NYS Senatorial Candidate Elijah Reichlin-Melnick discusses How National Politics Affect Local Elections & more

we're talking about. The Harris Walts ticket has supercharged in already red hot election season. But how will this new injection of optimism within the Democratic Party affect local elections? What does support or lack of it at the top of the ticket mean to those running for the offices

that truly impact us the most? And arguably, the dynamics of voting, particularly among specific rooums like young, black and Latino voters, has changed drastically since the last big election in twenty twenty How will that potentially affect the outcome.

Rockland County. As you know, we go live from Stony Point to actually go live to tape from Hudson River Radio in Stony Point, New York, which is in Rockland County, part of your district.

in the US Senate. And that said, I think he certainly had had many successes as president. He took over in an extremely difficult moment when the COVID pandemic was still raging. We were losing I think at that point, well more than a thousand Americans a week dying of COVID. At the time that President Biden toook office, we had just come off the January sixth insurrection, the biggest threat to our democratic order in probably more than a century,

and we were a divided country. President Biden had a lot of work to do to heal the nation from the damage that the Trump administration had left, and I think it's widely admitted he did a very good job

on much of that. Certainly there have been challenges, inflation number one among them, but I think there's no question that people will look back and really find a lot to admire in the policy accomplishments of the Biden administration that said, it was clearly time for us, which you know, I think there were widespread concerns that I had been hearing for months, well before the debate in June, from voters around the district just wondering, as much as they

might appreciate the work he'd put in, whether he had it in for another four years, and whether he had what it took to beat Trump in this election, which so many people believed to be such an important, the number one task that we have. And I think the debate really brought those concerns to the four It was painful to watch, and folks really, you know, just felt that as much as they might have felt affection for some of his accomplishments, it was time to pass the torch.

I certainly believe that. That's why I called for him to step aside and to have a new nominee. And I'm very delight to see that we've got someone who stepped up to the plate and seemingly off and running.

how did you deal with that as a Democrat? Because there are a lot of people that said, well, that's disloyal. He's our guy. We're sticking with him to the very end no matter what. So I know there was pressure for that. How did you deal with that? And how would you deal with it going forward.

And this, as I said, I think it was a popular position based on all of the conversations I had had throughout my time in office, and really in this case with Biden running this year, and seeing what voters were saying, so I was confident that whatever folks in party leadership might think or say, that the position I was taking to ask him to step aside was one that the majority of Democratic voters and voters in general felt to be the right one. And that's rarely where

my loyalties lie. And I think I were fortunate to the Democratic Party we are still a political party, were not a personality cult, and a lot of what you see on the Republican side is you see the price of anybody stepping out of line is either the end of their political career or they have to come crawling back.

And you can look at someone like the Republican vice presidential nominee j d Vance, who spent years attacking Trump in extremely vicious ways as you know, America's next hitler, and calling him like an opiate, you know, for people, and saying that the tax on immigrants, you know, made him feel sick to his stomach and things like that. And of course he changed his tune and came crawling back and sort of groveled before Trump, who endorsed him, and he won a Senate race and now is the

vice president. You can see that with somebody like Nikki Haley, who had some very courageous sounding things to say when she was running against Trump earlier this year and said, you know, she could never imagine wanting to support someone like that who attacked military members like her husband. And unfortunately, there she was at the Republican convention, coming back and endorsing him and supporting him. And so I think it's important as Democrats we remember it's not about one man

it's not about the party. It's about doing what's right for the American people.

that's not by choice. That seems to be just the way it happens sometimes. Yet I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that I'm certainly willing to engage others who are willing to listen to facts, et cetera. But yet we seem to get to a point where people refuse to see what's obvious right in front of them.

And I know I would be frustrated. I am frustrated as an individual, as a citizen, trying to deal with people who refuse to see what's obviously in front of them, so I can imagine what it must be for like for someone running for office, and if I might just finish to give an example, one of the things that

I said, you know, goes beyond politics. One of the things that struck me early on in the ear the first Trump campaign was when he made fun of a disabled reporter who also happened to be a Pulitzer Prize winner. For me, that was an immediate deal breaker. Beyond that, it's like, I don't need to know your politics. You're not a good person. I would never do that, and I don't know anyone else of my friends who would

do that. That's why they're my friends. So therefore and so in an argument, I said that to when it actually presented them with the video that was not doctorate, and being a journalist, I could assure that this was a live video and yet still.

