Interview: Manhattan Institute’s Reihan Salam makes the case for getting off the political sidelines
The Manhattan Institute's Reihan Salam discusses who the most interesting intellectuals on the left and right are, which politicians he's following, and if he'll run for Mayor of New York next year...
Led by Reihan Salam, the Manhattan Institute (MI) has for decades laid the groundwork for conservatives to recapture big cities like New York and Chicago that once elected Republican mayors.
One of Salam’s top takeaways of the 2024 election is that regular people got off the sidelines and rejected the progressive left’s vision for America.
“The backlash is coming from a whole range of communities that want accountability and competent leadership that reject extremist ideology, that reject the activist left,” he told the Washington Reporter in an interview. “But these are communities that are oftentimes not the most important politically within the cities.”
“Think about immigrants, for example, who, in some cases, aren't even naturalized immigrants,” he said. “These are people who've been on the political sidelines for a very long time, until in San Francisco, they got off the sidelines. Or you're looking at working class, lower middle class, people who do not belong to unions and who do not work for government. These are also people who do not show up for every single election, but they're the people who, if someone were to tell them, ‘hey, did you know that they are literally people in elected office who decided that it is bad and racist to put people in prison who are repeat, chronic, violent offenders,’ they would find that totally insane.”
Every state in America shifted to the right this cycle, and Salam thinks that the Pacific Northwest is particularly fertile ground for a GOP renaissance. “That seems really interesting and ripe,” he said. “This is a place where you've seen the Republican Party essentially eliminated as a competitive political force. What that also means is that these guys don't necessarily have the ownership of the problems that you've seen arise.”
At the forefront of the GOP’s gains in cities is a group that MI has termed “meritocracy voters,” who “are both upper middle class but also lower middle class. They're disproportionately Asian, though not exclusively. A lot of them are Hispanic. A lot of them are white. If you look at Jewish voters in the northeast, some of these people are people who are primed to move when it comes to local issues.” The increased receptivity comes as the GOP’s collapse in cities led to battles between centrist Democrats and “a really hard left faction that basically envisions government as being of, by, and for public employees.” With the ascent of the latter, embodied by many George Soros-backed prosecutors, voters are slamming the brakes.
Seattle, Washington elected a Republican City Attorney, Los Angeles, California elected a Republican-turned-independent as District Attorney, and Portland, Oregon’s Multnomah County elected a Republican-turned-independent District Attorney. Some Democrats, Salam said, have effectively pushed back on the activist class in their party: Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) and Reps. Ritchie Torres (D. N.Y.) and Seth Moulton (D., Mass.), for example.
But there are plenty of Republicans who have navigated this cycle expertly, he said — none more impressive than incoming Senator Dave McCormick, Salam added.
“Dave McCormick might be one of the most important Republicans in national politics right now, because he's someone who represents a swing state,” he said. “He represents a state that has a deep interest in seeing a manufacturing revival, an industrial revival in the American heartland. But he's also someone who understands global finance, having been a legend of the hedge fund industry, having been a serial entrepreneur, and I think that he could become a really, really important figure in crafting what the right’s message is on national economic policy, and also an important figure in figuring out, ‘hey, look, the party is really thriving by connecting with non college-educated voters. But college educated voters matter. There are a lot of them out there. It's a growing constituency. They matter in close races.’ I think that he has a big, big opportunity there.”
Salam is also closely following Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.), who “is another person who similarly blends some of that elite business class experience, while understanding that the Trump GOP is different from what came before it. I think that those are two people that I think are really interesting, talented people, who have a lot of runway to have influence.”
While Salam thinks there is a “100 percent” chance that New York City could elect a conservative mayor in the coming years, he doubts it will be in 2025 — and dismissed the idea that he could be a candidate himself.
“Well, certainly not me,” he said. “You need someone who is actually a really capable retail politician.”
Outside of the political arena, Salam keeps tabs on his fellow thinkers on both the right and the left. On the right, he doesn’t have to look too far. “I'm proud to say that when it comes to thinkers who I think are getting the big picture right, the Manhattan Institute is home to many of them. Chris Rufo, Heather Mac Donald, Douglas Murray, Abigail Shrier,” he said. “I think that we are now home to the most incisive and courageous thinkers on the right. And they're generally people who don't really talk in narrowly ideological terms. They think in big, ambitious ways. They're trying to build a broader tent. They are completely unstinting in their defense of Western values. I'm really proud of the team we built on that front.”
