Analyzing the Impact of the Election Results

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All' chosen candidates won, and their victories pointed to a growing movement within the Democratic Party Today, political reporter Nick Fandos explains whether their victories help Democrats in the midterms or put their chances of winning control of Congress at risk It's Thursday, june twenty fifth Nick Fandos, welcome to the Daily. So glad to be here Mayor Mamadi is having a very good couple of weeks, it seems. Yeah, an incredible couple of weeks. The Kicks are NBA championships. Y. The World Cup, his beloved sporting event is taking place just across the river in New Jersey. And this week, the mayor made a pretty audacious political gamble in a series of important congressional races in New York City And he won every single one of them. So okay, as much as I want to talk to you about the Kicks, you are here to talk about Tuesday's election results And I want to understand what these results in New York's primary tells us about the strength of Mayor Mandani, of course, this rising political figure in the Democratic Party, But also what these results mean for the national political picture. First, let's just talk about what were the results on Tuesday night. So on Tuesday night, voters across New York City went to the polls in a series of very competitive congressional primaries. Now in New York, a very deemocratic city The primaries actually are the elections that end up deciding who is going to fill these seats. And Mayor Maddani did something unusual in these elections where his predecessors have tended to try and stay out of local politics of the kind of bitter inner party fights that could divide their coalition or zap their political capital, he decided he was going to put all of his on the line for a series of candidates from the left, many of them Democratic socialists, who share his vision for the city and he thought could win these seats in Congress for their movement. This is a pretty extraordinary gamble just six months into his term If he succeeded, it would give him a foothold in Congress where he could inject the economic populist ideas from the left, his views on Israel, and other issues into the national conversation that Democrats are having right now about their identity But If you lost, he'd be squandering a lot of his own political capital. He'd be empowering people who are trying to stand in his way. And frankly, I think he'd make even some of his allies think this guy's not as strong as we thought. Maybe we don't need to go along with what he's talking about. Okay so you've just explained sort of The gamble of it. let's talk a little bit about how he decided to take the risks that he did So to answer this, I want to go back all the way to last year's mayayoral campaign.. Mamani was a little known state lawmaker. He was a democratic socialist. He was the kind of guy that when he got into the race for mayor, nobody thought he could win. And a year ago this week, he did in remarkable fashion. He beat Andrew Cuomo, this Titan of Democratic politics From the start, it's important to remember that Mam Dani is an insurgent politician and he's a movement politician. By the time last fall comes around, and it's clear he's going to be elected mayor in the general election He's already looking ahead to this year's races to figure out how can I expand that movement New York, we know anything's possible with a great team I'm Brad Lander, and I'll block billionaires from buying our elections. The first candidate he identifies is Brad Lander. Now Lander was actually a fellow mayayoral candidate whoom Mandani had beat, but then they locked arms to take on the Democratic establishment. And Mandani said to him as the election is coming to a cluse You know where we could use you most would be running for Congress. Why don't you run in the Brooklyn and lower Manhattan seat where you're from against Dan Goldman who was a Democratic incumbent, a former federal prosecutor, but crucially did not endorse Mandani in last year's election and historically has pretty close ties to Israel, which has become one of the animating issues, obviously, of the mayor's political movement. Isn't it kind of bold of Mandani to take on an incumbent politician in this way Absolutely. But in this case, Lander had a long track record in this district, and I think both of them knew that he had a very good shot beating Goldman and flipping this. And crucially, Lander was willing to do something that Goldman never was. Wh was Good evening. Welcome to New York O' debate for the tenth Cgressional District. Both these guys consider themselves liberal Zionists They're both Jewish. And Goldman has been critical of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli Gvernment. But he's drawn a line at calling what's happened in Gaza a genocide. Israel is not the most important issue in this district. What is the most important And he's not completely denounced groups like APAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Even if he didn't take their money in this election Lander was willing to do those things. He voted for every U. S military aid package to Israel. He won't recognize it as genocide. He's never used the word occupation to describe. He was willing to be much more vociferous in his criticism of Israel and in separating himself from the kind of pro Israel political forces in the United States. And for Amdani, that was crucial Wow, that really shows you how divisive Israel has become. That's right. But the way that he made this a campaign issue and that He figured it would resonate with the voters in a district that he's known for a very long time was to basically say that Dan Goldman is beholden to a special interest He is taking money from the pro Israel lobby, He is taking money from corporate interests. And that is affecting the way that he represents you in Washington That was a pretty powerful critique at a moment, I think, when a lot of Democrats are thinking about the entrenched interests of money and corporate power in the United States. So it took this rather small distinction and made it a bigger one. where he could differentiate himself And all of what you've just described, of course, driibes with Mum Donny's positions when he first ran for mayor. Absolutely But his intervention here also