More from the Torres v. Hochul primary talk from yesterday:
Torres planning a listening tour of New York. Says his main issues with Hochul aren't on policy but her erratic governing style, citing the congestion pricing flip-flops, and her very low approvals.
He says Hochul may be the new Biden who is too unpopular to win. He says Lawler is…
More from the Torres v. Hochul primary talk from yesterday:
Torres planning a listening tour of New York. Says his main issues with Hochul aren't on policy but her erratic governing style, citing the congestion pricing flip-flops, and her very low approvals.
He says Hochul may be the new Biden who is too unpopular to win. He says Lawler is stronger.
Hochul believes she contributed to the flips in the House races.
In any case I am not usually open to Democratic primaries unless there are very serious electability questions. Hochul suffers from several self inflicted issues but also a huge level of state level misogyny as well. I'm undecided about this.
On the Israel issue, by the by, both Hochul and Torres are 'pro Israel' if you really want to boil the issue down to black and white. Which is not advisable.
There’s a huge difference between them as to how they deal with those who disagree with them, and the priority they put on the issue. I’d like to see another candidate than Hochul, but certainly not this guy.
Yes. She halted it briefly before the election and then popped right back up after the election to bring it back. Suozzi, etc. were probably begging her.
And, by the way, if we want to talk about places where "Democrats have lost touch with the common man", congestion pricing would likely be a prime example of that.
It goes a little something like this, "Hi common man/woman, I'm a member of the city council. As far as you can tell, my main job seems to be standing on steps somewhere with 10 angry people behind me, grandstanding about problems. Good news, I've just voted in congestion pricing. Which means that for the privilege of getting up at 5:30 am to commute in terrible traffic to your crap job that doesn't pay you enough, you'll have to give the MTA fat cats $15 a day so that they can waste it like they waste billions of dollars a year. You're welcome, thank your local Democrat."
I would personally consider it pretty nuts to drive to work in NYC but I'm located close to the Metro North line. I found a statistics which says that the average income of a car owner in the city is $90,000. Not exactly Richie Rich.
It's not even all of NYC, it covers Manhattan below Central Park.
I don't know the transit habits of most of NYC, but I'd expect that most "common" people that work in Manhattan are taking public transit. I tried to find some statistics but the only NYC commuting data I found in my quick search explicitly did not cover Manhattan.
There's also a lot of traffic to justify this so by simple deduction there also has to be a large pile of people that do drive as their commute, but throughput is going to be the limiting factor here.
My guess? The people most affected by this won't be New Yorkers: it'll be people from New Jersey that don't have good access to public transit into Manhattan.
Fair or not it very likely will be a bit unpopular at first. Most good policies that deal with limited resources (road space in this instance) are unpopular at first. That's a natural result as they need to reapportion that limited resource in a way that results in better utilization for society and inevitably causes some people to need to change their default behaviors. Once the policy settles in it becomes popular or at least accepted.
This is a good policy that might hurt a bit in the short term but will cause less hurt in the long term if we keep it.
Other cities often exempt vehicles with two or more people from road tolls or congestion-traffic charges. When you in addition have access to car-pool and can get to work or your destination faster, that’s an inspiration – and it reduces the number of vehicles on the road. Many places it doesn’t take much reduction to greatly improve the traffic flow.
I know little about how NYC is considering congestion charges, but will it include such ideas?
As far as I am aware, there is no provision for car pools. There are low income exemptions (and I'm sure cops and certain other blessed city workers will be able to get around it).
It's very difficult to believe that this would do much to actually make the subways better (billions upon billions are already spent and they are getting worse) and plenty of common people drive.
Boston's T was doing quite horribly as recently as last year. It still cost billions upon billions of dollars to function even at that unimpressive level. It needed even more funding. It got a partial infusion of funding to catch up on decades of lapsed maintenance — and new leadership, which was absolutely critical — and the system is doing far better right now, with further improvements planned through 2027 if the funding can be maintained to enable those improvements (not certain).
NYC's subway needs are far greater than Boston's and will consequently cost far more too. I wouldn't be shocked if the MTA could seriously benefit from a change in leadership, but often insufficient funding is the core issue facing these kinds of systems.
I mean, your last paragraph is the issue. The MTA needs reform, but it isn't going to get it, so people feel like they are paying a lot of money for nothing. It's not going to be popular with them. That's it. Like everything, we'll see how that negatively affects us politically.
Completely disagree. It's wealthy New Jersyites bitching the most about contesting pricing. Modernizing NYC public transit helps the working class/working poor the most.