He added that outside of his own organization, Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh, Patrick Ruffini, and his former co-author Ross Douthat are must-reads. “In addition to being a very close friend, [Douthat] is someone who's thinking not just about the issues that we work on at the Manhattan Institute, but also bigger picture questions about religion and public life. What does a post-religious America look like? He’s someone who has a staggeringly prescient crystal ball; I’m a huge fan of his. I'd like to say if he does not win a Pulitzer Prize, that demonstrates that that institution really is utter nonsense.”
On the left, Salam added that “there are a lot of really interesting thinkers who are trying to reorient the left, trying to basically get the left to confront certain realities of what it means to grow an economy, what it means to foster public safety. Matt Yglesias deserves a huge amount of credit for being willing to pick fights. He's someone who I think pretty clearly moved to the center — that's the euphemism for having moved to the right — but I think that's to his credit, and I think it's useful to have someone like that within the Democratic coalition.”
Additionally, Salam said that “Josh Barro, [who] was actually a former Manhattan Institute scholar some years ago, [and] who is now on the center left, is someone who continues to be a really sharp voice of reason. Ruy Teixeira is someone I debated over the years over his emerging Democratic majority thesis, and he's someone who's really, really done a lot of soul searching and has been really indispensable.”
“There are a bunch of other people too, like Steve Teles, who’s a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, who's been a king of godfather to people in the abundance movement, as they call it,” he said. “David Shor has been a great truth teller. Jerusalem Demsas is someone who is further to the left, but someone who is taking those convictions seriously about what it actually means to build. There are a bunch of people who are really impressive.” Salam said that he is holding out hope that some of them will join him on the right.
“Part of me thinks maybe some of these guys are going to wind up on the right; we'll see what happens,” he said. “We'll see how the left responds, or maybe the right can benefit from engaging with some of their thinking.”
MI has long been at the forefront of America’s culture wars; its scholars are on the forefront of the battle against child genital mutilation surgeries, a battle that recently made its way to the Supreme Court. The next culture war that Salam is eager to tackle is “unfortunately literally the oldest cultural challenge, which is the poison of anti-Semitism.”
Salam tracks the spread of anti-Semitism to “elementary schools. You see this with ethnic studies curricula that are entrenching anti-Semitic tropes…This is something that is really dangerous for the future of the country, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves. And we at the Manhattan Institute are certainly going to do our best to make sure we get this right.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with Manhattan Institute president Reihan Salam, lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
Reihan, thanks for chatting today. Let’s start with some of the obvious phenomenons that we're seeing here. Over the past couple few years, we've seen Seattle elect a Republican City Attorney. In Cook County, Democrats just rejected a far left Democrat who was actually my college professor, who ran for District Attorney in their primary. Los Angeles elected a Republican-turned-independent as District Attorney. Multnomah County, which is the home of Portland, elected a Republican-turned-independent District Attorney. What do you think got the Democrats to this point?
Reihan Salam:
Part of it is the collapse of two-party politics in urban America. It's the nationalization of politics where people aren't necessarily engaged in thinking about what are the relevant state and local issues. But what this also means is that competitive politics are happening within primaries and in a context where people don't actually have reliable information on what people actually stand for, what candidates actually stand for. So this basically created the perfect conditions for a series of radicals who embrace decarceration rhetoric, who oftentimes are people who come out of elite institutions. These are people who are highly ideological, they are crusaders, and they recognized that elected prosecutors, these are people who oftentimes operate in the shadows. These are people where there isn't necessarily the same scrutiny of them as their mayor or governor, let's say. And so you're able to get pretty modest investment of resources by donors on the progressive left in order to capture these positions that have enormous consequences for public safety. But again, where you don't necessarily have a lot of public knowledge about who's doing what and when. It was the confluence of those two developments that is how we saw prosecutors go off the rails, both this collapse of competitive politics and the fact that these are elections where people don't really know what's going on. Politically, it's been really striking to see where the backlash is coming from: the backlash is coming from a whole range of communities that want accountability and competent leadership that reject extremist ideology, that reject the activist left. But these are communities that are oftentimes not the most important politically within the cities. So think about immigrants, for example, who, in some cases, aren't even naturalized immigrants. These are people who've been on the political sidelines for a very long time, until in San Francisco, they got off the sidelines. Or you're looking at working class, lower middle class, people who do not belong to unions and who do not work for government. These are also people who do not show up for every single election, but they're the people who, if someone were to tell them, ‘hey, did you know that they are literally people in elected office who decided that it is bad and racist to put people in prison who are repeat, chronic, violent offenders,’ they would find that totally insane. So the irony is that those of us who believe in law and order, who believe in public safety, actually we need to be the ones to get people off the sidelines. And I think you actually have seen that happening in some places where you see a really extreme deterioration.
