Nina Schwalbe is a public health practitioner and advocate who is running for Congress in New York’s Twelfth District. I spoke to her 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, Nina Schwalbe, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Thank you, Eli. Excited to be here.
So how’s it been going so far? This is your first campaign. What’s it been like?
It’s super fun. I get to meet New Yorkers and talk to them on the street and hear what’s making them happy and what’s bugging them. I love it.
That’s awesome. Is there anything that’s surprised you about the process or that you feel like you didn’t expect?
It’s definitely a club sport and I’m not part of the club and that surprised me, although it shouldn’t have, but it did. So there’s definitely a machine at work. And if you’re not part of the machine, it’s an uphill climb.
Okay, well, let’s jump to that then. I’ve heard you say that it’s really important to elect an outsider this cycle and that the machine keeps getting it wrong. You know, look at where we are right now. And my sense is that what you’re saying is obviously true. And also the machine remains pretty popular among NY-12 voters. So what is it to you that you think that the machine is getting wrong? What’s the key mistake they’re making and why are you the right direction to pivot in?
I think the machine is driven by inertia and people that do things the way that they’ve always been done. And I think that’s really what’s wrong with the Democratic Party. And we’ve started to call those legacy Democrats or people that have a right or follow the regular trail. I mean, I’m running for Congress. I do not want to be president. It is not on my pathway. And I don’t see this as a career step. I see it that we need a Congress that’s standing up for the people and doing the right thing. And this isn’t just like the next job. I would say the other thing about the Democratic machine is that, the answer I get from a lot of people when I say, hey, I’m running for Congress, people say like, oh, but I’ve known candidate X since he was 7. I’m like, well, that’s great, but does that make you a better Congress person than I would be? So there’s a lot of that kind of home team loyalty, and that’s on both the east sides and the west sides.
So with that in mind, my big question is: You have a glittering academic career, you’ve been an expert in public service. Why in the world are you running for office? Like what’s going on here? What motivated you to take this step and yeah, why are you doing this?
So about a year ago, just a little over a year ago, The government, led by Mr. RFK Jr., Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk, basically canceled my sector. 200,000 people, and counting, lost their jobs. Tens of millions of people lost access to health care. And according to a study by BU, over 750,000 people around the world actually died because we cut lifesaving programs. And nobody in Congress seemed to care or be the voice of the issue of health. And without health, we really can’t have democracy. So I just thought after a while, enough people said, maybe you should run. And I thought, maybe I should run because we can’t afford a country, a United States, a New York Twelve, that doesn’t have a robust public health system and our basic rights protected. And I didn’t see anybody else standing up for that.
One thing that I’ve noticed about how this race has been going for you so far is that you seem to be every candidate’s favorite candidate. I’ve heard Jack, he’s really gushed about you. He’s like, “If I wasn’t running, I’d probably be volunteering for Nina.” But also, Micah and Alex have said very nice things about you. Is that nice? Is that flattering? Is that kind of annoying? What do you think about that?
A very wise politician named Helen Clark, who’s the former Prime Minister of New Zealand and has endorsed my campaign.
The former Prime Minister of New Zealand endorsed your campaign?!
Correct. If you look on my endorsements page, Helen Clark’s.
That’s incredible.
Right Honorable Helen Clark is the first endorsement. And I heard her speak. She ran for Secretary General of the UN. And she said that the mistake that she made was that, or one of the mistakes that she made or that was made was that she was running against people. And her advice to future politicians is, don’t run against people, run for office. And I really took that to heart. So we’re all running for office. We shouldn’t be running against each other. We should be running for office. And I really like that ethos, and it’s important to me.
Yeah. Well, then you’re going to struggle with my next question, but that’s okay. Before we dive into policy stuff, I have one more table-setting thing, which is directly comparing you to the other candidates. Something that I wrote about a month ago, and that I’ve heard from a lot of voters as they’re trying to make sense of this race, is that there seems to be a lot of alignment. If you watch the forum that you guys did at Bank Street a month ago, or any other many places you’ve got a chance to speak, it seems like you’re all pretty much in lockstep on a lot of the big policy areas. And the thing that distinguishes everyone is background and experience.
