Scott Stringer represented the Upper West Side in elected office for nearly three decades, first as a State Assemblymember from 1993-2005, then as Manhattan Borough President from 2006-2013, and then as the city Comptroller from 2014-2021. He ran for mayor both in 2021 and 2025. He is NOT running for Congress. But I spoke to him last week for my podcast District Twelve, which you can check out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or right here on this page. The following transcript is lightly edited for clarity, so there may be some slight discrepancies between the podcast and the transcript.
All right, Scott Stringer, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Eli, it’s great to be with you this morning.
Thank you so much. I want to start by asking you about Jerry Nadler, who I know you’ve had a long relationship with. What is it about the congressman that’s made him such a beloved and successful representative of this neighborhood for the past 30 years? And I’m curious about both leadership traits and skills and abilities that he specifically has, but also about the political culture of the Upper West Side that you think has supported and enabled him to be the leader that he’s been.
Well, first of all, I met Jerry Nadler when I was a teenager, and ended up working for him at the ripe old age of 20 years old when he was a State Assemblyman at the district office on West 72nd Street, way back in the day. And what always struck me about Jerry was two things.
First, unbelievable integrity. A true reform Democrat taught me very on about right and wrong in politics and government, but also about how to make decisions that are yours. He taught me at an early age, don’t play to the crowd. stake out your own position, which means you have to read and learn and talk to people. And honestly, those early day lessons stayed with me for my entire life.
And part of what I think Jerry brings out is not just being about himself, but he really brought to the forefront on the West Side over many decades, a generation of young people who wanted to get involved in politics, progressive Democrats, liberal Democrats, thinking Democrats. And I was part of that young crew, and some went on to do some very great things in the private sector, the public sector. There was a group of us that ended up running for office. I succeeded Jerry in the Assembly, ran his congressional campaign, so he picked a good one early on. And he has been just a legend in this community for all the right reasons.
That’s super interesting what you’re saying about finding your own stance and not going with the crowd. Because on one hand, this is a place where people seem to really care about civil rights and social justice and inequality. It’s an incredibly progressive district. It’s also very wealthy, and over the past 30 years, it’s become more so. It skews older. At least today, it doesn’t have the demographic profile of a district that you’d associate with being on the progressive side, and yet it has a long history of being progressive.
In your 30 years of public service, what was it like navigating those two dynamics where people both care a lot about social justice, but also have material interests that might run counter to that at certain moments? Were there times where those things ran into conflict for you and how did you negotiate that?
Well, look, you know, I really got my start in a congressional campaign when I was in 6th grade for my cousin, Bella Abzug, who was a world-famous progressive member of the House, upset the political establishment, and represented the Upper West Side. And even doing walking tours of Zabar’s in the 1970s, it wasn’t always a quote-unquote wealthy district. It was a very diverse district. You had people living in single-room occupancy hotels that we were fighting to protect from from speculators who were trying to tear down those buildings and evict those tenants. Every organized protest happened at 72nd Street in Verde Square, whether it was to end the war in Vietnam, to all the other social justice and civil rights struggles.
And as the district did get wealthier, yes, there was a certain shift from being the super progressive district, but not so much. If you look at the people who ran for office after Bella Abzug, you had Ted Weiss, you had Jerry Nadler. I got elected to the Assembly. There were various different elected officials, and we all had this basic fundamental belief that government could benefit working people, that government was there to help, not hinder people who were struggling. I think that’s the rich tradition of this district. I think it’s very true today at this moment where we’re conjuring the Trump administration, ICE, and all the challenges that we face. I think this district has always been, and probably will be for the next generation, the epicenter of what reform democratic politics is about.
Yeah. So reform democratic politics, can you contextualize that from when you started out in 1992? What did it mean, what were the key fights that you were pitching in terms of being a reformer?
Well, look, when I got elected to the Assembly, legislators didn’t have to be present on the Assembly floor to vote. And the Brennan Center for Justice had said that In their analysis, the New York State Legislature was the first or second most dysfunctional place in the country. And they initiated a number of rules reforms, ending empty seat voting, more committee reforms, votes coming to the floor. And I was the legislator that agreed to sponsor this very radical bill, which would essentially end the golf games on Tuesday and force everybody to vote on Mondays.
