Julie Won on Immigration, AI Regulation, and Her Campaign for Congress in New York's 7th District
The New York Editorial Board's interview with City Council Member Julie Won, a Queens Democrat running for Congress in New York's 7th District.
The New York Editorial Board spoke with City Council Member Julie Won of Queens about her campaign in the Democratic primary for New York’s 7th Congressional District (parts of Brooklyn and Queens) on the morning of May 21, 2026. Won is among the candidates running to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez. The primary election is in June. (photo by Juan Manuel Benítez)
Participating journalists: Juan Manuel Benítez, Nicole Gelinas, Josh Greenman, Ben Max, Akash Mehta.
Full Transcript
Ben Max
Thanks for being here. Do you want to just take a couple minutes and tell us a little bit about your view of the district and its biggest needs, and how you would address those in Congress?
Julie Won
Sure. So thank you so much for meeting with me. My name is Julie Won. I’m currently a third-term City Council member. I represent Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, Astoria, which wholly sits within this congressional district, New York 7.
And I come from a non-traditional background into politics. I don’t come from the DSA, I don’t come from the Working Families Party, I don’t come from the Democratic Party, but I am a Democrat, and I believe in social democracy and social programs. I come from 10 years of tech experience. I was recruited out of college to IBM, where half of that I worked in Washington, D.C. as a federal contractor overseeing civilian agencies to help them modernize, and the other half I did commercial.
Once Trump took the presidency, I left D.C. and came back to New York, where I grew up. And when I look back…you know, there are certain serendipitous moments that happen in your life that make you pivot, and I don’t think I would’ve ever pivoted out of tech if it weren’t for COVID-19. Because as an immigrant, I landed in this country in 1998, and I grew up on public school free lunch, and if it weren’t for public education, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here with you today. I don’t know where I would be. And for me, I grew up understanding that if I did not have school, then food was not guaranteed because I was relying on public school free lunch. So when COVID hit, I used to be 90% travel [for work], and I was grounded in Queens, so I was sitting in my apartment where at the time, I was living with a friend who I knew from D.C., who became an advisor for Mayor de Blasio. So she and I were sitting at home ‘cause I didn’t have a lot of work to do. My clients didn’t know what we were going to do during the pandemic.
And I was watching press conferences with her when the TV came on and Bill de Blasio came on saying, “Hey, schools are indefinitely closed, but if you get public school free lunch, you can come and pick it up.” And it just triggered me to flashbacks of knowing when I was in elementary school and there was a federal holiday, I was not celebrating like other kids. I was pretty miserable ‘cause my brother and I were going to be hungry. So I knew that even though de Blasio said you could come and pick up free lunch, for kids like me, where your parents work frontline jobs at delis or nail salons or grocery stores, they are working, and you don’t have childcare, therefore you cannot leave the apartment. They just lock the door and just stay at home, watch TV, and eat whatever is in the fridge. And then you go hungry. So because I was on the community board, I was on the board of two local nonprofits, I was pretty involved in my mutual aids. We started doing meal deliveries in public housing, ‘cause I lived a block away from the largest public housing in the country: Queensbridge Houses.
And while I was doing meal deliveries, out of the shared experience of knowing what it’s like to be hungry, I met a lot of families that live there, especially kids. And this one girl in particular really changed my life, where she saw me week by week coming through with food, and she told me to come over and see her. And these kids would sit outside for about five hours, even in the winter, using LinkNYC to go to school ‘cause that was their only source of internet, ‘cause their parents couldn’t afford it at home. And she showed me her tablet, and she was like, “I never turn on my camera, and I never turn on my microphone ‘cause I don’t want other classmates to know that I’m poor, but I’m scared that I’m not going to do well ‘cause I’m not participating.” And that just enraged me, because she was just like me, she wanted to excel in school so that she could have an opportunity in her life to socioeconomically mobilize herself for her family, and she couldn’t because she couldn’t afford to. And that’s what really kickstarted my entry into politics, where I started to be part of the community board because of Amazon HQ2, ‘cause it was such a big public fight.
But it wasn’t until that moment where it became very personal to me, where I started to call my congressmember, and it was Carolyn Maloney at the time, and then my Senator, Chuck Schumer, because those were the only two that I really knew, honestly. I didn’t really follow local politics then. And they told me to call my Assembly member, Cathy Nolan.