It makes it difficult for people who are really like, ‘I want to vote for the most progressive candidate. I want to vote for the person who is closest to me on the spectrum.’ So my question for you is, are you the most progressive candidate in this race? Are you going to claim that?
One of the interesting things about the debates and how they’re set up is that you don’t really get to listen to the other candidates. So I think we’ve only had two opportunities in all of these interviews. There was an endorsement, a United Federation of Teachers endorsement where we all got to listen to each other, and then there was one of the forums where we all got to listen to each other. So I must say I have not spent my time in this race delving into everybody’s politics.
But I do believe that we need to abolish ICE. I think that and really reform the Department of Homeland Security in a massive way. I’ve worked for a major US agency, which was inefficient. And when a department isn’t working, you just have to get rid of it. Now, I know the others have said that too, or I understand the others have said that too.
I think on the issue of Israel and Gaza, I do believe that Israel is committing war crimes and should be tried for genocide, and I think that makes me stand out from the other candidates.
And the other area is LGBTQ plus rights. I mean, I think everybody agrees. I don’t want to speak for the other candidates, but trans kids right now are being targeted by the right, they’re being scapegoated by the right and we’re falling for it. And this is a highly marginalized group of people who have need healthcare and mental health needs met.
The other issues are, I believe that housing is a human right. I believe that healthcare is a human right. And I don’t believe that market economics solves for social issues. And I’ve seen that in decades of work, particularly around vaccines. So I don’t believe that the market solves issues that the government fundamentally needs to take care of. So I guess that puts me on the left.
Yeah. Well, let’s go to...
You tell me, is that on the left?
That’s definitely on the left. As you say, the abolish ICE stuff, I think you’re all pretty aligned. Israel and housing stuff may be a little bit less so.
Let’s go to housing then. So I read that you have two sons who are about our age and/or just graduating college?
One is a junior in college and one graduated in December.
Congratulations. And so I’m sure he and you have both noticed that if he wants to move back to Manhattan right now, and to this district in particular…
I’m going to cut to the chase. He lives with his parents.
As did I after I graduated. The housing market is insane. Why do you think that is? What can we do to fix it? And specifically, why do you think this district has struggled to construct new affordable housing? You know, in the ballot measures that we just passed, one of the things that it’s doing is taking more extreme steps for the areas, the neighborhoods that haven’t built affordable housing at the rate that they’re supposed to. And the Upper West Side and the Upper East Side are two of the six worst offenders in that area. So why is this, why are we in this position and what do we need to do about it?
Well, let’s start with what we need to do about it. Because I think looking back, I’m not sure. I think that there was a time in the 80s and 90s when we assumed that markets solved problems for poor people. And as I mentioned earlier, in vaccines, there used to be a mantra that said, and I worked on a project that said, making markets work for vaccines. And the concept actually even won a Nobel Prize, but it doesn’t really work. And we saw in COVID, that it doesn’t really work. Actually, poor people don’t get the vaccines. And I think it’s the same as housing. More supply, more supply meets demand. Supply meets demand. It’s a curve. I mean, that’s neo-Keynesian economics. And it didn’t really work.
So moving forward, I’ve been struggling with how to explain why we shouldn’t destroy Chelsea Fulton housing, which I know is an issue that you’ve also been following closely. And what I want to say is: My parents are no longer alive, but if they were, they lived on 69th Street in Lexington in a small building. I’d like to say to them, well, would you like me to just knock down your house and I’m going to build a tall tower and you can live there? Of course, they would say no.
And I think about the population density in many of these areas. Housing is a right, it should be guaranteed for everyone. And elderly people shouldn’t have to move if they don’t want to. So for me, it just walks it down from, is there a market solution to this problem? Or are we really talking about where people live, which is most fundamental? I’ve spoken to so many people in the district who are rent burdened, young people, old people, let alone the kids who have to live with their parents. I don’t mind my kids living with me. I think it’s great, actually.
