The New York City Primary Election: Catherine Vaughn & Ryder Kessler of Abundance New York on Radio Abundance

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to Radio Abundance, a podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. It's time to build again, folks. Fascism never made America great, but when progressives build, that's where you'll find American greatness. Tonight's guests are Catherine Vaughn and Ryder Kessler from Abundance New York. They'll be joining us to break down New York City's recent mayoral primary. How should promoters of Abundance think about Zoran Mondani? Is Eric Adams any better? What happened down there? The answers to all this and more are coming up on Radio Abundance. You're listening to Radio Abundance, a podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. Now let's get to the show. Please welcome your host for the evening, YIMBY Democrats for America Executive Director Steve Boyle. And to kick things off, here's Steve.

0:52 I'm Donald J. Trump and I hate these guys. Catherine Vaughn, Ryder Kesler, welcome to Radio Abundance. Thanks so much for having us. I am stoked for this conversation today for so many reasons. We are giant fans of yours and have been from the start. We've already teamed up on some events and events in the New York City mayoral race. We love your work and are excited to hear more about it and some of the impacts we think maybe you've made in this race. And then, of course, you've joined the team as partners and our Radio Abundance NYC correspondents taking your expertise and advocacy at Abundance New York to make sure that everybody who's following us, this podcast, following YIMBY Democrats for America, or just following the Abundance movement across the country understands what's up in New York.

1:42 And there's been a lot to talk about recently with the mayoral race, but you've made sure to keep us focused on down ballot, on what's happening at the policy level at City Hall, broader political questions in New York. And just really thrilled with the start we're off to and to keep that up in the coming weeks and months, both as we follow the next steps of the mayoral race, but also as we understand the changing political landscape and policy landscape of housing, energy, transportation, everything else in New York City. So massive fans of Abundance New York, we're going to talk today about the earthquake of a mayoral primary that just happened and what great timing to chat today. But first, maybe tell us who you are and who Abundance New York is. Sure. So we are we're an organization building power for the Abundance agenda in New York.

2:29 So when we came onto the scene, we kind of we did about a year of research. Ryder had previously run for office, and I'll let him talk about that. But we had met with sitting electeds, with the leaders of advocacy organizations, with people that we knew who were really interested in Abundance. And we found that there were Abundance advocates and champions around the city and state, but they were diffuse and they were disempowered. And we wanted to build a political home for those people who didn't feel that they had a political home either on the organized left or in the establishment, a kind of democratic establishment, which are basically the two political centers of gravity in New York. So we wanted to build a community of people that were connected, that could connect the dots both socially, interpersonally, but also in terms of the issues that we care about.

3:15 So understanding housing density as a climate issue and not just a housing issue or an affordability issue or thinking about the relationship between public base and public transit and housing and climate. And we've been around for just over a year. I think we we celebrated our year anniversary at the beginning of the month. We have about 3000 people in our community and we basically bring people in and then help them maximize their power. So that could be plugging them into advocacy opportunities for great Abundance legislation or helping them run for office or join their community boards or plugging them into opportunities to volunteer for a campaign or donate through our affiliated PAC. Yeah. And I'll just add that, you know, we come from kind of professional democratic politics before Abundance.

4:04 Catherine can speak a little bit more about her work, but, you know, I grew up in New York City and started working full time in politics after 2016, thinking that the operative kind of urgent fight was for Democrats to beat Republicans as a way to push back against authoritarianism. And so I worked on federal campaigns at the congressional and Senate and presidential level. But at the same time, I thought, OK, I'm doing politics now. I live down the street from where I grew up. I should see what's going on in my own backyard. And I joined a community board, which is one of our kind of local bodies of community feedback, one of the places where the process that makes building new homes or bike lanes or resiliency infrastructure quite quite onerous plays out. And I was very quickly kind of radicalized into what, in retrospect, I would call an abundance mindset, seeing that people who were very keen to fight Trump and to express their progressive values were not so keen to build more housing or to add a busway on 14th Street or to protect NYCHA residents, public housing residents on the lower east side of Manhattan from coastal flooding.

5:06 And so I thought this doesn't feel like progressive values to me. And I ran for the state assembly in 2022 against a 30 plus year incumbent on what we would, in retrospect, call an abundance agenda. But before that language really existed. And so I think like as national as professional Democrats from a national perspective, I think Catherine and I both say, especially in the wake of the 2024 presidential election, that, you know, we need a new kind of politics in blue cities and states, not just to solve our problems of skyrocketing rents and existentially threatening climate change and diminishing quality of life, but also to show that blue cities and states are well governed and can deliver outcomes. And when Democrats have power, they can solve problems, because if we can't, then why should people elect us at the federal level? So Abundance New York, you know, is that community and that platform for empowerment of people with this shared sensibility so that we can shift how New York City and New York State operates?