And then Cathy Nolan was like, “Try Gianaris.” And we tried [Senator Michael] Gianaris, and Gianaris’ office was like, “You gotta go local. It’s Jimmy Van Bramer.” And then [City Council Member] Jimmy Van Bramer-- ‘cause it was also COVID, so it was hard to get ahold of these offices. Eventually, I got a staffer who told me that it’s a vacant seat, and if I’m so passionate, then I should just run or do something about it myself. I think it was kind of sarcastic.
But during a team meeting on Zoom with my IBM team, we had a team stand-up. It really became a therapy session because our clients didn’t know what they were doing, so we just talked about what was going on in our lives. And I described what was happening in my district to folks all over the country who I work with. And luckily, one of the finance executives that I work with at IBM was like, “Oh, I could become your treasurer. I could help register you with the state. We could do this.” And two of the designers volunteered on my campaign and created my website, my branding. Then, some of us who worked together for a long time, they were like, “OK, tell us more about this race. How does this work?” I was like, “OK, I would represent about 175,000 people, and out of that we estimate about twelve to sixteen thousand people to vote. We have about two quarters, and I would be running in a race of 21 people.” I think at the end it was maybe 16.
And we used to take startups and new apps from zero users to 2 million or 200 to 2 million. So we were like, “I think we could try.” And we tried, and against all odds, even though I ran against somebody who had the mayor’s endorsement, the Working Families Party endorsement, every single labor union endorsement, had three times the money, we still won with 15 points or so.
And within six months of being elected, I got free Wi-Fi, free cable TV for every single NYCHA resident in my district at Queensbridge Houses, Ravenswood Houses, and Woodside Houses. And within the last three years we’ve scaled that program citywide, so now BigApple Connect is available, hopefully in perpetuity to the rest of the city for all public housing residents.
And as a consultant, I’m used to doing my projects and within two quarters I’m leaving. So I’ve had multiple conversations with people that I trust about not staying in politics and going back to tech. But that’s also when the migrant crisis hit. So I remember it was shortly after I gave birth to my first child, ’cause I’m a mom of two. And I remember getting a call from the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, the commissioner, who invited me to come to Port Authority, ‘cause I’m one of the few immigrants elected in New York City, to come and welcome the migrants coming from the buses from Texas. And it’s already a jarring experience ‘cause when the buses arrive and they get off, and we’ve seen it in the news, I was expecting it to be a very jarring experience ‘cause they’re all tagged with codes and they scan them out, just like a CVS checkout. But what really got me, another pivotal experience in my life, was there was one woman, and you could see them through the window. As everyone was getting off one by one, one woman in particular kept on rocking back and forth, and from afar I thought maybe she was just mentally unwell. But as she continued to come off, I realized when she got off, she was rocking a baby. She was holding a baby probably less than 24 hours old. That’s what it looked like to me. I think it was maybe 72 hours, and she was still covered in blood waist down. And I asked her if she gave birth on the bus because that’s how fresh the baby looked, and she told me that she gave birth outside of the bus. They cut her umbilical cord with a non-sanitized scissor, and then they put her on the bus and said goodbye, and she was still healing so she couldn’t sit the whole bus ride, and that’s how she ended up here.
And again, another moment of rage as someone who had been postpartum less than three months ago. To see that and how we were treating immigrants just like myself is what made me stay. And while some of my colleagues were fighting over who takes these migrants into their district, I just raised my hand and said, “I’ll take as many as humanly possible.” I opened up 38 shelters, and when we ran out of hotels, we converted commercial buildings that were empty from COVID into shelters for single men and even our gyms into shelters.
Josh Greenman
Sorry, when you say, “I opened up 38 shelters,” can you—
Julie Won
So what happens is, the City of New York will try to open up shelters, and a lot of Council members fight it, behind closed doors or publicly, and those are photographed and reported on. And even when I went beyond my capacity, I worked with the City of New York to open more.
Josh Greenman
OK, so you welcomed them to the district. You welcomed additional shelters to the district.
Julie Won
Yes. So we had about 15,000 people at any given time in the micro-shelters. And then I had a conversation with the speaker’s office and the mayor’s office. Even though the mayor’s office didn’t help us, we made sure that we had additional resources for our nonprofits, especially for a domestic workers co-op, so that migrants can work, because one of the biggest issues is that they can’t legally work.