I’ve had a good time living with my parents too, but…
They might want to move out at some point. But supply is not, we have to lower the cost overall. Everybody is rent burdened. And so we have to lower the cost for everybody. And there are ways to do that, proven policy interventions like vouchers. Vouchers is a way the federal government can alleviate rent burden.
The other thing that I’ve been struck by, which again, you’re surely more of an expert than me in this topic is apartment warehousing, where landlords in rent stabilized apartment buildings leave apartments empty and they call it warehousing. And that’s because they don’t want to release those apartments under rent stabilization. They want to wait until Albany changes the law and lets them rent them at market rate. So there’s a building right next to mine on 97th Street where there are 60 apartments that are warehoused. What about those 60 apartments? So let’s start there. And there are things that we can do.
Yeah. So I have two responses to that.
Some of this NYCHA housing, these apartments are in very bad states of disrepair. There’s asbestos, there’s mold, there’s basic utilities that they’re struggling to provide. They’re substandard living conditions. It’s really like an act of violence that the city is doing to a lot of these people.
And NYCHA has a $78 billion backlog of capital repairs it needs to make. I think housing is a human right, I agree with you on that. What can we do to help the hundreds of thousands of people in NYCHA housing right now and who are going to live there for the next 20, 30 years? What can we do to get them the repairs and quality of housing they deserve?
Yeah, we can fast track those repairs and get them the federal funding that should be allocated. We should be getting federal funding that we’re not. And I would love to see our Congress people, and I will stand up to make sure. Congress has appropriated money for housing here in New York, and we’re not getting it. The administration is holding on to it. And then we can fast-track. When I was down at Chelsea Fulton, people talked about all the ways you could fast-track repairs. For me, the tragedy and the crime is that we know those repairs need to happen and they’re not happening.
I agree that that’s a tragedy and a crime. I think the reason they’re not happening is because we, the city and the state, don’t have $78 billion. And both Democrat and Republican administrations of the past fifty years have been consistently unwilling to fund that kind of a project to that kind of a scale. And so it’s just gotten worse and worse. So I mean, if what you’re telling me is that you’re going to go to Congress and get us that kind of money and build a coalition for that, then that seems awesome. But short of that, and while we wait for that, I do think that we need to consider other solutions.
But we don’t have to keep going back and forth on this particular issue, except that I’m wondering, how do you think about this in general? This is sort of a metaphor for a bunch of different things. The idea that there are these people and they don’t want to move. And moving them is very painful to them, and it’s something that we should take really seriously. When you’re approaching a problem like this, how do you make space in your decision-making framework for hidden downsides of keeping the status quo? How do you generally think about that?
Yeah, that’s a great question. So for me, it’s about looking at the data and the evidence, and it’s looking at, so we have higher rates of asthma, as you mentioned. There are mold in those apartments. So what’s been the remediation plan for those apartments immediately, and how do we put a hierarchy to the urgent risks versus the less urgent risk? And we know that things like we have elderly people in elevators, and the elevators get broken. That seems like an imminently fixable problem. So first to say, you know, what’s urgent and high-risk and how do we fix that?
And then what are the longer-term solutions? So we focus first on what is the high-risk issue which can and should be fixed immediately to protect people’s health. And then the question is, what’s the solution? And that usually involves engagement with the community. So come up with hypotheses, come up with answers, but then engage with the community on what’s right for them.
And for me, that also in this area involves looking at the history. One of the things that strikes me about this is, I live in an area called Park West Village, which is on 100th Street and Central Park West. And the more I learn about the history of those housing projects, I’ve learned now, being schooled by many of my neighbors and long-term residents, that was one of those areas that Robert Moses mowed down. And what did our community lose? And we haven’t, so that’s essentially what we’re doing again. We’re sort of mowing down areas. And what are we going to lose in terms of the community, the neighborhood, and the things that make New York, New York when that happens? So being informed by the past to help decide our future decisions.
So it’s a systematic process. And the answers may be, if we go through that process, some things we haven’t thought of before.
