Meet the Brooklyn Boro Pres Candidate: Antonio Reynoso

( Mary Altaffer / AP Images )
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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC.The absentee ballot and rank choice voting count in the New York primary this week made it clear that City Council Member Antonio Reynoso won the Democratic nomination for Brooklyn Borough President. Let's do victory lap round two. There will be a general election in November against the Republican nominee, of course, but hey, it's Brooklyn. Antonio Reynoso is overwhelmingly likely to succeed Eric Adams as the precedent of Brooklyn. Just as Alvin Bragg is overwhelmingly likely to succeed Cy Vance as District Attorney of Manhattan.
One interesting electoral note, Brooklyn voters chose Adams for mayor considered a relatively conservative in that race, chose Brad Lander for comptroller, considered the progressive candidate for that, and chose Reynoso, also a progressive, who was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and the Working Families Party, for example. Reynoso age 38, grew up in Williamsburg raised by Dominican immigrant parents. His current city council district is the 34th located in Bushwick and Williamsburg, as well as Ridgewood, Queens. Councilman Reynoso, thanks for coming on WNYC today, and big congratulations on your victory.
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: Thank you so much, Brian. Appreciate it.
Brian Lehrer: Want to introduce yourself a little bit to the many listeners not familiar with you yet? Maybe start with some of your family's story, maybe how'd your parents wind up coming from the Dominican to Brooklyn.
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: Yes. I think the talk about where I've come from, where I am and where I'm going, I guess, Brian, very quickly. My mother and father came here from the Dominican Republic with very little in their pockets, welfare food stamps, Section 8, if there was a government subsidy that existed, my family had to take advantage of it just to give their children and themselves a fair shot.
It's why I'm standing here before you as a council member and Borough President representing the Democratic Party, and I want to be able to pay that forward. I want to show that good government can work for people in need, and it's where I've come from. My mother and father both worked taxing jobs. My father was a line cook at a restaurant for almost his entire life.
My mother is a home health aid working with the elderly her entire life, both minimum wage, for the most part minimum wage jobs.
We were able to make it mostly because of education, Brian. My family really cared deeply about making sure all three of their kids went to college. In college's where I found my-- I don't want to call it my calling, but just what I love to do, which is just how people, especially folks that are in need. I became a chief of staff to Councilwoman Diana Reyna, who is the council member that I proceeded.
Thereafter, just some work, really hard in the city government related to environmental justice, police reform, and housing issues and tenants rights. Now I've got the opportunity to represent all of Brooklyn, and I'm really excited for what's coming ahead and being able to really affect change in a meaningful way.
Brian Lehrer: Was there ever a moment in your childhood that you now look back on where you think, "Growing up in South Williamsburg, that's the time I got my real first inkling that I wanted to go into politics or public service"?
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: Not as a young person. I wanted to be a teacher, that's why I initially went to college. My family has gone through a hard time. We were in the South side of Williamsburg in the time when they wanted to close the Williamsburg Bridge because it was too dangerous. I've had family members that are deported, in jail, dead. Growing up in Williamsburg during that time was extremely difficult for me and most of my family.
There's a lot of trauma that a lot of folks in this community have had for quite some time, over the '80s and '90s, that was the South Side of Williamsburg. But for some reason, the way my entire family sought out the generation that I am a part of, was leaving to go to a school away from New York City. I went to Syracuse, I went to Le Moyne College in Syracuse and that was everybody's way out of the South Side.
I knew I wanted to leave, but it was in college, there was a professor that told me that I needed to get more involved in the school. Syracuse at that time, Brian, had the lowest proficiency in English and math in all of the state during that time, East Syracuse. The people that were teaching these mostly Latino kids, Puerto Ricans on the East side were mostly white males. The professor said, "These kids need to be able to see that folks that looked like them actually went to college. They've never seen Black and brown people that are from college. They only see the white males".
I decided to start an organization called B.O.N.D., Brothers of a New Direction, that actually went out and tutored these young kids. It was through there that I saw how many people actually joined the organization, that I started noticing that I had some influence and some ability to move people. Really is when I started moving away from teaching, my sophomore year, to political science, my junior year. It's when it like really hit me that I need to help my people and that I can influence folks in a positive way.
