Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and President Biden has pledged one point seven billion dollars to end hunger across the United States.
We have such an interesting show today.
Former CNN analyst John Aflon tells us why he's leaving punditry to run for a Long Island congressional seat. Then we'll talk to San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie about his run against a sitting incumbent. But first we have talking points memos.
Josh Marshall. Welcome too, Fast Politics.
Josh Marshall, thanks for having me.
We're excited to have you.
I live in a household was not one, but two talking points memos.
Subscriptions, Oh wow, that's good.
You know you can always jump it up to three if you feel so strongly about it.
We only have one Economist subscription because it's so expensive. I want to talk to you first about you broke a bunch of news this week, but my.
Favorite is a weird little canard? Is that the really pretentious way to describe it?
Which thing are we talking about?
We're talking about the secret Ken shisbro but it should be cheesebrow Twitter account, right. We broke that story like
a week and a half ago. We did a series about this kind of trolls of documents of his that shed a lot of new details about his role in not the storming of the Capitol on January sixth, but the idea that you're going to kind of throw a wrench into the works and then create this big crisis with you know, with the whole thing with Mike Pence not accepting the electoral votes and all that kind of stuff.
A lot of new details about that. We actually broke that story, like I said, in this series, about a week and a half ago, but we sort of pushed it out again yesterday because CNN came out with a purported exclusive which actually followed our piece, and they called it an exclusive, and so we kind of piped up again and said, oh, it's not an exclusive because you know, we did this ten days ago or two weeks ago, and you know, since we're cool, we don't kind of say,
like you guys saw for not admitting that because there was there was like story, there was like one little aside that said, oh, you know, This was also mentioned by Talking Points memo you know whatever. But in any case, it's a way for us to kind of remind our readers of our subscribers how awesome we are and all that kind of suff and a kind of a download tweak of CNN.
But yet it's a cool story. And we had this kind of a popet account where he was tweeting anonymously, which is cool, right, people can have anonymous Twitter accounts, But it was also a way to kind of communicate with other co conspirators. I mean, the whole thing is such a weird character in that whole story with you know, kind of a capital W.
So it's a fun thing.
Yeah, I mean it's interesting. And like the fact that these Trump legal.
Trials continue on and there are many to get onto Trump legal trials. What are the Trump legal hazards that you are watching that are imminent?
Well, you could take a course on you know, there's so many rights, right, most of us have been focused on these four criminal trials, you know, the sort of a purported four horsemen of Trump's apocalypse, the two Jack Smith trials, the one down in Georgia, the sort of the runt of the family, the one in you know, the Stormy Daniels one in New York, which is.
Always kind of little respects. Right.
The weird thing is is that the ones that have really gotten the most attention and in a way have sort of drawn the most blood are these ones that people work paying a lot of attention to.
You know, this big.
Civil suit by the State of New York, the one that General rated there's almost like five hundred million dollars fine and it's technically to call it a disgorgement. It's given money, you know, giving money back and everything was that. There's the ge Harrol cases, which we I mean, which she was stupid enough to make plural by going back to the well and defeating her again, which I know
you had a close involvement with. It's weird because you know, they have this kind of ringer judge down in Florida, federal judge down in Florida, who really does seem.
To judge a Leen Cannon, right.
Who's essentially kind of killed that trial as something that will happen before the election. So that one is kind of we've treated that one as kind of out of contention for months.
Just you know, again, if it's not going to happen.
She is, she has successfully since she's basically part of Trump's legal team, has successfully taken that one out of contention. You've got this bizarre situation down in Georgia where a couple of Trump's co defendants have gotten somehow or another, managed to get that trial to a question of whether or not the prosecutor had sex with one of her co prosecutors before their quote unquote relationship began, which is
Pli's belief that you got it to that point. So now we're kind of down to the you know, the coup trial Jack Smith, which is also being delayed, and then the Stormy Daniels case in New York, which, as you say, is coming up and will probably now be the first criminal trial. So Stormy Daniels ends up being the sort of the tortoise, right who wins the race in the final moment, even though I'm going to take that anywhere. That's kind of the tor arizon, yeah, of Trump legal cases.
But there's you know, there's a lot.
It's funny because it's like I always think of, you know, Trump sort of feels I think, or at least the sort of Trump hads felt.
I think and the.
Popular wisdom has been that these cases have helped Trump because he was able to raise money. You know, if you look at the chart of Trump raising money, it spikes right when he gets indicted.
But I actually have this like.
Counterintuitive theory that candidate Trump and defendant Trump actually run contrary to each other, and every time that a lot of times, candidate Trump will actually by being a candidate,
screwover defendant Trump and vice versa. So, for example, the civil penalty would not have been as high had candidate Trump not gone out there and said, I have a billion trillion zillion dollars and you should be apologizing to me, versus, you know, showing a little contrition and being like, I'm really sorry.
You know, that number.
Probably would be half.