I must say the other part of this housing issue that I find interesting seems to be the strong voice of the real estate lobby. And for me, that’s very similar to what we deal with in the health field. If the healthcare industry is really on the side of something, then it means we need to step back and take a look. And that also worries me about this issue. So I just would like to hear more debate, step back and have more debate. It’s a new process in which we look at the data, the evidence, and we consult with the community.
And you think that the RAD-PACT process that NYCHA went through from 2019 to now and ongoing is insufficient? We need to do more of that?
Well, we have a bunch of residents that are unhappy and old people, and it’s mostly black and brown people who say they didn’t really get it, what’s happening, and we need to hear their voices too. I think instead of just shutting them down and saying, you were asked, which is what I hear people say, you were asked, you voted for it, let’s move along, that just doesn’t work for people. And particularly low-income black and brown people and elderly people. That just seems wrong. So let’s step back and find a new solution that works for them and works for others too.
I think for the Robert Moses, and this is the first time I’ve actually spoken out loud, but it’s, for me, it’s the idea of steamrolling through a problem and ignoring people’s voices in the community. And what does it mean when you just steamroll through? Like, we decided this, we’re doing it anyway, we’re knocking down all these houses and we’re moving forward in the name of progress. I just think sometimes you need to take a beat and stop and listen again. And I think we have some really good examples of that having happened in the city.
Can I ask you, with that framework in mind: On 100th in Amsterdam, there’s a library, Bloomingdale Library, and it’s like a three or four story library and it’s on a big plot of land and so and it’s city owned. The idea is to knock it down and build a 30 story monstrosity and the first five stories will be a library and then the rest of it will be a mix of market rate and affordable housing. And the market rate will cross subsidize both the affordable and also the library.
Obviously, this is a project that people are bringing up a lot of similar concerns about, why are we steamrolling through? Why are we Robert Moses-ing this old thing that has been in the neighborhood for a while. And then, of course, there’s concerns about construction noise, and there’s concerns about how ugly this building is going to be. The issues you’re bringing up right now about, you know, blasting through Robert Moses style, how do you sort that out on a project like this?
Yeah, it’s interesting. I’ve heard, I’ve spoken to a number of neighborhood advocates, because that’s right, literally on my block, about how they feel about it. And I haven’t heard the knocking down that library, which people consider a relatively nice library, or that health center is the big concern. The concern I’ve heard from the tenants associations that I’ve spoken to, particularly in the buildings that are still rent stabilized, is the ratio of affordable housing to market rate housing. And they talk about a project also that was done a little bit further uptown, which is a similar project. I think it was 147th Street, is that right?
The one that was then turned into a truck stop, right?
But that the problem isn’t the library or having some portion of it be market rate, it’s the ratio of the two. And I think that seems like a fair concern. That’s again what the tenants, I’ve spoken to now three tenants associations in the neighborhood, and they’ve all raised that as the concern.
Yeah, and I mean, I would love it if that building was going to be 100% affordable. I think that…
The other concern that, and I’m just listening to people, I mean, I don’t, that’s also part of a public health approach is you actually just talk to people and you listen to people and you evolve your thinking based on data and evidence that you get. That doesn’t mean you change your mind. Housing is a human right. but how you get to that realization of that as a human right should be informed by data and evidence.
I was talking to an advocate at Manhattan Plaza, another subsidized housing building in our district, and one of the things that bothers them is that the financing isn’t transparent. Now, I haven’t looked at that, but they say, we don’t know what the ROI is. We have none of the numbers. It’s just like, hi, we’re going to subsidize this. We’re going to do market rate here. We’re going to subsidize here. Believe us.
So one of the things that they’re calling for is more transparency in the numbers. And for me, that goes across government. And I think that’s a role of Congress, because many of these projects are funded by federal dollars as well, and what are the actual numbers? What is the profit margin?
And we can pivot now to the pharmaceutical industry, because that’s something I’ve worked on a lot, is drug companies say, It takes $400 million to develop a new vaccine. And we’ve been saying for decades, okay, show us the numbers. Like, show us your actual numbers. How did you get to 400 million? How did you get to your ROI? Like, show us the numbers. No, It takes $400 million. And from what I heard these tenants associations saying over the last couple of weeks, they want to see the numbers on these buildings.
