Jessica Ramos Interview Transcript

A transcript of The New York Editorial Board's interview with mayoral candidate Jessica Ramos.

Jessica Ramos, a State Senator representing the 13th District in Queens and a candidate in the June 2025 Democratic primary for Mayor, spoke with The New York Editorial Board on the morning of January 10, 2025. (photo by Juan Manuel Benítez)

Participating journalists: Juan Manuel Benítez, Nicole Gelinas, Josh Greenman, Christina Greer, Alyssa Katz, Ben Max, Akash Mehta, Harry Siegel, Ben Smith, Liena Zagare.

Full Transcript

Ben Smith
We’re just gonna go around and ask you questions; you’ve done this before. But I just want to say thanks, first of all, because, boy, it’s an era when people running for office don’t actually have to talk to journalists. And we’ve at some level lost our ability to force you.

Jessica Ramos
I disagree with that. We have to talk to you. You talk to the public. You transfer information to the public. You’re influencers, the original influencers I guess. Whatever that word means nowadays. Many of you know the type of work I did at City Hall and in the labor movement prior to running for elected office. So I have a deep respect for everything that you guys do.

Ben Smith
We appreciate it. Juan Manuel, you want to start it off?

Immigration Enforcement / Trump Administration / 2024 Election Results

Juan Manuel Benítez
[Congress is heading toward passage] with bipartisan support what they call the Laken Riley Act. It would expand the federal government’s mandate to detain undocumented immigrants and include those convicted or charged of minor offenses, including burglary, larceny, theft and shoplifting. As mayor, would you comply with that mandate or not? And if you wouldn’t comply, how are you going to stop the federal government from retaliating against New York City?

Jessica Ramos
First and foremost, we would have to confer with the city’s attorneys and make sure that we understand the parameters of the mandate and exactly what it is that we have to comply with. I think that for those who have been convicted of crimes, well, that law already exists. There’s already a collaboration, or there should be, in practice, between the municipal government and the federal government so that those folks are held accountable for their wrongdoing. I have concerns, of course, when people have not been convicted and we’re merely talking about accusations, being that the accusations may or may not be true. There may or may not be a preponderance of evidence to convict that person of those accusations. So I would want to protect the right to due process of that New Yorker, no matter what their status is.

Juan Manuel Benítez
And how would you do that? How are you going to stop the Trump administration from saying, “You know what, Mayor Ramos, you don’t want to comply with this? You don’t want to cooperate with the federal government and with ICE, so we’re going to cut federal funding to the city”?

Jessica Ramos
I don’t know that I would be able to stop a Trump mandate and this is why I started out by saying that we would have to confer with our attorneys to see what wiggle room there is. Certainly despite my deep disagreements with President-elect Trump on a myriad of issues, I still want to have at least the semblance of a professional relationship, precisely because we need so much federal funding for a lot of the things that we already do and a lot of the things that I want us to do. Especially when it comes to upgrading our infrastructure, especially our sewage and water lines. A lot of that work is going to end up being done precisely by immigrants who have gone through our apprenticeship trainings and are going to be a big part of rebuilding the city in that way. Much in the same way that is being spoken about rebuilding the parts of California that are currently under fire, unfortunately.

So I’m hoping that we have enough of a relationship with the Trump administration for dialogue on issues, even as tricky as these, and that we’re able to make the case for protecting people’s due process.

Juan Manuel Benítez
Do you think there’s a disconnect? You ran unopposed for reelection. You got reelected with more than 90% of the vote, but at the same time, certain parts of your district went red —

Jessica Ramos
Oh, the Trump-Ramos vote was strong [in my district] —

Juan Manuel Benítez
So is there a disconnect between your policies and what your constituents really want right now?

Jessica Ramos
Well, I would say that they voted for me because they support not only my policies but my record, and they know that as someone who is born and raised and raising in my district, I care deeply about our streets and our general well-being.

I think that voting for both Donald Trump and myself perhaps can be reconciled in that we are not particularly perceived to be establishment-type candidates, and that even though we have very different style and very different rhetoric, we speak to working-class New Yorkers. I think above all, especially Latinos and working-class people in my district, we are a bunch of people who, either our parents or they themselves came to this country to work and make money, and that’s, I think, what they’re responding to.

My constituents know I raised the minimum wage. My constituents, and especially those of us who come from mixed-status families, had people who benefited from the Excluded Workers Fund that I won during the pandemic. And to me, my style of progressivism has been directly about rebuilding the middle class in New York through work and through living wages, and that’s going to continue to be my priority.

Closing Rikers, Building New Jails / Serious Mental Illness

Harry Siegel
So you were an early supporter of Tiffany Cabán, who ran for Queens district attorney on a “no new jails” platform. I’m curious how you feel and what you would do as mayor with the city’s legal obligation to close Rikers, which is supposed to happen by 2027 and the borough jails, I think only one of which is scheduled to open by 2030 at this point.

Jessica Ramos
Yeah, that plan has been very slow to grind. If I were to be able to take office on January 1, 2026, I think it would be insincere for me to say that we are able to close Rikers by 2027, even though that’s the law on the books. Largely because over the past three years, little has been done to continue that conversation about Renewable Rikers and how it is that we’re going to build those five borough jails. That conversation is not being had at the city level anymore, certainly not during the Adams administration.

I would want to come back to that conversation and make sure that we are on a serious path to closing Rikers and complying with the law, even if we’re not able to meet the deadline. And doing it in a way that’s actually responsible, because what we can’t do is do it in a way that actually hinders our public safety.

And to me, tied to this actually is a lot of the efforts I want to do for mental health. And I don’t know if you were able to peruse my plan, which I called Harmony NYC, but we have so many mental health institutions that have been closed over the past decade that I would love to reopen. Some of them are sitting empty right now and just need to be refurbished, need to be obviously, restaffed and resourced so that we have the number of psychiatric beds necessary, not just for people who are convicted, but even people who are arrested and perhaps not guilty of what they’re accused of, but clearly might be in need of mental health services.