started to raise another question Basically, how involved is Mam Dani, this new mayor who's going to be trying to govern an unovernable city as people like to call New York. How involved is he going get in politics. And we start to get some answers pretty quickly last fall In one counterintuitive move, he actually intervened to shut down a primary challenge by an ally of his in the DSA who was looking to challenge Hakim Jeffrees, the House Democratic leader. And after his private warnings to this ally didn't get through, Mom Donni actually showed up at a public forum and made a case for why it would hurt his meralty in their cause to go after Jeffrees in that way, to pick such a big fight She's basically telling the guy to stand down. Exactly And so that might have been where this all ended But in late November, one of Mamdani's allies in Congress, Nidy of Alasquez, who's been there for thirty years announces unexpectedly that she's going to retire There's going to be a lot of people interested in this seat. I believe you've said there's no air apparent I want to see a strong, independent, progressive public servant. And the district that she represents is one of the city' fararth this left It's also the place that Mom Donnie ran up the largest margins anywhere in the city. And so when she retires, He sees a once in a lifetime opportunity one of his allies into that seat and expand his foothold in Congress beyond just land It's too good to pass up As it happens, Mom Donnie had someone very particular in mind A young assembly woman named Claire Valdez, who had been his first endorser in the race for mayor and a fellow Democratic socialist Alasquz didn't know her at all It is what it is. I have a lot of respect for the mayor and I guess that we disagree this time She felt Mom Done blindsided her and was meddling in the race. She ends up backing another candidate, the Brooklyn Borough president, Antonio Reenoso Knowing my district, knowing my communities, I decided to step in and endor Antonio Why did he prefer his candidate Valdez over the handpick successor from Velasquez It's a great question. And on paper, there's not a huge amount of difference in these two candidates in terms of policy. They both want to abolish IC They both have called what happened in Gaza genocide They both support raising taxes on the rich as the mayor does But Valdez comes out of the mayor's political movement. Remember, I said he's a movement guy. She was with him on day one when very few people were Claire was there. If you look at photographs of the New York left over the last eight years, a cananvas in twenty eighteen, UAW picket line. And he felt basically, yeah, that guy's progressive. I like him. But Claire is my candidate And now we need to be able to do everything we can to get her across that finish line And what follows is this really fascinating race that drives a kind of geographic line through the district and through Mandani's coalition. Where on one side, you have young, very left, maybe DSA inclined voters who are more often white and college educated than their neighbors who have moved into this district over the last ten years. And on the other side, you had Reyoso and Velasquez who represented and were appealing to kindind of the old guard of the neighborhood, the the large Puerto Rican and Dominican populations that grew there, the working class black populations, the other immigrant populations in neighborhoods that have not gentrified in quite the same way Which is so interesting because here's Mumdanni, a candidate who had attracted both of those groups, now driving a wedge between the two of them with his endorsement of Valdez. Right. And so Mum Dni is jeopardizing the very coalition that he worked so hard to build. It might have stopped there, actually another year He kept going Because as the spring progressed, he had his eye on another district. This one was in Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx. It's a heavily Latino district. It's got a big black population, but similarly to the race we were just talking about, a gentrifying white community that's coming in and changing parts of that district. The interesting wrinkle here is that initially Mamani stayed out of this race because he had actually promised the incumbent congressman Adreano Espion that he would be with him. Espot had given Mamani a key endorsement during the Mayoral race brought along Latino support that he needed at the time. And in private, we've reported, they had a handshake deal. The mayor said, I'll return the favor if you ever need it And so Even though his allies on the left, We're lining up behind a challenger to Espiat, a woman named Daria Liza Avila Chevaler Mumani initially stayed on the sidelines But as the spring progresses, and Avila Chevalier is picking up momentum, as the DSA endorses her. He starts singing to hisself, I can't stay on the sidelines of this. She's got a real shot of winning. And if she doesn't win and I stayed out of it, well, that could be on me. There's an opportunity With my popularity in that district with the resources I can bring to it that I can help push her there So he decides to add her to his slate, the third candidate. and this is the decision more than any other. that really makes the Democratic establishment Back and Latino Democrats, labor unions go balistic because they say It's one thing Aainst an incumbent like Dan Goldman. in a district that he's out of step with. It's another to compete for an open seat and upset the outgoing Cgresswoman But to go after the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the first formerly undocumented immigrant in Congress, someone who actually is objectively pretty progressive on every issue except for Israel, and that's key bridge further. I mean, that is much more provocative and somebody that Mam Dani had given his assurances to that he would support in this very race. Precisely. And so a lot of them look at that and also say good is the mayor's word if he's going to go back on it here. How can we trust this guy going forward. So now Three districts now in play This fight just kind of keeps growing outward. So labor unions become very involved Pominent New York Democrats like Jeffrees, who are close with Espiat get involved. They start campaigning on the ground Super pCs start dropping millions of dollars