crowd for me to reach. It doesn't mean I won't go somewhere where I think there's Trump voters, or I won't talk to people, and I'll always engage people fairly and as humans and Americans, because I do think that there's a lot that we share, and I try to

emphasize those common grounds. A lot of voters on the right have bought into the spin from Fox News and from some of the figures on the right like Trump, that Democrats hate America, that the Democrats are communists or socialists, or you know, you name the negative thing, that that's what the Democratic Party is about. And when I have conversations with conservative voters, I do try to talk about values because I believe that we agree. I'm not a conservative,

but I believe in America. I am not a conservative, but I believe that we have been, though not perfect, clearly a force for good in the world, and that, while not perfect, we have been moving this country in

a positive direction over the course of our history. I believe, like you know, I think most Americans do, that markets are and capitalism and the free market is a tremendous innovation in history and has led to great prosperity and wealth across the world, particularly here in the United States. It doesn't mean we want no regulation on anything, or to let you know, companies run wild and pollute our rivers and you know, chuck down our forests and all

of that. And I don't think that most conservatives, if you ask them, do either. And so I think that finding these common values that truly I believe, if not all Americans, certainly eighty five to ninety percent of people except the ones that the extremes share, that's the way to try to bridge the divide, talking about how we believe things in common, and then we can get to the facts, because you know, I can be there and I can say. You may think democrats are communists. I'm

not a communist. I'm not a you know, I don't believe any of this stuff, and neither do most people I know.

that I think Democrats have been craving. It's been many, many years since we have seen the energy and the crowds that she's generating, and that is I'm not shocked in a way. I mean, it's wonderful to see. And you know, a month ago, it was hard to imagine how we could get from there to hear. But Democrats

have been hungry for a fighter. They've been hungry for somebody with the energy to go out take the case against Trump on the road and do it in a way that makes people feel good about the future, that makes them feel like this isn't just about a last ditch attempt to prevent the rise of someone that we all fear, but actually about building something better going forward.

And I think that what Kamala has been able to do is convey that optimistic vision that America is not doomed to just be fighting the same battles forever, that if we can win, we can actually put the country back onto a better track, try to restore as much of our prosperity as we can, and hopefully put this dark chapter of grievance and anger and the sort of you know world of Trump's I think disordered personality behind us and move forward in the way that I think

a majority of Americans would like to do.

so that's probably a big piece of it. I mean, it took a while because it's a very hard thing for you know, the president was the president, he is the president, and generally if the president incumbent president says I want to run for reelection, parties typically don't deny their incomb's a second chance at the nomination. There's been, I believe, if I'm correct, in the twentieth century and

on into the twenty first. I don't think there has been any instance where an incumbent president wanted to run again and was prevented by their party from doing so. So that's fundamentally why we got what we got, because the president wanted to run and there's no single powerful force. As you said, many of these governors seem like they are great and they've got a good political future ahead

of them. But they're not national figures, and so there was no national figure that could have stood up and said, I don't care if President Biden wants to run, I'm going to do it too. Let's have a primary and do it. I don't think that had any of these people, had Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Tim Walls, who has chosen any of the other governors we've talked about, decided they wanted to run last year, that they would have really

gotten very far. Because Biden has universal name recognition of goodwill among the Democratic primary voters, and to be confronted by someone who was fundamentally kind of unknown, I think wouldn't have led too much of an outcome. And folks were worried, rightly so, about weakening an incumbent candidate who might then go on to win the nomination anyway, but be facing, you know, weakened in the general election against Trump, and I don't think people wanted to take that role.

So the only primary you really saw was between you know, kind of crazy people like Mary and Williamson and you know, sort of backbench Congressman Dean Phillips, who nobody has a clue still who he is, and I think it's it's a challenge to primary president, and the president clearly felt that he was up to the job and he was ready to go, and he'd beaten Trump once and he could do it again, and that I think ultimately, you know, had his health been better, might have been true, but

given the realities of where it seems he's at, is not true, and so luckily he made the decision to beside.

with the big guys. If you will, do you do you feel that that's the case, that it's very important that at the top of the ticket does well so that it does filter down to the other candidates, the local ones.