I think that’s where some of the disconnect is, because as someone who doesn’t have a driver’s license, like we cannot, we cannot continue to allow the MTA to be our mental health facility. That’s unacceptable. And I also believe, particularly as someone who’s progressive, that if a person, if a New Yorker, is not within their full mental capacity to understand that they’re having a hardship, this is why I want to make sure we inject clinicians everywhere possible, that we are able to remove them and give them the help that they need before they hurt somebody.

Harry Siegel
So I think we have more about mental health in a minute. But I did just want to follow up on the jails for one second. So there are now some contracts and plans in place, in some of the boroughs, there has been some groundbreaking. So things are moving. But a new mayor would certainly inherit some of this in progress. Mayor Adams has said that the about 4,000 beds might not be sufficient for the number of people who would need to be held. Are there any specific changes that you would push to make with where all this is going?

Jessica Ramos
I haven’t examined those numbers yet, but I will say, in my experience so far, that I don’t always agree on the numbers with Eric Adams. And so I would want to make sure that I am not only accounting for the projected need of the actual jail, but again, where possible, the psychiatric beds. So that even people who are particularly in pretrial detention…we’re prioritizing their mental health, whether it’s behavioral therapy or medication, instead of just leaving them in a cell to rot and possibly hurt other incarcerated people around them, including correction officers.

Liena Zagare
I was wondering, does this mean that you are supportive of the Supportive Interventions Act that Governor Hochul is advocating for?

Jessica Ramos
Yes, I am generally supportive of intervention and Kendra’s Law. The devil is always in the details for everything, so I think that’s something that we’re going to have to learn more about now that session is officially going to start on Monday.

Ben Smith
But this is involuntary —

Josh Greenman
Not outpatient —

Ben Max
This is changing the definition of whether you’re a danger to yourself if you can’t take care of yourself —

Jessica Ramos
I understand. I think for me, what’s important is that it’s not just experts in the law who we’re relying on to make these decisions, but experts in mental health, which, unfortunately, New York City is very lacking in. We don’t have the number of mental health professionals across titles to be able to service our population currently.

Ben Smith
Just to put it more in plain English, you’re open to —

Jessica Ramos
Involuntary removal of people who are not able to recognize that they have a mental health challenge and are not seeking help for themselves. Yes.

Ben Smith
Thanks.

Jessica Ramos
I’m here to clarify.

Ben Max
But are you saying now you do support changing that standard in the law, or you’re still studying whether you want to change the standard in the law?

Jessica Ramos
I need to study the details. I need to hear more about the details. We need to be able to debate the details. Not to quote you-know-who, but I support the concept of the plan.

Sex Work/Prostitution / Policing Disorder / Decriminalizing Vices / Casinos

Nicole Gelinas
Senator, you’ve been a prominent advocate of decriminalizing prostitution, which you refer to as sex work.

Jessica Ramos
I also call it prostitution. I know that folks get stuck in the nomenclature, but —

Nicole Gelinas
Are you concerned that decriminalizing and/or legalization would induce more demand for sex work? And would that be good, bad, or neutral?

Jessica Ramos
That’s an interesting question, Nicole. I don’t know that it would be good. Look, I think that our penal code, currently, does a very poor job of distinguishing between prostitution that’s coerced versus prostitution that is voluntary. And that is, I think, at the heart of what we need to tackle.

Because, I’ll give you as an example, Operation Roosevelt Avenue that the mayor — are we on day 86, I’ve been counting. I think Monday is 90 days. He’s been focusing on arresting the sex workers themselves. But we’ve nary seen a trafficker or a pimp get arrested, and that is where I believe, the NYPD, the vice squad, even the FBI, depending on the size of the ring, where I would seek President Trump’s help.

I think that tackling the people who are coercing, particularly women, but not just women, because I’ve been propositioned by a man on Roosevelt Avenue. To really focus on that is important, but it also has to be coupled with economic opportunity for the person who’s engaging in sex work. I think that’s also a part that’s been lacking. Now, when we’re talking about someone who wants to do it, arguably… I think this is why alternative economic opportunities are really important. I think I bring a certain level of expertise when it comes to workforce development and labor issues in that way. Yeah, but I think that there needs to be a wider conversation, and I know it’s very taboo, but about what it means for a consensual transaction of services between two consenting adults. Is the law able to differentiate that? We don’t know.

And I think that when it comes to legalization and decriminalization, which are two very different models, right? The third being the Nordic model, or the equality model, and the fourth being, of course, criminalization, which is what we have right now. I think we unfortunately don’t have too many examples to drive from. Decriminalization exists in New Zealand, to my knowledge. Legalization, of course, is what takes place in Vegas and Amsterdam and some zones in Colombia, actually, the country where my parents are from.

It’s something that needs a lot more conversation, a lot less stigma. But I wish we could actually have honest brokers around this conversation. Look, Eric Adams is constantly talking about how there are politicians who want to legalize prostitution. There is not one politician, not one bill that has been introduced to legalized prostitution. But he insists.

That’s not fair. This is such an important issue that it merits, I think, a really important conversation. And I would extend that to being a sex-positive city and actually having a full conversation about our sexual health, I think it’s important.

Josh Greenman
Has New York learned, have you learned or changed your mind at all, based on our experience with legalizing or decriminalizing other vices — cannabis, gambling? Or do you think about those the same as you did before?

Jessica Ramos
Well, I think right now, famously, I don’t like gambling.

Nicole Gelinas
Why don’t you like gambling?

Jessica Ramos
Oh, I don’t like gambling. I don’t gamble myself, even though I’ve been to casinos when I’ve been invited to parties and things like that. In doing my research necessary for the proposed casino in my district right now, Astrid [Aune, a top Ramos aide] and I actually ventured out to Resorts World, which I had never been to.