Washington Reporter:
Which do you think is the next big urban city to elect a Republican or a Democrat-turned-independent or Democrat-turned-Republican?
Reihan Salam:
Well, look to the 2024 election, and look at the incredible erosion that you saw in support for progressive Democrats. Look at New Jersey having suddenly become a swing state. This is a really dramatic change. But even in places like Connecticut, California, you saw major, major erosion. And I think it shows that what was a radioactive Republican brand is less radioactive, there's more openness under these circumstances. So there are a bunch of different cities you could look to in the Pacific Northwest. To me, that seems really interesting and ripe. This is a place where you've seen the Republican Party essentially eliminated as a competitive political force. What that also means is that these guys don't necessarily have the ownership of the problems that you've seen arise. So again, let's not say that it's going to be going to be easy, but whether or not it's a partisan Republican, it could also be a centrist Democrat. It could also be an independent who's advancing a tough on crime message. I think you're going to see a lot of ferment there, and on the West Coast, more broadly.
Washington Reporter:
We saw Republicans and Trump specifically, do historically well in cities. He carried a ward in Chicago. That was the first time that's happened for a Republican presidential candidate this millennium. How do you see Republicans cementing those gains moving forward?
Reihan Salam:
This is an environment where national politics will matter to some degree. A year or two from now, if the Trump presidency is seen as a great success, that is going to buoy the Republican brand including in urban areas, if it's seen as something less than a stunning success, then that's going to be a drag. But I do think that these big cities are places where you're not just seeing mainstream Democrats in these places, you're seeing a really hard left faction that basically envisions government as being of, by, and for public employees, and that's why I think that you are going to see, almost regardless of the national political climate, some kind of pushback because of those folks who've been on the sidelines getting off the sidelines. And so that's my sense. As for the Republican Party in particular, what you want is a party that makes it plausible for naturalized citizens to be in the coalition. You want a party that makes it plausible for middle class, upper middle class people with college education who are concerned about declining public order to have them in the tent as well. The party has done really, really well with this kind of working class space. But you need to reach beyond that as well, in places where that working class space is not necessarily going to get you a majority. And I think that that's something that you're already seeing some people experiment with this, try this out, because you have folks who we at the Manhattan Institute call the ‘meritocracy voters.’ These are people who are both upper middle class but also lower middle class. They're disproportionately Asian, though not exclusively. A lot of them are Hispanic. A lot of them are white. If you look at Jewish voters in the northeast, some of these people are people who are primed to move when it comes to local issues, when you get a pitch that seems inclusive, that isn't hostile to you, where you are, to your identity, I think that that's going to be really, really important: meeting people where they are, showing up when it comes to community events, when it comes to ethnic outreach, just being there and demonstrating that this coalition is a genuinely multi-ethnic, inclusive coalition for law and order, public safety, meritocracy and prosperity.
Washington Reporter:
What do you think that on the flip side, the Democratic Party looks like moving forward? You see the battle between the forces of moderation, like Ritchie Torres type and John Fetterman, and progressivism, which is increasingly most of the active and energetic parts of their base.
