A tale of two mayoral candidates

There’s good news in Florida. I repeat, good news in Florida.

Welcome to a Monday night edition of Progress Report.

On Friday, I mentioned that I was working on a good news-only edition of the newsletter to lift some spirits around the holidays and highlight that progress is still being made around the country. I realize now that it was an ambitious promise.

Considering the shutdown of state legislatures and the fact that Donald Trump is dominating the news every day by nominating some new Visigoth or grifter for an important federal office, the good news has taken a bit longer to suss out than anticipated. But I’ve now got a number of positive stories for you, stories from off the beaten path and buried amid other headlines. I’ll work to bring more to you later this week, as well.

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Sunshine: I generally try not to think too far beyond the next election cycle, given how quickly things change in politics, but I’m all in on the next Orlando mayoral election, due to be held in November 2027.

The reason is simple: Rep. Anna Eskamani announced that she will be running in the Democratic primary, vying to succeed longtime Mayor Buddy Dyer. Rep. Eskamani was barely a teenager when Dyer took office back in 2003, but since being elected to the Florida House in 2018, she has established herself as one of the state’s best-known and most effective Democratic legislators.

Granted, there’s little competition in a state party filled with incompetent, self-serving centrists, but that only makes it more impressive that she’s been able to build a formidable political operation around progressive policy positions.

I got to know Anna when she first ran for office, in 2018, and have been lucky to become friends with both her (and her twin sister Ida) over the past few years. It’s rare to find a politician who stays so true to their values — for one, she refuses to take corporate cash despite representing an area awash with major theme parks and resorts — and works so unspeakably hard for the people they represent.

She’d be mad at me saying this, but Anna has a habit of meeting with struggling constituents, carefully writing down what they need, and spending her own money to purchase those things. The gifts are not accompanied by a press release, Instagram post, or other form of self-congratulation; it’s enough for her that some family in a tough spot is going to have a decent Christmas this year. While Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried was making friendship bracelets for the Taylor Swift tour she bizarrely tried to co-opt this past summer, Anna was building actual bonds within the community.

Total Turkey: New York’s Campaign Finance Board ruled today that Mayor Eric Adams is not eligible to receive matching public funds for his re-election campaign, dealing another significant blow to his long shot chances of earning another four years at Gracie Mansion.

The CFB cited the criminal indictments against the mayor and investigations into his fundraising apparatus in its decision to hold off on awarding taxpayer money to Adams’ campaign. Under NYC law, candidates who meet a minimum fundraising threshold are awarded 8-to-1 matching funds on the first $250 given by every New York City resident.

In 2021, Adams was allegedly the beneficiary of illegal donations that were funneled through often unwitting straw donors who lived in the city. Those allegations are at the center of an investigation into one of his most prolific fundraisers, while Adams himself was indicted for years of taking bribes from Turkish officials.

Today’s CFB decision left open the possibility that Adams could qualify for funds in the future, though running for re-election isn’t his top priority at the moment anyway. First, Adams has got to win over Donald Trump, who holds the power to pardon him before he goes on trial in April.

Deliverance: Incensed letter carriers from across the country participated in a raucous rally in Brooklyn on Sunday to protest the tentative contract agreement between their union and the United States Postal Service.

The National Association of Letter Carriers this week sent ratification vote ballots to more than 200,000 members, who have been working without a contract for well over 500 days. Local union officials, leaders of dissident caucuses within the NALC, and rank and file carriers have spent months urging fellow members to reject the deal, which they say falls far short of their minimum requirements after years of stagnated pay and rampant mistreatment by management.

Many letter carriers are facing deep financial hardship, as I documented in the report below:

Negotiated behind closed doors by NALC president Brian Renfroe and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, the contract provides for minuscule 1.3% annual raises and several concessions on overtime and other key issues. The negligible pay bump, which represents a small fraction of inflation over the past few years, has become a rallying cry for angry members, scrawled on placards and referenced in one speech after another.

Renfroe has tried to counter the dissent by meeting with local branches and warning members about the postal service’s finances. He faces an uphill battle, considering both the content of the contract and process from which it emerged. Simply put, carriers don’t trust Renfroe, who spent relatively little time as a letter carrier and is said to have gone MIA for a month during the early stages of negotiations.