I think gambling can be, like every other vice, including alcohol, marijuana, heroin, whatever, every single vice can be detrimental to the mind and to the body and certainly to a family’s well-being.

In the responses, the qualitative responses that I received to my surveys when I reached out to my constituents about the Citi Field casino, a lot of the qualitative answers I received were actually stories about how a person’s, one of their parents had a gambling addiction and therefore their family was doomed to poverty. In another country, in this country, it ran the gamut.

Ben Max
Are you totally against gambling, or just the Citi Field site? Do you not want an additional casino in New York City anywhere?

Jessica Ramos
My general feeling about vices is that they exist. So it’s not like we’re going to ban gambling. Gambling will always take place whether it’s above ground or below ground. I think my sentiment is actually the more above ground things are, it gives us the opportunity to understand the scale of the challenges that it may bring. And of course, it’s the opportunity to both regulate and tax it and generate revenue. Why allow that all to remain clandestine?

I am against the casino that is proposed in my district because roughly our average household income in my district hovers around $30,000 a year, still below the minimum wage. You all know the conditions and the city’s neglect of Roosevelt Avenue. The casino would be on Roosevelt Avenue. And not only do we have issues with prostitution, we have issues with loan sharks that don’t get covered as frequently. And so for immigrants who can’t open a bank account, who don’t have any economic resources in that way, are they going to gamble and hope that they’re able to win enough money to pay back their debt? Is that really the type of economy we want to build? I don’t think so.

Josh Greenman
By that logic, would [a casino] more belong in Times Square, or would it more belong in Coney Island?

Jessica Ramos
I think that in general, we’re having trouble finding what neighborhood wants to welcome one, and we’ll see where that conversation goes.

Nicole Gelinas
So you don’t see an economic development argument here. In other words, the opposite argument that you just made would be that this creates good unionized middle-class jobs —

Jessica Ramos
Of course is does —

Nicole Gelinas
So you don’t buy into that?

Jessica Ramos
I think that anything and everything that we should want built should be built and operated and maintained union from shovel to broom, right? But I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t think that economic development and priority shouldn’t be given to our infrastructure, climate change, resiliency, that we haven’t really picked up since Superstorm Sandy, I would think those types of union jobs should be priority.

Management, Budgeting, and Labor Negotiations

Alyssa Katz
So I want to switch to a question about management, and drawing from your resume. So you’ve worked for labor unions. You worked for former Mayor Bill de Blasio. You are now a state senator.

Jessica Ramos
And I worked at a law firm, my first job.

Alyssa Katz
OK. So I wanted to hear like, how many, what’s the largest number of people you’ve ever managed? And also what did you learn good, bad or indifferent, from working with de Blasio, including about labor relations, given that you’ve worked for labor unions that are obviously very identified with the labor movement? How do you then take on the role of manager and the needs for health savings —

Jessica Ramos
Switch to the employer side?

Alyssa Katz
Yes, with some very real economic issues on the line. So I know that’s a big ball of questions —

Jessica Ramos
That’s OK, I think I got it. I think the biggest number of people I’ve managed is probably right now, having both the district office, the Albany office, and then the campaign teams. I don’t exactly know how many, but it’s at least two dozen people. I have also in my capacity at City Hall, while I was not the direct supervisor of these people, I was in charge of managing work, the workload in many different agencies.

At first, when I was working for the deputy mayor of strategic policy initiatives, it was his portfolio. So everything from Universal Pre-K to [Department of Youth and Community Development], the Department of Veterans Services, when we created the Mayor’s Office of [Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises]. I had to manage a workload within those agencies. Those people were not reporting directly to me, to be clear.

I think that my experience, based on what I’ve observed and absorbed from having kind of a front row seat to three mayors, because I was a staffer in the City Council during the Bloomberg administration 20 years ago, is that the mayor is the CEO who provides the common vision for all of the agencies. But, I would want to cast a very wide net in terms of attracting the most talented people in our city and then actually trusting them to do their job in our office.

And if you want to ask Astrid [Aune], she’s right there. I won’t even look at her. But Astrid has been with me for many, many years. And actually, that’s maybe something to point out. I’m probably one of the legislators with the lowest turnover rates. People stay with me for many, many years, all the way up to six years so far. And so I aim, labor hat on, I aim to provide a very positive working environment where hopefully people feel supported to do their best work. I try to be the manager that I’ve always wanted to have.

Alyssa Katz
OK, and so two follow-ups on that. One is you know you’re going to need to find health care savings to replace the giant hole left by the Medicare Advantage court decision. So how are you going to approach that task?

Jessica Ramos
One of the big things, different things, that I want to do is be able to hire a chief revenue officer. For the City of New York, someone whose job solely is to think about how we make more money for the city to pay for the increasing cost of things, including the Medicare Advantage issue and a lot of other stuff that I want to do: my mental health plan, I want to do a youth jobs guarantee that I already did an interview for this morning, actually on my way here.

And so there are several things that I think we have ignored that would generate money. Street vending — major problem, absolute chaos. There is no actual system, I think. And our very conservative projections based on if we were to license and place the vendors right, we estimate that we would actually generate around $500 million a year in tax revenue. Josh, you look like you have a burning question.

Josh Greenman
It’s related, so I’ll just insert it now: You’re talking about generating more revenue. Please talk also about the savings that you might find, but also answer the questions Alyssa asked.

Jessica Ramos
Sure. When it comes to street vending, when it comes to property tax reform, which is something that I’ve been talking about, when it comes to other things that perhaps I haven’t thought of, that the chief revenue officer…who is tasked with that assignment, is an expert in generating revenue. That person is going to have to work with me and the rest of the administration to, yes, figure out where we can downsize, where we can save costs.

I’m not looking to run a City Hall full of cronyism and patronage. I don’t like being surrounded by yes-people. I precisely said that I want to cast a wide net and attract the best talent, because to me and perhaps where my ego is, I want to be able to help New Yorkers and people in general to believe that good government is possible and to believe in our public institutions, again, that doesn’t happen if I’m just hiring my friends.