It's been a little unclear to me in that case how much. I mean, he is probably right that if he had not been super high profile and these various stories had come out that have sort of put in the front pages his you know, over valueuation on his assets and all these kind of things, if he had not been such a ubiquitous media presence, he probably the case probably would have never have been brought. But that's not an excuse, right, I mean, that's kind of like.
No, but I mean, I'm just saying that he would do better if he wouldn't use each trial as a campaign stop. And I wonder if his whole secret theory to use the trial, use these trials to campaign is actually going to backfire.
I think it will, and I think what you're describing is really the reality distortion field that makes this evener question. He has this way of saying, you would think my being indicted for felony indictments four separate times and racking up fines of hundreds of millions of dollars would be bad for me, but in fact it is good for me.
It only makes me stronger. And even us, people who many probably see at the you know, at the heart of the resistance or whatever they call it, it even affects us, right, And kind of maybe maybe it's true. It really, you know, the more you and diet him, the stronger he gets. But that's always been absurd. That's completely absurd.
Of course, that's what I think.
That he gets indicted, and even in the narrow sense that he fundraises often that that's not even that great, since as we've seen all that money goes cities lawyers. So I mean, it doesn't really help him in the sense that we normally think of fundraising.
But it is an interesting theory of the case, right, like he has if you look at there's an article in the Financial Times, you know, he's lost about two hundred thousand of these donors. You know, his sort of his numbers are down, his enthusiasm. I mean, that's the thing I'm struck by. I don't know if you read that. There was a thing in the Times today about how he tends to be going in about ten points below the polls. Now, I have a friend who's straight news
reporter who I fight with, you know who. I have my like a little bit contrary, perhaps a little bit liberal take, and then he has his straight down the middle take, and we fight about it. But I actually do think like it is interesting. Like the whole theory of the case that Biden should drop out is based solely on polls. So here is a pretty tangible evidence that Trump is pulling much better than he's actually performing.
Its suggestive that it's hard. It's always hard to make any sort of straight line between the dynamics of a primary contest and a general election contest. But there are a lot of things about this primary contest, both in the polling, in the results, and in the difference between the polling and the results that are at least warning signs for Trump. I don't think, you know, they don't tell us that he's destined to lose or anything like that.
It's relevant information and it points to some of the theories people have that he is not as strong as his current polling suggests. His actual results in each of these primary contests have been not hugely, but significantly under what the polls suggested. One of the reasons that may be the case is that Nikki Haley in South Carolina did much much better among more affluent and more educated Republicans.
That's not a surprise.
The more affluent and more educated people are, in general, the more likely they are to know. So that's one piece of the equation. The other is that when you look at the polls, often the actual percentage that the polls suggested that Trump would get is actually pretty on the mark. The key is is that in any poll you always have you see it all and it's sixteen thirty, Well, sixteen thirty doesn't add up to one hundred. So the question is always where do those extra people end up going?
And to a significant degree, in each of these contests, they've broken in the other direction. They've broken to Haley. So you can never draw a straight line between the dynamics of a primary and general election. They're two different. But their hints that lend a bit of support to Again, the theories that say that that Trump's strength and a general is overstated, I certainly think they are. They're significant warning signs, and frankly, the biggest warning sign I think
is that Trump is already the nominated. I mean, he was really already the nominee a year ago, but he's one hundred percent of the nominee now, and yet you're having big turnout primaries where forty percent of voters are saying no. And you know, Nikky Haley's great, but she's really a placeholder candidate. She's kind of basically up there with light with you know, kind of Dean Phillips, maybe
Bean Phillips plus right. So the fact that you're that you're still having people willing to turn out and vote for someone else, that's not a good sign. And to know why it's not a good sign imagine that the same thing we're happening to by people would be losing their minds, right.
Imagine if Dean Phillips we're pulling it more than you know, we're you know, we're getting more than about two percent of the vote.
Yeah, an imbecile worm like Dean Phillips getting forty percent. Everybody who supports Biden would be losing their minds. You know, she's not quite an imbecile worm.
Level, but you know she's not that much better.
He's a placeholder cane, a little Pascal reference for those of you who are who are an.
Engineered as we are, like looking at this kind of endless primary, one of the things I think is really interesting.
And you tell me if I'm crazy about this.
Like, I've noticed that when I sit down sometimes with I have some friends who are Republicans and who are fancy Republicans, and their favorite.
Thing to say to me is when will Biden drop out?
New theory of the case is that they actually want Trump to drop out, but they can't say it because it's just they know they can you know that they know he has such a handle on the base.
And so the mainstream.
Media has for the last couple of months just passionately written all these pieces about how Biden has to drop out. And I actually think that this is like some kind of counter transference transference Freudian Michigan.
Am I crazy?
Yes, I really tend to stick to the to the patient experience when it comes to psychoanalysis, So I can't. You know, it's a little hard for me to get on the other side of a couch on that. But it couldn't be that presidential nominees don't drop out. That's kind of a that's a that's a kind of a hard and fast thing. Well, presidents don't drop out. I mean, you know, he is the incumbent.