6:00 And then I say in doing so personally, we see that as an opportunity to demonstrate that Democrats can solve problems and that blue cities and states can be beacons, that we can live up to our ideals as havens of people seeking freedom and opportunity, but also that we can be a model of what good governance can look like at a national level. And before we reckon with the results, let's get our biases out of the way. How did you how did you rank the candidates coming into the primary election? Well, we can. Well, I'll share what we put in our voter guide. So our number one pick was Elner Meyrie, who we are all big fans of here. He just had a really visionary platform. He wants to build a million homes over the next decade. He had, you know, a lot of really connected the dots that we were talking about between housing issues, affordability, but also public transit, public space and climate.

6:48 And then our number two pick. So the two that we really featured were Zellner and then Brad Lander was our number two pick, who's the current comptroller. And, you know, probably a lot of people know about him because he cross endorsed with Zoran at the end of the race. And, you know, they appeared together in a lot of different contexts. But, you know, I think he really has done this amazing job of showing how an abundance agenda is progressive. I think he's always been kind of a progressive champion and over time has really focused on building more housing. You know, he's always been a real champion for people for streets or, you know, a progressive climate agenda in New York. And I think he did a great job of showing that, you know, building more market rate housing can be a path to a more progressive kind of future for the city. And then we had a few others on our list. But those weren't the two that we really featured.

7:33 And did you rank Cuomo or Zoran? Yeah. So I can pick that up. You know, we had initially recommended supporting Zellner and Brad earlier in the cycle. And then we thought, OK, as we get closer to the election and we have, you know, this desire to put out a really robust voter guide for for people who are interested in real solutions to New York's problems and who maybe haven't seen what they're looking for through more purely kind of polarized ideological resources. Or who maybe might have once read The New York Times when they endorsed more reliably and robustly. You know, we wanted to provide those people good information. And we thought we really need to have a full slate, five people that we can recommend, especially because this election appears to be coming down to Cuomo and Mamdani. And we want to take a position about who is better for abundance minded voters and even just people who aren't syncing with the abundance lens if they haven't read Ezra Klein yet.

8:24 But people who want to address affordability and quality of life issues and long term safety and sustainability. So we ended up having a slate of five. Zellner, one, Brad, two. Our third choice pick was Adrian Adams, the current Speaker of the City Council, who was instrumental in getting the City of Yes for Housing opportunity passed. Our big first big rezoning since 1961. And then our fourth recommendation was Whitney Tilson, a former head fund manager, charter school advocate, who was one of the people in the race who really was reckoning with not just the need for housing abundance to increase affordability, but also pointing out that we spend a lot of money on many things, education included, but not exclusively. And that there has too often been a completion of dollars spent with achievement when actually the outcomes aren't necessarily there.

9:14 And then our fifth slot, we decided to recommend that people rank Zoran rather than Cuomo. And I think, you know, we can talk more about that. And I think even since we made that recommendation, Zoran has been even more assertive about his embrace of abundance issues. But thinking about Cuomo and Zoran through the lens as the issues we care about, housing policy, public transit and public space, climate, democracy, delivery, when putting them up against each other, while neither was our ideal choice from an abundance perspective, was clear that Cuomo represented very much more of the same and did not actually have the issue record to suggest that he would be the solution to our problems. Whereas while Zoran didn't always have the solutions we were looking for, he was diagnosing the problems and he was much more open to the information and the ideological perspective and lens that we were bringing to the table.

10:08 So ultimately, it felt like the right move to say, you know, voters looking for change, voters interested in solving these problems, rank Mamdani, do not rank Cuomo. And certainly last night's result wore out that many voters chose to do that. You know, your rankings are very similar to how I might have ranked this just as an individual. I am not a New York City voter, though I have been before, both in, you know, sort of across the board in in that final ranking in the binary between Mandani and Cuomo, leaning towards Mandani. And then especially in those top two candidates and something we will get to in a second to me, the story kind of lurking behind all of this is like, you know, like you, top choice would be has been Zellner Meyrie, right?

10:53 He is amazing. He had not just the boldest, biggest plan to build homes, build and preserve a million new homes in a decade with the actual expertise and know how to get it done with the mythology around the spirit of New York City, recapturing that energy and ambition and optimism that built the Empire State Building and like five X the Midtown skyline in 13 months in the Great Depression. And matching that with a lifetime of progressive credentials and tenant advocacy.