Reihan Salam:
This is a huge opportunity for common sense Democrats, for mainstream Democrats who want to restore the party to sanity. We at MI, we're a nonpartisan organization, and we see this as an exciting moment for us too, because we want to see a competition for ideas between the reform minded center right, but also folks on the center left who want to compete to actually deliver prosperity, to deliver competent government. And when I look at someone like Ritchie Torres in particular, this is a really fascinating figure, because this is someone who has a deep understanding of the ravages of crime and disorder on working class communities, particularly working class communities of color. He gets it. He has the energy; he's actually willing to take on the establishment in very explicit, direct ways. Fetterman, similarly, as someone who I'm sure I disagree with on most important national issues, but when it comes to anti-Semitism, when it comes to the vile nature of how some extremists have celebrated the assassination of a 50-year old dad who is guilty of the supposed crime of being the CEO of an Obamacare-regulated health insurer, this is really important to send cultural signals that you are seeing and in tune with the American majority. And I think that Seth Moulton, the Massachusetts congressman who is speaking out about gender ideology, and how extreme the activist class has become, I think these are figures who are learning that lo and behold, if you actually get on board with the 70, 80 percent majority of Americans, actually there's going to be a political benefit for you, including in the Democratic Party. I think there are a lot of other people, a lot of other ambitious, scrappy, hungry Democrats who are going to be discovering this land, but the question is whether or not they can actually pull off meaningful change in the party at large. I'm not sure if that's going to be the case. And then you also have a divide between someone like Torres, who is an urban Democrat, who's speaking to this kind of working class base, and then you've got someone like a Josh Gottheimer, who's going to be running for Governor of New Jersey on a more kind of, call it, upper middle class friendly pitch that's going to be focused on low taxes. It's going to be really interesting to see where this goes. But I see a lot of energy and ambition in that reformist wing of the party.
Washington Reporter:
When it comes to Republicans, who do you pay attention to as political figures who you find interesting?
Reihan Salam:
There are a lot of new folks in the mix that I'm curious to see more from. How they evolve, where they land. Dave McCormick might be one of the most important Republicans in national politics right now, because he's someone who represents a swing state. He represents a state that has a deep interest in seeing a manufacturing revival, an industrial revival in the American heartland. But he's also someone who understands global finance, having been a legend of the hedge fund industry, having been a serial entrepreneur, and I think that he could become a really, really important figure in crafting what the right’s message is on national economic policy, and also an important figure in figuring out, ‘hey, look, the party is really thriving by connecting with non college-educated voters. But college educated voters matter. There are a lot of them out there. It's a growing constituency. They matter in close races.’ I think that he has a big, big opportunity there. Bill Hagerty is another person who similarly blends some of that elite business class experience, while understanding that the Trump GOP is different from what came before it. I think that those are two people that I think are really interesting, talented people, who have a lot of runway to have influence.
Washington Reporter:
What elections and events are flashpoints there for the left coming up that you see as moments, whether they're overstated or not, from which people will infer significance?
Reihan Salam:
New York is going to be big, both the New York City mayoral race, but also the gubernatorial race, and also when you look to the DNC chair race, it's been interesting to see this whole generation of Netroots progressives, online progressives, who cut their teeth in the Obama era, people like Ben Wikler, the party chair in Wisconsin, trying to consolidate their hold on the party. And that's going to be interesting, because you're seeing the fading of a generation of Democrats — Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, who are people who represent an older style of politics. They're people who were there during the Clinton presidency, and now you have a party that is really deeply divided between affluent progressives and a working class base that's disproportionately minority, where people are a lot more modern and where, I don't know if we've seen the bottom fall out in support from that constituency. So it's going to be really interesting to see if those affluent progressives can check themselves and understand that actually they don't have the numbers to be the dominant voice if they actually want to rally this coalition that's looking very battered and bruised right now. New York is where you're going to see how that hashes out.
Washington Reporter:
You wrote the book, Grand New Party in 2008, and you talked a lot about the potential for Republicans to win working class voters. In hindsight, what do you wish you had known as you were working on that book to ensure that it is the definitive working class GOP tome? What surprised you about how your predictions and suggestions did or did not get adopted by the GOP in the years since then?
Reihan Salam:
I think we got a lot of the big picture right. This book was written before the 2008 financial crisis, and I think the turn against market economics on the left and to a lesser extent on the right was an interesting development, certainly a conversation about inequality was very present, but we were arguing that ultimately, the inequality obsession mattered much less than questions of family structure and questions of cost of living and questions of whether or not working class, lower middle class families felt that they saw a path to building wealth and building family stability. That was interesting, as was the immigration issue. It's very striking to me that you had these failed efforts to achieve some kind of broader settlement of the issue. We were critical of McCain-Kennedy, and we were critical of these measures that were produced that were out of step with the conservative base. But it's kind of incredible how you never actually saw some kind of plausible settlement. You didn't see the left actually get chastened, prior to just now, the last two years, instead, you saw them get more and more extreme on the immigration issue, and that was really striking.