You have these you know, while he's old, right, that's the theory of the case.
He's old, and he doesn't pull well versus like I do.
One. Criminal accounts, like the civil cases that you know in and out of courtrooms, can't raise money.
It strikes me that, like, you know, if you had to pick.
Your guy, you'd probably just want the guy who was the old.
You know, you'd think these are to kind of grant the case. These are both fairly unprecedented. We've never had anyone Well, it's.
An incumbent against an incumbent a certain way.
That is yet another thing.
We've never had anybody, you know, even close to as old as Biden, except for Biden right four years ago, who was only four years younger.
That is true.
If you were going to talk about by any kind of historical standards, even though there is no precedent being kind of bound over for trial in four different jurisdictions, that would be the kind of thing that you would say that even though nominees don't drop out, that would be the kind of thing that might.
Get you to the first. But it doesn't.
And you know you made this point before a out Biden's poll numbers. The race is basically tied, with a very slight advantage to Trump at the moment.
These are early polls. He's one or two points back in averages, but certainly Democrats would prefer to be one or two points up or really five points up. These things are true.
I mean, I think a huge amount of the age thing is people are terrified that Biden is not clearly winning, which he is not to the extent that the current polls tell us something. And you want to find a reason for that that it's not because Trump is actually popular and could win, and so everything has sort of focused on Biden's age. That's that's kind of that's the whole thing. Now, Having said that, Biden is not a vital looking guy, he's you know, he looks old.
He does.
There's there's no getting around that. He seems to have some sort of you know, arthritis stuff in his back. So it's gate climp stiff, he broke his foot early in his presence, and.
Blah blah blah blah blah.
But I mean, I guarantee you Biden is up five points, and you'd think a like Hull Hog Dark Brandon, right are kind of you know, some kind of like you know, mid late era Clint Eastwood, like old dude kicking everybody's ass memes. People would be a fine with it if they were confident he was going to win. But they're freaking out. And the freak out is understandable. It may not win, it's and that's terrifying it.
But I mean, you know, this time in twenty sixteen, right we knew Hillary Clinton would win.
Well, we absolutely did. And I'll end on this point. The single biggest determinant of whether you win a presidential election is whether you're the incumbent.
It's a huge, huge factor.
It always has been. Obviously, occasionally the incumbent doesn't win, but it's rare, and that's kind of one of the reasons why the idea that in this kind of election you'd say, well, let's get rid of the incumbent is in addition to it not it is not going to happen. It's just insane, even if you could make it happen. And again that's not even a matter of like being a Biden fan. That is one of the most reliable facts about presidential politics.
Yeah, right, and clearly incumbency is an enormous advantage.
Thank you so much, Thank you.
Josh, thank you.
Did you know Rick Wilson and I are bringing together some friends for a general election kickoff party at City Winery in New York on March sixth. We're going to be chatting right after Super Tuesday about what's going on, and it is going to probably be the one fun night.
For the next eighty days.
If you're in the New York area, please come by and join us. You can go to City Winery's website and grab a ticket. John Avlon is a candidate for Congress in New York's first district.
Welcome to Fast Politics.
John Avlon, Hey, Mollie.
We're really excited to have you.
You were an editor, you were an anchor, and now.
You are running for Congress.
Explain that's the truth.
I run it in New York's first district, which is eastern Long Island, where I'm talking to you from today.
Of course, Wait, you actually live in the district.
Yeah, what a novel you no, you know, actually the current Republican incumbent does not live in the district. He can't vote for himself. That's Nick Loloda, right, Nick Loloda, Trump hugging Nick Loda.
Yeah, he sucks.
This was a district in twenty twenty that Biden narrowly won, and he has like just been a Trump flucky from day one. He mocked Langford for the bipartisan border bill.
Let us take a moment here to talk about James Langford, liberal communist cock, James Langford from the state of Oklahoma.
That's right.
Well, look, I mean it's very clear this has been going on for a while, but by partisanship is considered a firing offense inside Trump's Republican Party and I think that's just one of the many, many, many ways you see what contempt they have for functioning governance and a democracy. And I think the reason there was a lot of pick up with my announcement and I was frankly, happily surprised by it. I mean, our launch video got over two million views in the first few days. We've been
strong audigate shocking number of articles. I think people are become used to members of Congress wanting to be on TV, wanting to be on cable news, and not frankly doing their jobs, which is solving problems for the American people. But people are a lot less used to someone leaving a chop in news and television news to go into public cherp. I just felt compelled to do it. I didn't want to tell my kids that I could have done more when it mattered most for our democracy. And
that's how I really feel about this. I wrote a file column for CNN about how, you know, I really I'm very concerned that we're sort of sleep walking into this selection, sleepwalking into a dictatorship, as Liz Cheney said, And I felt that as much as I love c IT ed and the work I was doing, there that simply offering opinions on cable news wasn't enough. You know, democracy depends on people showing up, and that this is
one of those times in our nation's history. And I'm a presidential historian as well in my book writing where say is it's got to step up and get off the sidelines and get in the areta. And if there's a chance to flip a seat, a swing seat in New York, yeah, where I live, then let's go. Let's
do this. Let's do the hard thing because it's the right thing, and we'll look back on challenging times with pride if we all step up and build the broadest possible coalition to defend democracy, defeat Donald Trump, and win back Congress from his magaminions like Nickelodo who just aren't even trying to solve problems for the American people anymore. And so I think that's the opportunity the obligation of this moment.