11:27 Zellner is buds with Zoran. They don't agree with everything, but they text a lot. They talk about housing. They support each other. They tease out ideas. When Zoran mentioned to the New York Times that he is maybe changing his mind around the need to build market rate housing, I hear a little bit of Zellner's voice. And it's notable to me that in the final days of the election, Zellner never took down Zoran and spent a little bit less time boosting himself and most of his energy and funding to tear down Cuomo. So that is notable to me. And then Brad Lander, who you mentioned, whose plan, I believe, was 500,000 homes. Yeah, actively cross-endorsed Zoran and, you know, went on the Colbert Report with him or whatever the serious Colbert show is called.

12:13 And so that is really interesting to me, especially when you throw Chiose in the mix, who we'll talk about in a little bit. But let's save that and just talk about what just happened. I think everyone listening knows that there was an earthquake in the election. Zoran Mandani didn't just beat Cuomo and everybody else. He is kind of a landslide as these things go. You know, when we scheduled this post-election analysis a day after the election, maybe it's the Californian in me. But my experience with counting votes and especially ranked choice is that it takes a while. And we knew pretty early last night and it was and I and Cuomo conceded out of the gate like it was big. So I'm wondering, like, initial reactions to Zoran's victory and and also what else up and down the ballot we should be paying attention to, thinking about, you know, putting in our heads as the narrative of this vote and the New York City electorate.

13:06 And then we'll we'll build on that kind of initial framing from there. Maybe I'll start. Like, I think, one, just to bring in down ballot off the bat, like I think that we've been thinking a lot about abundance as a different axis from the left to right ideological spectrum. And if you look at this election, at first, Lance, you might say, well, it was a left versus center election. It was Mamdani on the left and the folks who ended up supporting, you know, the WFP candidate, the Working Families Party slate, all kind of banding together against Cuomo in the middle.

13:42 And, you know, and the left prevailed. But then when you look immediately down ballot, when you look at the comptroller race, that is a tricky one. And I think we would say, what does it really mean to be a progressive? And we would say that Mark Levine was a very progressive candidate in many ways and focusing on housing affordability and in his emphasis on congestion pricing and people for streets and that sort of thing. But I would say, at least in terms of how it was conveyed to the electorate, a lot of the electorates saw Justin Brannon, who was also running for comptroller, as the more leftist or progressive candidate. And Mark Levine won. So it wasn't I think the story is not so simple as like the leftists won. I don't think Mark Levine necessarily won because he was the abundance candidate. I think he had a really great coalition. He had support from across the boroughs and he has great name recognition, has done a lot in Manhattan.

14:30 Like, there's a lot of reasons and everything's always idiosyncratic. But I do think that there it was a change election and it was a big vision election. And I think that a lot of the 43 percent of people who ranked Zoran number one, they were not all DSA members. They were people who wanted a change, who didn't want the status quo as represented by Cuomo, who didn't want to go back to someone who had had to resign in disgrace. And I think that they were looking for big ideas. And that is something that Zoran offered. And that is something that candidates like Mark Levine also offered in terms of really thinking about how we make the city more affordable and more livable. Ryder, I'm sure you have a lot more commentary on that. Yeah. I just want to first just kind of contextualize in case any listeners are coming in without a lot of knowledge about kind of what the expectations were for this race and the timeline.

15:20 So it's a ranked choice election where voters in the primary could rank up to five candidates, as we talked about. And I think what you were gesturing at is that our expectation was that we would see that Cuomo and Mondani were close in the first choice votes, that maybe they each would have gotten about 30 to 35 percent. But I think people thought after the first choice votes, Mondani will be below Cuomo and first choice votes. Maybe he'll be a little bit ahead, but but it will require the ranked choice tabulations to take place where the candidates who got fewer first place votes are eliminated and their ballots are reallocated for Mondani to pick up support from Brad Lander voters. And what we saw instead was that Mondani had such a commanding lead in the first choice votes that it was clear that given the fact that the third place candidate, Brad Lander, who got about 10 percent, had endorsed him.

16:15 It just seemed impossible for Cuomo to go from 35 percent of first place votes to over 50 percent. So I think that's some of kind of what was so jarring. I think we were really kind of expecting that we would be waiting till July 1st, which was the date, which is the date that the Board of Elections will be running the instant runoffs. They have to wait a week because we need to receive all the ballots that are outstanding. People in New York have a week to have their ballots arrive at the Board of Elections if they're postmarked before Election Day. There was also a chat about like, well, I think we just know immediately. It's good that we're waiting for all the ballots to come in to run the instant runoffs. But I think people were quite surprised that Mondani had such a commanding lead out of the gate and that Cuomo decided to rip the bandaid off and just concede.

17:01 So that's just a bit of context. I would say just to echo Catherine's point, absolutely. I would say it would be a misreading to say this Mondani surprise, very resounding win means New York City is some socialist paradise now that people were like adopting wholesale this idea as, you know, wanting a democratic socialist in charge. I think it's a repudiation of the status quo, while not exactly the kind of new axis and abundance minded versus scarcity minded that we would kind of prefer to be the operative axis. It's more, I think, really just about change. I think Brad Lander said that this was about fighters versus fakers, where like Zoran clearly has energy and chutzpah and Cuomo very much just is self-serving.

