She's fighting to restore the NY Democratic Party
She's fighting to restore the NY Democratic Party
Chaos in New York leads to a clarifying moment
Welcome to a big Monday edition of Progress Report.
This edition usually comes out on Sundays, but I’m happy to report that I was flying back to New York from Chicago yesterday, having landed at O’Hare after grinding through 36 hours of delays, canceled flights, and a few agonizingly close standby calls.
Once I finally landed in Chicago, it quickly became clear that something special was afoot and that all the airport chaos was a small price to pay to be a part of it. I’ll touch on what I saw in Chicago later in the newsletter, after tonight’s main story.
(Just a reminder: Roe v. Wade could be overturned by the Supreme Court as soon as tomorrow. Please consider donating to these abortion clinics and access organizations, as they will be on the front lines of providing care and sanctuary to women as their autonomy is stripped away and lives changed forever.)
Thank you to our latest crowd-funding donors: Kristie and Piet!
In story I wrote about State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi back in March, I dubbed her New York’s Giant Slayer, a nod to her knack for taking down the most powerful men in state politics. Three months and several unforeseen legal twists later, Biaggi is taking on another titan of corrupt corporate politics.
Biaggi’s career has tracked the progressive uprising within the New York Democratic Party. In 2018, she pulled off a massive upset to unseat powerful conservative state Sen. Jeff Klein, and last fall, Biaggi was an early leader in the uprising that forced scandal-plagued Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation.
This spring, when she set her sights on an oddly drawn Congressional seat that included large swaths of Long Island, it seemed as if Biaggi’s next rival would be Jay Jacobs, the vindictive state party chair and diehard Cuomo loyalist with whom she already had plenty of history.
The calculus changed in mid-May, however, when a conservative state judge ordered a newly redrawn Congressional map. The terrible new map set off a series of events that ultimately resulted in Biaggi going head-to-head with Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the powerful chair of the DCCC. They’re both running in the primary to represent New York’s newly redrawn 17th Congressional district — a district that is currently held by Rep. Mondaire Jones.
The situation is not as confusing as it sounds, but definitely more infuriating.
Maloney currently represents NY-18, a Hudson Valley district that was nominally reshaped by the new map. His home, however, is located in the small part of the district that was plunked into the new NY-17, and that gave him an excuse to run in that safer, bluer district.
In doing so, Maloney abandoned a more vulnerable seat despite there being no law requiring him to do so. He also tried to force Jones into running against another progressive Black lawmaker, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, putting him in an almost impossible bind. It pissed a lot of people off, to say the least, even if it came as little surprise from a Democrat with a history of building power for Republicans and trying to rescue cynical conservatives (see: Rep. Kurt Schrader) and kneecap popular women of color (Summer Lee and Jessica Cisneros).
“I am friends with Mondaire, so I spoke to him and told him that he should run in his district, because it's his district, and that he would have my full support,” Biaggi tells Progress Report. “What makes it so egregious is that it is literally Sean Patrick Maloney’s job to elect more Democrats, but he’s leaving his district behind in a year that everyone knows is going to be challenging. It’s kind of crazy, and there is an element of selfishness that frankly, I think is representative of everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party.”
Biaggi, meanwhile, was left without an obvious district by the no-holds-barred game of musical chairs. She thought about running for State Senate again, but her district was significantly changed there, too. It was a heady few days, waiting for the final maps and decisions by incumbents to shake out, and then Jones shocked everyone by deciding to run in NY-10, a congressional district located in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
That last twist opened the door for Biaggi, who grew up in Westchester and has represented parts of it in the legislature, to step up and contest what Maloney thought would be a coronation. Instead, he’ll be forced to defend his conservative record in Congress against Biaggi’s much more aggressive and progressive record in Albany. Over the course of four years, she’s passed bills to expand health care, provide new protections for sexual assault victims, codify abortion rights at the state level, tackle environmental racism, and create more affordable housing.
Given Maloney’s deep pockets and access to corporate donors, he could still be considered the favorite, but Biaggi isn’t showing up to this fight alone. Among others, Biaggi has got the backing of the Working Families Party and the outspoken support of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who first allied with Biaggi in 2018 when they were both running to upset powerful conservative Democrats.
Progress Report caught up with Biaggi last week for a long conversation about her decision to jump into this race, the state of Democratic politics, and her vision for a new generation of leadership.