If they're voting for Trump, they vote the rest of the Republicans. That's obviously not one hundred percent of voters do that, but in election after election, studies show that it's these days eighty five to ninety percent of voters do not vote across party lines, and they may not vote the same party each year. There are still obviously independent voters and folks who in a particular year might lean for the Democrats, in a different year might lean

for the Republicans. But having a strong candidate at the top of the ticket is absolutely important for people who are running further down the ballot. I'm going to run, and I have been running a very vigorous campaign. I served for two years. Certainly a lot more people know me than they did before I got into the politics, but no matter what I do, there's going to be a large number of voters that don't pay any attention to state politics, and they're going to be out this

year to vote for Trump or for Harris. And if they're voting for Harris, the vast majority of those people are going to vote for me too, not even necessarily because they know about my campaign, but just because they're voting for Harris. She's a Democrat. I'm a Democrat, and vice versa. Obviously, the vast majority of Trump voters will vote for my opponent, even if they have no idea who he is, because he's a Republican. Trump's Republican, so strong top of the ticket makes a very big difference.

Two years ago, it was a huge uphill battle for me and other people running in Rockland because at the top of the ticket, Governor Hokel ran extremely poorly in this area and lost Rockland County, although she won New York State, but lost Rockland County by a twelve point margin fifty six to forty four, trailing leez Elden. And so for me running for reelection in the Senate, needing to find several thousand, I mean, about twelve percent of

the electorate that was voting for a Republican governor. Needing to bring them back to vote for a Democratic Senate candidate was a tall order. We got a number of them and only lost by about three percent, not eleven or twelve. But it still means you have to find a lot of people voting Republican up the ballot to come and vote Democratic down the ballot. And that's hard. It's hard for any candidate.

politics are local. I mean, things that are national certainly affect us, and I think and i'd like to get your feelings on some of them that are certainly going to filter down, and you mentioned a few of them, the immigration situation, the abortion and civil rights, homelessness, LGBT rights, etc. Which our national issues, but certainly affect us so very

much so here on a local level. So on a which of those topics are or issues do you feel that you are needed to be addressed on the local level as well, certainly in terms of importance.

years ago, that politics was more local. People knew what was going on in their communities, They knew what was going on in their state, They knew what their local elected officials were up to because there was a robust, independent, local media that covered things that were happening in you know, the city council or the county or the state legislature. And these days, most voters have a better idea what's going on in Congress and in Washington than they do

in Rockland County, for instance. And that's a huge loss because we missed that ability to see when our local officials are effective and when they're ineffective or even corrupt in some cases. So these days I think you almost could reverse it. And maybe not all politics, but most

politics is national. People watch national cable news that covers national stories and focuses on the same handful of national candidates and issues they find the most extreme and divisive members of Congress on both sides put them on TV all the time to yell at each other, and that's what passes for news. And so when you think about how that percolates down, Yes, a lot of voters are focusing on these big national issues and not what's crucial

in their communities. I think the national stuff you asked what's relevant. Look, a lot of people are very worried, for instance, about abortion rights. We've seen the destruction of Roe v.

you said, it's it's hurt. It leaves a gap, an important gap that needs to be filled. How can we fill it? What can we do?

like that. But because people are now able to advertisers can reach more people at better rates online, they've fled from local media sources and left them sort of starved for funds. And then it becomes a vicious circle where and also voters of course get a lot of their news.

They are on social media and look for news there too, But it becomes a vicious circle because a newspaper, say, doesn't have the ad revenue they once did, so they cut reporters, they cut coverage, they stop it, you know, they don't cover the local stuff as well, and so local voters say, well, what am I really paying for and they stop subscribing, and then the newspaper is even less revenue, and on and on and on. I did

very strongly. I mean, at the very least, I stood up along with many of my colleagues to support the efforts of journalists at Gannet News, at the Low Hut and other regional newspapers around here to unionize to make sure that they're going to at least get some fair wages and benefits because they're doing vital work to keep our communities informed. But it's difficult because you don't want the government to You can't really have the government subsidizing directly.

in some sort of fair and transparent way. But at the very least, I think the federal government should make sure to use the anti trust laws that we have to go after some of these monopoly news corporations that have snapped up hundreds or even more local TV news stations, newspapers and things like that all over the country in ways that end up just stripping them for spare parts and using the brands and the legacy brands of those newspapers or stations to simply make a few quick bucks

and then get out without any welfare of the local community.

think it's very important. This is intelligent conversation. I'm enjoying it immensely. There's more to go. I'm going to take just a brief break. We're going to come back. I want to talk a little bit more in detail about the things that you're doing differently now from your previous campaign and what are some of the most pressing issues that you see facing your constituents here in Rockland County. So we'll be back with that after a brief commercial break.