17:50 And so voters are less I think people do think about kind of this gestalt kind of what is the key differentiator between the candidates. And it might it might have been less ideological than more about change versus stasis. I think for us, we are encouraged by the idea that that change can be inflected with abundance ideas because Zoran really is is driving a realignment of New York's left towards a focus on delivery and outcomes. And so there's a lot of just kind of different different contrasts that are that are coexisting here. But yes, the upshot is that it was quite surprising for the race to be called so quickly. It was quite surprising for Zoran to win so resoundingly. There had been chatter for months that he had a ceiling, I think, because of an expectation that his support would be quite narrow within the more conventionally left leaning electorate.

18:43 And really, it's to the it's to Zoran's campaigns credit that he really reached out beyond that narrow left. And I think it's a credit to many in the electorate that they were willing to be similar. Yeah. You know, I told people that I thought for all intents and purposes that it would be a tie in the sense that I thought Cuomo would take a hit, but not such a big hit that that he wouldn't still run, that he wouldn't in the fall, that he would even if he didn't lose win the primary, that he would go, hey, I got name recognition. I got money. I'm not going to let these lefty loonies take me down. I'm going to take it to the population. And he may still he conceded the primary immediately. He hasn't, I don't think, said he's refused to say he won't run in the fall, but obviously took a giant hit. Meanwhile, I thought Zoran, I didn't think he'd necessarily pull it out, but I thought he'd be able to say, look, look at the trajectory here.

19:33 I have third party options. Let's see where this can go in four more months. So I thought they kind of both emerge in the race and it would settle nothing. It was, of course, a huge and very compelling event for a lot of the reasons you're mentioning. You know, Zoran gets a ton of credit for being a brilliant and savvy campaigner, as well as a very charismatic guy. But as you're talking about, there's really three things that stand out to me that he did really well. One that the DSA has always struggled with that Zoran did expertly is to make allies and unexpected allies. And his really strong connection and cross endorsement with Brad Lander and sort of co-campaigning is a great example of that. Secondly, like and we're seeing this across the Democratic Party, you just have to go places. And yeah, you got great short term content, but you also have to have the long form conversations with people who might be potential detractors.

20:23 And so for Zoran to sit for long interviews with Derek Thompson and John Lovett and talk about abundance in detail and very clearly demonstrate he'd read the book and thought about it. That made a big difference. And I think certainly for the three of us. And then lastly, as you've called out, he focused on pocketbook issues. He focused on the cost of living and your money. And you can do that from the socialist left. You can do that from the capitalist center. In a sense, where you're going with that is less important than that you do that, that it's still the economy, stupid. And people want to know that you're focused on them, that you are authentic, that you will listen to them and take flack for that from them and show up and that you are focused on their bottom line in their lives.

21:08 And I think Zoran did that better than than anybody else. I agree with much of what you said and how you framed it. I might tweak a little bit. I do think, like, yes, Zoran reaching out to new coalition partners and allies was a signal of of what made him successful. And I think something that we were pleased that he engaged with our community and seemed to to take it in. I would say, like, I think there's a style point and a substance point there, which was stylistically he showed that he was open. And then also he truly adapted and admitted that he changed his mind. He told The New York Times that the issue he had changed his mind about was the role of market rate housing development and driving affordability. And whereas Cuomo would not admit to having never made a mistake. So there was a stylistic thing there, but also it showed voters actually is not so ideologically rigid and scary and out of touch, but actually that he is responsive and awful.

22:00 I think his I think going everywhere was great for both getting that new information and also making it. I would say I think every candidate tried to make the race about affordability. So I think that's the one thing where I'm like, everyone's they are the affordability candidate. I think Zellner can make the same way to us as if we could build a million homes, then we can really bring rents down for everyone and not just, you know, rent stabilized tenants who are going to benefit from a rent free is what was one of Zoran's promises. I think something that made him quite successful on in emphasizing affordability was the clarity and consistency and concision of his campaign promises. Every if you stop someone on the street and said, what is Zoran about? They would say freeze the rent or they would say free buses. And that is something that all candidates can learn from that kind of clarion consistency.

22:52 And the idea of centering affordability is is necessary, but maybe not sufficient. And I think Zoran also successfully tied those ideas to the basic New York values and the kind of fighter ethos that I think Brad Lander responded to and that a lot of voters responded to in this Trump moment, where they want someone who will fight for integrating communities, who will fight for making New York welcoming, including making it affordable, but that it's not issues divorced from those broader progressive values that deeply enmeshed with them. You know, let's talk for a second about how we should think about Zoran and I think we'll do that in two rounds and first about how we think about Zoran and abundance. And then after we talk about that, let's get to what we think about the rest of his policy suite and how it will actually affect abundance and what he can actually do in office.

