Jay Jacobs and New York's Democrats

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. A few weeks ago, we had journalist Ross Barkan on the show to discuss his brutally titled piece The Democratic Party in New York is a Disaster published in The New York Times Magazine, equally blunt as the subtitle, which reads, "After losing crucial seats in the congressional midterms, a bitter civil war over the moribund state organization has spilled into the open." The article hones in on criticisms of one player in the New York Democratic Party, in particular, Jay Jacobs, the party's chairman. He's not that much of a big public figure. Most of you have never heard of him, but he's the state Democratic Party chairman.

Now, as pundits point to lost congressional seats in New York state as the reason for Republican rule of the House, many Democrats feel the issue lies with Jay Jacobs's leadership or lack thereof in the state. Now, he's going to join us in just a second. One of those Democrats critical is Erica Vladimer, state committee member for the 76th Assembly District on the Upper East Side, who we had on during that same segment with Ross Barkan about his Times article.

She was one of the drafters of a letter signed by more than 1,000 New York Democrats, many of whom come from the progressive wing of the party calling on Governor Hochul to "elect a real party leader who embodies actual Democratic values and is, as our party website clearly states, committed to building a party that ensures New Yorkers have progressive, fair and dedicated leaders at every level of government." That's a quote from that letter calling for Jay Jacobs's removal. When I asked her why the focus is on Jay Jacobs, here's what Erica Vladimer, Democratic Party committee member from the Upper East Side, had to say.

Erica Vladimer: This is about the fact that the state party has failed to get involved and partner with publicly and party elected officials to make sure that Democrats across the state are engaged, not just during electoral campaigns, but on issue campaigns, educating each other and the public about things like bail reform and why it was so important to make sure our messaging is key. The reason why the state party has not been as involved is because Jay Jacobs and other leadership have not made the effort to do so.

Brian Lehrer: Well, Jay Jacobs heard committee member Vladimer and Ross Barkan on the show and contacted us and asked to come on and respond. Fair enough. Here he is. Chairman Jacobs, welcome back to WNYC. Thank you for engaging.

Chairman Jacobs: Well, thank you for having me today.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start off with what we just heard Erica Vladimer say in that clip, where she calls for the party to engage voters on both electoral and issue campaigns. Basically, if the policy of the New York State Legislature is bail reform, as the legislature passed, your job is to go out and sell that message across the state. How much do you disagree?

Chairman Jacobs: I don't completely disagree, but let's understand, in the first measure, I think a lot of what she had to say was both disingenuous and just factually wrong. The state party does issue statements on policy quite frequently. It's not just regular, it's frequent. Yesterday, we put out just another newsletter. I think we've done a couple of newsletters to our state committee members and our county chairs and other leaders across the state and electeds several times a month.

We do that, but understand, in the first instance, policies are sold to the public by the elected officials who enact them. I would have to say to you that we support that effort. The role of the state party is to organize for elections, is to coordinate between campaigns, is to maintain what I refer to as the housekeeping functions of the party, the voter file and the rest, and to make sure that candidates have access to resources that they need to win their elections. I believe we've done that fairly vigorously.

Brian Lehrer: Vladimer's main point is, in part that most elected Democrats believe in the bail reform they enacted, you were going around casting shade on it, according to her, rather than helping to explain why they think it's the best thing for public safety in conjunction with other investments in communities that the majority of the legislature supports. They see you as going around parroting Republican talking points. That was another quote.

Chairman Jacobs: Again, when they say that that's because they don't want to engage in the facts. The facts are I did support bail reform. I advocated for bail reform. My statement early on, before it was ever passed, was number one, I didn't think that should be included in what they referred to as the "big ugly" thrown into the budget. I said we need hearings. We were hearing from district attorneys, police organizations and others, and elected officials around the state that this was going to be problematic when it was first adopted.

I knew it was going to be a problem, particularly in areas where I come from, Long Island and other suburban areas, and rural areas, because of the messaging that we were getting out of the Republicans. I was clear about this in every interview I did. This is why I think Erica is a bit disingenuous. In every interview I did, I supported the concept and the overall goal of bail reform, cashless bail for nonviolent crimes. The problem was that the original bail reform had some cleaning up that needed to be done. That was because I think it was rushed through, and I said so.