Were there literally golf games on Tuesday?
Oh yeah, no, you swipe a card and you’re gone for the day. And there was literally no one sitting in their seats. The success that I had was we actually didn’t just propose a bunch of rules reform that fell flat, but we actually convinced the leadership at the time to initiate these reforms that went for many, many years. Then the assembly went back to empty seat voting, and now there’s a call to go back to having members sit in their seats, because if you go into the chamber today, nobody is there, nobody is there, everyone’s voting, in their offices, just having the votes get called. And that was my first reform effort in Albany.
And at the time, I was probably considered the most progressive liberal member of the legislature. I was actually the first legislator, along with the late Senator Franz Leichter, also a West Side legislator, who actually voted to slightly, slightly, slightly raise taxes on people making a little bit more money to deal with the Pataki budget cuts. that didn’t work out so well. But a lot of the work that we did back in the 90s and 2000s, I think, was very significant and sort of a lesson of what’s possible going forward today.
Yeah, I bring that up because when you’re leading that effort, you’re getting people in the assembly to vote against their own personal interests. Obviously, a lot of those representatives are either politically or just personally not interested in making their lives more difficult and exposing themselves to more scrutiny. What is the skill set and the toolbox that you bring to a problem like that, where you’re trying to convince people to do something that they instinctively don’t want to do?
Well, I think the challenge always is you could do it two ways. You could use the bully pulpit, which many people do, But there’s also an inside game there’s sitting down with colleagues and members and working through a lot of initiatives. one thing I will tell you that I learned early on in my first year in the assembly, going back to before fax machines, right? I introduced so many bills. I had the experience. I was 32 years old. I thought I knew everything, right? And so I introduced all these bills and I keep introducing bills. And I just think this job is just for me, right? I mean, I’ve been ready for this. And then at the end of session, I passed two bills because I have not yet understood the skill set of getting bills passed in the Republican state Senate.
So that, to me, was an early life lesson. You can introduce a lot of bills, you can have a lot of great ideas, but there is a skill that you have to develop to actually get things done. And that takes time. And people say to me, well, what were your best years in the assembly? I say, my best years were nine through 13, when I was chair of the city’s committee, when I had really gotten my rhythm down. And I think it’s very important for people who get elected to office to also take the time to maybe spend a little less time today on Twitter or on podcasts, except yours, and really focus on how you can actually accomplish an agenda.
One of the sort of ongoing fights that you pitched during your career was fighting to protect and build new affordable housing in this district, specifically and across the city. When you’re, you know, fighting to build affordable housing on the Upper West Side, what are the dynamics of that? What is the day-to-day of the actual work of that process?
And why is it so difficult? Why is it that right now the Upper West Side lags behind a lot of other neighborhoods in terms of new affordable housing construction?
Well, first of all, the West Side, and I started politically, in addition to work for Jerry Nadler, I was a tenant organizer focusing on the Mitchell-Lama housing program, which I thought was just the greatest housing probably ever constructed in the United States. Homes to hundreds of thousands of units, homes to 400, 500,000 families. If you look at the West Side urban renewal area south of 100 Street, starting at Parkwood’s Village, working your way down to 86th Street, those 20-some-odd buildings really represented the affordable aspirations of thousands of thousands of people. And these folks moved into the West Side in the 50s and 60s and 70s. When they got here, they didn’t just exist. They didn’t just move into an apartment. They brought an activist lifestyle to the neighborhood. They built our schools, the daycare centers, they built our synagogues and churches, I don’t mean physically, but in terms of membership, they created the political life that’s world famous on the upper side. You started out the interview saying, look, there’s only one congressional district in the country that’s quite like this over time. Those folks actually came in and built that.