23:42 This has divided our community of abundance liberals and GMB Democrats and its folks who like if we sat down to make a party platform, I think it would not take that long. Like, I think we agree on a lot, a lot of stuff. There's a community of people who are pro abundance, pro democracy, who like agree across the board. But when it comes to evaluating Zoran, you've got people who are very excited about this, people who are in absolute panic, like New York is going to trash itself and have a lot of problems San Francisco had. It's very divided. And there's people who are really stoked about Zoran talking about abundance and people who are like, he's pulling the wool over your eyes. This is fake. I will tell you first how I think about this, and then you will tell me with your much more informed local opinion how we should think about this.

24:28 For me, you know, starting off and talking to Zellner, like, yeah, Zellner would have been my favorite. He would kill it. He would, he's just a good guy with the right platform. He could do it. But if he wasn't going to win, you know, Cuomo, Cuomo didn't budge an inch on Yimbyism and abundance. He only, he only went forced to, did he slap together a housing plan with chat GPT bullshit in it. And so, and he was the clear favorite. And Zoran had already emerged with DSA credibility and as a brilliant and charismatic campaigner. So, like, I remember in March, like, my prayer was if Zellner doesn't win, knowing Zellner and Zoran were friends, man, I'd love Zellner to take over Zoran's housing plan, right, or put a bug in his ear. And, and, and this happened on a trajectory beyond my wildest imagination, right?

25:17 So the cooperation with Brad Lander, the relationship with Chiyose, who we should talk more about. Obviously, the sort of maybe most, I don't want to say coordination, that might be an issue. But, like, the fact that Zellner went after Cuomo and not Zoran, the fact that Zoran came out and told the New York Times he was changing his mind on market rate housing. I don't care that Zoran said the word abundance. I care about the fact that he talked about it in detail and praised why it was important to his policy suite with Derek Thompson and John Lovett and others. I care that he shouted out Tokyo at the debate. I care more that he shouted out Jersey City. New York politicians do not praise Jersey City. But he talked about how Jersey City under Mayor Stephen Pullup has been putting New York to shame on building housing. So, like, we don't know what he's going to do.

26:03 We don't know what the rest of the platform is going to do. But he's knowledgeable and interested. And we have to remember, this was not the election. This was the primary. There are more than four months to see where this evolution goes, what it looks like now that he's not running against Brad Lander and Zellner, but that they can maybe probably join his team in some way, have some influence. So we have more time for him to evolve and for us to make a final decision. We are not committed. He is not the endowed next mayor of New York City. He might well be, but that's a decision in November. So that's I think of this as like a kind of a bet if if if if it was going to come down to Cuomo and Zoran, I think this is a best case scenario. But I'm wondering how we should think of this election as Democrats and how we should think about Zoran right now.

26:50 Yeah, I mean, I do think that some of Mom Donnie's beliefs are fluid. We have seen that. So we met with him in February. It was before the Abundance book came out. So no one had read it. And, you know, we talked with him about about Zellner's ideas around like, what if we built so much housing that prices came down for everyone the way that it's worked in places like Austin or Minneapolis? And he seemed receptive and we, you know, we weren't holding our breath, but we thought, let's let's see how this goes. And then over time, we saw him adjust some of his perspectives and we've seen him come out more publicly reconsidering his views on market rehousing. And I'm curious to see how some of his other views evolve. I think probably the biggest point of contention in our community around Zoran is, you know, whether he sees government as like the driver and funder and provider of the abundance of things that we need versus as a facilitator and as a broker among different, you know, private sector or market actors and public sector actors.

27:54 So, you know, I think that his proposal around city run grocery stores, there's some merit to it. There are food deserts. Prices are very high. I personally don't think the solution is to do city run grocery stores. He kind of I don't know if he's modified his proposal or kind of clarified that he's really thinking about doing one pilot per borough. So it's also not as scary as people think. But I would say a lot of people in our community would say, you know, how can we use the government to facilitate more abundance through the private sector as opposed to seeing the government as needing to actually provide all of these services directly, especially given the track record of kind of bureaucratic inefficiency in government. What I'm heartened by is hearings or on talk about how we need to think about government delivery and how we need to take back certain phrases from the right and own them as Democrats or as the left and think about how our government can work better and how we can restore faith in government from people.