I will tell you that, what happened? Well, the legislature went back and they made a fix. Then there were other issues that came up. They made a second fix, and now they're looking potentially at a third fix. I don't think I was wrong. I think that I favored bail reform, but what I was doing was articulating a problem that folks in the city weren't caring too much about but where we have contested races, which is not generally the city, the suburbs and upstate New York, we were hearing a lot of problems, so we needed to deal with it. My job as leader of the party is to speak the truth as far as I see it on the political realities of each and everything that we do so as to ensure that ultimately we can elect more Democrats.

Brian Lehrer: The progressive wing also argues that if you look at the candidates who lost their elections, who amongst them were promoting the more controversial progressive takes on crime, and it's the ones who lost who weren't. For example, they say Sean Patrick Maloney who lost District 17 north of the city touted his support of law enforcement on his campaign website, including his efforts to secure $7 million for local law enforcement. Same thing in Tom Suozzi's old district, which George Santos won, never mind Santos's problems. That was a Democratic seat for a long time before that.

If it's moderates who lost their elections, why do you blame progressives, which according to the Times article you do, who tended to win their elections and bring crucial young voters into the electorate, for example?

Chairman Jacobs: Now, if you'll allow me, I'm going to have a little bit of fun with that because the facts really tell the story here. You point out Sean Patrick Maloney, well, the number one thing that Republican campaign ads, if you saw them, and I did, had against him was a little snippet where he favored cashless bail. They rammed that down the throats of voters, if you will, in that district. Just to give you a sense of it. In his losing race, Sean Patrick Maloney got 141,597 votes. He got 58% of all Democrats out and he lost, all right? Robert Zimmerman got 122,000 votes. He got 51% of all, [coughs] excuse me, Democrats who are out to vote who are eligible to vote.

Brian Lehrer: That's the Santos seat.

Chairman Jacobs: That's the Santos seat. [coughs] Excuse me. The problem is this, if you take a look at AOC, now, she won her election, she got 78,000 votes. She only brought out 34% of all Democrats. The same people who argue that progressives bring out the vote don't bring out the vote. If you take a look across the board at the State Senate races-- By the way, AOC will argue and she'll say "Well, wait a minute, I didn't have a competitive race." Well, you know what, Jerry Nadler didn't have a competitive general election race. He got 51% of the vote. Same thing for Dan Goldman down in the 10th Congressional. He didn't have a general election race. He brought out over 50% of the Democratic vote.

In Nassau County where they attacked us for not bringing out Democratic vote, we got over 51% of the Democratic vote, very much in line with every midterm election previously with the exception of 2018, which was a little bit higher. That's because it was Trump's first midterm and everybody remembers all us Democrats had our hair on fire over Donald Trump and everybody came out in larger numbers, but you had turnout numbers in the 30s of percent in 2010, in 2014. Doing as well as we did, and I think we did relatively well in terms of what we had to do to bring out Democratic vote, that's not being portrayed.

I'll tell you something else. The progressives argue, "Well, if we were more progressive and we advocated more progressive things, then we would energize this great base of vote." Let me remind you, we had a Democratic primary in Nassau County for governor. Jumaane Williams was the candidate of the far left. He got 7.5% of Democratic votes. Forget the Republicans and unaffiliated, 7.5% in Nassau County.

I'm going to tell you, Robert Zimmerman didn't lose, Laura Gillen didn't lose, Sean Patrick Maloney didn't lose, Josh Riley didn't lose in those four congressional seats because they were not progressive enough, Jumaane got 19% of the Democratic vote in the state of New York. In areas in the city, you're going to have a more progressive electorate. That's true, but that's not where our problem is, and those votes don't tend to come out as I've demonstrated. What I'm saying is that people say a lot of good things that make other people in their network feel good, but they're just not factually true.

Brian Lehrer: You just called Jumaane Williams far left. Is that your characterization of him?

Chairman Jacobs: Yes, I would. I like Jumaane personally. I respect him. I think he's got every right to stand for the things that he stands for, but yes. I know that there are people who say that that's a derogatory term. I don't use it that way and I don't mean it that way. I think it's a descriptive term. I've always said if somebody has a better description that they would feel more comfortable with, I'll be happy to use it. I'm just trying to point out that the views that he represents are those that are akin to much more of an extreme progressive, if you will. That's why I refer to it as far left.

