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How much? Mayoral hopefuls red-faced after guessing New York housing costs
With less than six weeks to New York’s mayoral primaries, two candidates have left themselves electorally vulnerable for vastly underestimating the median cost of buying a home or apartment in Brooklyn.“In Brooklyn, huh? I don’t know for sure. I would guess it is around $100,000,” Shaun Donovan, the housing and urban development secretary under Barack Obama and housing commissioner under the former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, told the New York Times.Donovan’s press secretary said later in a statement to the Hill that Donovan “misinterpreted the question and made a mistake”.In the same set of endorsement-seeking interviews, Ray McGuire, a wealthy former Citigroup executive, guessed that the median sales price was “somewhere in the $80,000 to $90,000 range, if not higher”.McGuire later said: “I messed up when accounting for the cost of housing in Brooklyn. I am human.”The tech entrepreneur and 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang guessed correctly, while two other candidates, Maya Wiley and the former NYC financial comptroller Scott Stringer, both guessed over $1m, with Wiley suggesting $1.8m.Brooklyn’s median sales price is $900,000.The housing-cost guesstimate game comes as voters in the city begin to engage with the choice of who will replace Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is stepping down after serving two terms.This week, two of New York’s media outlets offered their endorsements – the New York Times picking the former sanitation department chief Kathryn Garcia, and the New York Post picking the former police officer Eric Adams.Donovan and McGuire’s wild underestimation of housing costs, particularly in a borough where average individual income is about $32,000 and has, in parts, seen an affordable housing crisis develop as a result of rapid gentrification, was widely mocked on social media and by progressives.“How could people running for mayor of the city not know this? Because most people want power, but few want responsibility,” the podcast host Ashley C Ford posted on Twitter.Chi Ossé, a 22-year-old progressive candidate running for city council in the Bed-Stuy section of Brooklyn, told the Guardian that the answers “proved that these wealthy men are out of touch with the majority of the population of New York City”.“This is a city of the working class – tenants, immigrants, people who are in touch with what’s going on. When it comes to leadership, we need people who understand where the majority is coming from.”For many progressives, Dianne Morales, a former executive with Phipps Neighborhood, an affordable housing developer, has emerged as a favorite to replace De Blasio. In her interview with the Times editorial board, Morales came relatively close to guessing correctly.“Oh, my gosh. The median sales price of a home or apartment. I don’t know, half a million.” More
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Democrats propose quick reaction force in $2.1bn Capitol security bill
House Democrats plan on Wednesday to unveil a $2.1bn supplemental bill to enhance security at the Capitol that will propose creating a quick reaction force to guard against future threats in the wake of the Capitol attack, according to sources familiar with the matter.The proposed bill will also include the construction of a retractable fencing system around the Capitol, the sources said.Rose DeLauro, chair of the House appropriations committee, is expected to unveil the proposal to House Democrats on a caucus call on Wednesday, amid growing calls urging the adoption of recommendations made by a taskforce in the wake of the 6 January insurrection in which a pro-Trump mob ransacked the Capitol.No lawmakers were injured during the attack, but several, such as Senator Mitt Romney and former vice-president Mike Pence had only a narrow escape from attackers looking for them. Meanwhile, nearly 140 officers suffered injuries and one, Brian Sicknick, later died after being assaulted.The proposed bill largely tracks recommendations made by retired Army Lt Gen Russel Honoré, who was appointed by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to examine security shortcomings, as well as critical flaws identified by the US Capitol police inspector general, the sources said.In the report released to House Democratic leaders last month, Honoré made a series of recommendations, including hiring more than 800 US Capitol police officers, the construction of mobile fencing around the Capitol, and an overhaul of the US Capitol police board.“We are trying to take into consideration understanding what happened, how do we account for that and what we need to do to prevent this from happening again,” DeLauro said of the taskforce recommendations after its release last month.The proposed bill, which could be brought to the House floor as early as next week, will also include a provision to reimburse the national guard deployed around the Capitol. The national guard and other security measures post-6 January is costing nearly $2m a week.Its prospects are still uncertain on Capitol Hill, with House Democrats largely going ahead with the security review alone and Republicans yet to indicate what measures, if any, they are willing to embrace.Lawmakers in both parties largely agree on the need for enhanced security but some – Republicans in particular – have been agitating to scale back the barriers encircling the area and troops patrolling the grounds despite lingering threats.“While there may be some worthy recommendations forthcoming, Gen Honoré’s notorious partisan bias calls into question the rationality of appointing him to lead this important security review,” Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, said of the taskforce in March.“It also raises the unacceptable possibility that the speaker desired a certain result: turning the Capitol into a fortress.”The issue has exposed the divide between members of Congress who want the Capitol to return to a sense of normalcy, and the concerns of US Capitol police and a raft of law enforcement agencies tasked with their protection. More
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Divided Republicans reunite to mount defense of filibuster