I would totally agree that there should be more transparency. I think that I might quibble with the idea that without significant additional resources from the government in some way, you can make the numbers work on that project or in a lot of projects. The tragedy is that we don’t have the money to just subsidize tons of housing on the Upper West Side. If what you’re telling me is that you’re going to go to Congress and you’re going to unlock tons more money and we’re going to get federal funding raining down on us, that sounds awesome. But I think a lot of these policy conversations happen in the context of assuming that’s not going to be the case.
The Trump administration spent $200 billion on the war in Iran. There is money there to be unlocked.
And there’s money for our subway systems, and we just went through the tunnel thing, Second Avenue Subway. There is money there that has already been appropriated by Congress and should be now allocated to our city.
Yeah. All right. So let’s jump to public health. This is your signature issue. You’ve worked on vaccine distribution. I imagine that this is something you could talk about forever.
My children prefer that I don’t, but I could.
At a different time, I would prefer that you do. But if you had to distill it down to maybe like 90 seconds, what is, this is captain obvious question, but what is wrong with what the federal government status quo is on public health right now? And I’m wondering if you could speak both to the problems that are Trump administration and RFK specific, and also the problems that you’ve observed your entire career across administrations.
They’re ignoring the evidence. That’s the number one problem. And they’re ignoring it… We talk about myths and disinformation in my field, and mis is just like you got it wrong, and dis is you’re actively promoting the wrong story. So they’re ignoring the evidence and they’re promoting disinformation about the evidence. They have defunded all of the systems that keep us safe, from the Centers for Disease Control, which as you know now doesn’t have a head, but people who run what’s called a level 5 biosecurity lab, which contains all of the scariest pathogens you’ve ever heard of, is understaffed or unstaffed. So from there to defunding basic research, cancer research, all the research which makes us healthy, they’ve destroyed it already. Basically, they gave Mr. Musk a delete key, and he just deleted our public health system.
Yeah, I mean, horrifying. Are there problems that have been going on for decades that you also think we’ve neglected for too long? Or do you see this as a singular sort of Trump issue, that things were mostly actually in pretty good shape in 2023 and then Trump came to power and ruined everything?
I think COVID exposed a number of problems with our public health system, which that it’s been chronically underfunded for decades. We have a lack of access to primary health care, which means basically people don’t have a family doctor anymore. And services are not as comprehensive as they should be. And I’m sure you’ve talked to older people who are on Medicare and don’t have access to glasses or dental. So there are some chronic problems that have been pervasive. But one of the things that has been done really, really well in the United States of America is control of infectious diseases. And that’s kind of what the federal government, that’s like a basic function. In fact, the CDC was founded around control of infectious diseases for immigrants coming to the US. And they just destroyed that. They get 100% credit.
Yeah.
I mean, we were talking the other day about, I was in Washington last week and I was on a panel with Tony Fauci and we had a discussion in advance of the panel about what was sort of bugging people. And one of the things one woman said is she said, we’re about to have the FIFA, the soccer tournament now. We have no public health system in place to control. We would normally have had for an Olympics, public health teams deployed everywhere so that if there was any sign of any suspicious fevers, there was an immediate alert system. That system is not in place. That is terrifying.
And our system was seen as the best in the world. I mean, the world relied on our Centers for Disease Control, not only for the work that they did here in the United States, but also for the support they gave to others in terms of controlling infectious diseases.
Yeah. What’s the playbook for rebuilding that? I mean, things are much easier to destroy than rebuild.
The playbook for rebuilding is to hire back up quickly. I mean, for good or for bad, a lot of people who were laid off have not yet found work and they’re still ready to come back. So that’s the first part of the playbook. But it’s not going to be easy. And every day it gets worse and harder. There has to be a strong statement from our federal government unequivocally about why we all need to be vaccinated, why that’s important, both for ourselves, for our children, for our neighbors and family members, and putting in place a strong, credible voice for science.