So let's talk about what your district looks like in New York one. I mean, I think one of the interesting things about these seats is they were really tight. It did feel like there was a certain amount of like sleepwalking, which is why Democrats lost all those seats.
Yeah, I mean, I think twenty twenty two in New York was a bit of an outlier because the former congress from this district, Lee Zelden, was running for governor, and so I think there was a decision to contest other seats more intensely. But look, candadate quality matters. You need candidates to conspire the base, but also went over independent voters, and I think this election, I think the stakes could not be clear for the country, but also
this community. I mean for folks at home, and the lines in New York are being redrawn as we speak. This is all happening in very real time. But it's long island, so there's only so much you can do. It's an island. This is Montalk, the north and South Forks and then north of four ninety five to Huntington. So it's a really big district. It's a beautiful district. It's a district was represented by Democrat Tim Bishop for over a decade, then went to Lee Zelden. I was
never a big Lee Szeldon fan. He was one of the one hundred and thirty seven hundred thirty nine Republicans who voted to overturn the election after the attack on our capital. But it goes back before that. When I after I'd written the book wing Nuts, which is how the lunatic for just hijacking America that unfortunately was the side of things to come, I got a mailer from him that said, it's not the first time he's served
behind enemy lines, referring to his constituents. Does that to be here's a perfect example of everything that's wrong in our politics that I've been writing about in columns and the book WingNuts. This is before I became editor in chief, and you know that just symbolizes everything that's wrong with our politics. And so we got to break this fever and then try to find a way to, you know, reunite the nation and build a new kind of politics.
But you got to stand up to bullies, and you got to stand up to Trump and remind people that there is nothing remotely normal or acceptable about a presidential candidate of a major party campaigning on the authoritarian platform and praising dictators every day. If that's not wrong, nothing, So this election offers us moral clarity and moral urgency, and that's why Sleepwalking it shouldn't be on the menu. We all got to straight in our civic backbones and
get in this fight right now. And part of my message to Democrats here in the first district is is that Democrats can't afford to lose this fight. You need to put forward compelling candidate, but also it's going to be one and lost on not just you know, bigot picture issues like democracy in the trajectory of the twenty first century, but also making people feel that government can work again. And that's one of the insults of the
truck blockage of the border security bill. But it's also making sure that you know you're dealing with, you know, kitchen table issues that ef like middle class families who've lost faith. It's not an accident to my mind that we've seen the hollowing out of the middle of our political center in America at the same time that middle class families have been getting squeezed for so long, and
that's an opportunity for Democrats to deliver. I think Joe Biden's done a good job out of the gate things like infrastructure and the Chips hack, but there's more to come.
I want to.
Ask you as we're looking at this Laloda, the way that this Congress has worked is that Republicans have, as opposed to Nancy Pelosi, who was very focused on making sure that her people didn't have to vote for insane legislation that could be used against some when they were running for re election, because you know, in the House, you run every two years, and so you have to constantly be answering for your votes, which I think one of the things that I think this new sort of
Maga House of Representatives doesn't do is they don't really do that. So Republicans have voted for things that are like pretty much beyond the Pale two impeachments.
We're different crs.
They may have a shutdown now coming up again, Well they shut down the government when they controlled all the branches last time. This will be a but you know, so there's a tiered CR. I mean, there's just a lot of things that really seem like errors. You're out on the ground talking to constituents. Do you feel like people understand that and do you feel like.
Republicans are getting the blame for them.
I think that's starting to resonate with folks. I think one of the points that Tom Swazi made in the special election in the adjoining district of New York three, which George Santos had represented before.
He can't say George Santos cereal fabulous is his first name.