Washington Reporter:
Other than yourself, who do you feel like are instructive thinkers on the right now who are navigating these issues, whose opinions you find useful, instructive, incisive, controversial, wrong, interesting?
Reihan Salam:
Well, I'm proud to say that when it comes to thinkers who I think are getting the big picture right, the Manhattan Institute is home to many of them. Chris Rufo, Heather Mac Donald, Douglas Murray, Abigail Shrier; I think that we are now home to the most incisive and courageous thinkers on the right. And they're generally people who don't really talk in narrowly ideological terms. They think in big, ambitious ways. They're trying to build a broader tent. They are completely unstinting in their defense of Western values. I'm really proud of the team we built on that front. And in terms of other thinkers, there are so many interesting people floating out there, including people I don't always entirely agree with. The Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh is someone I find extremely funny, but also very insightful. I'd say that he's someone who's a kind of tough on crime liberal, tough on crime, cosmopolitan, liberal, and he has a talent for kind of seeing through can’t. So he's someone who I find very interesting. I don't know if you're interested thinkers on the left as well.
Washington Reporter:
That's a great transition to my next question, which is, what about on the left? You go on CNN all the time. Who do you find incisive?
Reihan Salam:
There are a lot of really interesting thinkers who are trying to reorient the left, trying to basically get the left to confront certain realities of what it means to grow an economy, what it means to foster public safety. Matt Yglesias deserves a huge amount of credit for being willing to pick fights. He's someone who I think pretty clearly moved to the center — that's the euphemism for having moved to the right — but I think that's to his credit, and I think it's useful to have someone like that within the Democratic coalition. Josh Barro was actually a former Manhattan Institute scholar some years ago, who is now on the center left, but he is someone who continues to be a really sharp voice of reason. Ruy Teixeira is someone I debated over the years over his emerging Democratic majority thesis, and he's someone who's really, really done a lot of soul searching and has been really indispensable. There are a bunch of other people too, like Steve Teles, who’s a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, who's been a king of godfather to people in the abundance movement, as they call it. David Shor has been a great truth teller. Jerusalem Demsas is someone who is further to the left, but someone who is taking those convictions seriously about what it actually means to build. There are a bunch of people who are really impressive. Part of me thinks maybe some of these guys are going to wind up on the right; we'll see what happens. We'll see how the left responds, or maybe the right can benefit from engaging with some of their thinking. By the way, one thinker on the right who occurs to me who's been just absolutely outstanding is, of course, Patrick Ruffini, someone who is an old friend and collaborator. And how could I forget the legend: Ross Douthat, who was my coauthor. In addition to being a very close friend, he is someone who's thinking not just about the issues that we work on the Manhattan Institute, but also bigger picture questions about religion and public life. What does a post-religious America look like? He’s someone who has a staggeringly prescient crystal ball; I’m a huge fan of his. I'd like to say if he does not win a Pulitzer Prize, that demonstrates that that institution really is utter nonsense.
Washington Reporter:
Going back to your point in Grand New Party, what do you think that Trump should do in his first 100 days to cement the gains with the working class voters and maybe peel over some of these left leaning writers to get on board with his agenda?
Reihan Salam:
Honestly, I don't think that there's very much that he can do to get thinkers on the left on board. I think that there's a lot of distrust and there's just deep animosity that's built up over time. I don't think that those are the folks who are going to be persuadable by it, but I do think that when it comes to cementing his gains, my emphasis is always on how you have to build credibility over time, so you first take steps where you're actually able to bring people in the tent. That's why I'm personally quite persuaded by the argument you're hearing from the Senate leadership that you ought to have a reconciliation bill that's really focused on the 60-40, 70-30, issues: defense, energy, border security. You ought to focus on those Democrats who won by very narrow margins just now. Or you want to focus on those who are going to be up for reelection in 2026 and you want to peel off a meaningful number of them, because even though you don't need them in a reconciliation process, necessarily, it is very helpful. It shows that you're making the overtures, even if they don't actually wind up voting for you. That is really important, really powerful, because it undermines a lot of the narratives about Trump and who he is and what the second Trump presidency will look like. How likely is that? I can't say it, but I think that that would be really, really powerful: focus on the big unifying issues of great power competition, keeping our streets safe, and most of all, getting the border under control, figuring out that there are hundreds of thousands of people who have deportation orders right now, and what are we going to do about that? I think that that is something that would be really be powerful in setting a foundation for what comes next. And that means, do not push the envelope in a way that's meant to thrill your online fan base. It's about basically moving public opinion in your direction so that in the second 100 days, in the third 100 days, he can start racking up wins, because he demonstrated competence and an ability to really build coalitions. I think that that would be very powerful.