Brian Lehrer: Do you accept the premise of the Ross Barkan New York Times article that there is a civil war within the New York State Democratic Party? Kind of sounds like it.

Chairman Jacobs: No, I don't think there is at all. I think what you have is what you've always had. Remember, I've been state chair now in two different time periods, 2009 to 2012, and then again in 2019. There has always been a progressive wing of our party who has a voice. When I became chair, frankly, the big complaint was that they weren't allowed in the state party to bring up resolutions and things were tabled quickly and we couldn't have debate. One of the things I brought to the leadership in the state party is I changed that. Now we have debates on these resolutions and we allow the robust discussion that was previously knocked down.

We've had this. I thought it was fairly opportunistic what happened right after the election. There was disappointment in those four congressionals and everybody says, "Well--" They say, "Jay Jacobs lost the four congressional seats. He's got to go." That caused the whole Congress to go Republican. Look, you can say that, but how about the fact that if you want to blame me for those four losses, and I think there are things that we did that they don't talk about in terms of trying to win those four seats, but if you're going to do that, why don't you say that Jay Jacobs won the governorship, the comptroller's race, the Attorney General's race?

The United States Senator was returned and we got the supermajority in the State Senate and the supermajority in the assembly. I have nothing to do with that. I don't have anything to do with any of the wins. I'm only fully responsible for the four losses. Come on, they can say these things. By the way, I think it was also a little disingenuous of Ross Barkan not to make it known that when he did say he ran for office, he ran as a candidate against the establishment from the far left. He said that he was a member of the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America.

His campaign manager Zohran Mamdani is a Democratic Socialist of America assembly member now. He was endorsed by AOC. He doesn't mention the political bias that he came to the article with. That was the reason I didn't want to give him the interview. That he didn't say to everybody in the article. He just mentioned I was reluctant to speak to him. The reason was I've seen previous articles that he's written and I found them to be unfair. I found this one to be particularly unfair because he had information that we supplied to him about the facts of what we did in the state party.

He knew we raised and spent over $6 million to run a coordinated campaign. He knew because we sent him the documentation. We had 10 field offices across the state, 56 full-time field people working across the state managing 6,000 active unique volunteers. He knew that we were in each of those congressional districts and ran field offices with more people on our payroll than the DCCC, the Congressional Campaign Committee, actually sent down. He knew that we sent out 1.5 million absentee ballot applications that brought in over 200,000 Democratic results, and spent a good amount of money to do that and did the follow-up for that.

He knew about all of the text messages that we sent and the door knocking. He knew that we spent $3.5 million in the City of New York, in Central Brooklyn, Southeast Queens, in the Bronx, bringing out our vote as well, but that he didn't mention. The interesting thing is, at the end of his article, he ends it with Sochie Nnaemeka from the Working Family Party, the executive director, who says, "The party didn't know what to do, so we did nothing."

They claim, and I love this, that they're the ones responsible for Kathy Hochul's win. Understand something, I just told you the state party raised and spent $6 million. Forget what Kathy Hochul raised and spent, I think $40 million. We put all of that in. The Working Families Party, you take a look at the financials. They spent more money qualifying challengers to Democratic candidates to get on the Democratic primary ballot, to have primaries against Democrats in this election than they spent on Kathy Hochul or their own line supporting Kathy Hochul. They spent $158,000, we spent $6 million. They're telling us that we did nothing?

This is what we're dealing with. If people want to engage in a discussion with the facts and the data, I'm happy to do it, but if you want to [inaudible 00:17:15] opinion, okay. That's what it is.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, my guest is Jay Jacobs, the chairman of the New York State Democratic Party, under fire from the progressive wing of the party primarily, which wants Governor Hochul to replace him as state party chair after the congressional losses and the close gubernatorial race last November. There are reasons of ideology and there are reasons of practicality according to the 1,000 Democratic Party critics who signed a letter to that effect. We'll take a few phone calls in a minute. A lot of people are calling in to talk to Jay Jacobs.