My guest is Elijah Reichman Melnick. He is the Democratic candidate for the thirty eighth New York State Senatorial District, and we'll be back with more of his intelligent conversation right after these brief commercial messages. I'm your host, Frank Lobono. Please don't go anywhere yet.

of Green with Maxine, margat Rubin and Malcolm Berman. Get informed about environmental issues and current events that affect us all. Pick a shade of green and raise your eco consciousness with the Many Shades of Green available on Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, Hudson.

they weren't encouraged. We did everything we could to engage and encourage people in my campaign, and I think the evidence was that it helped at least somewhat because, as I mentioned, I was able to come much closer than Governor Hokeel did in Rockland, come much closer than the

congressional candidate Sean Patrick Maloney did. But fundamentally, it is a challenge when you're running for a statewide office like senator Assembly to get people quite as excited as it is for governor or for president particularly, and so the results were that many Democrats didn't come out young voters, particularly if you looked at neighborhoods like Haverstraw and Spring Valley,

which have many Latino or Black voters. The turnout there two years ago was also down quite a bit from four years ago, and so having someone like Kamala Harris to head our ticket makes a huge difference at getting people out. I certainly think the biggest difference about this race before compared to two years ago isn't even also so much on my side, but on my opponent's side, because two years ago he was somebody without a record.

He had run for office multiple times. He'd run at least three times in Ramapo, lost each one of them. Ran in twenty twenty for Senate, lost that one as well, was running for a fifth time against me in twenty twenty two, but there wasn't ever any actual record that he had because he had never been in office, so he could say a lot of things and portray himself

as some reasonable, moderate guy, and there was. Of course, we argued strenuously that was not accurate, and I think now it's clear that we were right and it was not accurate. Since he's been in the Senate, I think he's voted just like any other pretty dream Republican that you might expect he's voted. We have an Equal Rights Amendment on the ballot this year. We talked about Roe v. Wade before the break and New York needs to stand strong as a sanctuary state for abortion rights for women

to make this choice. Look, you know, it's not my job to tell a woman have an abortion, don't have an abortion. That's her decision, not my job, and not the government's job. And so I was proud when it came for a vote in twenty twenty two to vote

for the Equal Rights Amendment. When it came up back up for its second required vote a year later, my opponent, Bill Weber voted against it, and he voted against the era, which not only has we should be clear, not only has protections for reproductive rights, but adds important protections to the state constitution for the LGBT community, for people regardless of nationality or immigration, and for anybody with people with disabilities who are often discriminated against in horrific ways in

New York State. And so I think it's a real problem that he voted against that and voted against a lot of other important policies and funding for our district. So he asked me, what's the biggest shift. I think he was able when we ran two years ago to say anything you don't like in the world, it's Elijah's

fault because he's in office. And the reality now is that my opponent has been in office for two years and he would struggle to point to one thing he's done concretely to make Rockland County a better and safer and more affordable place to live.

and how important money is in elections. And I remember, in particular with Mike Lawler, the Republicans poured millions and millions into his campaign in an effort to turn a blue area red, which they accomplished, and most people said, a big part of it is the fact that the Republicans thought it was so important that they poured so much money into it, which buys ads, etc.

town council seat that only covers one town. You don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars to run for a town council race in Orangetown, for instance, because there just aren't that many voters that you need to reach. And keeping in mind that most voters in any election are very partisan and will vote no matter what. You could spend eight million dollars in Orangetown and most voters are going to vote either Democrat or Republican if you hadn't

spent a dime, because that's what they do. So you need money in order to get your message out, and money pays for the basics, the yard signs, the mailings. If you're running an expensive race, TV ads, things like that, you need to hire staff to help recruit volunteers, contact voters et cetera, et cetera. But once you've done that and again for a bigger race like Congress, it could be millions of dollars to do that, there comes a

point of diminishing returns. There was between Lawler and Maloney about and the outside groups that supported them two years ago about twenty million dollars spent on that congressional race. I don't think anybody would say that at a certain point that all all that money was necessary. If one side is spending twenty million dollars on the other side

spending nothing, that's going to make a big difference. But you could even go and look at it at some times, depending on the district, it won't every year the people running against Marjorie Taylor Green and Georgia, who's, of course, the extreme not so Republican congresswoman from a very very

conservative part of North Georgia. Every year the Democrats running against her raise ungodly amounts of money because they do run ads on Twitter and Facebook and all of that and say, oh, don't you hate Marjorie Taylor Green, Send me one hundred bucks, send me fifty bucks. I'm going to beat her. And everybody hates her so they send her money, and they send these people money, and they

spend and they outspend her. They spend millions and millions of dollars, and they lose in a landslide because no matter all the money in the world, isn't going to make a district that votes sixty percent Republican or seventy percent Republican vote for a Democrat. And conversely, people run Republicans run against AOC every year and they raise millions upon millions of dollars to do that, and they lose in a landslide because AOC represents a district that's eighty

percent Democratic. And so I think, you know, is it good to have money? Yes, all else being equal. If you have two candidates in a fifty to fifty district and one of them spends a lot more money, they'll probably win. But most elections aren't. All else being.