And we had public housing. Amsterdam Houses, Douglas Houses, Stephen Wise. You look at this district, this multiracial, affordable district, led the way, led the way in terms of affordable housing, middle income housing, housing for the working poor. And that created the vitality of the community. When I became borough president early on, we also started to say, well, how can we replicate this? What’s the way to do this? So just like Mark Levine when he was borough president, did sort of a count of all the opportunities we have to construct new buildings, new construction. I actually partnered with a group called Picture the Homeless, where in those days we didn’t have handheld computers and fancy digital apps, but we literally took out pen and paper and walked the borough of Manhattan looking for places where we could construct this housing.
And then when I became controller, I had a little more heft and I was able to do audits and sort of just look at all the vacant property that the city owned. City owned vacant land. And we said, look, if you took all that vacant land, and I talked about this in the mayoral campaign, you can, with free land, build the next generation of Mitchell-Lama too. You can build affordable housing. And the city has control of that land. We identified 1,000 parcels of land. And I went to de Blasio and said, man, there’s 1,000 vacant property. And of course, it wasn’t his idea, so he didn’t like it. And then they testified somewhere, some of his housing people, and they said, Stringer’s wrong. It’s only 600 vacant parcels of land. And I was like, damn, okay, I’m on to something. 600’s a lot. And to me, the passion has always been, how can you bring Mitchell-Lama to the city? How can you build real, affordable housing? And at the same time, make sure that we maintain the housing that we have. And that has to do with NYCHA public housing.
Right. So, and this connects to the big housing struggle of today, which is that unfortunately, with the money that we currently have, it’s very, very difficult to build at the scale that we need just through the public sector. We do, in NYCHA, for example, need private investment to do some of these like RAD-PACT programs.
And even on some of the publicly-owned land. One project that we’ve been obsessed with on this podcast is the Bloomingdale Library on 100th and Amsterdam. They’re going to build this big building that’s going to be market rate housing, and then, you know, 30% of it or something is going to be affordable.
If you, in 2010, said, let the private industry build tall buildings full of market rate apartments in dense neighborhoods, that would not have scanned as a progressive position. That would have been something that I think a lot of people in the neighborhood would be like, “what are you talking about? These developers are evil. These buildings are ugly.”
So has your perspective changed on the need for specifically more market rate housing units? And do you think that there’s a gap between where the neighborhood is on that issue and where you think we need to be?
Oh, look, my position really hasn’t changed. I’ve always believed that we do need more density. We do need more housing construction. That’s why the first thing I did as borough president was go find the places where we could build and build so that we can meet the housing crisis needs that young people are feeling. Look, the more we build, the more we will attract people to this city. But you have to walk and chew gum at the same time.
So what I always said to people in communities that were worried about large-scale development, blocking shadows, traffic congestion, are there going to be enough schools? What I always said to the community board when I was borough president is, “I know you’re not going to like this. You’re not going to like the Fordham University plan. Right. You’re not going to necessarily like the Columbia University plan, which will create luxury housing and it will certainly create more density. So tell me you don’t like it. But then, in your analysis, tell me what gets you from a no to a yes. Because I want to get to a yes”. And that has always been my mantra.
When you have a development plan, there should be community engagement. If you want to engage, now they call you a NIMBY. If you’re carte blanche, you’re a YIMBY. This is the craziest debate I’ve ever seen. Why can’t we just have rational discussion, planning for neighborhoods, recognizing that we do have to build density, we are going to have to build to meet the housing crisis that we have. But you know what? We’ve got to make sure that we have schools and that we have infrastructure and we have all the things that you need, whether it’s commercial space, we need places for people to buy food and restaurants. And so to me, it’s an exciting community negotiation that has to happen if we’re really going to be able to build the infrastructure the city’s going to need over the next 30, 40, 50 years.
We had someone on this podcast, a housing advocate named Sam Deutsch, and he expressed what some people in this world feel on the YIMBY side that you were describing there. They feel that some of the people that are on the community side there are not really negotiating in good faith, or are just a blanket no for any increased density. Do you think that’s too cynical? Do you think that there’s more appetite for this?