While congressional Democrats hope to make dramatic changes to a controversial legislative tool that has stalled bills in the Senate and could be used to frustrate Joe Biden’s ambitious agenda, Republicans are mounting an all-out defense to protect it.Conservative outside groups have been organizing overtly and covertly to counter Democratic pressure to gut the filibuster – a Senate device that in effect allows the minority party to halt proposed legislation.While Democrats have been struggling to unite members of their Senate caucus, especially the more centrist holdouts, to get rid of the filibuster, their Republican counterparts have been lockstep in opposing changes.Meanwhile, Republican outside groups have churned out polling, aired ads, organized gatherings and released statements warning of the long-term consequences of changing the rule. It is a concerted program that Republicans see as vital to preserving their power in the Biden era, while Democrats see it as a potential threat to their attempts to bring in meaningful legislation.The cause has reunited Republicans after the divisiveness of the Trump era – bringing together business interests, Trumpist politicians and their anti-Trump opponents in the party, as well traditional big donors to conservative causes.For Republicans involved in the fight, the campaign to preserve the filibuster is a historically important one. “The filibuster really serves as that backstop against heat-of-the-moment politics,” said Garrett Bess, vice-president for government relations for Heritage Action for America, a non-profit group aligned with the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank.Bess said his group sought to ensure “that people understand what is on the other side of changing the filibuster. So when we’re talking to a conservative audience or a right-of-center audience, on the other side of the filibuster is higher taxes and gun control and taxpayer-funded abortion. Those kinds of things.”In front of a more moderate audience, Bess said, the argument is to warn about statehood for Washington DC or Democrats’ voting rights package. Bess said Heritage Action had focused on talking with “constituencies of Democratic senators in which we have a very large footprint – Arizona, Georgia, West Virginia” and was expanding into New Hampshire, Bess said.In late April, One Nation, an outside group aligned with Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican Senate minority leader, released polling from Arizona and New Hampshire, Nevada and West Virginia to argue against filibuster reform. Arizona and West Virginia are the two states with the most conservative Democrats in the caucus. The polling found that voters were largely unaware of the filibuster and when they were made aware “in fairly neutral terms, support for keeping the filibuster is solid”.“On the filibuster, voters are much more aligned with the position and statements of Senator Kyrsten Sinema than they are with the position and statements of Senator Mark Kelly,” the One Nation polling memo said. Sinema has expressed stubborn opposition to changing the filibuster while Kelly has expressed openness to some kind of reform.The fact that one of the primary McConnell-aligned groups published those results underscores congressional Republicans’ position on the filibuster. McConnell has warned about longer-term consequences of filibuster reform and has argued it would change change the Senate to a “scorched-earth” body.“Let me say this very clearly for all 99 of my colleagues: nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, can even begin, to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” the top Republican said in March. Heritage Action and 28 other groups published a letter in January urging every member of the Senate to oppose filibuster reform.“The legislative filibuster is an essential part of ensuring a strong system of checks and balances,” the letter read. “While we typically do not weigh in on Congressional procedure, we believe elimination of the filibuster could result in a slew of destructive policy changes.”Manchin and Sinema are favorite targets for conservatives looking to fight support for filibuster reform. Americans for Prosperity, another outside group, funded by Charles Koch, has launched a six-figure ad campaign focused on those two senators.Similarly, Ken Cuccinelli, a former official in the Department of Homeland Security during Donald Trump’s presidency and a former attorney general of Virginia, is leading a conservative group that has encouraged Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to oppose filibuster reform.Even the US Chamber of Commerce, which at times has worked with Joe Biden’s administration and endorsed a set of congressional Democrats, has voiced opposition to filibuster reform. Suzanne Clark, the president and CEO of the chamber, tweeted the group’s statement.Issues of national importance deserve the time, thoughtfulness, and deliberation that the #filibuster provides. Debate doesn’t have to mean obstruction—lawmakers should be able to have passionate convictions AND find solutions. Read our full statement: https://t.co/z9YPkm7x3E— Suzanne Clark (@SuzanneUSCC) March 16, 2021
Thank you @Sen_JoeManchin for your principled stand on preserving the #filibuster. American businesses—together with the West Virginians you serve so well—appreciate your commitment to solving our nation’s problems through collaboration and consensus-building. #leadership— Suzanne Clark (@SuzanneUSCC) April 9, 2021
Issues of national importance deserve the time, thoughtfulness, and deliberation that the #filibuster provides. Debate doesn’t have to mean obstruction—lawmakers should be able to have passionate convictions AND find solutions. Read our full statement: https://t.co/z9YPkm7x3E— Suzanne Clark (@SuzanneUSCC) March 16, 2021
Whether the filibuster will be dramatically altered depends on Democrats. No Republican senator has expressed support for it – and at this point, there are not enough Democratic votes to change it.Democrats who do not usually weigh in on Senate procedure or legislating have begun to argue for reform, however.And more than 350 prominent historians published a letter arguing for getting rid of the filibuster.“Only in recent decades have filibusters effectively created a regular supermajority threshold for routine legislation, with prior norms of restraint all but disappearing,” the letter, first reported by Talking Points Memo, said.Fix Our Senate, an alliance of about 70 groups that aims to get rid of the filibuster, has launched a six-figure ad buy urging Democrats to gut the mechanism. The group will also be holding a town hall with senators Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to argue for its elimination.“It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Republican leaders and their special interest allies are pulling out all the stops to protect the filibuster as the best weapon they have to block President Biden’s agenda and prevent Democrats from delivering on their promises,” Eli Zupnik, a Fix Our Senate spokesman, said in a statement. “But voters across the country are learning more about this ‘Jim Crow relic’ and will see through these desperate attempts by Senate Republicans to maintain power from the minority.” More