I actually take issue with the word fabulous because it sounds fancy liar, I mean just liar, serial, reflective liar, George Santos, the personal Santos said, Look, Democrats need to lean into issues people are concerned about, play offense on messaging and policies on issues like crime and migrants, but more importantly, make the case that Republicans aren't actually interested
in solving any of these problems. You know, the real disruption of DC is resolving to solve problems and not just demagogue them and fearmonger off them and fundraise off them without ever taking the steps necessary to solve the problem. And that's what Nickeloda is utterly complicit. He's part of the problem. I mean this Maga crew I call magaminions
because they do whatever Trump says. It's sort of they've already shown they're unable and or unwilling to govern in the national and they're not interested in solving problems at all. And I think the border security bill is a really visceral example, for folks who are feeling concerned about immigration to the state of the border, they just told you they would rather have the issue and keep it a problem than have bipartisanship work and solve the problem because
they would rather have the issue. How offensive is that? What a profile in cynicism and cowardice in real time that really resonates with folks. I just think that calling that out really clearly, it really starts to restate with folks. If they think bipartisanship is the problem, then they're part
of the problem. And what Nancy Pelosi did, and this is one of my favorite Stacks stats about the first two years of the Biden administration, when Nancy Pelosi and Democrats had the narrowest margin imaginable in the Setate fifty to fifty and Nancy Pelosi had a similarly narrow margin
in the House. That Republicans have been unable to govern with Democrats pass over three hundred bipartisan bills, three hundred bi partisan bills, including the infrastructure bill in the Chip Sack, which will do more to help rebuild in the middle class while competing with China than anything that's been done in a half century. And that's just an example of government works when democrats are doing it and making peel
over the handful of reasonable Republicans who were left. And that's the only way you're going to avoid these sort of constantly playing chicken with government shutdowns to score political points.
And the extremist agenda, particularly with regard to women reprick women's reproductive freedom that we see this Congress advancing tied up in knots over IVF and all sorts of other things that just are an insults of basic not just reproductive freedom, but individual freedom in a way that's supported to backlash even red states, as we've seen in all those specials. So I think they've woke into sleeping giant.
But we need to lean into that and build this broadest possible coalition because democracy is on the line, not on our watch. We can't let this in our watch.
You're not a democrat though, or become, but you weren't always a democrat.
I was an independent, okay, like many journalists, you know. I mean some journalists don't, as you know, register to vote because they think that'll you know, give them a rooting interest. I think that's an abdication of our citizenship.
But one of the.
Things I think is pretty interesting is that what you're seeing here is that the Republican party that voted for There are a lot of Republicans voted for Biden. And it seems to me as if when we look at those South Carolina numbers, I mean, these are our South Carolina primary voters, right, so, pretty white, pretty religious, and one in five of them are never Trump. So it does seem to me like there's a pretty large swath of people who are right for the Biden picking.
Can you talk about.
That one hundred percent? That's the opportunity of the election. That's why I feel bullish about our chances come to fall once people sort of shake themselves out of they're stupid. The stakes are too high. I understand why people are feeling exhausted by politics in the news, but that's part of a cynical design. When Steve Bannon says that, you know it talks infamously about the strategy to sort of
flood the zone with shit. What he's talking about is trying to overwhelm and exhaust normal people and making them think that politics and public service is fundamentally dirty and dishonorable and dishonest, and that therefore seedes the ground to those extremists and ideologues who don't mind waiting through shit every day to do what they want even if they can't cobble together a majority, which is why you see such contempt from majoritary and democracy being expressed from Mike
Johnson on down. And I've written a lot of columns about this. That's the larger opportunity here when I talk about building the broadest possible coalition to defeat Donald Trump, defend democracy. That's the opportunity. And you need candidates who can connect with those of what's left of the reasonable edge of Republicans who I respect, who can connect with independent voters in a way that shows a real ability to understand their perspective. And that's one of the things
that I can offer. This is not anything resembling a normal election. This is all hands on deck, not a drill, defend democracy. And I think we will be able to pull together a broad coalition not only here in Suffolk County but across the country because of exactly that dynamics. But you need people who can communicate a compelling message in a way that blows the doors off this what about ism and false moral equivalence that lulls people back to sleep, right exactly, And.
It does seem to me like you're in this district that is is a very mixed district. Nasa County is known to be or not. You don't go all the way up to Nassa County, but all Suffolk, right, But Suffolk is known to be you know, parts are very red and maybe the liberals there are not quite as liberal as a sort of city liberals, so to speak.
So can you talk about that?
Well, look, I think that's part of the opportunity and that's what makes this race. One of the things that makes this race so exciting. Look, we need more swing districts. Swing districts are healthy. They are not enough of them because of the rig system of redistricting, and the most egregious examples are always predictably in the red states where
they representative elections create representative results. And so I relish the chance to run at a district that's genuinely competitive and the current line and this is all happening in real time, as I said, in New York, but are slightly Republican. Even though Biden won the pre existing district in twenty twenty narrowly one of the narest margins in
the country. That means you need to persuade people. That's what democracy is supposed to be about, reasoning together from a common set of facts and finding common ground and then building on it. You know, swing districts, competitive districts
are healthy for democracy. The problem comes, as we see over and over again in covering politics and Congress, that you know, folks have lifetime employment unless they lose the close parts of the primary, so it forces them to the extremes, and fear and greed drives all their decisions,
which is what Donald Trump drives a truck through. I think having a competitive general election is the most healthy expression of a vibrant democracy because then we need to reach out beyond the base and win over the reasonable edge of the opposition and win over independence. We need to engage in persuasion again, and that's the heart of
democracy at the end of the day. And the problem, one of the many problems with our era with so much disinformation and misinformation, which I confronted on my reality check segments on CNN for a long time. Try to restore offense of common facts while fighting the good fight. Look, the mere fact that Donald Trump is perpetuating the adoption of an election lie as a litmus test for party
loyalty shows how deep the rot has got. And competitive swing districts offered the best chance to focus people on common facts and reason together through persuasion. And that's why someone like you, who's far too far right for this district, like Nickeloda, is right for the picking with the right general election candidate. And I believe I can be that candidate if I win this promery.