Alyssa Katz
So just one quick follow up on that, are you or are you going to not pursue health care savings? Which was what Medicare Advantage was supposed to be.

Jessica Ramos
I think we have to pursue health care savings, absolutely.

Alyssa Katz
OK, and then one more question. Working under de Blasio, he was kind of notorious as a micromanager, right? Now we have a mayor who, we don’t know how much he knew, maybe we’ll find out more, had a lot of people in his government who had all kinds of side business going on on the side as far as we know, right? So somewhere —

Jessica Ramos
And inflated salaries, for no-show jobs.

Alyssa Katz
All kinds of things, right. Maybe it’s not quite a spectrum, but somewhere between micromanaging and you have a bunch of people out there and you don’t necessarily know what they’re doing. How do you approach management?

Jessica Ramos
You have to know what they’re doing. I don’t see knowing what they’re doing is micromanaging. I’m certainly going to keep tabs, and certainly that’s the reason why there’s a hierarchy and an organizational structure for City Hall. So that people are reporting and hopefully things are getting back to the person in charge. That’s the idea.

I see micromanaging much more as kind of hovering over the employee and making sure that they do everything exactly the way we say. Instead of saying, actually you’re the educator and based on your experience, I want us to get here. How is it that we can figure out a plan together in order to get there?

Ben Smith
Did you learn lessons positive, negative from de Blasio?

Jessica Ramos
I like to be on time. I plan on putting a weight rack inside of Gracie Mansion. And I want to be able to spend, especially I think the first year is critical, spend substantial time at agencies, actually conferring with rank and file workers and all of our civil servants. I would love to do like a day in the shoes of “X” worker, of a sanitation worker, of a police officer, of a firefighter, a social worker —

Ben Smith
You’ll go out and pick up trash?

Jessica Ramos
Yeah, why not?

Ben Max
You could do that now.

Jessica Ramos
I could, and I’ve asked to. I think it’s been rather difficult for me to be able to get answers that I would like to have from City Hall currently.

Ben Smith
Oh, you have asked to actually go and work a day?

Jessica Ramos
Not recently, but I have in the past.

Collegiality / Advisors

Christina Greer
So thanks for coming. You’ve had some dust-ups with some fellow officials of yours, most notably your criticisms levied at your colleague [Rep.] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which we can get to a little bit later. So I have two questions for you. What would you tell voters who think that you might have some trouble playing in the sandbox with others? And who would you choose in your ‘kitchen cabinet’ as mayor?

Jessica Ramos
Who would I choose in terms of deputy mayors, from elected officials, or in general?

Christina Greer
Just in general, who would you rely on, not necessarily in an official capacity, to help advise you, to help you think about management, to help you think about macro issues as well as micro issues?

Jessica Ramos
Yeah. Look, I would want to both be able to attract folks from academia who are experts in different fields, all the way to actual practitioners of whatever topic we’re talking about, whatever agency we’re talking about. I have a deep respect for people who bring those different perspectives to the table.

To me, the goal is to be able to tackle whatever outcome we’re trying to improve, whether it’s health care outcomes or the like. I’m not…it’s too early to share names…but I would want to make sure that there is a breadth of experience when it comes to different agencies and different initiatives.

I think I play well in the sandbox with a lot of people who like to work. Perhaps I come with my government experience and my labor experience to understand, especially when it comes to my district, the needs that we have at every single level of government. Including the federal government.

My criticism of my Congresswoman [Rep. Ocasio-Cortez] is only one, which is the lack of a district office [in Queens]. It is not OK. My constituents rely on the federal government for answers to, yes, their immigration cases, but also in terms of their health care, or in terms of social security and so on and so forth. I would love to have more cooperation when it comes to that. And I think it’s unfortunate that we don’t have a congressional district office in my district. That is my criticism.

Christina Greer
And just a quick follow-up, who currently are sort-of some of your intellectual confidants to help you think through issues?

Jessica Ramos
You want me to release my intellectual confidants?

Josh Greenman
You can just name us.

Jessica Ramos
You know, every day I ask myself, what is Josh Greenman thinking about this morning?

Ben Max
Who do you get advice from? Who are some of your closest people that you’re willing to name?

Jessica Ramos
I think it depends on the topic. If we’re talking about mental health, for example, we just got done with the Harmony NYC draft. We gave that to everyone from public defenders to actual mental health associations, service providers, in order to make sure that our plans were realistic.

I come from labor, so perhaps I talk to labor the most. And that’s across disciplines, right? Both public, private sector and construction, and so on and so forth.

Who else do I talk to? Trying to navigate without, like, getting anybody in trouble. I’ll pick up the phone and call anyone, even if it’s to introduce myself and to ask questions and to learn more. I think that’s important. I’m a curious person, and I think I’m humble enough to ask questions when I don’t know — I know what I don’t know.

Ben Smith
But it sounds like you’re also not totally averse to conflict and to criticizing people. Is part of being there picking fights, sometimes?

Jessica Ramos
I think sometimes there’s merit in picking fights. I don’t think there’s always merit in picking fights. I think it depends. Actually Donald Trump being a very good example, right? When it comes to certain things that we may disagree on, if he decides to somehow threaten a woman’s reproductive right then, we’re going to pick that fight. However, I also want to have a working relationship when it comes to the infrastructure and transportation money that we’re going to need.

Child Care Expansion / Budgeting

Liena Zagare
Your platform focuses extensively on child care and expanding support for families and care providers. That seems to me like a massive expansion of investment in the education department that is already struggling with funding and also accounts for a huge part of these expenditures. How are you proposing to fund that? You said you were going to have a chief revenue officer. Who is that person?

