An Op-Ed By Public Advocate Candidate Marty Dolan
The party fracture
The NYC Mayoral election has brought into the open what my campaigns vs Representatives Jamaal Bowman (in 2023/24) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (in 2024) highlighted: the split between Democratic Centrists and the Progressives.
This fracture originated in the post-Clinton/Obama period, Successes with Obamacare and the end of the cold war may have lulled the Dems to sleep. Stunned by the 2016 loss, the Centrists reflexively fell into a simple and uninspiring anti-Trump opposition strategy which unfortunately persists today.
With no real new Centrist thinking the Progressives’ unease about overseas policies, permanently changing job markets, and George Floyd’s death created real political power on the far left (note: ‘too’ far left is ‘Radical; just far left enough is Progressive).
On top of this, the party whiffed on immigration, criminal reform, and the Joe Biden off-ramp in 2022. Even though these are real doozies – they are fixable, not permanent mistakes.
The more chronic problem is Democratic tolerance of low standards in the blue cities. Voters will forgive ‘mistakes’ – we all make them — but what’s happening in our cities is not just a mistake we can say “we’re sorry” for.
The Democratic run cities have chronic problems. We’d better work in unity to fix these.
How can we work together?
Centrist vs Progressive scorecard
The Progressives have incredible energy. On cold winter nights, they turn out for political meetings. Their weaknesses are they chafe at Centrists’ seniority (experience!) but most importantly they lack focus: many small policies, typically complaints, not mainstream boldness. NYC has daily marches, but very little new legislation.
The Centrists’ have experience but don’t connect to progressive voters. Their biggest weakness is their federal anti-Trump fixation. Being anti-Trump, and older, causes them to shrug off poor municipal conditions. They miss the glaring fact the Democrats control local legislative majorities.
The obvious combination? Centrists and Progressives should pause the protests and pass local legislation which can act as test cases for national rollout. And not pointless confrontational legislation (eg, sanctuary city laws) targeted at non-citizens but local state and city laws which can help citizens PROGRESS.
Who’s doing this already – the Republicans. MAGA vs Centrist fractures haven’t prevented the Republicans from substantive local ideas such as, in Florida, eliminating property taxes.
Our checklist: think local, aim for wider appeal, be bolder, keep it simple. Mike Bloomberg, for example, hit these buttons by eliminating cigarette smoking, planting trees, and building amazing infrastructure. FDR, maybe the greatest Democrat of all time – created social security and unemployment insurance.
The Dems needs programs, not protests.
A city-based revival can unite the Democrats
The Dems biggest opportunity is to fix the cities. We can drive innovative policies through our legislatures.
What’s bugging our cities? Centrists intuitively know what makes a community hum, but they just don’t say it.
Answer: the schools.
In NYC’s $115 billion budget, the $40 billion school budget jumps out. NYC spends $500,000 to get a kid from K to 12. But only 50% of the 1 million kids can read, write, or do math at grade level.
This is where the real problem is. Kids who can’t read, write, or do math at grade level are streaming towards a lifetime affordability crisis. They can’t great jobs at JPMorgan or Google – they suffer the indignity of delivering food on bikes to kids who grew up in better school systems.
So then the city spends another $35 billion for social services to help. Ineffective education financially is like cigarette smoking – it gets you later. $40 billion badly spent drives later spending of $35 billion. These expenses crowd every other department, then there are cuts, services are squeezed to threadbare, and 500,000 middle class taxpayers leave.
Why do we fail? Our leaders are not focused on our biggest budget item — the schools – and the downstream social services budget mess it creates. They have wrongly focused on overseas wars (but ignored our 170,000 veterans), the southern border, virtue signaling, criminal/bail reform, Trump, you name it – everything EXCEPT our biggest budget item and highest returning investment: our kids’ educations.
The model is already right in front of us. The SUNY system subsidizes young local learners with lower college costs on the bet that the state will later collect higher taxes from these more qualified people.
Our purpose as a society
Our core purpose is to help develop 25-year-old citizen-adults to become taxpayers, home buyers, and business and community leaders.
In our cities, we need to do much better. The Progressive/Radical solution of lower food costs and $3 bus passes is not enough – it’s a band-aid.
We need to combine the energy and ideas of the progressives with the legislative experience of the centrists to address school results which are below standard.
When we unite our party to focus on getting 10-25 year olds to grow from learners to earners we will stream our kids towards the dignity of long-term livelihoods, lower our long-term budget strain and bring new voters to our team.
New Progressive policies
Here are how New Progressive ideas can unify our party.
- We must revise our schools/curriculum: no tolerating illiteracy, more practical, more job streaming, and teaching civics. The future Public Advocate (me) should bring focus to education and its lower performing schools and enable resources as needed. The after-school programs must be restored – kids’ confidence can grow in many ways at school not only in the classroom.
- No income tax until age 26. We should differentiate our young learners/earners by rebating all the taxes previously deducted from age 10-25 (up to $25,000) to young earners on their 26th birthday, to be used then for a home purchase, retraining, paying off student loans, or for investment accounts. This program will give parents, teachers, and kids an unambiguous message about the purpose of learning — and a fun on-line tool to track their progress.
- Parents / guardians should have a perpetual 10% rebate on taxes paid by their kids. We need to reinforce the role of the family and parents in creating self-sufficiency.
- We must courageously address the reality that we cannot get kids off to good starts in 177,000 NYCHA apartments. We need to create a path for home ownership for NYCHA resident families. I propose $40,000 transferrable equity vouchers and $80,000 mortgages for each $150,000 market value apartment. This would be a $20 billion injection and an improved home learning environment and messaging to our 10-25 year olds. This program can also free up 1,000s of affordable apartments very quickly.
We should be bold with infrastructure too – by tying Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn’s waterfronts with a beautiful system of purpose-built bike/pedestrian only bridges.
Let’s show the world and national voters that NYC is a leader again.
Let’s get back to basics. Let’s work together – in Unity – for our kids.
Marty Dolan is candidate for Public Advocate on the
Unity Party line in November and the leader of the
New Progressive wing of the Democratic Party in NYC.
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