We'll take a few phone calls, but moving off whether the moderate or the more progressive arguments win in different districts, just to the organizational prowess of the party that you run, the party apparatus, I want to play a couple of clips from other people who are critical other than Erica Vladimer and the progressive wing of the party itself. Here's a clip of the journalist Harry Siegel, who I think you would probably characterize as more moderate, having to do with the ground game, the get-out-to-vote game during the election.

Harry Siegel: Not entirely surprising but distressing to see how much energy there is for that. Right outside of New York City and just being around the state in recent weeks, there are Zeldin's signs everywhere. Even in New York City, I'm not seeing that many Hochul ones.

Brian Lehrer: We had calls to that effect from various parts of the state during the campaign, "Seeing Zeldin signs everywhere, not seeing any Hochul signs." Where were the Hochul signs and is that your responsibility?

Chairman Jacobs: No, the signs come from the campaign. I advocated for signs, there's no question. I will tell you on Long Island. I can't speak for other areas of the state with any certainty, but I will tell you on Long Island, we got a lot of Hochul signs ultimately from the Hochul campaign. I'm also the county chair in Nassau, so I'm in charge of getting those signs out. We're talking about hundreds and hundreds of signs and several rounds of that. We put the signs out and within hours our signs were taken down, Zeldin signs remain up. You have town workers, Republicans, town workers who pull them down.

That's not unique to the Hochul campaign and Zeldin. That happens here in Nassau County and I believe in Suffolk County, and probably in other areas as well that have strong Republican organizations. That happens in every election. It's exceedingly frustrating to us because I would get complaints from our voters that weren't seeing signs. We had just put them up all over the place. We have people with their ring cameras on their lawns seeing trucks, and they can't identify the truck to specific or we'd get the police involved, pulling up in front of their house in the middle of the night pulling their signs down. Sometimes replacing them with Zeldin signs.

In my house where I live, the day before the election my Hochul signs were stolen and Zeldin signs in front of my own house were put out there. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: What's the takeaway from that story? Is it that Republicans play dirtier than Democrats?

Chairman Jacobs: Yes. I don't believe in tearing down someone else's signs. I believe we have to campaign. We're Democrats. We're supposed to be better than they are. There are people who disagree with me on that. I respect that, but I disagree. I believe our job is to get those signs out, and we do. Now, that being said, I believe Hochul signs could have been out earlier. I think some of the criticism is legit on that front, but it's not for lack of trying that I know at least in the suburbs we worked upon.

Brian Lehrer: All right. One more in this vein about the prowess of the Democratic Party apparatus. This does come from Ross Barkan who wrote that Times article when he was on the show that day on the issue of lack of staffing, listen.

Ross Barkan: In New York, I think it's important to state this bluntly, the Democratic Party organization through the state committee barely exists. You have four staffers, one of whom some thought was retired. There's as far as I can tell only one staffer who's doing any day-to-day work on the party.

Brian Lehrer: Ross Barkan here the other week. A stat in that article was that New York's Democratic Party has only four staffers while the New Hampshire Democratic Party organization has 16 full-time staffers when their state is only half the population of Queens. Do you agree on the numbers?

Chairman Jacobs: No. Here's the unfairness of it. He has to do his homework. I tried to get this point across to him in the interview and he ignored it. First of all, I said to him the following, I said, "We were down to four staffers at the time of the interview." I said that's because we wound down. Interestingly, I missed-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: You did have only four staffers?

Chairman Jacobs: Yes, but as I said we were fully staffed up through the election. We spent every dime that we had. We had no money left in order to win the election. We laid off groups of employees that we would normally have and they went into other areas. I also point out and I pointed out to him then, you can't compare us with others. I said, "By the way, we're staffing up now. We're getting a new office. We had downscaled the office. The office was too big because it also encompassed the Hochul team, which was very large. We need a moderate-sized office. All of that is in transition. By early Spring that will be back up to full speed."

He didn't include any of that. You can't compare us to other states because we're organized differently in this sense. In other states, the state party runs the entire gubernatorial, State Senate, State Assembly operation. Under our bylaws, the state party has two subsidiaries that the state chair does not control. That is the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee that runs the State Senate races and the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee. They all have currently lots of staff that were on. You can't compare New Hampshire's numbers and New York's numbers.