Jessica Ramos
There is no chief revenue person right now. It would be a brand new position that I would create at City Hall. We don’t have someone at City Hall right now thinking that through. But it is without a doubt that we’re going to need help from Albany in order to have the funding necessary to start correcting 3-K and making 3-K universal, and hopefully being able to work backwards from there all the way to newborns. I like to say that in the same way that we can open an app on our phone, like OpenTable and make a reservation at a restaurant, we should be able to use technology to help a parent find a child care spot, even within an emergency.

And mind you, we don’t exactly work 9-to-5 jobs anymore. Some people have different schedules and different needs, but it should be relatively easier to find a child care spot on your block within a five-block radius, or something like that. The child care model, while definitely part of the DOE [Department of Education] like pre-K, is not just the DOE, right? It would be an intra-agency effort, the [Department of Buildings], the [Fire Department], [Administration for Children’s Services] and so many others actually played a role in making sure that pre-K was working every day. At least that’s how we set it up.

Liena Zagare
Do you have a sense of how much the expansion, much this platform would cost?

Jessica Ramos
It would cost billions of dollars. It would cost a lot of money. And I’m actually very inspired by the fact that Mayor de Blasio was able to go up to Albany and get the funding that was necessary in order to get universal pre-K? Yeah, that’s how, that’s how we did it.

Policing Disorder / Analyzing Crime

Josh Greenman
Policing disorder: You’ve seen what’s happened on Roosevelt Avenue. Do you think there ought to be more vigorous enforcement against lower-level crimes? Less vigorous enforcement? iI what’s happening right now about the right level? What’s your philosophy and strategy on how to do it?

Jessica Ramos
Just to circle back to the conversation that we started about sex work. I want us to utilize policing to get the culprits and less so the victims. I think that the better the economy, the less propensity for New Yorkers to commit many, not all, of those low level crimes. And I pose as an example, when the minimum wage was raised to $15 — I think 2018, was that? — we actually saw a dip in crime, in the crimes of poverty.

Josh Greenman
Is that actually true? Because we’ve had a pretty good economy over the last couple of years, but we’ve had, by most accounts, an increase in disorder.

Jessica Ramos
But our mental health is not OK. And actually, the reason why affordability is such an issue is precisely because the economy is doing well by many measures that are usually measures for the wealthiest among us. If you talk to working-class people in any borough, they’re not necessarily doing well at all, or don’t feel so. But the reason I bring up mental health as well is because…. It would be too much, unless some expert can enlighten me, which I would appreciate…. Our CompStat just isn’t able to differentiate between targeted and random assaults and different kinds like that. So I think, yes, there’s policing of the streets, but also there’s just an education of the population in terms of conflict resolution and other things, and I say that as someone who had to leave an unhealthy relationship, that needs to take place.

Juan Manuel Benítez
I’m sorry, can you expand on the last part that you mentioned on what you said on an unhealthy relationship?

Jessica Ramos
Yes, I’m a divorcee and I had to leave an unhealthy relationship.

Nicole Gelinas
Can I ask you, you said, “differentiating between targeted and random assaults” — that sounds really important. Would you change CompStat so —

Jessica Ramos
If we can. I don’t know how, but if we can, if I could find the expert that can inform the way we would do that. Because that way, we would know what level of services, whether it’s policing services, whether it’s mental health, whatever it is, to dispatch and where. Yeah, that would be amazing.

Housing / Transit / Property Tax Reform

Akash Mehta
You’ve said that the biggest issue facing your constituents right now is the cost of housing. And you said that the City of Yes zoning reforms didn’t go far enough in creating new homes. But you have also expressed support for the Council’s amendments to that plan, which shaved about a quarter of the projected new units off of the plan. So is more needed on lifting restrictive zoning? And, do you support eliminating parking minimums?

Jessica Ramos
Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I think perhaps my bias here is that I’m also a former Community Board member, and I’m the daughter of a former Community Board member, so land use issues were talked around my dinner table very often. And I generally think that no one size fits all approach really works for New York City.

New York City is a city of neighborhoods and it’s impossible to compare Eastern Queens to other parts of the city. For example, there are parts of Queens that generally feel they’re suburbs, despite being a part of New York City, that it’s not, quote, unquote, a city or an urban landscape. I think that given the need for affordable housing, however, we actually have already naturally been decentralizing Manhattan, and a lot of the affordability that’s needed is actually in neighborhoods like mine.

So I’ve been really supportive of measures to build housing around train stations. That was actually one of the things I liked about the housing compact that Governor Hochul had proposed way back when.

And I think landmarking can be a challenge sometimes. I say that because my district has historic Jackson Heights, our beautiful garden apartments that prevent us from building right then and there. But that means that in the immediate surrounding vicinity, we have to figure out where it is that we can build.

My main concern is that as the city does grow and there is greater density, our sewage system and our pipes aren’t up to the task. They’re 200 years old. Every time there’s rapid rainfall, even if it’s just three inches, people get flooded. There’s sewage backup and on top of that, insurance companies won’t even recognize that and pay out the claims. That was very difficult for me to contend with in terms of Hurricane Ida and how it devastated my district. So to me, the pipes are actually the biggest housing thing that I would love to accomplish as early on in my administration, just to actually have kind of the skeleton ready to build housing.

I saw City of Yes as a plan for zoning changes to encourage and inspire more building, but not necessarily a plan for building itself. I think he outlined some ideas yesterday. My number one priority this legislative session is my Jobs and Housing Act, which is a plan to leverage union pension dollars with taxpayer dollars to build low equity home ownership with some rentals, a la Penn South in Manhattan or Co-op City, Electchester. We abandoned that model, which was the precursor for Mitchell Lama. We abandoned that model in the 60s. Erroneously, I believe. Penn South is even energetically off the grid and I think a prime candidate for geothermal energy to actually sustain the population living there.

Alyssa Katz
What about the transit piece of that puzzle? The Interborough Express, which is proposed would go to your district —

Jessica Ramos
I know. Jackson Heights to Bay Ridge. Great food. The food line, it is going to be a delicious, the most delicious train line.