Brian Lehrer: My guest is the winner of the Democratic primary for Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. We can take some questions for him at 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet a question, @BrianLehrer. Let me ask you to give us an eight-year view of where we are right now in New York, eight years ago, as you do know, it was a time of great progressive hope.
In the city, Mayor de Blasio was being elected as a progressor after 12 years of [unintelligible 00:06:07] Mike Bloomberg, Melissa Mark-Viverito was about to succeed. Christine Quinn, the City Council Speaker, people like you are coming into city council as freshmen, but not counting the effects of the pandemic. Assume a 2019 world, how much progress did de Blasio and this city council make, in your opinion, toward the central quest of fighting inequality?
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: I think we made a lot of progress, Brian. I guess to answer that question, we got to talk about how we get there. I think it was more important than getting there. The fact that in the city council, during Melissa Mark-Viverito time and early on during the Corey Johnson time, we had to drag this administration on policies that ultimately they agree with or was said to agree with.
We did the Right to Know Act, which was a second part of the Community Safety Act, that's already related to police reform. It took me four years to get that done, even though entering into the 2013 cycle. De Blasio was all in and supported and actually was one of the co-sponsors in his time of this legislation. It was just a work that we needed to do to get the de Blasio administration to follow through on his commitments.
That's was, I think, what the frustration was, these are things we should have gotten done in year one and year two. Instead, we were getting done in year four, five, and six. I think there was a lot of frustration over how long things took to get done, even though we agreed on it in principle. But looking back, I think history is going to tell a different story than what we see now, what we believe now, what we're feeling now. I think the de Blasio administration and the eight years that we were in council actually, did a lot of good to try to address inequalities.
I think the one place where we really fell short was housing, and still not being able to tackle that issue in a meaningful way. We're seeing the amount of homelessness in our streets, in our city. Just say not being able to be addressed again, I think was our biggest shortfall but outside of that, when it comes to the 3K and the work that we did with tenants rights, a lot of environmental justice work that we've been able to do is also meaningful.
I know you asked Alvin Bragg previously, what was the difference in [unintelligible 00:08:35] and crime? I just think it's an opportunity, Brian. I think that the city is still filled with opportunities for people. What we need to do is now if we can address this housing issue in a meaningful way and deal with the inequalities that we still see, and do it deliberately instead of having to drag people through it, I think we could get to more change and be prouder, I guess, of the time we had over the last eight years.
Brian Lehrer: I saw you quoted as wanting to embody Former Borough President Marty Markowitz, his cheerleader, enthusiasm for Brooklyn, with a policy wonkiness of Elizabeth Warren. If I've got that quote right, would you elaborate on that?
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: I think a part of me feels that the work that Eric did was really laying the foundation for his run for mayor while he was in the Borough President's Office. I don't necessarily think that there was any redefining moment in his time as a Borough President, outside of the healthy eating initiative that he started, which I think was meaningful.
Brian Lehrer: He's certainly going to be our first vegan mayor, by the way. A lot of people don't know that yet.
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: Exactly. More power to him. I'm excited for his time and I hope we can work together to really help New York, but Marty Markowitz was Brooklyn. Everything about Brooklyn was Marty Markowitz. We don't necessarily have someone tell us when spring begins or an animal will tell us when spring begins, what we have is the Wonder Wheel in Coney Island. We should be doing that every single year in the Borough of Brooklyn. We should be promoting the fact that we have the largest Chinese population in the entire City of New York. The Chinatown in Sunset Park is the largest not Chinatown in Manhattan.
There's so many beautiful things and great things about Brooklyn that I really don't think was shown in a positive way, and I'm talking about cultural things and things that really excite us. I want to go back to cheerleading and making sure that people know that Brooklyn is the center of the universe and that's its rightful place, and we need to make sure that the rest of New York in the world knows it. I really want to make sure that everyone knows that Brooklyn is going to be back on the map in a meaningful way, and I'm going to make sure that I highlight that.
Then I'm a big nerd, Brian, I care about policy, the legislation I passed, none of it was easy, none of it was recording or reporting documents, and so forth for resolutions. They're really difficult pieces of legislation that took a lot of work. I want to be able to show that we can affect change, again, in a meaningful way through legislation, through policy and affect the lives of the people that needed the most, while also making sure everyone knows that Brooklyn is the greatest borough in New York.
