00:09He is going to be a great mayor for New York City.
00:12I was proud to endorse him before the primary, and he is so smart, so authentic,
00:20cares so much about working people, and has put together an incredible coalition.
00:24We're thrilled.
00:25He's bringing the party together at this point.
00:27Look, he's bringing anybody who can see the reality of the success of his candidacy
00:32and his campaign together.
00:34Anybody that's staying out at this point instead of endorsing this incredible,
00:38dynamic leader is missing an opportunity.
00:40Do you think he won over any of the members who weren't supporting him or on the fence?
00:46Sorry, what was that?
00:47Do you think he won over any members?
00:49Oh, I think it's hard not to be won over because it's the combination of his
00:54authenticity, his smarts, and his commitment to lifting up working people
00:59and making life better for real folks that is really inspiring
01:05and not always easy to find, you know, and so I hope so.
01:11Thank you, everybody.
03:26We were just learning skills from him, communication skills.
03:35It was not about whether we're supporting him or not.
03:38Are you talking about any policies specifically?
03:40He talked about, you know, freezing rent, faster buses in New York City, and universal child care,
03:49which seems to be the message that really resonated with New York City voters.
03:53How do you think he didn't talk about that?
03:54How do you think he didn't talk about how he was getting that message out because that's what New Yorkers want.
04:03What do you think he did?
04:04What do you think of his idea for him?
04:04What do you think of his idea for government-run grocery stores?
04:06Did he try to pitch that?
04:07No, he did not talk about that.
04:09What do you think about it?
04:10Do you think that's a good idea?
04:11I'm not sure how that would work.
04:12I haven't really looked at how that would work.
04:15How about ending cooperation with ICE?
04:18He's talking about that as well.
04:19Do you agree with that?
04:20Of course.
04:21Of course.
04:22I'm a member from Los Angeles.
04:23We're going through massive ICE raids that are creating fear in my community.
04:28I represent Mexican immigrants and Central American immigrants.
04:32I'm the child of immigrants.
04:34And so what ICE is doing right now is horrible to our communities, to our economy, really disrupting Los Angeles.
04:42I'm from Los Angeles.
04:46Talk to the cameras.
04:51Okay.
04:52I'm Congressman Mark Tucano.
04:54I'm the ranking Democratic member on the Veterans Affairs Committee.
04:57I'm also chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, among other things.
05:02I was very eager to meet Assemblyman Mondani.
05:06I started to get into my social media feed a lot of the videos around the time of the election
05:13in New York and post-election.
05:15One of the videos that made a huge impact on me, which I thought was brilliant, was the
05:20halal inflation video, where Zohar Mondani talks to a halal, a falafel, a falafel stand,
05:34and about how much this falafel stand operator has to pay to the city of New York for a permit.
05:41$17,000 a year.
05:43And he asked him how much he would charge if he didn't have to do that.
05:47His falafel is $10.
05:49And that he would charge $8 of halafel if he didn't have to pay, not the city, actually.
05:56It is some operator, somebody who holds the permit.
06:01And we learned from this interview that Mondani does with this guy, is that he's not actually paying the city.
06:08He's actually been waiting in line.
06:09He's like 32,000th in line to get a permit.
06:13And, you know, the overall impression on me was this guy is not a communist.
06:17He's not a socialist.
06:18He's an advocate for small-c capitalism.
06:23And that, you know, he really is fighting for the little business guy that's trying to eke out a living in New York.
06:31Half of all New Yorkers, you know, get their jobs from small business.
06:34And I thought that was a tremendous message.
06:37I have a lot of small business people just like that.
06:40Immigrant business people trying to make a living in my own district.
06:44And I thought it was such an aspirational video.
06:47It was very inspiring.
06:49Do you think he made any inroads with people that might not be completely on board with him yet that was in that room?
06:54You know, I was, I came toward the end.
06:56I had a conflicting meeting.
06:57I'm with sort of in the leadership meeting.
06:59Yeah.
07:00A conflict with this meeting.
07:01So I was, actually, I got the last question.
07:03There were a lot of other senior members of Congress in that room who, I think, are very curious about him.
07:13I think they've seen a lot of his social media and think it is really quite penetrating and brilliant.
07:20Congressman, what do you think are some of his weaknesses to winning and what advice would you give him?
07:26You know, I didn't really, I had some questions, you know, about, you know, association with, you know, democratic socialism.
07:34And, you know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained to me the generational divide over this, that people under 40 have experienced watching Barack Obama.
07:48They were the first person they voted for be attacked for being a foreigner, you know, from Africa, not a citizen.
07:55I mean, these were all false charges and attacked as a socialist.
07:58And they grew up thinking that this is all baseless and unfair.
08:03And so the people over 40, like me, I'll admit to being over 40, that socialists have a different, the word has a different charge.