I explained to him the reason why, I had to raise the money, which I've been doing, to now make sure we can pay for people that are on the payroll. I think people who look at campaigns have a little bit of respect for our campaign that runs itself to the bottom in order to make sure that they win as many votes as they can. It's completely unfair to characterize us as running typically on four people when it's generally a good deal more than that.

The plan that I have that had been sent out prior to that article coming out has something in the neighborhood of 12 to 14 full-time people. That does not include what the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee has, which are quite a few, and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which also is in addition to that.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We're New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming @wnyc.org. A few more minutes with the New York State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs, who I think we can describe as embattled after 1,000 Democrats signed a letter calling for his ouster after the November election results. Adriana in Ellenville, you're on WNYC. Hello, Adriana.

Adriana: Hello, Brian. Thank you so much for taking my call. Hi, Jay.

Chairman Jacobs: Hi, Adriana.

Adriana: My name is Adriana. Hi. Thanks for being on the show. My name is Adriana. As you know, I'm a state committee member for the 101st Assembly District. I live in the beautiful town of Wawarsing also known as Village of Ellenville, where we struggle with having more registered Democrats but Republicans are always winning. I want you to know, Jay, that the grants and funding that the state party has given to upstate committees like mine have been a really big help and I want to recognize that. I know you do give grants and work at doing that for a lot of upstate committees, so thank you.

Chairman Jacobs: Thank you.

Adriana: That said, when I look at the historic transformations that Dems have made in places like Michigan, a state that I actually lived in for six years in Flint, I want you to know that I feel left behind here in rural New York. I feel like our leaders are out of touch with how vulnerable people like myself feel. I'm Mexican American, do with that information what you will, but there is a vulnerability that I feel. It's part of the reason why I am fighting for Democrats and for people here in my community. We all know that our time is one of climate change, rising authoritarianism, of gilded age wealth gaps, and we must win these fights. My question is--

Brian Lehrer: Adriana, can I ask you a question?

Adriana: Oh yes, please.

Brian Lehrer: Being in Ellenville, I think you're in the district that Republican Marc Molinaro won for Congress. Is that right?

Adriana: Yes, sir.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think that either the candidate or the party, Democratic Party, could have done differently to win there, if anything?

Adriana: Well, foundationally we need a bottom-up organizational strategy. We have a command and control strategy right now. No offense, Jay, I know you're doing your best, and I really appreciate all the things that you're doing to bring more people to the table. I think it's wonderful and I think it's going to make our party stronger and better and truly able to reclaim that true blue New York state progressive leadership that we like to rest on our laurels with.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. I'm going to leave it there. Adriana, thank you for that call. I think you were a first-time caller. Please call us again. Jay, what do you say to the caller from the Catskills?

Chairman Jacobs: Listen, first of all, I thank you for recognizing some of the work we've done. We spent a lot of time, I raised a lot of money to get it into upstate. Just so you know, Democratic turnout in upstate New York was up 2.5% over even 2018. It's the highest we ever saw. Governor Hochul actually did better in upstate New York than Governor Cuomo did in any of the years that he ran in upstate New York. We did really better there.

The distinction I want to make, you point out Michigan, I hear a lot about Wisconsin and Georgia and the state parties in these other places, understand this, those are swing states. In swing states, money flows out of New York, frankly, and into those state parties because everybody is all excited and energized about the Senate races particularly and gubernatorial races. Now, not all of those states did we win. Wisconsin, they can't boast that they won everything. They won the governorship, they lost the United States Senate seat and they did the best that they could. You don't always win, but the money and the resources went there.

I'm raising money against that, where I'm talking to donors who're saying, "New York is a blue state. You don't need the money." That's why we don't have as much money to distribute to places we'd like to. I agree with you, upstate should be a priority of us because I think we could do a lot better in certain places upstate. Just as you know, I looked at that particular district. We had field offices there. We had field staff there. We knocked on, I believe, over 40,000 doors, and we made 137,000 direct calls. We had banks of volunteers working in that district. We didn't win that district.

Brian Lehrer: Somehow it didn't appear that way to her as a local committee member. One more call, Larry in Brooklyn Heights, you're on WNYC with Jay Jacobs, Democratic State Party Chairman. Hi, Larry.