Yeah, the vaccine thing in particular is really scary. With that in mind, the two polls that I looked up in advance of this: in 2019, 84% of Americans said that it was either very important or extremely important for parents to get their children vaccinated. So 84 in 2019, in 2024, that’s down to 69, so 15% drop. Still above 50, so it’s still a popular proposition, but less so. Another scary poll is that in 2019, 73% of Americans said science has a mostly positive effect on America. In 2023, that number’s down to 57. How do you explain this sort of loss of trust that Americans have had in the systems that you’re describing?
Some of it is active disinformation campaigns, and we can see that when we go on YouTube or TikTok. There is just active disinformation. And one of those types of disinformation is if you were on TikTok or Instagram during covid vaccine and you are a young man, you may have seen an ad that says, take a cold shower. It’s just as good as being immunized. And that was pervasive. And that is, that requires rules and regulations to combat.
And the other part is that, and this is less about me running for Congress, but maybe it has an analogy, but in my field, we’ve had a lot of thinking about how people want information in a soundbite in two words, and issues are complicated. And it’s very hard to do that. And we’ve come to a place where yes, no, yes, no, as opposed to when it’s complicated, we’ve lost the plot on how to explain that to people. And one thing that we think a lot about in public health is how do you communicate uncertainty? It’s very hard to communicate uncertainty and risk. We think the weather people do a good job. Like there’s a 30% chance of rain and you’re like, I don’t really know if it’s gonna rain or not, but you kind of get what that means. And in public health, when we talk about there’s a 1% chance of X, Y, and Z. People don’t, it’s very hard to process. We have to be much more honest in public health about what we know and what we don’t know and just be able to be honest about the science and what’s certain and what’s not.
On healthcare, One of the things that I’d like to pass in Congress, when I’m in Congress, I will pass something called the National Health Security Act. because we have a lot of people in this district and around the country, but also in this district that they can’t get a doctor’s appointment and they can’t afford their drugs, their basic drugs. It’s like when I’m standing on the street canvassing, I hear that from everybody and it’s about them, their parents. It’s as critical as the housing issue. And when the cuts come from the big ugly bill in the fall, it will just get 10 times worse for people. 30% of people in our district rely on some sort of subsidized health care. So one is to lower the cost of drugs. And I have negotiated down the cost of cervical cancer vaccines by 65%. It is possible. And it’s about pushing the data to say, look guys, how much profit do you really need on this? It’s about data and evidence.
The second is making sure everybody has a primary health care doctor. We have a great system called community health centers. We have Ryan Health, there’s one in our neighborhood right down the street, where everybody can go get a checkup if they need it or call their doctor if their kid has a fever. It’s old school.
And the third is we have Medicaid, we have Medicare, and we have an increasingly unaffordable care act, but an affordable health care act. We need to protect those and expand those. And it’s all doable and it’s much less money than we’re about to spend on this war.
All right. Wrapping up a little bit. So I’ve heard you talk about how this field is you and four guys. Do you have a comment on what it’s been like running as basically…?
There is another woman still in the race, and she’s still very much in the race. I would say it’s bizarre. Like in my world, we call out these things called “manels”. Is that a word you guys know? It’s a big thing in my world. A manel is like a panel with only men. And we call it a manel. And there was a huge movement of like hashtag manel every time you saw a man.
I can’t believe that in New York 12, we are only paying attention to the guys. It’s crazy! So the New York Times has run stories on four of the guys and none of the women. And for a long time, when they listed other candidates in the race, they didn’t list any of the women. Now Laura and I wrote to the ethics editor of the Times, and now they seem to be at least listing the women. But it’s crazy. This is New York 12. Bella Abzug at one point was our representative. We are the feminist center of the universe here. And it’s crazy to me that it’s a boys’ club. I almost can’t get over it. A majority of our district is women. What the heck? What do you think? Why is that?
Well, on this particular program, you’re our first active candidate to come on. So we’re being the change we want to see. With that said, the four men you’re running against happen to be quite famous and prominent and have huge social media followings or have long records in elected office.