Alyssa Katz
Full disclosure, I live on it. So what are you doing right now to promote it? And what would you do to promote greater transit to these vast areas that don’t really have it?

Jessica Ramos
Yeah, look, within the theme of decentralizing Manhattan, the biggest problem with the MTA, there are many, is the lack of investment over the past many decades. It’s like 50 years of not expanding the system to support the growing population. So there’s a whole lot of catch-up to take place. And I would love to be supportive of that measure.

I think the mayor of the city of New York should be able to appoint the New York City Transit president, within the confines of the MTA still obviously being within the state’s authority, and the Governor appointing the chair. But I think actual city dwellers should have a greater say and influence over what the plans are, beyond the legislature and the MTA board members.

Alyssa Katz
And what about upzoning along areas like Utica Avenue, other areas where there have been proposals for transit [expansion], would you be supportive of that?

Jessica Ramos
I would be supportive of that, but I would also like to go to community boards and say, in this area, we need to tackle X number of affordable housing units. Can you help me come up with a plan within two, three months that responds to that need and then if they’re unable or unwilling to do it, well, then we’re just going to have to do it unilaterally. But I think there should be a role for the locals to say in what way that can be done.

Ben Max
I want to come back to housing. You’ve mentioned it here, but you’ve also spoken quite a bit in the campaign so far about the need for property tax reform —

Jessica Ramos
Yes.

Ben Max
Why haven’t you done anything in your tenure so far? Or correct me if you have. It seems like there’s been almost no discussion of property tax reform in Albany — Brian Benjamin did a little bit of it before his different shifts in his career. Why haven’t you taken action on that if it’s been such a glaring need?

Jessica Ramos
Yeah, thanks for the question. I think largely because the city is out of compliance with the law. That’s why. Right now, property tax assessments are being conducted with rent-stabilized units as the marker and not market-rate units. It allows for a dystopian way of generating revenue from that source.

I think if we had those uniform property assessments and actually applied the law in a way that is accurate, then we would have a property tax that is much more reflective of the affordability across the city.

I love to point out the fact that I, as a rent-stabilized tenant, through my rent pay $5,000 a year in property tax. But if someone owns a brownstone in Park Slope, that person is paying $3,000 a year in property tax. When I’ve been in Richmond Hill, actually on the campaign trail a few weeks ago, in Richmond Hill, on average, the property tax is $7,000 that they’re paying.

Ben Max
It’s almost universally agreed that property tax reform is needed.

Jessica Ramos
And there’s going to be a conversation in Albany this year from some of my colleagues, to cap the property tax at 2%, which I generally would be supportive of.

Ben Smith
Would you raise the property tax on single-family homeowners?

Jessica Ramos
I’m not prepared to make that decision. I have not analyzed the numbers in that way.

Nicole Gelinas
Follow-up transit question: you said the biggest MTA problem is the lack of investment —

Jessica Ramos
The historical one.

Nicole Gelinas
But the MTA surveys and private polling would say constituents right now think their biggest problem is crime and disorder. Have you perceived an increase in crime and disorder in your own day-to-day life on the transit system, and how would you address that?

Jessica Ramos
I am aware that crime takes place in the MTA. I am a very fortunate New Yorker who has not had to experience that firsthand.

Nicole Gelinas
Have you witnessed more disorder in the last few years?

Jessica Ramos
I have witnessed more people struggling with their mental health, talking to themselves, or pacing or in tattered clothing, clearly lacking the ability to keep themselves warm. I saw someone with ripped up pants in this weather, actually a few days ago on the 7. That’s not OK, that person needs help. But to clarify: to me, the lack of expansion of the trains is the historical kind of thing that’s been lacking.

Nicole Gelinas
But what would you do — the mayor and the governor have both struggled with this over three years — how will you improve the public safety disorder and the mental health situation on the trains?

Jessica Ramos
This is a greater conversation about how we deploy our police officers. I think sometimes we get stuck on the number of police officers and less in strategic deployment. So right now, for example, my train station is 82nd Street Station, Jackson Heights on the 7. We see many more police officers on the platform, sometimes as many as six, kind of huddled together, versus actually on the train itself, walking up and down the cars. Given the new ones that are coming, actually that should be facilitated even more, being able to walk from car to car. Because if I’m not mistaken, more often than not that’s where people have been getting hurt, is on the actual train and not on the platforms. So that would certainly be something that I am open to discussing and hopefully figuring out with the NYPD.

Government Tech & User Experience, Labor & Innovation

Ben Smith
Something you said earlier struck me. You can call up an Uber with an app, but if you want to engage the city child care system, it’s much more complicated. It speaks to this moment, right now in this country where the American private sector is the envy of the world. They’re incredible new tools that have been built over the last few years on your phone. And meanwhile, I think there’s a broad conception that the American government is kind of a joke at every level. And there’s a real lack of trust in it.

I’m curious as somebody who has spent your career in labor and government — that’s not obviously an easy problem to fix, but it does seem at every level this huge challenge. If you actually, as mayor, want these city agencies to be as easy to engage with as Uber, I’m sure every mayor wants that. Why is that so hard? And how do you get around that? How do you change that?

Jessica Ramos
Well, I think it’s perhaps a generational perspective on technology use as well. Let’s start with the 311 app. I’m a huge fan. I love and use my 311 app very often. Because, better than calling, I can actually upload pictures of the thing that’s missing, of the thing that hasn’t been cleaned up.

Ben Smith
How often do you use it?

Jessica Ramos
As often as possible.

Ben Smith
More than once a day or once a week?

Jessica Ramos
Once a week, sometimes much more often. But first of all, I would really want to centralize 311 as the number for New Yorkers to call in order to reach any agency. I don’t want to see toll-free numbers scattered all over the place. Every New Yorker should know that they just call 311, and ask for the agency, the service, the form, the thing that they are looking for, and they should be able to do that in as many languages as possible.