I think there is more appetite. Look, I think people recognize that we are in the midst of a very serious housing crisis. We have unaffordable affordable housing. So even when we build affordable housing, it’s not affordable to working people in the city. I think that’s a crisis. We do want to attract people from all over the world to continue to come here. If the entrance fee to this city is a $2 million condo and a $7,000, $8,000 a month rent for a one-bedroom apartment, the city will die. It will not be diverse. It will not be economically mixed. And that is not the kind of urban planning that is required now.
So yes, we have to put new tools in the toolbox. We have to reform some of the laws that have sort of impeded development and growth. But we have to make sure that as we build our communities that we protect the longtime residents in our neighborhoods. It’s really wrong to me to only talk about building luxury housing when we can’t take care of our NYCHA residents, that we can’t have a public housing plan like Mitchell-Lama too.
So imagine having a city hall and a state government that could actually walk and chew gum at the same time. Let’s build fair market housing and give developers an opportunity to meet the housing needs. Let’s build Mitchell-Lama 2 to make sure that working people have access to housing, hard-working people who may not make a lot of money, but they are very much a part of the city. And then let’s make sure that the NYCHA residents, who quite frankly made this land, this borough valuable, that they don’t get pushed out because no one was willing to make their repairs and help them. That’s, to me, the comprehensive approach.
Yeah. And then specifically on the NYCHA side, do you have thoughts about how conversations specifically around the Rad Pack conversions are going and whether you think there’s a better way forward than those kinds of programs.
Look, I think we still have to continue to make sure that the community and the residents are respected as stakeholders. And I would go as far as to say they’re actually equity stakeholders because when they moved in, they made the land and those buildings valuable. It’s not their fault that the federal government and the government in general has withdrawn from making basic repairs. So I do think we have to find other opportunities to maintain and help those buildings, but always with bringing the community to the forefront.
Switching gears slightly, another issue that you’ve been outspoken about throughout your career is criminal legal reform and policing reform. You got arrested during the protest after the Amadou Diallo killing. You were one of the first elected officials to call for Rikers to close. I could go on. I’m interested in how these conversations play out in this district, particularly, because, I mean, I take your point that this district has changed a ton. I was born in 1999. My parents tell me they grew up here in the 60s and things were very different.
Oh, they’ll tell you that you couldn’t…, I grew up in Washington Heights, but you couldn’t walk down Columbus Avenue back in the 70s.
Right. But, in my lifetime, it has felt like crime in this neighborhood is something that happens for sure, but it is a little bit more abstract than it is in other neighborhoods. So what is it like having conversations about criminal legal reform here? And how do you contextualize our current moment in terms of like the bail and discovery reform was in 2019? Where do you think the district is on this issue right now?
Look, I think people want to live in a community that they feel safe in. They want, you know, I have two kids at my age, they’re teenagers, they’re now taking the subways. If you don’t think I worry about them every time they get on the subway, that’s, no, I worry. For the longest time, I took them on the train because I grew up here in the 70s when there were 2,000 murders a year. I remember how dangerous the A-train was when I was growing up. And when the crime stats go up, parents get worried. So there should not be a disconnect between safety and justice. And I think we have made some great strides and trying to make sure that we provide justice for people, give people a second chance. Incarceration shouldn’t be based on skin color. But at the same time, we also have to keep the city safe.
During the mayoral campaign, everyone’s talking about, we’re spending $800 million in police overtime. That money could be used for nurses and doctors and help for people with mental illness. Well, they’re 100% right. But you know what? If you want to reduce overtime, you have to hire 3,000 more police officers so that we’re not paying police officers to work multiple shifts, creating a dangerous situation for them and the public. But also it makes no sense to pay $800 million. All you have to do is have those thousands of cops. And I think that is as important as pairing them with mental health professionals and going into the trains and helping people. I don’t think there has to be this disconnect.
And look, I know the mayor’s putting together this big community safety agency. I thought the announcement was quite frankly pathetic. A deputy mayor in charge of two staffers, $260 million, and nobody knows what the hell that agency is going to do. That just sets us back from doing the things that he wants to do, which is a combination of social justice, but also keeping the city safe.