In September, Renfroe announced that he’d entered rehab for alcoholism during that time, and he now faces two challengers in the union’s next leadership election.

The rally in Brooklyn featured one of those candidates, who currently runs a faction of reform-minded mailmen and women called the Concerned Letter Carriers. Larger and louder than the rally in Brooklyn that I covered in the newsletter in November, the event also served as an implicit rejection of of President-elect Donald Trump’s interest in privatizing the postal service.

USPS lost around $9.5 billion in fiscal 2024 and was one of Trump’s favorite targets during his first term. DeJoy has been rapidly slashing expenses, in part by cutting work hours and consolidating offices in ways that make life difficult for carriers. They argue that losses are due in part to management’s incessant violations of their contract and the financial penalties that incur, poor decisions, and wastefulness.

One important twist: If USPS does ultimately get privatized, carriers and other employees will be eligible to go on strike.

Kentucky: Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear announced that state government employees will be eligible for paid medical and family leave as soon as this summer, extending a key benefit to more than 30,000 public workers.

The added benefit will give state executive branch workers up to six weeks of paid leave, available in three intervals during an employee’s career, the governor said. New hires will immediately become eligible for six weeks of paid time off, he said. Another six weeks of paid leave will be offered two more times: once employees reach 10 years of service and again at 20 years.

At the moment, full-time Kentucky executive branch workers can earn one day of paid sick leave per month, with an additional 10 days available to workers who stick around for 10 and 20 years.

These aren’t exactly the world’s most generous benefits, but there’s nothing in Kentucky law that guarantees any time off for workers beyond the federal FMLA, which allows for 12 weeks off unpaid. In that light, Beshear’s order creates a pretty considerable and enviable amount of time off, which will hopefully at minimum push more private employers to offer the same benefit.

New York: Gov. Kathy Hochul took a bit of time off from consoling scared CEOs last week to sign a bill that requires health insurers to cover EpiPens and caps their cost at $100 to consumers. Whereas they once cost $60 or so apiece, pharmaceutical industry consolidation and market manipulation has sent prices soaring to upwards of $600 per two-pack.

This is the kind of reasonable regulation that will probably save a fair number of lives in the years to come and should definitely be applauded, yet feels like a hollow victory because it doesn’t fix any of the underlying problems driving the sickening costs now endemic in our health care system.

My teacher lives at school: Faced with teacher shortages around the country amid tightening budgets and the soaring cost of living, a growing number of public school districts are investing in housing for staff members and district employees.

A number of small scale projects have been completed in recent years, like the 16-unit village in Fairfield County, SC. One and two story homes rent for less than $1K and sit just minutes from school district headquarters, dramatically reducing commutes and gas bills, as well. An additional nine units are planned for the village thus far, and perhaps even importantly, the Fairfield project has inspired larger districts to take action.

Charlotte Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina is spending $30 million on a development of 100 homes, while Charleston is also looking into teacher housing. Interestingly, both are low union density states where even teachers unions have less sway. Building these properties for teachers to occupy while employed may be seen as a better investment than higher wages, as the districts will maintain control of the homes for the long-term. Various districts around Texas have also been building teacher workforce housing on mid-size scale.

Similar plans are popping up nationwide, including in larger cities where the need for affordable housing and accomplished teachers are even more acute.

In Chicago, a long-gestating plan to convert an abandoned elementary school into apartments for teachers received a significant boost from the city housing authority this past August. Advocates want to create 106 affordable units and a handful of market-rate townhomes inside of what used to be Von Humboldt Elementary School. Currently, vouchers from the city would cover 30 units for people making 60% of the area’s median income (or about $47k) and 31 units for people making 80% of the AMI ($63K).

Perhaps the biggest development I’ve seen under consideration is a proposed 1000-unit teacher housing supply spread out across five sites owned by the San Diego Unified School District.

There is a dire need for this kind of housing — a survey of 2,372 staffers for the district found that 70% qualify as low to moderate household income. The district ultimately wants to provide housing for up to 10% of its staff, an ambitious goal in a growing city.

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