That being said, I also think that we can utilize technology nowadays in order to have a one stop shop for a lot of these services that the city offers. I actually talked about this in one of the forums, in terms of presumptive eligibility for Fair Fares, right? If you are a New Yorker who is already qualifying for SNAP benefits, maybe you have Section 8, you should be able to actually access your profile and see what you’re not signed up for. That one stop shop should exist as an actual living desk at the biggest transportation train stations in New York City, but should actually live as an app on your phone.

Josh Greenman
Uber is not a famously union-friendly company.

Jessica Ramos
No, no, it’s not.

Josh Greenman
Neither is Apple, nor a lot of the other most innovative companies in the country. So is there tension between being very pro-union and wanting a lot of rapid innovation inside government?

Jessica Ramos
When it comes to AI, a good example of how I’ve dealt with this was precisely my bill that got signed into law a few weeks ago by Governor Hochul in order to protect the voice and image likeness of an actor. It’s a bill that we worked on with SAG AFTRA in order to protect them and make sure that they have legal counsel available before they agree to such a thing. I wouldn’t call it a conflict. I think it’s something that we have to deal with.

Technology is here and we would be fools not to use it. I think when it comes to labor, it’s about allowing the transition into technology to be also advised by the workforce itself, so that we can do it in a responsible way. We can’t be Luddites.

Josh Greenman
I’m just talking about the rigidity of the rules that are often in place and the unions’ understandable desire to protect their workforce, which sometimes interferes with or complicates desires to transform service delivery.

Jessica Ramos
Well, look at farm workers, right? Farms. Farms are increasingly using more technology to plant, to harvest to, I’m not very well versed in agriculture but to do all of the things that farm workers actually have to do. I would love for us to be able to do that more efficiently and actually be able to provide workforce development for people who are farm workers to transition into other careers that they may be interested in. I don’t want to go deep down the farmer hole, but it’s a good example of just how industries are going to be changing —

Ben Smith
You’d be managing a huge unionized city workforce and others; do you hope that you can replace lots of them with AI so they can advance their careers?

Jessica Ramos
If I wanted to. I may or may not want to, depending on what agency we’re talking about. But that is most definitely something that has to be part of a contract negotiation with the union. So it’s not like I, as mayor, will have the only say it’s part of a negotiation that’s going to take place.

And to circle back on the previous question that is related that Alyssa asked. Coming from the labor world, I think I generally understand contract negotiations very well. Even if I am management, and I’m looking to save money, and I’m looking to reduce waste, I’m hoping that the unions will be my partners in doing those things. But if not, we’re going to have to make tough decisions and just be able to deliver for New Yorkers. That’s the number one thing.

Nicole Gelinas
Do you think Adams made a mistake in signing union agreements without some productivity concessions?

Jessica Ramos
I don’t know if I can answer that question across the board. With the police officers, for example, I’ll give you one side of both coins. I would love to increase the starting salary for police officers. I just think it’s way too low, especially for a person who is carrying a gun. I think we don’t want that person to be worried about making rent and raising a family in New York City.

By that same token, I would love to revisit conversations with them about overtime. One thing is protests that are unplanned or unexpected that can’t be projected for that year. But a lot of the parades that have been happening down Fifth Avenue for the past 50-60 years, it’s going to happen. So why is that overtime and you haven’t been able to plan ahead. That to me is a cost-saving place, that needs to be talked about during negotiations, contract negotiations.

Big Picture Vision

Juan Manuel Benítez
Many New Yorkers are frustrated right now with the city. You’re not running to become mayor of a small city, this is the self-proclaimed capital of the world. How do you envision New York City? What kind of New York City do you envision after a two-term Mayor Ramos?

Jessica Ramos
Oh, after me. I thought you were going to ask about my predecessor.

Well, I’m hoping that we all find the city to be much more livable. Much more friendly to raising our children, much more supportive of working families in that way. I think our economic recovery hasn’t gone very poorly, but I hope that it’s an even more bustling city in terms of the cash flow across our streets.

I want us to be able to fill every single storefront, if that’s possible. Very difficult in the age of Amazon, when so few retailers and other business models are unable to make it. But this is why I pride myself despite being in labor, also often being the bridge to the employers who depend on the city actually doing its best. We’re going to need big real estate to chip in and play their part in building housing. We would be fools to think that they wouldn’t; we just can’t only rely on them.

Encouraging Business/Economic Growth

Ben Smith
We’ve spent most of the time talking about government, but obviously most of the revenue comes from the very top of the city’s economy, from finance in particular. How would you, as mayor, keep and build those industries? Do you see other industries you’d try to draw to the city?

Jessica Ramos
That’s what I mean about livability in the city, And that goes all the way from sanitation and actually returning trash cans to their respective corners. I don’t know about you guys in your neighborhoods. I’ve got a 20-block stretch in my district without a trash can, and we have called the sanitation department and they laugh. And that has been really frustrating.

But I think in that way, visualizing a city where people want to do business, because the morale of their workforce is such that they’re proud to be New Yorkers. And they want to live here and raise their family here. And hopefully that in developing our workforce in that way, we’re able to attract businesses, small, mid and big, who want to do business here.

Best/Worst Mayors

Josh Greenman
Of your lifetime, who’s the best mayor of your lifetime and who’s the worst mayor?

Jessica Ramos
That’s probably the hardest question I’ve been asked.

Well, I was born when Koch was mayor and I don’t really remember Koch. I have some TV memories of Dinkins. My dad liked Dinkins very much. I have a very, not love-hate, because it’s not hate, but I have some resentment towards Bloomberg, only because I’m someone who was stopped and frisked in my early adult years. But I also loved that he stopped smoking in so many areas, and I loved how he was able to protect the immigrant population. I loved his stance against gun violence, and I am thankful for the investments that he has made. And I liked his hands-on management style.

