AOC on Her First 6 Months in Congress

"I've been pretty shocked with the concentration of power internally" [Politics Brief from WNYC + Gothamist] [Keep friends and family informed. Forward the Politics Brief.]( Where Things Stand Now With the Queens District Attorney Primary Recount By [James Ramsay]( A manual recount is expected to begin later this week in the too-close-to-call Democratic primary race between Melinda Katz and Tiffany Cabán. (Photos: Seth Wenig/Frank Franklin II/AP Images) A lot has changed since the last edition of this newsletter! Tiffany Cabán, who declared victory on the night of the June 25th Democratic primary for Queens District Attorney, is now technically losing. Melinda Katz, the Queens Borough President, is currently ahead by 16 votes. A manual recount of 91,000 votes is set to begin as early as Thursday, with Board of Elections officials saying it could take up to two weeks. And possible legal fights could extend the process until the end of the summer. How'd this happen? And what does the mess itself mean for both Queens residents and New York voters at large? I asked WNYC reporter Fred Mogul to fill us in. If Katz *won* by 16 votes, why is she not the winner? New York, [like many places]( demands an automatic manual recount of all ballots when the margin of victory is super-slim. In our case, it’s anything less than 0.5 percent. In this election, based on the total number of votes cast, any margin below 450 votes would have triggered a recount. On July 3rd, when the news broke about Katz's lead, my Twitter feed filled up with people accusing her of fraud. What's that about? Caban’s primary-night margin wasn’t as slim as this, but it was always slim — claims of "victory" were tenuous. She and her supporters knew there were many uncounted absentee ballots and provisional ballots, but they assumed those ballots wouldn’t add up in such a way to disproportionately favor Katz. Yet, that’s what happened, outraging Team Cabán and generating accusations against the Queens Democratic Machine and the city Board of Elections. Maybe the most high-profile case involved the activist Shaun King, who accused the party of trying to "[steal]( the election from Cabán. Her campaign then explicitly [distanced]( itself from King. What is the Board of Elections trying to catch that might've been missed during the initial election? Many things can go wrong with ballots. The totals we see, whether it’s the morning after an election or weeks later, when they’re certified, have a margin of error. Everyone believes that "every vote should count," meaning eligible votes, but this is especially crucial when you have a teeny-tiny spread between the top two vote-getters. A manual recount is more accurate than the initial machine count, because it can examine ballots individually to — as election law experts put it — "discern the intent" of each voter. So, if someone put an "x" in a circle next to a candidate’s name, or underlined it, or circled it, rather than darkening the whole thing, the scanner would not have picked it up. In what scenario would either candidate sue, thereby dragging this out beyond the end of the manual recount? Technically, both sides already have sued — that’s how election lawyers get court supervision of the process, which is what they always want. In this case, there are about 2,000 affidavit ballots that voters filled out at polling sites, because their names weren’t on the rolls. Most of those have been rejected, because the Board of Elections says the voters were ineligible — for instance, they thought they were registered Democrats. Cabán’s attorney maintains that at least 114 of these were discarded erroneously. But at a court hearing on Tuesday, both sides agreed to defer legal challenges until the recount is complete, because there’s always a chance the revised margin could be so large that it dwarfs the number of disputed ballots. New York Senate Democrats' Election Year Agenda After an extremely productive 2019 legislative session, Democrats in Albany are now turning their attention to 2020. On the progressive end of their wish list: Legalizing cannabis, codifying voting rights for parolees, and banning solitary confinement in state prisons. The challenge, says veteran State Senator Liz Krueger, who represents the Upper East Side of Manhattan, is that every state legislator is also up for re-election next year. High turnout is expected, since it'll be a presidential election year. And when the goal is to preserve or expand the Democratic majority in Albany, it's necessary to respect the ideological range of everyone in New York who'd vote for a Democrat. "We recognize it’s a big state, really different areas, really different issues," she told the Max & Murphy radio show. "We want to make sure we grow our majority in 2020, we don’t want to put anyone at risk, and frankly, the more we grow our majority the more diversified our needs will be." ([Gotham Gazette]( Progressive Dreams Run Through Frank Pallone, the Veteran Democrat From New Jersey One thing "Medicare for All" and the Green New Deal have in common: If they're to eventually become laws, their first stop in the House will be the Energy and Commerce Committee. Frank Pallone (NJ-6), who once got in [a closed-door fight]( with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over climate change policy, chairs that committee. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who once openly opposed a promotion for Pallone, is now one of his biggest backers. She — and many other Democrats across the ideological spectrum — sees Pallone as a consensus-builder. If Pallone can help hold the party together while, say, getting President Trump to sign an infrastructure bill, he'll prove Pelosi right. ([Politico]( Why Are Voters Ignoring Kirsten Gillibrand? As of Monday's publication of this long Washington Post Magazine profile, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who's running for president, was "polling between 0 and 1 percent in national surveys, nestled in the bleak data crevice between Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee." Her campaign's spin on that: "Public polling shows that the majority of Democratic voters don’t yet have an opinion of Senator Gillibrand. We believe we’re well positioned to continue introducing Kirsten to voters." Why the publicity struggle? She's from a major media market. She's a Clinton White House alum who filled Hillary Clinton's senate seat. She branded herself as the anti-sexual assault candidate at a time when sexual assault is constantly in the news. And, as the article indicates, she's trying her hardest to be meme-able. Also, who's Tim Ryan? "When you poll in New York, there’s still typically between 20 and 30 percent of the state who don’t know who I am," Gillibrand told the magazine. "Nationally, you’ll have that challenge exponentially." ([Washington Post]( 60 Minutes With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [AOC] Besides a college internship for Sen. Ted Kennedy and a volunteer gig with Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had never worked in politics before she ran for a House seat herself. Now, a year out from her monumental primary win over longtime incumbent Joe Crowley, what has she learned? Study an issue before you speak on it. It's easier to do that when you don't spend hours a day focused on fundraising. Serving in Congress feels much like any office job, except the decisions made cost billions of dollars and can change lives. And the way Congress actually functions, she says, came as a surprise. "I’ve been pretty shocked with the concentration of power internally," Ocasio-Cortez told host David Remnick in a new, hour-long interview for The New Yorker Radio Hour. "Not just the influence that lobbyists have...but how the actual rules within Congress have changed over the years to put, I think, an insane amount of power in a handful of people within even just the House of Representatives: the Speaker, leadership, committee chairs. Congress used to function in a way where each member had much more power as an individual." She also spoke with Remnick about the first 2020 presidential debates, her recent visit to a migrant detention facility, and why she thinks it's possible that after the Census is taken, rivals within her own party could gerrymander her district (NY-14) to the point where getting re-elected becomes a major challenge. [HEAR THE COMPLETE INTERVIEW]( Support WNYC + Gothamist Make a donation to support local, independent journalism. Your contributions are our largest source of funding and pays for essential election coverage and more. [Donate]( Copyright © 2019 New York Public Radio, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: New York Public Radio 160 Varick Street New York, NY 10013 [unsubscribe]( [update preferences]( [privacy policy](