Washington Reporter:
The Manhattan Institute has been at the forefront of the research against child genital mutilation as a policy. What's your thought on where this is going, and what do you see as the next culture war on the horizon?
Reihan Salam:
Well, I think the most important thing is that there are a lot of people who disagree about a great many things, but who are united in the belief that it's really important that we protect the integrity of medicine and the medical profession. I understand that people have a lot of opinions about these issues, but fundamentally, from my perspective, the really relevant policy issue is what is happening with minors? What is happening with children? Are we seeing medical practices that are grounded in evidence, or are we seeing medical practices that reflect an ideological understanding rather than sound evidence? The thing that has really united people is not the question of ‘should we respect people who belong to sexual minorities who are struggling with their gender identity?’ I don't think that that's what this is about. It's possible to be compassionate, humane, respectful and tolerant, while also saying that we are very concerned about irreversible medical interventions and very concerned about whether or not we're doing things to children that those children may later come to regret. That is really important for making sure that we're really focused on the right issues. This is not about disrespecting people, this is really about making sure that the medical profession is doing the job that we’re trusting it to do, which is to think long term, and not act because some radical activists, some legislators who don't know what they're talking about, who are not really thinking about evidence in a rigorous, careful way, to end up imposing rules that are going to really harm children over the long term.
Washington Reporter:
And what do you see as the next hot button culture war issue that either you guys are going to engage on with a Manhattan Institute standpoint?
Reihan Salam:
This is not a new issue, unfortunately. It’s literally the oldest cultural challenge, which is the poison of anti-Semitism. This is something where we thought about this. There are a lot of people who have thought about this campus issue. There are a lot of people who have thought about this as a short term issue. I've come to believe, and reporting by Abigail Shrier has strongly suggested, that actually, we're looking at this poisonous anti-Semitic ideology, that certainly centers on poisonous anti-Zionist sentiment. But it's actually much broader than that. You see it being smuggled into schools in all sorts of ways. And I'm not talking about colleges here, to be clear; I'm talking about elementary schools. You see this with ethnic studies curricula that are entrenching anti-Semitic tropes. This is something that I think is really alarming, and it's something that all Americans need to be aware of and concerned about and educated about. So that's something that I honestly don't know if it’s going to matter politically. I have no idea. But as someone who runs a nonpartisan research organization that's really focused on solutions, that's focused on improving public policy, that is something I'm very concerned about. And when it comes to politics, I will say that this is an issue that should absolutely resonate with Republicans, Democrats, independents, whatever political party you belong to. This is something that is really dangerous for the future of the country, and I hope it gets the attention it deserves. And we at the Manhattan Institute are certainly going to do our best to make sure we get this right.
Washington Reporter:
Do you think that with Trump in the White House that there is a path for a Republican to be governor of New York in 2026 and if so, what does it take to get them there?