Not that I much trust position polls (they clearly make it look like voters are more liberal than they are) but they showed that the pause of the implication was about twice as popular as continuing forward with implementation. My pretty strong feeling is that this will be pretty unpopular in general with NY and NJ voters. Again, most folks would reasonably expect that this cost won't improve service much, as the MTA is deeply incompetent. We'd all better hope the MTA changes.
Hochul will suffer from misogyny, her own record, and general mediocre campaign abilities. Torres will suffer from his race, orientation, being from NYC and a former council member (which is something I personally take a dim view of). I suspect there is someone stronger than Hochul out there (James) but I don't think Torres is it.
I had always assumed she was planning for Governor someday but she could pretty easily waltz into the Mayor's job right now. It is a political dead end but being Governor of NY also feels like a bit of a cruddy job at the moment. It also occurs to me that being Mayor might have some pension benefits, but I'd need to research that. It's possible being AG counts toward her 20.
People shouldn’t shy away from primarying unpopular incumbents. If the Republicans nominate a remotely normal candidate, they can probably beat Hochul next time, and we can’t let that happen.
I’m from Illinois, and I keep thinking of 2014, when Pat Quinn was the least popular governor in the entire country but received no serious primary challengers and then lost to a Republican in the general who destroyed our state for 4 years. That could easily happen in New York, and we can’t risk it.
Could be I’m way off base, but I’ve always thought of Kathy Hochul and Eric Adams as semi-Republicans. Still, that’s a helluva lot better than the real ilk, especially the current MAGA mutations.
completely disagree with you; Trump will kill most '26 Republican governor nominees in almost all blue\purple states(watch Virginia in '25 for the swing)
I hope you’re right, but then in that case we should primary out Hochul because she’s bad at her job and shouldn’t be governor, and Torres (and most other Democrats in New York) would do a better job as governor and would win the general anyways. Either way, I can’t think of any reason why we shouldn’t try to primary her out.
More from the Torres v. Hochul primary talk from yesterday:
Torres planning a listening tour of New York. Says his main issues with Hochul aren't on policy but her erratic governing style, citing the congestion pricing flip-flops, and her very low approvals.
He says Hochul may be the new Biden who is too unpopular to win. He says Lawler is stronger.
Hochul believes she contributed to the flips in the House races.
In any case I am not usually open to Democratic primaries unless there are very serious electability questions. Hochul suffers from several self inflicted issues but also a huge level of state level misogyny as well. I'm undecided about this.
On the Israel issue, by the by, both Hochul and Torres are 'pro Israel' if you really want to boil the issue down to black and white. Which is not advisable.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/22/torres-hochul-governor-campaign-00191249
There’s a huge difference between them as to how they deal with those who disagree with them, and the priority they put on the issue. I’d like to see another candidate than Hochul, but certainly not this guy.
Didn't congestion pricing go into effect? Were they just waiting until after the election?
Yes. She halted it briefly before the election and then popped right back up after the election to bring it back. Suozzi, etc. were probably begging her.
And, by the way, if we want to talk about places where "Democrats have lost touch with the common man", congestion pricing would likely be a prime example of that.
Explain please?
It goes a little something like this, "Hi common man/woman, I'm a member of the city council. As far as you can tell, my main job seems to be standing on steps somewhere with 10 angry people behind me, grandstanding about problems. Good news, I've just voted in congestion pricing. Which means that for the privilege of getting up at 5:30 am to commute in terrible traffic to your crap job that doesn't pay you enough, you'll have to give the MTA fat cats $15 a day so that they can waste it like they waste billions of dollars a year. You're welcome, thank your local Democrat."
"Oh, I'll also, the congestion pricing won't actually make congestion much better and we'll need to raise the rates real soon. Again, you're welcome."
I'm not an expert on NYC, live very far away, but does the "common man" drive to work if they work in NYC?
I would personally consider it pretty nuts to drive to work in NYC but I'm located close to the Metro North line. I found a statistics which says that the average income of a car owner in the city is $90,000. Not exactly Richie Rich.
It's not even all of NYC, it covers Manhattan below Central Park.
I don't know the transit habits of most of NYC, but I'd expect that most "common" people that work in Manhattan are taking public transit. I tried to find some statistics but the only NYC commuting data I found in my quick search explicitly did not cover Manhattan.
There's also a lot of traffic to justify this so by simple deduction there also has to be a large pile of people that do drive as their commute, but throughput is going to be the limiting factor here.
My guess? The people most affected by this won't be New Yorkers: it'll be people from New Jersey that don't have good access to public transit into Manhattan.
Fair or not it very likely will be a bit unpopular at first. Most good policies that deal with limited resources (road space in this instance) are unpopular at first. That's a natural result as they need to reapportion that limited resource in a way that results in better utilization for society and inevitably causes some people to need to change their default behaviors. Once the policy settles in it becomes popular or at least accepted.