So, all right, let’s get to Mamdani. The overtime is part of this budget crisis storm that we’re in right now. I’m curious, both in your experience as a Comptroller and also, you mentioned the Pataki budget gap that you were in the assembly for.
Right now, it seems like on the menu there’s a bunch of different bad options. There’s cuts to cityFHEPS, the voucher program that keeps people from being homeless. There’s these school mergers that could save money but are very controversial and the community seems to hate. Overtime is one of the things that’s under-budgeted.
Do you think that we can get through this and make up $5.4 billion with some combination of spending cuts and Julie Menin’s accounting tricks, where if we measure things differently then the number gets smaller? Or do you think that this is a time where we actually do need to do another revenue-raising tax increase in order to get through it?
Look, I think what’s unfortunate is the new mayor has not yet learned the art of budget negotiation. So rule #1, don’t make threats you can’t keep. So when you threaten property tax increase as an either or to a tax the rich increase, it may play well at a rally with 3,000 screaming people. But that’s just not how you negotiate a budget.
And when Julie Menin and the Council rightfully said, no, we’re not doing that. One, because there are people, especially in communities of color, that would tip them in terms of their own affordability crisis. And the fact that you just don’t show up and say it’s got to be my way or the highway. the problem when you win an upset victory, you think that that’s going to be the way it is forever. And what I try to caution some folks is that elections are really a yearly occurrence, right? And the longevity of a successful administration ain’t what it used to be. The pendulum swings very quickly the other way.
So part of what you have to do is come in and put aside some of the campaign rhetoric, which I think he’s doing, by the way. I do think the revolution has just about ended. And he’s now focusing on the reality of: “I got to balance a budget.” We got a $5.4 billion budget deficit. No, it wasn’t $12 billion, but $5.4 billion is nothing to sneeze at. They’re going to get to that balanced budget.
But I think what the mayor is concerned about is not so much this budget, but “my God, I promised everybody everything.” The one thing that is clear is free buses and all these initiatives are just not happening right away. And I think he’s worried about that base. If you look at last week when he did the 100-day rally and Bernie comes back and they’re trying to gin it up and say, “I’m not really going to do free buses anymore. I’m really going to make them faster by 6 minutes.” Okay, well, that’s not what you said during the campaign. Then the second thing is, “oh, universal, universal childcare. Well, it’s not going to be for everyone but a couple thousand seats.” All right. And then, “you know what I’m really going to be? I’m going to be like Al D’Amato. I’m going to be Senator Pothole.”
He’s starting to recognize that in tough economic times with Trump uncertainty, he’s going to have to pull down the rhetoric, lower expectations on the base vote that he got, and just be a good mayoral manager, which is what I think people want him to be right now.
There’s been reporting that you’re not just saying critical things, but also organizing against him in some way. You’re fundraising for a PAC. Is your objection mostly of a sort of technical managerial flavor, that you think that this is a skill set that he’s a little bit inexperienced at, and that he needs to just execute the job better? Or do you think that there’s also a fundamental policy differences that you guys have, where you think that he has different priorities and you’re in a different part of the spectrum?
First of all, I happen to like him personally. We sat together for some 35 debates. You really get to know somebody, so I personally like him. But for me, after being in government for close to 30 years, my elective office, I’m a citizen. I have a Twitter account as well. and I’m entitled to my opinion. Some people don’t like to hear what I have to say. I don’t care. I’m going to get on the Eli podcast, you know, now that I know him. And I want to be able to give my opinions, but that doesn’t mean I criticize him for the sake of criticizing the mayor. You know, I would have done this if Andrew Cuomo was mayor. The only person I wouldn’t have criticized probably was me. Certainly would have criticized Brad Lander. So I’m not against Zohran Mandani, but I am using my voice and my beliefs to make sure this city is good, not just for me, but for the two kids that I’m raising in this city.