28:52 So, you know, I think a lot of this is still an evolution. And I totally agree with you that we should see how things go over the next few months and really try to influence these campaigns as much as we can. I think we see it quite similar to how you see it. And you gave a robust, comprehensive account of the encouraging signs. You know, we had decided to recommend Zoran over Cuomo even before his Abundance tour, where he really embraced more fulsomely the ideas and more publicly. The ideas of the book and market rate housing, et cetera. I think, to be fair to the skeptics, there is a question now of if Mondani wins in November, and we could talk more about November because it certainly is far from a done deal.

29:38 Will he be New York's Brandon Johnson or will he be our Michelle Wu?

29:43 How ideologically rigid will he be in pursuing some of the core promises of his campaign and what are the fiscal implications of that? I think some people who are more skeptical of Zoran and either didn't rank him or didn't rank either Cuomo or Mondani or chose to rank Cuomo, and we have all sorts in our community. I think they might suggest that some of our analysis is more wishful thinking than really data-driven analysis. I would disagree with them. But I think to ventriloquize a little bit more what they would say, it's that, you know, Zoran is gesturing towards these ideas, but they are not his core commitments, either ideologically or policy-wise. His housing plan is about freezing rents on rent-stabilized apartments in New York City, which, while certainly a bomb for renters who are in rent-stabilized apartments, who are, you know, seeing their rents go up and having trouble paying, is not necessarily an abundance-minded policy because we need those units to be able to be improved and kept on the market.

30:50 And reasonable, you know, nonpartisan analysts suggest that if those rents can't go up with inflation, then they will fall out of the market, and that will be bad for the renters and for the market at large. And his commitment to building 200,000 new income-restricted units with $70 billion is just, you know, it's not going to happen. It's not financially tenable. That money isn't available. So I think, you know, we should be fair to the critics who see Zoran's promises as unrealistic and irresponsible when he is asked about the rent-stabilized units. For example, he talks about the, you know, profit increases for rent-stabilized landlords, but he's talking about averages that have very high variance. And, you know, it's like, I think if we are digging into the details of some of this stuff, we don't agree with him on everything.

31:41 I think what encourages us is the fact that he is outcomes-oriented and he wants to get to affordability, and I think he is open to whatever levers can be pulled to get there, as an example. And that he certainly is much more responsive to good new information than Cuomo is or was. You know, I think you named the big fear, which is the disastrous mayoralty in Chicago. You know, if Zoran succeeds and even in a small way helps woo the DSA in little steps towards abundance with DSA-friendly language, I mean, they will still call us corporate shills. But if they build the housing, I don't see that that matters much. That would be a massive victory for what I would call Progressive Abundance.

32:29 But if he fails, he might not just be New York's Brandon Johnson. He might be abundance's Brandon Johnson. I mean, it could backfire on our movement, on the abundance movement, on the Democratic Party, as we try to take on Trump, on the relationship between Democrats and abundance. I mean, there's risks here, and it seems to come down both to what he does on these issues, but also there's other red flag issues like you mentioned, right? Look, free buses and cheaper publicly provided food. These are not evil concepts. It's just a matter of, like, you have trade-offs in budgets and what you focus on. And, you know, if you make buses free, but there's less buses, that makes losers of us all. But the goal is not terrible. But then there's other worries around, you know, public safety, which is always difficult to talk about because you can suffer from both over-policing and under-policing.

33:19 But we've certainly seen how the sense of chaos in cities can backfire and delegitimize Democrats. So when it comes to these other parts of his platform and red flags, you know, I'm both curious, like, what are the risks here? And what can a mayor actually do, given that they have to work with a lot of other elected officials to get this kind of thing done? I'll quickly say, I mean, I think a mayor has a tremendous amount of power, but not unlimited. And so on many things, whether, you know, they are overseeing the public education system or the police department, they can make their policy preferences known and can effectuate them. I think when we hear people say Zoran is going to bankrupt the city, that doesn't contemplate the reality that, like, the city council passes the city budget.

34:06 So Zoran cannot wield a pen and say, we're spending $200 billion on X, Y, or Z. He will have to work with the city council to pass the budget. And the city council passes the laws. So if there are changes to, you know, criminal justice policy or what have you, there will be collaboration with the city council. So much also of New York's policy at the city level is controlled by the state. And so when Zoran pursued the free bus pilot, that was something he did as a state legislator because it required the state legislature to act. And he would need the state legislature to be doing a lot to fund some of the income-restricted housing development. So there are going to be natural checks on any mayor's capacity to meet all of their promises for good and for ill.

34:57 I think for us, vis-a-vis Zoran, some of it is like we see this as a healthy check, whereas there is still a lot of opportunity to drive towards policy preferences. Things like citywide rezonings, if we are going to upzone in transit-rich neighborhoods, if we're going to end the requirement to add parking spaces with new housing, if we are going to implement the streets plan that the city council passed to require additional bus and bike lanes, that is all stuff that the mayoral administration can push and can kind of take the lead on. So we see opportunities for a mayor to commit to abundance ideas and move them forward, but in a way that is collaborative with other branches of government at the city and state level, that will kind of require structurally more collaboration that we think could be helpful no matter who the mayor is.