Larry: Hey, hi. Hi, Mr. Jacobs, too. I've been listening to you.

Chairman Jacobs: Hi, Larry.

Larry: I'm here. You seem awfully defensive, Mr. Jacobs. I've got to say you're damned with faint praise. Talk about Representative Ocasio-Cortez and Advocate Jumaane Williams. Right now the Democratic Party in our state has no identity, and you're talking about the two people who have an identity in this thing. You should be more behind that. Right now your identity is you're just not Trump. That's not good enough.

Also, Representative Ocasio beat Joe Crowley. You can talk with faint praise about her numbers and everything, but she beat the ultimate centrist candidate. I think you're looking in the wrong direction. The Democratic Party is becoming a non-entity. That's all I have to say.

Chairman Jacobs: Okay, Larry. I appreciate your comments. First of all, just understand that my views are such that, look, AOC represents a district that is far more to the left than the rest of the state. I stand up for what I believe to be Democratic values. I think that things that Joe Biden is talking about are things that I have advocated for and support, and I support him. Things that Governor Hochul is talking about and improvements to people, working families, and the rest. Those I believe are Democratic values.

It seems to me that you were advocating a far more left push. That will work in some places, but I'm telling you, if you heard me earlier Jumaane Williams advocated those things. He got 19% of the statewide vote in the gubernatorial. Look, in the mayoral race in the City of New York, 70% of Democrats rejected candidates of the far left. It just went that way in that primary. I think-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Let me jump in and ask a quick follow-up and then a closer as we're running out of time. The follow-up is, isn't that term far left to refer to those politicians in your own party accepting a Republican smear? Far left is the Sandinistas. Far left is Karl Marx. These are people who may be associated, some of them with the Democratic Socialists of America, which is a-

Chairman Jacobs: Far left, too.

Brian Lehrer: -pro-democracy organization more to the left than some of the other candidates we've been talking about or yourself. Far left is a smear that the Republicans use, and you back them up by doing so, don't you?

Chairman Jacobs: Brian, I disagree with you, and here's why I'm going to say it. This is the pieces of the platform of the DSA, defund the police by cutting their budgets annually towards zero. I'm reading right off of that. All right? End incarceration of all people. End involuntary confinement. Disarm law enforcement officers, including police and private security. All right? We fight for the abolition of capitalism. I can go on. Of course, the BDS movement against Israel and nationalistic posturing toward China. Immediately withdraw from NATO. All right? Stop seeking domination of the world. Close-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: What are you reading from?

Chairman Jacobs: I'm reading from the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America. I'm reading from their platform, which was taken off their website. I'm saying to you, yes, those folks are far left. Now, if somebody wants to give me a better terminology of it, I'm happy to use it. There is a difference between moderate progressives and far-left progressives. I count myself as a moderate progressive.

For Larry who says I sound too defensive. Well, there are a lot of people who have a lot of things to say about what they feel I did or should have done better or I didn't do. I feel I should answer that. Now, I could say, "Everybody's right," then I'm not defensive, but I'm not giving a fair defense.

Brian Lehrer: 30 seconds. Is there anything you're going to do differently running the campaigns or having the party contribute to the campaigns in 2024?

Chairman Jacobs: I think we're going to have a different financial pitch. We've got $45 million from the Democratic Majority PAC that is coming to the state now, recognizing that we've got competitive races here we need to focus on. What I'm trying to get everybody in the Democratic Party to do is to understand, number one, we can have these debates without them being personal, without attacking people personally and calling them names. We could discuss the merits of issues. That I think is so important.

The other thing that's important is to recognize that it's not one size fits all for all of New York state. We're a diverse state with diverse regions, with different electorates, and different types of campaigns. On the island and upstate New York, we have real competitive campaigns with Republicans. You don't see that in much of New York City. Some areas, yes. We have to be mindful of all of that and work together. I'm looking to work with anybody that would like to do so, but I want people to stick to the facts, stick to the data, and look clearly to ways that we actually can improve and win, not just make political points within our party.

Brian Lehrer: New York State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs, thank you for engaging. We appreciate it.

Chairman Jacobs: Thanks for having me.

 

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