Brian Lehrer: I heard you cast shade on Groundhog's Day there, saying we shouldn't have an animal tell us when spring begins. You may be the first politician to cast shade on Groundhog's Day. Diana in Bay Ridge, you're on WNYC with Antonio Reynoso, City Council Member and winner of the Democratic primary for Brooklyn Borough President. Hi, Diana.
Diana: Hi. Good morning [unintelligible 00:11:37]. Hello.
Brian Lehrer: I apologize for that.
Diana: Thanks for taking my call. Mr. Reynoso, part of why I was so enthusiastic to vote for you are your policies and your ideas around environmentalism. I've been a public school teacher for 17 years here in Brooklyn. A lot of what I teach is about environmental justice and just sustainability. I want to know what kind of policies are you willing to take on?
Obviously, it's not just a Brooklyn issue and Department of Education, is the entire city. But I'm talking about everything from composting in our schools to the tremendous amount of food waste that goes on in our schools, to the fact that recycling doesn't really happen in our schools. What can you do to make our schools a model of sustainability and right now? [unintelligible 00:12:28]
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: Diana, thank you so much for that question. For folks that don't know, I chaired the Sanitation Committee for eight years, it was one of the places that I really wanted to make sure that I could bring about change because North Brooklyn actually handled 40% of the city's trash, and one out of 51 districts, 40% of the trash was handled in North Brooklyn. I care deeply about trash and the fact that you're talking about compost, really excites me.
Look, this is an example of dragging the administration to a place that they already agreed with us on something. Zero waste by 2030 was something that we were supposed to be achieving, and the mayor has moved back and push back composting in the city for his entire time as mayor. I just think that what we should be doing is imposing a mandatory organics across the city, composting across the city mandatory the same way metal, glass, plastic, and paper is recycled, we should be recycling organic waste. He's fought us every step of the way to try to get there, and we'll see what the future looks like.
The way we affect change when it comes to environmental justice is with the children, and we teach the children and the students how to recycle, how to compost, and how to do the work related to sustainability. They take that on to their adult lives, they take it on to their parents, and we really see more change happened when the children are focused on that work. We want to start with the environmental justice work and the instruction that needs to happen there at a very young age, so being able to do that, at the Department of Education level, can be something that are changed garbage culture in our city.
I think this last budget, we've done a very good job of being able to add money to make it so that the Department of Education is going to be what we start doing universal composting in the city. You should be seeing the infrastructure laid down right now for the Department of Education to take on composting long term, and once we do that with the young people, I can see that carried over generationally to be able to actually have a sustainable impact.
Brian Lehrer: That's such an interesting answer about how you approach being Chair of the City Council Sanitation Committee. There's that famous Mayor LaGuardia line about there being no Democratic or Republican way to pick up the garbage. Turns out that's not true, doesn't it?
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: Yes. Absolutely, absolutely, and I'm glad you said that. I just think that it's hard. When it comes to trash if you don't see it, you don't care about it. Out of sight, out of mind, Brian. The department sanitation has done a very good job of being able to do this basic service for the last 60 years the exact same way. What COVID did do, Ryan, is that he showed us that when you take money out of the Department of Sanitation, or you take resources out of it, that you can actually get dirty streets or that the job cannot be done as reliable as we've come to know it.
What they also don't see is all the work that's happening to turn the tanker to bring the Department of Sanitation to a new age. For example, Brian, right now everyone hates the fact that trash is in the streets, they complain about it all the time that we have to walk through garbage. Containerized trash on parking spots is the way that modern cities have already figured out how to handle their rat problem, the visual problem of trash, and the fight we have is no one wants to lose parking spaces over trash, over being able to have a better solution for trash. That is a very, I want to say lefty-righty issue and something that I want to start curing for in Community Board, so I'm really excited about that as well.
Brian Lehrer: Rob, in Brighton Beach, you're on WNYC with Antonio Reynoso, Democratic nominee for Brooklyn Borough President. Hi, Rob.
Rob: Hi, good morning. Good morning, Councilman Reynoso, this is Rob Burstein from public school 196, and I'm calling to ask a question but first, I want to say as an educator for 34 years in your district, I just wanted to reinforce, from personal experience, what you indicated at the beginning, your responsiveness to educational needs. In my career, there's rarely been a public servant in that district who has been as responsive to educators and kids, so thank you for that.