Now tell me about your primary.
So look, I mean I left CNN is two three weeks ago. The leading candidate previously was the twenty twenty nominee n In Nancy Gore. A number of candidates I've dropped out or may drop out since I got in the race because I disrupted the calculus. And it's not an accident that the day I got in, the National Republican Congressional Committee immediately attacking they hadn't done that for any of the other candidates because they frankly thought they
wouldn't have to contest this race. I have a lot of respect for anyone who get you know, gets in the arena, especially now, because it's fascinating to see politics from this perspective to great education, and I find it really invigorating because it's deeply purposeful. The tail of the tape is Nancy Goreoff was the nominee in twenty twenty. I turn out high intensity election year. She spent eight million dollars and she lost by double digits. That's difficult
to make a case that we should rerun that play. Ultimately, it'll be up to Democratic voters. But I think most importantly Democrats want to win. They want to win here, they want to win across the country. There's good people in the race. There's a two term state senator named Jimmy Goren. You know, I think the mere fact this race, which is a swing district by any mathematical definition, was in danger of not being seriously contested, and of course
that has a depressive effect on local enthusiasts. And the second I got in the race, you know, I got win that. You know, Republicans might be try to start a super pack against me, like they're talking about me. They're scared I'm in this race, which is a great sign.
Folks in the primary will try to attack me from the left, and well, the right is attacking me, you know, is a radical liberal, which is remotely credible because I've devoted most of my career to warning about the dangers of hyperpartisanship and polarization and trying to advocate solutions that can reunite us as a nation. So I mean, bring it on, but I think the mere fact that they're afraid that I've gotten in the race is a sad of strength.
Thank you so much, John, really great, looking forward to seeing more of you.
Thank you. You are awesome. I appreciate you and what you do.
Daniel Lurie is a candidate for mayor in San Francisco. Welcome too Fast Politics, Daniel.
Thank you, Molly. It's great to be here.
So I wanted you to come on because of what you're doing, which I think is super interesting. So give us this sort of ten thousand foot view on what you're doing.
I'm running for mayor of San Francisco because I love this town. I was born and raised here, my wife and I are raising two young children here, and I've always thought that San Francisco is the best city in the world. No offense to New York, but I have to be honest, the direction we're headed, I'm worried about my friend's children and all of our children not having that same sense of pride in San Francisco. You all hear the news in the direction we're he leaves me
really concerned. And so I have a track record of getting big things done, bringing diverse groups of people together on behalf of San Franciscans and actually the whole Bay Area, and I know I have what it takes to lead this city.
So explain to us a little bit about your Democrat and you are primary the sittying mayor, Explain to us.
What you're thinking was, it's not a primary, it's like your election. It's ranked choice voting. It all happens in November, on the same day as the presidential something. Our election actually was moved it was supposed to be last year, and so we're going to have the greatest turnout in our cities history, probably form There's a lot of people
running like real candidates. Right now. We have three real candidates, maybe one more jumping in, and everyone sees the writing on the wall that we have a mayor that has just not delivered, you know, no personal offense to her she is not worked for our city.
One of the things I hear about San Francisco is the sort of Republicans have said the city is, you know, it's one of their favorite cities to pick on. I mean, we're New York, We're close behind. But one of the things that conservatives the Rupert Murdock industrial complex like to say about San Francisco is that it has you know, out of control drug use and crime. And I mean, is that true? And if it is true, why is that? And just sort of give us a few minutes on crime.
We have problems in parts of our city.
Our downtown core is being hollowed out if you walk through the Tenderloine or Soma. We have open air drug markets that are crazy. The media, though, doesn't want to show you some of our neighborhoo that are thriving. So we have a lot of good things happening, and it's easy to pick up on a number of the bad things that are happening. So, as with anything, the truth is somewhere in between. But we've been very lax on
drug dealers for a ver long time. And I came out with a proposal after a first time arrest for a drug dealer selling fentanyl which killed over eight hundred people in our streets last year, Malik. Eight hundred people died of fentanyl overdoses last year in San Francisco, and we need to take it more seriously. We need the DA and the judges to hold people accountable in a more serious way. So let's put ankle monitors on first time drug dealers who are arrested. Let's make sure they
have stay away orders and search conditions. I've put out the toughest tough on crime in terms of drug dealers proposal out of any candidate in this race. And we have to send a message to everyone in this country and around the world that you don't come to San Francisco to deal drugs, or to do drugs, or to sleep on our streets.