I follow your Twitter account very closely. And one specific criticism or concern that you have seems to be about Israel-Palestine stuff. So one Tweet, and I don’t want to just focus on one anecdote so if you think this is an unfair one, we can pivot to a different one, but I think it’s hopefully representative.
Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia protester who was detained by ICE and was released, he gave a speech at a Seder in the streets where he said, “Let us all pray together that the Israeli occupation and the Israeli genocidal regime will have ended.” And then he called for total and complete divestment. I think he was talking about both universities and also the city.
You took exception to that. You Tweeted, “Total Jewish Hate. Wake up and fight back, people!”
Yeah, I stand by that.
Okay, so tell me, help me understand a little bit more. Labeling the current Israeli regime genocidal and calling for the end of that regime, is that Jewish hate?
Let me just cut to the chase so we don’t have a big Middle East debate here. But let me tell you where I’m coming from as, and I Tweet as a former Comptroller who invested in Israeli bonds. What has me very concerned is that the BDS movement, and the way the DSA catalogs priorities for the mayor, eight of the first 10 priorities are anti-Jewish. Some of it’s about Israel, but a lot of it is about divestment from Jewish institutions. And when elected officials can come to the controller’s office and talk about those issues of divestment, that is very concerning to me because we’re starting to normalize Jewish hate. Even if it is not the intention of some of these characters, it’s what it is. That’s why you see the amount of hate crimes. That’s why you’re starting to see a very uneasiness in the city.
And by the way, what this reminds me of. It reminds me of when I was in elective office after 9-11 as borough president, after the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Muslim hate in this city was off the charts. I was the first Jewish elected official, I think the only Jewish elected official at the time that went to Park 51, which was the proposal to build a mosque in lower Manhattan, and said, everybody stand down. When there were attacks on the Muslim community, I worked with the Jewish and Muslim community to make sure that mosques were safe. And when there was an attack or an attack on a Jewish synagogue, you could call up our Muslim brothers and sisters, and we were all together. That has to, we have to go back to that collective.
And part of it is knowing when to pick your shots. BDS and pension investment in Israel, the investment is so small, it’s not even a rounding era. And it’s been in existence since Harrison Goldin was Comptroller. We just gotta think about this.
Yeah, you said something that is new to me. What are the non-Israel-related Jewish institutions that BDS is pushing to divest from?
I don’t have the list in front of me, but there’s Jewish businesses, any business that does business, anybody who does business with Israel. I mean, it’s creating an untenable environment for the Jewish community in the same way it was untenable for the Muslim community. And we all worked together 20 years ago. We’re in the same situation we are today. And I think we have to be mindful of this. So I look at when elected officials think they can just go to the controller’s office and talk about an investment that they have no idea what they’re talking about. I mean, the amount of stupidity online and people say to me, Scott, don’t, don’t educate on Twitter.
I was going to offer that advice also,
But it’s either that or online chess. So, for me, I do it, you know, it’s I’m.
Happy to meet you there [for online chess] if you want.
So, I want to ask you briefly about NY-10 before we get to NY-12. You’ve publicly endorsed Dan Goldman. On Twitter, I get the sense that you specifically are concerned about Brad Lander and don’t think he’d be a great congressman. Is that basically because of the stuff that we just talked about, Israel and BDS? Or is there a deeper concern you have about his performance succeeding you as Comptroller?
Look, I have a concern when somebody is so willing to change their positions on a dime based on polling, right? So, when Israel was up, Lander was a Zionist. Israel’s down, now he’s, you know, anti-Israel. It has nothing to do with his positions. It’s just the waffling part and the pandering part has really been very much a part of his career.
And as Comptroller, he was asleep during that entire Eric Adams Administration. He did not do the work that was necessary to hold Adams accountable. I think if actually, if Brad had done his job as Comptroller, I think Adams would still be mayor because he would have held him accountable. Like you can’t get away with stuff. He chose not to do that. Then he woke up, wanted to run for mayor.