My question regarding education is, in your new role, assuming that you win the election which we do, since you have been a big supporter of public schools and averse to charter schools, to some degree, as a progressive, Mayor Adams has quite a different view. How will you perceive that you're going to best interact with him in the best interests of kids?
Brian Lehrer: I'll just say we can't call him Mayor Adams yet. We can't even call him Mayor-elect Adams yet, he's Mayor Nominee Adams, just for the record, but go ahead.
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: Thank you. Thank you so much for that question, Rob. Look, I think there's going to be a common interest with everyone that was elected this cycle. It's to recover, to bring New York back, or bring New York back to better. I want to start my time, should I win, working with the potential mayor, Eric Adams, and seeing what ideas we have that are in common that we can actually do in a good way to help solve our problems.
The last thing you want is this relationship that the governor and the mayor have, had made it impossible for us to get things done in places that needed, like Down TA, like [unintelligible 00:18:28] nature, and so forth. I don't want to start on my relationship or my time as the Borough President. I'm fighting, I want to start at working, I want to build a coalition to actually get things done and where we agree, let's agree, let's get it done and when we don't, let's discuss it and try to do better. Education is going to be one of those places, but at the end of the day the charter school conversation is really a state issue. It truly is.
The way we're going to be able to have a conversation about lifting the cap and all these other things that all happens at the state level. What we need to do is make sure that the proficiency rates of students in mostly Black and brown poor neighborhoods are not at below 20%, that our kids are not reading or doing math at grade level. Those types of things we can really start addressing out of ground level. I want to work with the potential Mayor as a potential Borough President in the places that we agree and do the best we can to make change happen there. I want to do my job as an advocate to be able to go to the state and let them know how I feel we should be addressing our education problem, which is what I see right now, especially in poor neighborhoods in our city.
Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC-FM HD and AM in New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong and WNGO 90.3 Toms River. We're on New York and New Jersey Public Radio. We have a few minutes left with-- let's face it, [unintelligible 00:19:59] he's going to be the Brooklyn Borough President, and Eric Adams is going to be the mayor. The Democratic nominee-
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: Thank you, Brian. It's official when you say it is official, Brian. Thank you so much.
[laughter]
Brian Lehrer: I only made a prediction. Soon we'll call Eric Adams mayor and we'll call you president. Asanti in Brooklyn is probably going to be our last call before we run out of time. Then, listeners, we have coming up an assessment of Marvin Gaye's classic song, What's Going On, which turns 50 this year, and we'll talk about its enduring impact. We'll also talk about Sha'Carri Richardson not going to the Olympics and the underlying issues there. Asanti in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with future President Reynoso.
Asanti: Hello, can you hear me?
Brian Lehrer: Yes.
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: Yes.
Asanti: Okay. Yes. My commentary and question is about waterfront access. Just for context, I'm a fisherman, I have a lot of friends, we fish, they have kids. I live in downtown Brooklyn, and every time I go to Brooklyn Bridge Park, I get harassed. I'm five minutes away, and it's to the point now I don't even want to go. I'm an African American and I take my white fiance with me so I don't get harassed. During the pandemic, when you think that waterfront access would be open, you could go out for an hour before work or whatever. This is very emotional to me because I went to school for marine biology and I fished with my grandfather as a kid. I get harassed like, "Go somewhere else, you can't fish here".
Then, the park was under construction. One time I was there, the guy asked me for my license, and the guy next to me has an illegal fish, which is a ticket. He doesn't even stop and ask him and this is the Park Police. All across the Boroughs, I noticed that places that should be for waterfront access for families and kids it's being closed down. I just can't understand it. My last point on this, there's a place in Staten Island where Debi Rose, the council member, that's also been closed down for three years.
My last thing that highlights this story is there was a gentleman named Jamie. He's like, "I love to come here." He comes from Sheepshead Bay. He said, "This is such a great spot. I will bring my neighbor's son here, but every time I come, I get harassed." This is without me talking to him. I'm like, "Well, tell me what's going on." He says, "Every time I come, I get harassed. The guy said they were going to give me a $250 ticket." I said, "I've never heard of that. It's not on the books as far as I know".