08:11And, you know, the critique of, you know, Stalin or even Castro, that's maybe a kind of debate that we're going to see raised by people maybe over 40 that are going to have a problem with that word.
08:33But that he's another kind of socialist, that he's fighting for small business people, trying to bring down stupid regulations, criticizing Eric Adams for, you know, not moving permits faster, forcing, it's kind of, it's corruption we're fighting here.
08:50Corruption, the corruption that prevents, you know, the dynamism of small C entrepreneurs, small C capitalist entrepreneurs.
09:00No contradiction there, trying to get buses to run more efficiently and faster.
09:05These are all things that are improving people's lives.
09:10And I think, you know, Alexandra explained to me that generationally younger voters who are coming into, they are already the majority of voters out there, doesn't have the same charge.
09:25And it doesn't, it doesn't indicate, it's a bogeyman sort of fear that's being put on by older people.
09:32What about his views when it comes to the government run grocery stores?
09:35Do you think that's a good idea?
09:37Well, you know, you can question my friend, Shelley Pingree.
09:41I don't let her speak for herself, but she's the ranking member, former chair of, you know, the appropriations committee that deals with ag.
09:50There's not a lot of difference between the idea of some sort of public run grocery and a co-op.
09:57In the state of Maine, there's a lot of co-ops that come together, nonprofit co-ops to, you know, bring down the cost of groceries.
10:04So there's other ways to think about this concept of how do you bring down the cost of groceries and to what extent is the market in New York kind of dominated and, you know, how you say, overly consolidated in some ways.
10:20And those are legitimate questions to have and I think, you know, he's injecting some idea about, so it's really, I go to some parts of Europe and I'm amazed even how in Paris the cost of food is pretty reasonable.
10:36We should be asking ourselves, why is that? How is it that we can, and look, if we look at a larger picture, so it's bigger than New York, because he's not dealing with the bigger picture.
10:46But, you know, just how there's a few really meat processing plants in our country, meat processing companies, how concentrated that market is and how much of this might be really the failure of our government to do the antitrust activities we should be doing in order to make sure that price gouging isn't occurring and that there is, you know, price inflation because we're not doing enough to make sure that there's enough competition out there in terms of the food supply.
11:15The food supply chain. So it's, that's a, that's a higher level federal issue. He's trying to deal with this issue at a very local level and it's a legitimate one.
11:23People think that New York City is Democrat run for many years. Why would going further left resolve these issues of the cost of living, the most expensive areas in the country tend to be Democrat run?
11:35Well, you know, I don't, I don't know that left or right, I mean you're imposing, you're the one imposing the left or right by the premise of your question.
11:44What I see is someone addressing cost of living issues and I think if you were to run these Zoran Mondani commercials blind in front of self-identified conservatives, part of the MAGA base, I think they would find Mondani very, very appealing from what he's saying in his commercials.
12:04So without the left or right imposition by the question you've asked, I, I don't, I looked at that halal inflation commercial.
12:12I thought a MAGA viewer would look at that and go, hey, you know, cut out this, this, this holder of the, of the license, some, some, some, some, some other, some, some guy and make the government work more efficiently so that we license all these people.
12:32Or the whole medallion, I mean, Mondani kind of got some street cred with the, with the taxi drivers over the, with Bloomberg over the, over, over the taxi medallions.
12:41I think these are, these are fairly, these are issues that much of the MAGA base would agree with.
12:46You're saying you think some of his ideas aren't necessarily left, right, but like a populism.
12:51Um, I, I even think populism has a kind of, to some people, a pejorative point of view.
12:56I think he's taking on cost of living issues head on.
13:00And I think, uh, if you look past all of the labels people are trying to impose on him, I think, uh, I think, uh, that's what's refreshing about him and his, his direct messaging.
13:12Uh, I want to lower costs for New Yorkers. And I think, I think Democrats need to be, uh, talking about how we're going to lower costs, but we really mean it.
13:20That what's been happening with Donald Trump is a lot of fakery. Uh, he came in saying he was going to pay attention to the cost of living.
13:27Uh, but his policies, uh, his irrational tariffs, his spontaneous tariffs, uh, we just saw a 2.7% inflation, uh, increase over the past couple of days.
13:38Uh, and he's going to want to blame that on someone else like Chairman Powell of the Fed, uh, you know, for not lowering interest rates.
13:45But how can he lower interest rates when the Fed's job is to watch inflation? And under Donald Trump's policies, inflation goes up.
13:51So, uh, a lot of talk and a lot of fakery. But I think, uh, you know, Mondani has got a, you know, a platform that, um, I think he can deliver on.
14:01How many people were in New York?
14:04When I arrived, there were like, uh, I'd say 20, 25. And, uh, I think people trickled out as before I wrote it.
14:10I think this thing started at eight. Um, and I was very happy to be able to make it.
14:14So, anyway, uh, hey, uh, it was great to talk to you and, um, it was very exciting meeting, I think, the next mayor of New York.