Reihan Salam:
I'm taking off my hat as the head of a nonpartisan organization. I'm just talking to you as a political analyst. My view is that national politics will matter. The conventional wisdom, which I think is probably right, is that when you have a an incumbent of a given political party, that's going to buoy the out party, that's going to buoy the opposition when it comes to midterm elections, and that's true both in congressional elections, but also in statewide elections. However, that is not some iron law of history, and if you have the right candidate, and if you have the right issue set, you could have a different outcome. And in New York state, it happens that we'll have, I imagine, a competitive primary, both on the Republican side and on the Democratic side. But without playing favorites, I think Mike Lawler, who just won a very heavily contested race in the suburbs, the northern suburbs of New York City, this is a guy who is very strikingly moderate. He's someone who distance himself in various ways from President-elect Trump when he was running for president. He is someone who actually came out as a cosponsor of the PRO Act. Now, the PRO Act, in my view, is an utter disaster when it comes to substance, but to me, it also tells me that Congressman Lawler is someone who understands that he's not going to be able to run as a down the line conservative when it comes to winning statewide in New York. I think that he's really interesting. And he's not the only Republican who could be compelling. Because when Lee Zeldin ran in New York, he had some liabilities. This was an incredibly talented, tenacious candidate, but he's also someone who's very closely associated with President Trump. He's someone who voted against certifying the election results in 2020 and he's someone who had a pro-life record. He's someone who I have enormous admiration for, but was someone, when you think about the electorate and New York and the Democratic Party powers that be, he had a lot of ammunition against him. Lawler is someone who has, in a way, it seems, observed what Zeldin did most effectively, and has tried to, I can't say whether or not he tries deliberately, but he doesn't have some of the vulnerabilities that Zeldin had. So that's going to be really interesting, especially because I think of the Democratic side, we'll see if Ritchie Torres actually decides to run for governor. But if he did, and if he were the nominee, he would be incredibly formidable. And then you could have two young members of Congress who are both highly intelligent, who understand politics deeply, and who, in some ways, might have some overlap in their agendas for revitalizing in New York state. So I think that's very likely we're getting a big change at the statewide level in New York, regardless of the party label of who wins.
Washington Reporter:
Do you think there’s a way in which either Torres or Gov. Kathy Hochul are both on the ballot in November with third party fusion voting?
Reihan Salam:
I find it very hard to imagine that Torres would run if he were not the Democratic nominee working to get in the race; he is someone who is very devoted to the Democratic Party, and that's just my sense. I just wouldn't see him if you're trying to split the vote. Maybe you can have a credible independent candidate in that race. I think it would be challenging, and that person would need immense resources, or the ability to raise immense resources, to really make a dent. So I don't find that scenario that plausible, but it's certainly interesting.
Washington Reporter:
Did you see that the mayor of Detroit quit the Democratic Party, is an independent, and is running for governor as an independent?
Reihan Salam:
I did see that, and it's very interesting. It's going to raise a lot of questions. I've even seen some rumors that Pete Buttigieg, as I understand it, a lifelong Hoosier, is contemplating running in Michigan, which would be interesting. I have a lot of time for carpet bagging, just because when you think about the corporate world, look at Brian Niccol, who did a great job at Chipotle. Why not see what he can do at Starbucks? I don't think that's necessarily the worst thing in the world to think, ‘hey, I really killed it in Nebraska. Let's see what I can do in Minnesota.’ But it's certainly not something that people love. And when it comes to Mayor Mike Duggan, he's an ambitious guy, and the fact that an ambitious guy chooses to do this tells you a lot. Whether or not this is going to be the right lane for him, we'll see. Is this because he didn't want to go all the way over to running as a Republican? And does this say more about the Democratic brand or the Republican brand? I couldn't tell you, but it's certainly very interesting.
Washington Reporter:
New York City: do you think that Eric Adams is going to become a Republican? What do you make of what's going on over there?
Reihan Salam:
I don't know exactly how this is going to shake out. I don't think we've seen the field yet. I believe there are going to be other people getting in the mix. Of course, former Governor Andrew Cuomo is someone who is looming on the horizon as a very formidable contender. I think that someone can shake up the race, who has name recognition could be really, really meaningful. I want to suspend judgment until I actually see what the race looks like. And with Adams, look. He is someone who is a really interesting figure. He is someone who very shrewdly identified that the 2021 race is going to be a quality of life race. Now it also happens that he was hamstrung by the fact that New York City is laboring under a series of laws passed by the state legislature in Albany that really inhibit what local law enforcement can do to address the challenge of disorder. Now you could argue that Adams could have done a lot more to reshape the political playing field, especially early in his tenure, when he had a lot more leverage. You could criticize his record in office in all sorts of ways, but I think that he does deserve some credit for recognizing that New Yorkers are very, very frustrated by what they saw as the deterioration in public order, what they saw and what was an undeniable reality. That's not just about homicide, that's not about major crimes. That's about people feeling unsafe, because you have people who are chronic offenders. You have people who are chronically mentally ill who are not dealt with in an expeditious and also compassionate, humane way. And like it or not, he's now the person who owns that. He was also very aggressive in drawing attention to the city's migrant crisis. But the problem there is that he was rattling the tin cup and asking the Biden administration to come save him. And the Biden administration was saying that these are problems of your own making. These are things that are unique to New York City and New York State, the so-called right to shelter. These legal settlements that tie the hands of local officials who actually could say, ‘I'm not going to let this tie my hands,’ who could take some more decisive action. I think that he's in a really tough spot. And if he loses the Democratic primary and then decides that he wants to run as a Republican, are Republicans going to want that? Are they going to want to see him take that mantle? Or maybe he decides right now, I'm going to run a more spirited campaign. I'm going to recognize where I went wrong, and I'm really going to try to build a different kind of coalition, maybe. But that's going to require a lot of energy and a lot of willingness to confront where he's gone wrong, and you never want to count someone out, especially someone who is a talented politician like Adams, but it's a tall order to see someone make that kind of a change.