One of the things that makes San Francisco a hard city to govern, just like Los Angeles, is that the city council has a lot of power, right I mean, is that do you have that similar dynamic.
We have politicians here that love to make excuses, they love to fingerpoint. I'm running against a bunch of insiders that have built up a system where no one is held accountable here. It's a board of supervisors, it's city council bes where a city and a county. We have eleven supervisors. They run just in their districts and so they are not thinking city wide as you would hope that they would. But the mayor has a lot of power.
You put a fourteen point six billion dollar budget on the table and the board of supervisors fights over point two percent. This mayor is two district attorneys, four supervisors, three Board of ad members, a city attorney, of public utilities head. No one can tell me that the mayor of San Francisco doesn't have a lot of power. Having said that, Molly need charter reform and we need commission reform.
We have one hundred and thirty plus commissions, double with any other city in the state has, and it's insane. But that's how these elected officials want it. They want it so that they don't have to accept responsibility. I still have not heard the mayor or or a supervisor say, when something's gone wrong wrong in our city, oh, that's
on me. It's always a fingerpointing game, Molly. You see this everywhere, but it's really really rotten here in San Francisco and That's why we need an outsider to come in and fix this broken system.
I'm thinking about, like the sort of successful example of this in New York might be again, someone where you sort of are able to address things. So I'm curious, like this is also partially a problem of what crimes are being prosecuted.
It's a management problem, it really is.
But can the mayor influence like under it.
One hundred percent? And I you know, one of the role models I have is Mayor Bloomberg. You know, I'm talking to former members of his administration that helped him turn around New York, helped him get through the economic crisis of two thousand and eight. You can manage this city once again, I said it before, I'll say it again. You need commission reform and you need charter reform to make sure that these excuses are taken out. But you
got to hold people accountable. You've got a whole department heads accountable. They currently are not being held accountable. They all run their own little fectoms. The mayor's not setting the tone from the top. You know, we go after nonprofits all the time because we have allied control spending on nonprofits who are not being held accountable. We're not measuring their results, which I did at tipping point. We held our groups accountable. Tipping point is the foundation I
started in two thousand and five. We've raised over half a billion dollars to tackle issues of povery throughout the Bay Area. But the thing that made us different Moly. Much like the Robinhood Foundation in New York, if a group was not performing, we cut funding to them and redirected those resources. That's not happening at the city level. We all want to blame the nonprofits, but what about our departments that are funding these groups without holding them accountable.
That starts at the top. That's what I will bring to bear on this executive branch. So I have two questions, which are one, can you win in the recent polls with the rank choice voting. I mean, I'm neck and neck in first place votes already, and I win if you go to the second round. I'm beating the sitting mayor and the mayor who had about five months on the job. I'm beating all the insiders. Not only are we in good position, We're going to win in November.
Here's my other question. If you can win, can you really do this?
Yeah, the winning, and then you got to actually do the job. I've worked with every mayor since Gavin Newsom. I brought Super Bowl fifty to the Bay Area. I had to bring the entire region together. The chair of that host committee, San Jose mayor, Oakland may or, San Francisco mayor, we all had to work together. I'm the only one in this race that actually got housing built in San Francisco. We got it done on time, under budget,
using good paying union labor. I actually had a bet with the sitting mayor at that time who could get their project done. Mine was three years, three hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars in it. His took six years, six hundred thousand dollars in. I have the executive experience managing one of the largest anti poverty fighting organizations in the country, you know, bringing a global sporting event here
and getting housing built. And I work very well across the business community, the nonprofit community, and of course the political arena.
We want to be compassionate to unhouse people, but we also want to have our streets and cities to be livable and usable.
And I mean big belonged to all of us. So what does that look like. I came out with a comprehensive plan yesterday. It's a six point plan, but it starts with making sure that we have enough treatment beds for people. And I believe it should not just be a belief being the front lines going out and dealing with somebody with a mental health crisis or you know, experience in a drug crisis, but you go out. We're going to have corresponder models under my administration, where you
have a trained clinician out with a police officer. So the first play contact is that trained clinician, and then you need twenty four to seven crisis centers where you can take that person. They need to accept it. They got to accept treatment, or you need to arrest them. We need to have both the stick and the carrot.
Currently all we have is a stick and or you take them to SF General and we have these high fires as we call them, and it costs US hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to deal with one person.
This is the difference.
It's sort of like, is there something between police officers and you know, is there some kind of like homeless social working organization.
It's a great question. We have outreach teams right now, but they're not well coordinated. We've seen they have dubious efficacy, and so it falls to the police. And when you're talking about we're down out of two thousand, we should be around two thousand police officers, we're well below thirteen hundred. There's a morale issue for many reasons. But one reason is they're out doing you know, homeless services and drug The first one is responding when somebody is having a
mental health episode. We can't have our police doing that work. We need them walking, to be out patrolling, responding to nine one one calls. We have the longest nine to one one call response time in the last twenty plus years. Right now, people don't feel safe. So yes, you can have train clinicians go out with police officers. That's the middle ground. That's what I propose actually yesterday. And then you need the bed smallly. We have a fourteen billion
dollar budget. This is not a crisis of resources. This is a crisis of leadership, and we need to build the beds and this administration has failed to do that.