I mean, long records, not so long.
That’s a.. I mean, it’s interesting with Micah, because he has a long record of not being in elected office, but being behind the scenes for people that are.
That’s right.
You’re right that Alex is two terms, a little bit more fresh.
On the topic of viability and who’s getting what coverage and who’s being taken seriously, someone actually wrote to me and asked “why aren’t you writing more about Nina?” Which I took as a sign that you’re onto something because you have fans that are very excited about you.
And I wrote this person back and I said, you know, I’d love to have Nina on my podcast. And also, I think that it’s a tough road for her. Because as you say, it’s a insider-y club, specifically among the political elite community of this district.
And also because sort of downstream of that, you’re going to need volunteers. You’re going to need money, which we haven’t even talked about. But you’re going to need people who are not only excited about you, like ‘you seem really smart and great, and I agree with you,’ but ‘I need specifically Nina to win. And I need that so much that I am going to take out time for my day and knock on doors and hand out petitions.’
So make the case to someone who’s thinking about volunteering, why do they need to be focused on this, why do they need to devote time, to really start pounding the pavement for you?
Yeah, we’re changing democracy back to what it should be. We’re a volunteer-driven campaign. We have over 100 volunteers. We’ve collected all of our petitions through volunteers, no paid petitioners. And we’re talking to people about what they care about. And that’s the way democracy should work. I was going to run for Congress. I spoke to my cousin who ran for Congress on Long Island, and he lost. And I said, John, should I run Congress? And he’s like, Nina, if you have a passport and something to say, you can run for office. I was like, damn straight. I love that. And that’s true. Democracy shouldn’t have to cost $1,000,000 to run, and certainly not $5 million PACs and this and that. We should be able to do it through getting on the street and talking to people.
And that is what our campaign is about. And so far, it’s amazing. And what I love, we talked a little bit about, I stand on the street corner and people say like, I heard about you from my cousin, or I read about you in the West Side Rag, or now they’ll say, I heard you on Eli’s podcast. And that’s amazing. So this is old school. Friends and family get on the street. We want to show people that you cannot buy America. And $5 million PAC money, you know, that’s just crap. We got to get back to talking to people, figuring out what they want, and putting regular people in Congress.
Yeah. Well, that’s a great place to close it. Our last question, it’s a little bit different because you’re a candidate, but we’ve been asking everyone, ‘What’s one thing that we should ask to the candidates when they come on?’
I should say that we covered some of the things that we were asked to ask you. I mean, we could rifle through a few of them if you want. Someone wanted to know what everyone’s favorite local business was. Do you have a quick answer to that?
I don’t have quick answers to those questions. I’m way too like, I don’t know. What I love about New York is that it can change every day.
Yeah.
The question that I would ask is, if you were offered the role of president today, would you take it? Because I think a lot of these guys want to be president, and this is a stepping stone for them. So I would want to know, like, honestly speaking, if somebody said tomorrow you could be president of the United States, would you take the job? Is that really what you’re running for?
So let me ask you then, if you could take the job of United States president tomorrow, what would you… would you do it?
No, because I think it should be an elected process by the people, and I think it would be completely inappropriate for somebody to just become president.
That’s a great answer... wait, so is the question, do you want to be president tomorrow, or is the question, do you want to be president one day?
Well, that’s kind of the trick of the question.
I see. Do you have a comment on whether you’d want to be president one day?
I do not want to be president. I do not want to be president. I would like to be a member of Congress and make sure that we have checks and balances because if our Congress isn’t working, the whole system doesn’t work. And that to me is, you know, the chief executive comes and goes. But if the chief executive isn’t checked and balanced by the other two parts of government, something we all learned in civics class in 6th grade, and I think we all thought it was true, but now we see it’s not, is we have a court system, and we have a Congress, and we have a president, and they’re three different branches, and they hold each other in check. And unless and until we fix that, we don’t have a democracy. So for me, there’s nothing more important. And I’m definitely not qualified to be a Supreme Court judge.
Well, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it.
Thank you very much, Eli. Thanks so much.