When I saw the new map and the significant changes made to NY-3, where you had been running, I was wondering what you would do. How did you arrive at the decision to run in NY-17?
I am running for Congress for the same reasons as when I started to run in February. That hasn’t changed. It’s the lack of urgency that we see in our members of Congress and wanting to be on the frontlines of what I think is one of the most important fights of our lifetime. And so there was an element of me that felt like I wanted to finish what I've started here.
In terms of this district, I think it was the combination of the shifting districts in the State Senate and the frankly selfish reaction from Sean Patrick Maloney to run in Mondaire’s district without even consulting him or asking or talking to him.
It made me really motivated to run, but it's a combination of all the things that I want to fight for and the fact that I think that there's a real need for different leadership. If you just look at this guy's history, and just how he has led, he really has put himself first instead of what’s best for his district.
Last cycle, the DCCC established a so-called Black List that banned consultants and campaign staffers that worked on primary challenges against Democratic incumbents from ever working with other members of the party ever again. The DCCC officially rescinded that policy, but do you feel like your campaign is going to experience that sort of wrath, running against the DCCC chair?
It's actually interesting that you say that, because in a lot of the Democratic committee meetings that we're in, when we're talking to the members in the community, he touts [ending the blacklist] as one of the reasons why he should be considered a progressive.
And yes, he may have officially changed that policy, but there are certainly members of his teams — both government and campaign — that have called consultants that I have worked with and told them that they're not allowed to work with me.
Let’s talk about the distinction between the two of you, in terms of voting record and what you’ve done in office.
I represent [parts of] the Bronx, people who are most vulnerable and most marginalized, the people who actually need government to work for them. He represents corporate interests and special interests. And that's not something that I'm just saying, that's from his record.
So if you look at his record, he has consistently voted against legislation to hold Wall Street accountable. He was one of a handful of Democratic legislators that voted to weaken Dodd-Frank, which is one of the most important pieces of legislation to bring accountability to Wall Street. He also raises hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from Wall Street and from corporate interests.
When it comes to things like immigration, I've been a real outspoken champion for making sure we are not just providing opportunity, but also living our values of what it means to be a Democrat.
I think one of those values is making sure that people who are seeking refugee status or asylum status in the United States in their greatest moment of need are offered that. And so when it comes to his record on that, he voted to prevent Syrian and Iraqi refugees from coming to this country in 2015.
Yet in these committee meetings that I've been in with him, he’s said he’s a strong advocate for immigration. And that particular vote is the exact policy, blocking refugee status, that Republicans used to justify Trump's Muslim ban. So there are just a lot of inconsistencies and also breaks in his integrity when it comes to the issues.
You’re in favor of Medicare for All, while Maloney’s record on health care probably falls outside of even the more moderate wing of the party.
He spent his entire first term voting with the Republicans to weaken and slow down Obamacare. In his first race for office, he didn't even have the courage or the forthrightness to just tell voters whether or not he would have voted for or against Obamacare. I mean, it's one of the most important accomplishments of this party for the past 20 years.
I think that this race is another way to really restore the Democratic Party to the values that it says it’s about. Why can’t we make progress on climate justice? Why is that? Well, see let's see who this party is taking money from and who was leading it and who's making those decisions. And that's a huge part of why we don't ever see things get done.
Every crisis seems to be an opportunity to fundraise. There is never really an attempt to harness public outrage to force through significant changes. We’re always just a few more seats away from being able to get something done. When the draft of the Roe v. Wade decision leaked out, it became a monster fundraising opportunity.
There was a tweet that Sean Patrick Maloney put out that basically called voters stupid. He said “It’s November, stupid,” that we have to get out there and vote. But we already voted. We all campaigned. We all worked so, so, so hard to elect members of Congress, members of state legislatures, members of the United States Senate, and also President Biden. And so to tell voters to vote harder is probably one of the most annoying arguments, and you can almost guarantee will not motivate people to actually turn out, because it’s just insulting to people.
People literally donated, they voted, they did everything that they could and nothing's changing. Yes, we should vote but you don't call people stupid because it's not just November — you have the power to do something right now.
The real question around your initial campaign in NY-3 was the fact that while it contained part of your current legislative district, it was a lot of Long Island, which was new for you. Now you’re running in a district closer to home, though you haven’t explicitly represented its borders. How does this shift your approach?