But yeah, here's my question about the police. I mean problem with police being unhappy, but is there a problem with police accountability too, like our mayor is what came up through the police, and it certainly feels like there's not that people are not very focused on accountability when it comes to the police.
I don't, we don't. I don't believe that that's a problem that we have currently. We've had much better training of our police force over the last number of years. We have a police Oversight Body, which we should have. Police should always be held accountable, but we also have a police Commission that has taken the reins and made sure to prevent police officers from going out and doing
their work. And we've swung so far. And you asked this at the beginning, you know, if this was a response to maybe the Trump era here we were sort of pushing back against Trump and going so far one way that we've gone so far. I don't want to say left or right, but that police aren't doing their job because they feel like they're handcuffed. And yes, we should always have oversight, but we need to enforce the laws on our books, and we're not doing that right now.
We have people walking in taking whatever they want as stores. We see those videos, but that's actually happening now.
Let me ask you about those videos, because we have them in New York and they're not Actually a lot of the statistics here were sort of juiced up and weren't necessarily as they were sort of made to look worse than they were.
I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say that the media is like they have blown things out of proportion, for sure, and many of those things have happened. We've had many closures of Walgreens, so senior citizens now can't walk to their local Walgreens because Walgreens has said it's because of crime and public safety. Our Union Square was just announced this morning that Macy's is closing its
flagship story here in San Francisco. It's like the best piece of real estate, state commercial real estate maybe on the planet is closing. And Whole Foods, right, and that Whole Food's on Market Street. You know, you could question whether or not that was the right location for it, but people were walking in there and taking things all day every day, and you don't have police walking the beat. Because how this all works is the perception that you are not going to get caught and the reality that
you're not going to get caught. Fuels people wanting to steal. So we need to recruit aggressively, recruit police officers and retain those that were at risk of losing. You cannot have twelve hundred police officers in a major city like ours and keep the public trust always always. You got to have oversight and accountability for sure. But we also have to have police walking the beat and out on
patrol in neighborhoods. People are flying through stop signs, they're running red lights because they know they're not going to get caught. So we need more visible police presence and community police. And two right, So.
I have another question, which is about safe injection site.
I mean, where are you on with that right now?
With what we have on the streets. I'm not in favor of them here in San Francisco at this time. What you have in New York you have safe injection sites, and I've heard really good things and we're talking about heroin here, we're talking about fentanyl. Fentanyl, do it once you can die. So for me, we have to clean up the streets. We have to get mental health and drug treatment. That's first. Let's close these open air drug markets that are in real effect, especially at night here
in the Tenderloin and in Soma. We have to send a message that this is no longer acceptable. I have friends, you know, in the public health sphere who you know, are pushing me on this safe injection site. They haven't been able to convince me that it's, you know, something that you can do safely with fentanyl. Once again, eight hundred and six people died of fentyl overdoses in our city last year. It's out of control, and so the idea of providing a safe place to do fentanyl is
a bridge too far for me at this moment. I'm happy to continue the conversations, but we first need to clean up the streets and open air drug markets and get the people that are addicted into treatment. And we need treatment on demand, right.
You know, I'm sober since as a teenager, so I really agree with that, and I certainly believe that if you're an addict, that's the game. So do you think it's doable?
We're coming back, Mollie. This is the greatest city in the world. We have great bones. We have UCSF, uc Law School, we have cow we have Berkeley. We're the home of the AI boom. We're the home of clean tech and green tech. We have a great arts community here. We have a world class San Francisco Ballet, we have a world class opera, we have world class art museums and SF Mama and the de Young Mollie. We are coming back. We just we need to get back to basics.
We need to allow small businesses and our big businesses to thrive. We need to simplify the tax code. We need labor and business to come together to simplify things and make sure there's certainty for our small businesses in our big business. And then we're coming roaring back and we're a boom and bus town. This is one of the worst bus we've been through, there's no doubt about it. But we're coming all the way back.
Daniel, thank you so much for joining us.
Mollie, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be on your show.
No moment full, Jesse Cannon, Hi, John Faspia. This looming government shutdown and the Republicans are acting a little crazy.
What are you seeing here?
Speaker Mike Johnson, backbencher handpicked by Trump, turns out not to be good with math. He said he would not fund the government unless Democrats fixed the border.
Democrats gave him.
Quite a conservative border bill which did all sorts of things that progressive would not have liked.
He rejected it without looking at it.
And now on Friday, twenty percent of the federal government is going to shut down unless Maga Mike Johnson is able to figure out how to do a new CR. You know he said he said in a call on Friday that he wasn't going to do a CR.
I don't know.
That sort of doesn't solve any problems for him and Mike Johnson and his ever shrinking to vote majority is.
Our moment of gray.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.