35:52 I don't know if it's that risky to the abundance movement. I don't think anyone looks at Zoran and says he is the banner child for abundance. I mean, we ranked him five on our list of five and we qualified it and said, look, he's better than Cuomo, but he's not perfect. And I think there is ambiguity in the abundance movement. I think that there has been a conflation of the abundance project and a project to make the democratic brand more centrist. And that is something that we're often trying to clarify because I think in New York it's a different landscape and those two projects are not the same. But I do think if you drill down into the policies, I think most like everyone in our community would say, you know, upzoning is an abundance policy and freezing the rent is not.

36:38 And if we see a lot of issues because of a four year rent freeze, I don't think people are going to say, look, the abundance movement failed. I think it's incumbent upon organizations like ours to really define what that means, work with candidates and electeds to to flesh out what an abundance agenda looks like here. But I'm not too worried right now that, you know, a Mamdani failure, a la Brandon Johnson, would would bring down the abundance with it. But I think we should be careful about how we label candidates. And I think there are a lot of candidates that are using this trendy new label without clarifying what they mean when they say I'm the abundance candidate. And I think organizations like ours are here to kind of help family for people and put out voter guides that help people understand, like, who really is carrying that mantle. The question of rent freezes is actually really interesting.

37:26 And it was part of Zellner's plan, albeit like more limited in scope and temporary. It's something to we talked about with Tabitha Kanene of the New York City New Liberals. It's something I am keen to discuss with you much more in depth. This is not our only conversation. So I think maybe we save that because I want to finish with two quick questions. But one is, I mean, if the general election was now and it was Zoram Mandani and Eric Adams, is this an easy choice? Is it a hard choice? I mean, you'd think we'd be all really stoked about the guy who passed City of Yes and also is completely hilarious. He just also happens to be an ultra corrupt crazy person in a soft alliance with Trump, who is very vulnerable to to a little bit of the art of the deal and carrots and sticks around his legal troubles and who no longer has any meaningful relationship with the Democratic Party.

38:17 I mean, how do we think about Eric Adams? And if we didn't have four more months to figure this out, if it was now we had to pick between them, how do we think about that? I'll maybe punch on the question and say, like, it's not now. Not only do we not only is it not now, but we actually don't know what the field is going to be. So, you know, we know that it is very likely and will be confirmed after the RCV tabulations are run that Zoran will be the Democratic Party nominee. Eric Adams, the incumbent, is going to be on the ballot as an independent. Cuomo could be on the ballot as an independent. He secured the ballot line, but is undecided if he'll run. There will be a Republican. Curtis Sliwa got the nomination. There's also another independent, Jim Walden. So there is a broad field, potentially, of these five different candidates.

39:06 And we don't know how New Yorkers will think. It seems like establishment folks are kind of lining up behind Zoran as the nominee. And if he gets labor support, if he gets more elected official support, it would be hard to imagine him not being able to coalesce a big part of the electorate, whereas the rest of the electorate might be quite divided. There's a potential, you know, for the rest of the folks to decide they're going to go all in on Eric Adams or Eric Adams is going to drop out and they're going to go all in on Andrew Cuomo or they're going to get Curtis Sliwa to give his ballot line to Eric Adams and then everyone else drops out. I would say, so I guess I first would just say it's too early to assess.

39:52 We have to at least know who's going to be in the field. I would say on the Eric Adams question, just through an abundance perspective, he has achieved so much on housing vis-a-vis the city of Yester housing opportunity. I would say like two caveats to that. One, he is not, I don't think, a true believing Yimby through and through. Just in the last few days, he, his first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, canceled 12 years in the making, 100% affordable housing plan because of NIMBY pushback. I think Eric Adams is responsive to NIMBY pushback in ways that are not great for the abundance agenda. And I would, the second caveat is, speaks to that point, which is that we are not just a housing movement. We think about housing as one key input into bringing out the superpowers of dynamism that are New York's historical strengths, vibrant, dense, walkable, people-first neighborhoods that are integrated and sustainable, that are affordable and safe.

40:49 And on issues beyond housing, I think Eric Adams has a more mixed record, whereas he said he would be the bus mayor, but then he didn't even meet legally mandated requirements to add bus lanes. He also cancels a lot of streets projects due to NIMBY pushback. He announced he was going to tear out a bike lane that's been there for years and has saved lives because of pushback in the neighborhood. So that's all to say, I think it would require a lot of reflection as the field does kind of take shape. And as we learn more about what an Eric Adams second term would promise, and as we hear more about what a Zoran first term would promise, we can assess. But thankfully, we are not going to the polls again tomorrow. We're still waiting for this first election to actually fully be resolved. To be continued then, and more fun for us to have together this summer and fall.