I've lived in Westchester almost my entire life, and I've represented Westchester for the past four years in Albany. Frankly, when Westchester was not part of NY-3, that was the thing that made me feel like it wasn't the right race for me to be in. It just didn't feel authentic, and that’s because this is my home.
We’ve organized with a lot of these people who have really been leaders in their communities. A lot of them played key roles in the change of leadership in our county executive in Westchester County from Rob Astorino to George Latimer. And so there is an element that we have a baked-in foundation. I feel very lucky to be able to have that. We get to use that to introduce ourselves to a lot of people who are new to both me and to Sean Patrick Maloney, because he has not represented a majority of this district.
He's going try to make it seem like he's the incumbent of this district, because he's already an elected member of Congress. But I think that beyond that, he is very much trying to use scare tactics to get people to believe that he's the best candidate to win in November against the Republicans. But if he were so confident in beating Republicans, he would have stayed in his district, because he would have been able to beat the Republican in that race.
One thing I’ve been really stuck on is the idea that economic centrism is inherently more electable, as if people who are more culturally conservative also demand that politicians have a close relationship with Wall Street. It feels like a convenient myth.
My record transcends party politics. In 2020, when I ran for re-election, I outperformed Biden by four points in the part of my district that's way more conservative and really like light-red. That means that people literally went to the polls and they voted for Trump and for me [laughs].
I think it's because they knew that they're not getting a political hack that's going to lie to them or just give talking points that sound good. I’m going to tell them the truth and fight for things like economic prosperity and make sure that they are protected when it comes to their loved ones in nursing homes, and for other things like living wages. The things that really matter to people.
Beyond that, what will help us to win in November is something that he's not really talking about: you have to be able to turn out Democrats. And I don't think that there's anybody better positioned to turn out Democrats than me.
He is not going to be able to make the case that he's a new kind of leader in a changing world, because he is so very much part of the Democratic establishment that is stuck using an old playbook. He’s going to try to make the case that I'm too progressive or bold, but bold policies and really fierce leadership are exactly what make people vote.
So do you have an overarching strategy? He’s going to have a lot of money on his side, even if the DCCC hasn’t proven all that adept at winning tight elections lately.
It’s the same kind of strategy as 2018. Building a coalition from the ground up is key, and making sure that we have all of the voices that are part of not just the grassroots, but part of an electorate that is looking for something different. We’ll build it from there and knock on as many doors as humanly possible, make as many phone calls as humanly possible. Whether it's postcards, whether it's texting, we will employ every single means of communication. And if we're lucky enough to be able to get on TV, then that is something that we will definitely do.
The future feels distressingly bleak right now, with fascism on the march and the earth threatening to wipe us all out altogether. Existence is increasingly exhausting, so it came as a great relief that weekend’s Labor Notes conference provided a window into a future far less dystopian than the one we’re staring down at this moment.
For three days, approximately 4000 workers, union leaders, and community organizers compared notes and strategized, looking for ways to build on a recent burst of post-Covid labor unrest and broader public interest in unions.
The overarching goals: rewiring our economy and rearranging power structures in service of creating a more equitable and just future for working- and middle-class Americans.
The weekend featured panels and parties, keynote speeches and classroom sessions, each aimed variously at fostering class solidarity, activating disillusioned workers, reforming staid labor institutions, and winning back political power. Almost everyone wore a mask while inside, and we each put stickers on our name tags signifying our gender identities.
The whole thing was something out of Tucker Carlson’s sweatiest and most violent nightmares: A multiracial, gender-inclusive coalition of grassroots workers and activists coming together for a vaccine-mandatory convention in Chicago and hatching plans to wrest back society from the grasp of malevolent elites and fascists.
What should scare Tucker even more is the fact that these folks are going to win.
Wait, Before You Leave!
Progress Report has raised over $6.4 million dollars raised for progressive Democratic candidates and causes. We’ve also brought invaluable attention to issues in communities that are ignored by the national media. Isn’t that cool?
None of that money goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out there. Not a dime! In fact, it costs me money to do this. So to make this sustainable, hire new writers, and expand to report out more stories, I need your help.
For just $5 a month, you can buy a premium subscription that includes:
Premium member-only newsletters filled with important news
Exclusive updates from candidates and interviews with other progressive leaders.
The satisfaction of financing new projects and paying new reporters
A new best friend (me).
A free subscription for a reader on a fixed income or a very tight budget
You can also make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign — doing so will earn you a shout-out in an upcoming edition of the big newsletter!