De Blasio: As a mom first and foremost, I have to thank him for saving me probably $40,000 a year with childcare for both of my kids the minute they turned four and were able to go to pre-K. That’s undoubted. Unquestionable. But I was also able to meet incredible people [working for him] and kind of figure out where, where my place in the city was.

Josh Greenman
You don’t want to pick.

Christina Greer
Giuliani?

Jessica Ramos
Oh, I forgot about Giuliani…

Ben Max
Best and worst?

Jessica Ramos
I don’t have —

Josh Greenman
It’s a ranked-choice election —

Jessica Ramos
It’s a ranked-choice election of former mayors, oh, gosh. I’m going to be the person at the booth for a while just staring at the piece of paper if I really have to rank them.

Ben Smith
Do you think Adams is the worst?

Jessica Ramos
In my lifetime? Just purely on the corruption charges — and they’re charges, right, because he hasn’t been convicted. Yeah. I think purely just on corruption, not even getting into mismanagement and kind of cronyism and not being able to deliver on outcomes, I would say yes. Because that hasn’t helped New Yorkers be able to trust government anymore.

Stop-and-Frisk Experience

Nicole Gelinas
Would you mind sharing the circumstances under which you were stopped and frisked during the Bloomberg years?

Jessica Ramos
Sure. I was coming home from Manhattan. I was 19 years old. It was the summer, maybe July. This was maybe 2004, 2005. I was in Manhattan with my girlfriends. We rode the train. It was probably like one o’clock in the morning. And on the corner of Roosevelt Avenue and 75th Street, we were stopped by officers. And we were stopped and frisked. One of my friends actually in her purse they found a condom, and they threatened to use it as evidence of sex work — of prostitution. Emphasis on the frisk, by the way. The stop was short, but the frisking was not.

Ben Smith
How did you feel?

Jessica Ramos
Humiliated.

Harry Siegel
It was called ‘stop, question and frisk’ — was there a middle step there?

Jessica Ramos
Question? Stop, question and frisk?

Harry Siegel
Mhm. And you brought up Bloomberg and that you didn’t like stop-and-frisk, but you liked the gun thing. He, of course, said they were very intimately tied. But in your own experience, I’m curious if you have any sense what led them to initially stop, did they ask questions at that point? Did they go right through, going through your girlfriend’s bag?

Jessica Ramos
I don’t think we gave them a reason. We were a group of maybe seven young women who were coming off of the train at the 74th Street station and we were on our way home. It was hot. Some of us were wearing mini skirts. It was one o’clock in the morning and we were all Latinas.

Differences From Competitors

Harry Siegel
Eric Adams keeps talking about an undifferentiated mob of far-left running against it. There are a lot of Democrats running against an incumbent Democratic mayor. A lot of them are offering some sense of being more confident and less corrupt. There were a lot of similar launch videos about coming from New York.

Jessica Ramos
Yeah. I also have a no-perverts pledge [in appointments]. Yes.

Harry Siegel
What differentiates you among the people who like to replace Adams? New Yorkers are thinking about this and they can rank. Why should you be at the top?

Jessica Ramos
Well, thank you. In terms of differentiating myself from the other candidates, aside from the obvious, which would be my gender, I think is my record. I don’t only fight for progressive causes. I’ve actually managed to win on many throughout my tenure in the New York State Senate, and that’s oftentimes been working with unlikely partners.

Right? The Business Council might not like my pro-union stances, but they’ll come to the table and talk to me, because we very often are able to figure out how to address matters at hand. So for example, this coming session, the Business Council and I are part of the coalition that’s going to be pushing for an “Ellis Island initiative” in order to provide workforce development to the migrant population. That’s something that we agree on. On the things that we disagree on, we will continue to disagree on.

Akash Mehta
Are there opponents in particular, whose rhetoric you think that talk outpaces their results?

Jessica Ramos
To that topic, specifically, in terms of migrants?

Ben Max
No, the race in general, the mayoral race.

Jessica Ramos
OK, so then rephrase the question?

Akash Mehta
You were just saying that one thing that differentiates you is that you don’t just talk about your goals, you achieve them. Which opponents does that contrast with?

Jessica Ramos
I don’t want to get into hitting my opponents. Every New Yorker is able to see who they are, what they have done, what they haven’t done. But I can only pride myself in having the ability to deliver the past seven years.

And actually from the get, from my freshman year, I was able to deliver on some really hard legislation that had been languishing in the legislature for decades. And that’s me leveraging not only my knowledge, but my relationships across government and across branches of government, not only with my colleagues, but in the executive branch as well, in order to do things.

Josh Greenman
You said, ‘obviously my gender’ when contrasting, does that matter at all?

Jessica Ramos
I don’t know in terms of an electorate. If you look at the numbers in the last presidential race, many women didn’t vote for the woman candidate, right?

Josh Greenman
Do you think women lead differently in any meaningful way?

Jessica Ramos
We’re said to be much more compassionate and we all view things from our particular life perspective.

Ben Smith
I think we have to let Senator Ramos go. But just one last question, do you welcome Andrew Cuomo to the race?

Jessica Ramos
I do welcome him, I welcome any New Yorker to the race —

Ben Smith

Is he a New Yorker? [As in, New York City resident.]

Jessica Ramos
That is an excellent question. I would argue that apparently he’s a New Yorker since he moved to Midtown, but he hadn’t lived here in 30 years. You really want to talk about Andrew Cuomo?

I don’t feel that as governor he really was someone who conveyed his love for New York City, and that’s without getting into all of his baggage, right? I blame him for the closure of our mental health institutions. And then there’s, of course, the sexual harassment, the nursing home deaths, the Buffalo Billion, the Moreland Commission, all sorts of things that have transpired that hopefully New Yorkers will remember. That’s what I hope.

But I also hope that any voter doesn’t see the need in recycling people. There is plenty of talent and New Yorkers who are hungry to make a name for themselves by doing the right thing, so give us a chance.

Ben Smith
Well, thank you so much for doing this.

Jessica Ramos
Thank you.