41:36 Last question of the night, then, to get y'all out of here for both of you. Take the mayor off the ballot. Let's just look down ballot. Was this a good night or a bad night for abundance? I've seen allies say both. I think on the whole, it was pretty good. Ryder and I were talking about how there weren't a lot of unexpected results beyond the mayoral. But we have Mark Levine, as I mentioned, who will be taking citywide office as comptroller. And he's been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, abundance champion, you know, as an elected official in New York. We had, you know, we did not have a great abundance champion get the Manhattan borough president win that race. We, you know, we did have Antonio Reynoso, an abundance champion, win the Brooklyn borough president's race.

42:22 And then when it comes to the city council, all of the incumbents that were defending their seats won, even despite taking some pretty difficult positions sometimes that weren't always popular in their districts on new housing developments or congestion pricing or, you know, transforming the streetscape. So I think that's the hopeful news. I'll let Ryder talk about some of the areas where we might have wished to see more. Yeah, I agree with that. And I'll just to contextualize a little bit, like a couple of years ago, a Bronx council member named Marjorie Velasquez had defended, who had ultimately supported new housing after being, you know, after a prolonged fight about it. And then she lost her reelection in the general to a Republican. And I think a lot of people took the idea from that, that being a Yimby was bad politics in New York.

43:10 And so just to echo what Catherine said about the fact that Shahana Hanif won reelection in Brooklyn and folks who have been really vocal on City of Yes, like Irina Sanchez in the Bronx, won their very tough reelection fights while also being unapologetic pro-housing candidates. And that folks who also really committed to street safety improvements and other abundance ideas also won reelection. To the disappointments, I think there were a bunch of open seats where there were kind of clear abundance candidates who we were supporting and would hope, you know, hoped that they could defy the odds against kind of more well-known or well-funded alternatives. And that we could get some, you know, new, true-believing abundance champions into the city council.

43:58 And we did not win those races. We also had one race where we had an amazing candidate, Jess Coleman, challenging Chris Marte in the first council district in lower Manhattan. It was the only incumbent we were challenging, but, you know, Marte was the only Manhattan vote against the City of Yes or Housing Opportunity. He's rallied against congestion pricing. I mean, he generally represents a lot of the ideas that we oppose, and we weren't able to defeat him, which was very disappointing. I will say, like, he did not get 50 percent of the vote, which means it will go to ranked choice tabulations, but he is leading and he will win. The fact is, though, that, you know, over half of the voters in that district are unhappy with the incumbent. And so we see these trend lines and these macro stories where, you know, we are seeing a repudiation of the status quo.

44:46 We're seeing the success of candidates like Mark Levine, who are unapologetically abundance-minded. We're seeing the re-election of council members who are good on our issues. We are seeing the slow but steady loss of support amongst entrenched incumbents who are not aligned with us. And so I think, you know, it's very painful to lose some of these individual battles when you have great candidates running great campaigns. But I think it's clear that in the macro context, we will ultimately win this war. So much more to talk about. And I think we will get that opportunity over the coming weeks and months as we work together to familiarize the nation with the ins and outs of New York City politics, Yimbyism and abundance and fitting that we close with a shout out and some praise for Mark Levine, not just a stalwart abundance champion, but a Yimby's for Harris champion, an early adopter and supporter and guest of ours from the fall, who we are very grateful for and excited for his victory.

45:43 We're also very grateful for your leadership throughout this campaign process as you vetted the candidates and and shared your rankings and your analysis. And and and also for your time with us and Yimby Democrats for America and Radio Abundance, keeping us updated and up to speed on New York on a weekly basis. You are abundance champions and heroes of ours. And we're just so grateful for your time to analyze this today and and just the time to sit down and hang out a little bit. So, Catherine and Ryder, thank you so much for joining us on Radio Abundance to analyze the New York City election. Thanks for having us. Always a pleasure. Thank you. You've been listening to Radio Abundance. Join the movement for Progressive Abundance at Yimby Democrats dot org. Yes, we can build again. Yes, we can trounce the fascists. Yes, you can be the difference.

46:36 This is A.I., by the way. You think these jokers actually got Obama? Check in with me in a few months. It'll happen. Thank you for listening to Radio Abundance, a new podcast by Yimby Democrats for America. Now it's time for you to join the movement. We're building a big tent and it's going to take all of us. Join us and together we'll fight to build America, defeat fascism and unleash the era of Progressive Abundance. Join the movement at Yimby Democrats dot org.