for and against candidates and both sides of the race The mayor throws himself aggressively into the slate. and it's worth noting he has gone way above and beyond what even an endorsing may or might to an erace We need Claire Valdez, Dariaisa Avila Chevalier And Badand fighting for. He's been raising money. He's been offering strategy advice. He was out on the campaign trail in the final weeks B and forth. Exactly. He held a big rally with Bernie Sanders Some of it frankly gets ugly. Avila Chevalier, who is a PhD student and relatively untested It turns out that her history as an activist left her with a trove of inflammatory and polarizing tweets Among the most circulated were tweets that attacked the Democratic Party In one of them, she said F Kamal Harris And other ones express policy positions that really far outside of the mainstream. So again, among the most prominent, was one where she basically said All deportations are bad. We shouldn't be removing anybody from this country under any circumstance. Clearly very out of step with the majority of Americans. Exactly Okay, I can see why you described all of these as risks and Mom Donnie's taking a gamble in this race because If these candidates end up losing Not only has Mandani not installed his allies in Congress, he has really alienated people who supported him in his initial race for mayor He has potentially damaged his coalition for the next time he might want to run. and never mind the fact that he has made it harder for him to accomplish his agenda. And made some pretty powerful enemies. Sure And of course, we know, in the end Gamble pays off, Mom Donny had a huge victory on Tuesday night because all of his candidates won All of his candidates won And I just want to add in convincing fashion. Lander won by almost thirty points Valdez won by about twenty points And Avila Chevalier had a narrower margin, but somewhat comfortable four points over a powerful incumbent They were margins so big that even mayayor Mamani and his allies were surprised And so big that they sent shock waves that went not just throughout the five boroughs of New York City, but frankly well beyond, and right now are rattling the foundations of the Democratic Party We'll be right back. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs even on weekends prettyretty much all he talks about in a good way What's in your wallet? Terms apply. see capital onene d. com slash bankuy Capital onene NA, member FDIC Protecting your home shouldn't be a headache. 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But I think Kingmaker is an apt term. I mean, this is someone now who seems to be among the most popular political figures in New York As his own team would say, he has a huge amount of political capital and he's not afraid to use it I think that's the other thing that this has shown us. He is willing to take risks. And in this case, the risk paid off. And he not only now has new allies But he also has other Democrats in the system, people in the city council, people in Albany, the governor who are seeing that his political power is real and they're going to have to respond to it And so when they get into fights about his agenda about how to pay for child carere about whether to raise taxes you can really bet that going forward He's going to be coming in with a stronger hand on the national level, though Nick, because we know in Congress, Hakim Jeffrees, House minority leader, he has been focused on winning control back from the Republicans. So what does he make of all of this Haim Jeffrees, they' very specific implications and much broader ones for his party Specifically two of the candidates in this race, Avila Chevalier and Valdez, have not committed to backing him in a leadership fight next year when he's trying to become speaker. They could become real Thorns and his side in Washington But I think that the bigger implication both for Jeffrey's politics in New York City and in Washington is that this is going to give the left a much bigger platform the Mamani left specifically to advance its ideas at a time when Democrats are really in this big national argument about what they want to be as a party. And Manddani and his allies have a very specific vision. It's anti corporate power, it's big government, it's tax the rich. It's pay for social services to help working people and has pulled the United States away from its alliance with Israel And on each of those issues Now they're going to be speaking in a louder way in a way that frankly may cause problems for Jeffrees as he looks towards the midterms this fall, where races are not going to be won and lost in deep blue New York City, but in swing districts across the country this new wave of progressive Democrats, they obviously represent a lot of frustration that Democrats have with the Democratic Party, with Democratic leadership, and that's got to be on the minds of some of the more establishment Democrats, of course And I wonder whether it's possible to pull apart How much we saw on Tuesday could be attributed to that frustration? and how much can be attributed to the pull of Mamani, as you have described it I think there is No doubt as we've been watching primaries play out across the country this year And frankly, ever since Donald Trump was elected, the Democrats are really frustrated with their leadership. They're frustrated that they lost to Trump in the first place and they're frustrated that they have not been able to stop him from enacting much of his agenda over the first couple of years And so In any election like this, I think there is a degree to which voters are coming out to vote against the status quo They're going to look at any candidate that's backed by leadership and be against them. And that's got to be concerning for Jeffrees because If that spreads across the country enough, he could end up with an unruly caucus or nominees in close contests that can't win against Republicans But I also think that there is something undeniably particular happening in New York City where Mamani who is In some ways, a product of that discontent himself is also able to kind of harness it And put a frame around it and direct that energy behind a particular alternative And so what I think he did in these races that was risky but also powerful was by associating himself so much with these other candidates, he