And so he’s a nice guy. I mean, I like him. We hang out. It’s great. But why would you run for Congress against our leading fighter in Washington? Dan Goldman, by any measure, has been a force nationally in Congress for all the right reasons. He’s a progressive, he’s strong, he’s an adult, he doesn’t waffle. You don’t have to agree with him on everything, but you kind of know he’s got your back. And I think the Lander campaign is totally inappropriate and pathetic going against a Democrat when we’re trying to take back the House. What I’m hoping for is that voters wake up and realize that Goldman is critical when we take back the house, and I, and I hope people understand that.
Mandani didn’t think Lander was a good Comptroller. Even though Lander was telling everyone he was going to be deputy mayor, first deputy mayor, Mandani’s telling everyone “hell no,” right? So Mandani now is stuck, right? He thinks he owes Lander, even though I don’t think he really does. And now what is he going to do? So, “oh my God, I got to give him something, but I don’t want him in my administration. So I’m going to just see if I can gift him a congressional seat.”
This is not a consolation prize, people. And Mandani should take care of him after the election. There’s a lot of things that Brad is talented to do in the administration. But don’t tell me I have to replace a great congressman because you wouldn’t make him a deputy mayor or a commissioner. It’s just not right.
Well, I mean… he’s currently polling like 20 to 30 points ahead of Dan Goldman
He was polling ahead of Zohran Mandani too.
Well, there you go. So moving to NY-12.
The mothership. 12.
The mothership. I love that. You’ve endorsed Micah Lasher. I know you’ve known him for many, many years. Why do you think he’s what we need? And specifically, can you tell us about an anecdote, a time when you saw him use leadership skills that impressed you?
I’ve known Micah literally since he called me up at the age of 14 to get involved in politics when I was in the Assembly. And I have watched him grow to a point where I think he is the heir to a great congressman, Jerry Nadler. I’ve seen him in the different jobs that he’s had, make a tremendous contribution to the city, whether it was representing the city in Albany as the mayor’s legislative representative, which is a very serious job, to somebody who was a policy director to the governor of the state of New York, to somebody who served in the Assembly in the first two years, has taken on the Trump administration in Washington because he’s smart, because he’s focused, because he understands how to use legislation, not just locally, but nationally. And I think this moment in time, for the same reason I’m for Dan Goldman, we just need smart, thinking legislators who are going to go to Washington and take back this country. And Micah Lasher, by any measure, is just ready for that fight.
I will tell you the personal anecdote I have with Micah Lasher. When he believes in something, and I disagree with him, he will come back to you. Facts, figures, analysis, deep thought. I mean, imagine electing a congressmember who actually acts that way every day, who doesn’t put his finger in the air and say, “well, I’m going in this direction” because you can sit and talk with him. Sometimes I like to think I’ve changed his mind over the thirty, forty years I’ve known him. A lot of times he’s changed mine.
I’m curious if you have specific insight into any of the other candidates. I’d love any comment on Jack Schlossberg in particular or if you have any interactions with George Conway or Alex Bores.
Yeah, look, I have a lot of respect for all these candidates. Isn’t it great that in NY-12 and in this district, whether East Side, West Side, it’s always choosing from the best that we’ve got. So I have a lot of great respect for the other candidates. I don’t know Jack Slossberg personally. I knew his uncle who, when we did some issue work together, walked the streets actually for David Dinkins in the campaign back in 1993 and 1989. I follow George Conway. I know Alex is a hardworking legislator. Nina has been great on public health and raising her voice. And some of the others I don’t really know, but I respect all of them. There’s not a bad apple in the lot. Just for me, you know, Micah Lasher is the one that I think would best represent the district. But I just really respect these candidates.
Our last question, when we get the rest of the candidates on, what’s one question we should ask them?
I think the best question to sort of flesh them out, although we’re probably tipping them off, is talk about the first 100 days. Talk about how you put your marker down. I also think, I recommend to all these candidates to watch the Bella movie. It’s on Channel 13 about a trailblazer in Congress who shook up the political establishment in two ways. One, by being loud, outspoken, and strong, but also understood how to bring home the resources New Yorkers need. And that’s what we need from our congressmember in NY-12 and NY-10.