This is a good policy that might hurt a bit in the short term but will cause less hurt in the long term if we keep it.
Other cities often exempt vehicles with two or more people from road tolls or congestion-traffic charges. When you in addition have access to car-pool and can get to work or your destination faster, that’s an inspiration – and it reduces the number of vehicles on the road. Many places it doesn’t take much reduction to greatly improve the traffic flow.
I know little about how NYC is considering congestion charges, but will it include such ideas?
As far as I am aware, there is no provision for car pools. There are low income exemptions (and I'm sure cops and certain other blessed city workers will be able to get around it).
I think that the common man takes the subway, bus, and/or train and would like them to run more efficiently.
Which is in large part what the congestion pricing would pay for
Or, it could just be another way for the folks who run the MTA to turn their 45 billion in unsustainable debt into 60 billion in unsustainable debt.
It's very difficult to believe that this would do much to actually make the subways better (billions upon billions are already spent and they are getting worse) and plenty of common people drive.
Public transit is expensive.
Boston's T was doing quite horribly as recently as last year. It still cost billions upon billions of dollars to function even at that unimpressive level. It needed even more funding. It got a partial infusion of funding to catch up on decades of lapsed maintenance — and new leadership, which was absolutely critical — and the system is doing far better right now, with further improvements planned through 2027 if the funding can be maintained to enable those improvements (not certain).
NYC's subway needs are far greater than Boston's and will consequently cost far more too. I wouldn't be shocked if the MTA could seriously benefit from a change in leadership, but often insufficient funding is the core issue facing these kinds of systems.
I mean, your last paragraph is the issue. The MTA needs reform, but it isn't going to get it, so people feel like they are paying a lot of money for nothing. It's not going to be popular with them. That's it. Like everything, we'll see how that negatively affects us politically.
Completely disagree. It's wealthy New Jersyites bitching the most about contesting pricing. Modernizing NYC public transit helps the working class/working poor the most.
Not that I much trust position polls (they clearly make it look like voters are more liberal than they are) but they showed that the pause of the implication was about twice as popular as continuing forward with implementation. My pretty strong feeling is that this will be pretty unpopular in general with NY and NJ voters. Again, most folks would reasonably expect that this cost won't improve service much, as the MTA is deeply incompetent. We'd all better hope the MTA changes.
Hochul will suffer from misogyny, her own record, and general mediocre campaign abilities. Torres will suffer from his race, orientation, being from NYC and a former council member (which is something I personally take a dim view of). I suspect there is someone stronger than Hochul out there (James) but I don't think Torres is it.
If James doesn’t run for mayor I think she’ll run for governor.
I had always assumed she was planning for Governor someday but she could pretty easily waltz into the Mayor's job right now. It is a political dead end but being Governor of NY also feels like a bit of a cruddy job at the moment. It also occurs to me that being Mayor might have some pension benefits, but I'd need to research that. It's possible being AG counts toward her 20.
my take on James is simple, she only runs for Mayor to stop Cuomo; otherwise, she waits 'her turn' and runs for the most likely open seat after Hochul
Torres is also way too online.
People shouldn’t shy away from primarying unpopular incumbents. If the Republicans nominate a remotely normal candidate, they can probably beat Hochul next time, and we can’t let that happen.
I’m from Illinois, and I keep thinking of 2014, when Pat Quinn was the least popular governor in the entire country but received no serious primary challengers and then lost to a Republican in the general who destroyed our state for 4 years. That could easily happen in New York, and we can’t risk it.
Could be I’m way off base, but I’ve always thought of Kathy Hochul and Eric Adams as semi-Republicans. Still, that’s a helluva lot better than the real ilk, especially the current MAGA mutations.
Hochul is a Democrat no doubt. Adams seems like a secret Maga, only ran as a Democrat to get elected
Well, must admit I really started wondering when I saw who Governor Hochul first wanted to appoint to her State Supreme Court.
That's new York transactional stuff, you scratch my back I'll scratch yours.
completely disagree with you; Trump will kill most '26 Republican governor nominees in almost all blue\purple states(watch Virginia in '25 for the swing)
I hope you’re right, but then in that case we should primary out Hochul because she’s bad at her job and shouldn’t be governor, and Torres (and most other Democrats in New York) would do a better job as governor and would win the general anyways. Either way, I can’t think of any reason why we shouldn’t try to primary her out.
I am perfectly fine with a primary but I seriously doubt Torres ability to actually win against hochul
I wouldn't assume that Torres would win the general election.
I don’t believe that he would do worse than Hochul.