was kind of able to link together races that might otherwise have been sleepy primaries fought about different things and make them all kind of a referendum on what the Democratic Party is right now his version versus the status quo And so that kind of amplifies both the discontent and it offers a particular alternative and tries to put some force behind it so that it can become more relevant in national politics New York City, of course is in some ways an anomaly, but in some ways, it has often been a leading indicator in politics. I mean, this is the place after all, where Jeffreys is from, but so is Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader It's the place that in twenty eighteen, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez won her own surprise Democratic primary against Joe Crowley and launched basically a progressive movement that did meaningfully push the Democratic Party left and led to all kinds of incumbents falling across the country. So I think Anyone who doesn't take this seriously does so with their own peril Okay, I understand how all of these dynamics play out in places that are very blue where it's basically Democrat versus Democrat, right? But just looking forward to the midterms The very far left politics that these candidates won on, I wonder how that might translates to races that are much tighter in places that are purple, for example, right? Or saying something like I don't believe in deportations is really going to turn off voters, potentially. I think this is a question a lot of Democrats are asking today and Those who are on the winning side would say, well, they're going to help us. The Democratic Party is losing across the country because regular people are not into our ideas. They think we're not fighting for them. We think we're not committed to the right issues. And we're trying to push the party towards a place that we think it can win A lot of those people are not actually living in the kind of districts you're talking about. out in the suburbs of New York or in the middle of the country in the Midwest, wherever it may be The candidates running there, I think, look at these results and are a little worried. Republicans have shown they are very adept. at taking the extreme comments of lefties in New York City or Chicago or LA and broadcasting them all over the country and saying You may think you're voting for this reasonable moderate candidate, but you're voting to empower a party that is so crazy and outside of the mainstream, they're going to do X or Y or Z They want a lot of communists to come in. I'm say it And that's exactly what we started to hear from Republicans just hours after the election results became clear. The people They're pushing our communists. and this country is not gonna have communists. President Trump himself. Speaker Mike Johnson in the House. The Democrat Party, the Socialists, the Marxists, have nominated some of the most radical candidates to ever run for office, and they're running for Congress warned that Marxists and socialists like those in New York City were going to be cropping up all over the country. The insurgent left is on the rise If these DSA members end up working against the Democratic brand nationally in the midterms could actually feel like a loss from Mam Dani, right? Like he could get blamed for taking a big risk on these candidates that is then seen as backfiring I think that is certainly a risk for him But I think to give the mayor his say what he would allow is that he's probably going to get blamed and attacked anyway. He's already one of the most visible leftft leading politicians in the country And so why not take a big swing at trying to push the party place where he thinks he might actually help them By advancing ideas that he really believes are not only attractive to many Democrats also can be attractive and persuasive and activating to people who have either been turned off by the political process altogether or maybe voted for Republicans who feel like Basically the system is not working for them The people who frankly, he was able to bring out in large numbers in his mayoral election, who don't typically vote, or in some cases had voted for Donald Trump for president and then came around to support him Does this nick feel to you like a potential mirror of what happened on the right, which is that populists took over the mainstream of the Republican Party I think in many ways, there are similarities. I mean, whether you look at tea party after President Obama was elected or you look at Donald Trump's rise in the twenty sixteen Republican primary There was a very similar situation on their side after losing a series of elections There was a faction within the Republican Party who came in and said We've got it all wrong. We've got to change drastically. if we're going to win across the country And they went on to start winning races. and we find ourselves where we do now Democrats right now are trying to figure out how do we get our Mojo back And I don't think we're going to have a true answer for a couple of years until We have candidates on the presidential debate stage and vying for the attention of the entire country It sounds like the big question going into the midterms is basically Whether the far left views of these candidates that might be seen as turning off a lot of moderate voters, whether will push more people away. than the broadly popular economic and anti Israel messaging, frankly, that we have seen that might attract them The midterermms will give us one answer to that question And I think that the presidential election that's waiting right behind it will give an even bigger one becausecause Democrats not just here in New York, but in races from Maine to Michigan to other places are testing out their tolerance right now for ideas and labels that previously would have been seen as outside the mainstream that might have been seen as disqualifying and deciding is that something that we like? Is that something we're willing to tolerate because of the energy and dynamism and the freshness of what they're bringing to the table, orr do we want to retreat to something more familiar to try and win over our neighbors who are not already on board. And that's gonna be a raucous multi stage fight. And so Tuesday night in New York might just have been the opening bell.