He said, "I'm a poor guy, I can't pay that." I asked him his name. I said, "I'm your advocate for this." I've emailed the mayor's office, I emailed candidate, Maya Wiley, I talked to Johann Simon staff. It's not that big of a deal, but it is if you like the water. Who deserves to get access to the water in New York? What has happened at Brooklyn Bridge Park? I'll take my answer off the air.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much. Council.
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso Thank you. There's so many layers in that work. There's implicit bias that obviously exists. The last thing you want to do to any Black person doing work that is not necessarily illegal, but just calling the cops or harassing really is what we need to do when it comes to the work with the NYPD, and just what it means to make a 311 call versus a 911 call to know the effect of the trauma in the lives of one type of people versus another, or Black and brown people versus white people.
People really need to be very careful about harassing folks, especially when they're doing something that's extremely harmless, and if anything beneficial to us in the city of New York. The first thing is just addressing that in a more meaningful way. I don't necessarily know how we're going to do that, I'm looking forward to a more progressive council that can figure that out. The other thing is waterfront access, it's about knowing what parts of this city are accessible to people publicly, along the waterfront. If we don't know that, they should be posted, we should have information readily available to people so they know what they can and cannot do.
If the waterfront is not accessible, we should start working towards that. That is something that we should be doing. The big thing we have with this environmental justice conversation is that the people that have access to waterfronts and the people that have access to be able to do these types of things are very isolated and people that have a lot of political influence, which is something that I'm trying to change. I'm trying to spend more time in the places that need the resources and need my time as opposed to the places that already have the political resources, and affluence, and so forth.
This is the first time I'm hearing about this one issue, but waterfront access is something I really want to start addressing as Borough President. I want to do it by making sure that everyone gets access to it, not just a few. It is something that I will have a plan for, like Elizabeth Warren, hopefully, within the first year. I will make sure that I clearly outline what we can and can't do on our waterfront, and when we can't do something, work towards making it a reality.
Brian Lehrer: Asanti, thank you very much for your call and letting more people know about that issue. Let me wrap up with you with a pure politics question which is, what do you think about these election results overall? I mentioned in the intro, the apparent paradox of Brooklyn voters mainly choosing Eric Adams for Mayor considered a relative conservative in this context, although we say we're still talking about the context of New York City Democrats. It's not like he's Matt Gaetz or something like that.
Still, Eric Adams for mayor, relative conservative in this context, progressive Brad Lander for Comptroller and progressive view for Borough President, how do you explain it? What do you make of many articles that have been written with the Adams victory about progressives claiming to speak for majority Black and brown working-class interests, but then the votes go to candidates like Eric Adams and Joe Biden?
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso: Yes. Look, I think that it doesn't necessarily need to be this progressive versus moderate conversation when it comes to this mayor Borough President and Comptroller. I've won districts overwhelmingly where Eric Adams was the number one vote-getter in that area as well. I've had other areas where Maya Wiley was doing well, and where Dianne Morales won in parts of my district. I just think that where we're so obsessed, where we really want to know how it happened or why this bit happened, I just think Eric did a very good job in his campaign, outlining a message that resonated with the most amount of people.
We did that locally as well. If you look at the work that our Comptroller Brad Lander and myself, the work we did was very clear messaging regarding our progressive policies and politics. At the mayor's level outside of Dianne Morales, that didn't necessarily happen. A lot of people were trying to play both sides or really be more moderate than what they truly are, what they could have been. I just think our messaging is about helping the people that need the most help. That worked for us.
For him, it was about bringing about safety and doing that in a way that is comprehensive and doesn't infringe on the rights of Black and brown people. That worked as well. I just thought it was two messages, that would both resonated, that ended up getting us a victory. It's a lot more complicated than that, for sure, Brian, but I just don't want it to be this idea that you can't elect Eric Adams and Antonio Reynoso, that can happen or that that's unusual. It isn't. It's good messaging, it's good campaigning in a city that only has less than 20% of the people vote. Again, I think it was just good campaigning. He did a very good job with his message, and I think Brad and I did well with our message.
Brian Lehrer: Antonio Reynoso, now the Democratic nominee for Brooklyn Borough President. We look forward to speaking to you many times once you're in office.
City Council Member Antonio Reynoso Thank you so much, Brian. Take care.
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