candidate directly. But there's now packs that are out there political action committees that can raise unlimited amounts of money, don't need to disclose who's donating, and so you see these billionaires nationwide setting up super packs and funding it with a handful of mega rich people who can then outspend real campaigns with very few limits on what they

can and can't do that. The only thing you can't do legally is sit down with the candidate and coordinate directly and say, okay, we'd like to do this, and you do that. That's not legal, but people find ways around it, and it's and it's it is very corrosive. I'm more familiar with the state level, where you know, you don't usually see packs spending huge, huge, huge amounts

of money like that. But at the federal level packs, you know, you get multi billionaires who are putting in here's one hundred and fifty million dollar donation to some pack. That's that's a problem. I mean, I would love to see both the individual limits restored. The rules around packs, which the Supreme Court has gutted clearly should be restored. I don't think it's healthy to be in a position where a handful of mega rich people have such an influence over our democratic system.

I didn't go up there to just do things that were going to work for New York City or for upstate, but for the suburban communities in Rockland that I represented, And that's what I'm fighting for. It matters that you've got a senator there who actually knows the county and knows how to get things done in Albany, which my

record shows I was able to do. I was the most active freshman of any member of the state Senate in the two years I was there, passing introducing and passing more than ninety bills through the state Senate to tackle really important local issues and state wide issues, whether it was things to keep kids safe from gun violence, from lead exposure on household products, give funding for vital early intervention services for kids with speech or other developmental delays,

and then talking about money to actually successfully bring state funding, our tax dollars back to Rockland County for projects that make a difference. And you can look around Rockland and there are dozens upon dozens of communities and projects that have been funded because of money that I was able

to secure directly. You go to Orangeburg Veterans Park. There's a beautiful new splash pad for kids and families there that was paid for by about eighty percent with a grant that I was able to get from the state through one of the capital programs, more than two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars coming in for that. Go down to Piermont the Fire Department, there is new equipment for their dive team. Go up to West Nayak and Jermon's Park, there's new pickle ball courts for seniors to use.

Thanks to grant funding, I was able to secure Valley Cottage Library. He's got a new roof paid for in part by money was able to bring home, and you could go around Rockland and find dozens of things like that. None of that has occurred over the last two years because the senator we have there is unable or unable to do that, and so that that funding that comes

back for local communities simply isn't coming now. And I think that's so important that voters realize that and what it means to have a senator with the capability to deliver those resources back to the communities.

Rockland is an beautiful part of the country. We have the River, We've got mountains, Harriman Park, Rockland Lake, all of these wonderful amenities. We're close to the city but not too close. We're close to upstate but not too close. But it's very expensive to live here. And so if I could fix one thing, it would be to find some way to get that cost of living down to a more reasonable place for middle class and working families.

just a Republican position. That is a Democratic position, or certainly should be. It's my position. And taxes, you know, Democrats believe in making things easier for the little guy. For people that aren't mega rich. And if you're rich, you're paying more in taxes in New York, but you can afford to if you're middle class or a working you know, working class family. It's a killer, it's a killer. And property taxes are regressive taxes because as a share

of your income. You know, somebody living in a small starter house is paying an enormous share of their income towards local property taxes compared to somebody who's fortunate to earn millions of dollars.

We appreciate all points of view as long as it's done in a respectful manner.

so keep that in mind. We've got some great music for you as well from Rea Vogel and the Scoop. Raise up your hands in the meantime, remember we offer fresh topic every week. You can catch us wherever and whenever you get your favorite podcasts like Apple, Spotify, all the rest. Check us out on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page. Leave us a comment, and we ask you to become a subscriber so you can support us and we can continue to bring you great shows like this

one for our engineer, the mailman, mister Neil Richter. I'm your host, frankle Bono, and we hope to see you on the next Being. Frank, thanks for joining us.