Washington Reporter:
I'm curious how you think cities, like New York City and beyond, are reckoning with the COVID pandemic. We saw a massive 525 page report out of the COVID Select Committee in Congress about the failures there. COVID hit cities really hard. How are they reckoning with the lessons of that pandemic, and how does that affect their politics like education and public safety going forward? Looking at Cuomo specifically, are these policies liabilities, or will he try and say ‘the Republicans are persecuting me. You should actually vote for me despite these policies I did’?
Reihan Salam:
Well, there's a lot there. I think that the biggest impact of COVID is its fiscal impact, where you basically saw a massive infusion of public dollars into state and local governments, a massive infusion of public dollars where there really needs to be a reckoning. How are these dollars spent? Where did the money go? Who did they benefit? To what extent did we get this infusion of money and then create and new recurring expenses? I think there's a reasonable case to make that this money was misused to such a crazy egregious degree that it really demands that we rethink a lot about urban governance in the United States. I think that it was really that bad. But as to Cuomo particular policies from that era, I absolutely think he's going to have to talk about that, understand exactly what happened, how he needs to reckon with that. The advantage that he has is that nobody else has reckoned with it either when it comes to New York City and New York City politics. So to the extent that he has to own up to that, it's also going to be true for many other members of the local political class who marched in lockstep with him at the time. And also I think a lot of Americans for better or for worse want to move on from that time. They want to forget it. They just don't want to reflect on it very much. And in a funny way, that actually ends up rewarding some of the bad actors from that period. Think about teachers unions. Do you really see a huge backlash to them within Democratic politics? Do you really see people saying ‘maybe these guys shouldn't have the enormous power that they have because of the incredible damage they've done to young people’? I don't see that. We might want to see some righteous reckoning over the missteps that happened during that time. I'm just not sure we're going to get it. Maybe the righteous reckoning was actually the Trump victory in 2024, but when it comes to local and state politics, I'm not sure I see it. Certainly not by the time you're getting to 2025 or 2026.
Washington Reporter:
Finally, I'm not going to ask you to announce that you're going to run for mayor in 2025 or 2029. But what would it take to get someone like you, or you specifically, to say, ‘I'm throwing my hat in the ring, not symbolically, but because I think I can actually win in New York City’? Is there hope for either someone like you, or you specifically, to ever run a mayoral campaign because they think they can win it? William F. Buckley, who ran National Review, which you worked at, famously did just this.
Reihan Salam:
Well, certainly not me. You need someone who is actually a really capable retail politician. But do I think that a conservative could be elected? 100 percent. But I think that it's going to have to be someone who understands the city, who is going to get people off the sidelines, particularly immigrants. It’s not going to be someone who is perceived as a kind of old school Republican from the heartland who doesn't get urban American. It's going to be someone who lives and breathes this place and who understands what were the core values, where the kind of outer borough working class sensibility aligns with conservatism, and it's going to be about upward mobility and meritocracy. It's going to be about those core values, and it's not going to be reflexively anti-government. It's going to be about making government work for citizens. Lightning can strike in a bottle. If you have the right person, if you have the right talent. But, I don't see the stars aligning for that person in 2025 but I can certainly see a moderate do very, very well this time around. And I'm eager to see that happen. But you need people to get up and do it. And New York City has some unique campaign finance laws with some unique qualities, where you have matching grants. A wide variety of people can run credible campaigns. But you're gonna need to have a lot of energy. You're gonna have to have a very, very thick skin.
Washington Reporter:
That was fascinating. Thanks so much for chatting, and for hosting our Christmas party with us this week!