Juan Manuel Benítez
You started by saying you’re a three-term Council member. But you’ve been in the Council for not even five years yet, right? And you also said that before the pandemic, you weren’t really paying attention to local politics. So what do you think makes you qualified to really run for Congress for a seat that has been occupied by someone there for 30 years with deep roots in the community, and with one of your rivals, Antonio Reynoso, who has been a City Council member, he’s also represented Brooklyn and Queens, he’s also been a Brooklyn borough president. Why do you think you’re qualified for this position?
Julie Won
So do you think qualifications are only by time, the number of years served?
Juan Manuel Benítez
No. But you started your words by saying that you are a three-term Council member, so you put some weight on experience as well.
Julie Won
Well, I said third term because that’s truly the third term that I’m in. So if you want me to break that down, three terms is two, two, and four [years] within my Council tenure. And I believe that within the last four years, I’ve built and approved 32,000 units of housing, which is more than the borough of Queens has done in the last decade. And also, we’ve also passed over 14 bills. We’ve also made sure that we brought in over $2 billion of investment from the city to my district. We’ve built and approved over 6,000 new school seats, over 200 new 3-K and pre-K seats even before Hochul and Zohran’s announcement.
We’ve done a lot as a community together, and you can do a lot in a fast amount of time, and I don’t believe that qualifications are just about the time that you spend in government. It’s also your professional experience prior to getting in government that can prepare you to be a good representative, especially in a time like now, where we are going to be having a national discussion on the AI revolution and what this means for our job loss, what this means for our future as a country, and how we prepare for it, and you are best equipped by those who have industry experience, like myself in tech, to help prepare and usher the future of our country.
Nicole Gelinas
You mentioned the term social democracy. How do you see social democracy as different from the DSA?
Julie Won
I would never identify as a socialist or a communist, where some of those members do, because I am a child of—
Akash Mehta
Which members identify as communist?
Julie Won
There are members in my community who do.
Akash Mehta
Oh, members in your community.
Julie Won
Yes.
Nicole Gelinas
Members of the DSA?
Julie Won
Yes. In my district who will openly say that. But I personally don’t, because I come from a war-torn country where I’ve seen it personally, and I grew up with my grandmother showing us pictures of family members who are still in North Korea, not because they chose to be there, but because they were stuck there when the DMZ was drawn outside of Korean control, who ended up in a communist country, who are now starving to death.
I take it really seriously but I do believe in social programs like universal healthcare, universal childcare, which we have in South Korea and many democratic countries and I believe that those are important parts of our country, especially what our taxpayer dollars should be used for so that the government can function properly.
Nicole Gelinas
So what would be the practical difference? Like, a lot of that the mayor supports, but he obviously supports something like city-run grocery stores. Is that where you would draw the line and say, “That’s not the government’s role”?
Julie Won
Well, I think it, there has to be a clear line with making sure that there’s a free market, because I believe in a free market, and I think that there has to be a clear distinction.
I think there’s a misunderstanding of city-run grocery stores where we get phone calls from my constituents asking us for a free city-run grocery store. The city-run grocery stores are not free, they’re subsidized by the government. But we also simultaneously get phone calls from grocery owners who are really distraught that there is a grocery store run by the city that’s going to have subsidized costs a block away from them, even though their store is unionized and they are afraid of what this is going to do for them. But at the end of the day, the root cause is the same where people are afraid that they cannot afford the food that they need to eat, like the food that we have on this table. Because it’s cheaper for me to now get takeout than buy my own groceries and spend the time to cook it.
Ben Max
So are you supportive of the municipal-run grocery stores, or how are you thinking about that? Would you welcome the Queens one in your district?
Julie Won
I don’t really know. I think we have to see how, ‘cause this is going to be the first in the city of the government openly subsidizing a grocery store. So I think we have to understand the costs and how we run it, and what the municipal involvement is, exactly to what level. So I just don’t know enough to say yes or no. But I think the idea is something that we’ve seen in cooperatives in Brooklyn that have worked very successfully without government involvement.
Ben Max
Yeah, I mean, he’s also talking about just making sure there’s a small “basket of goods” that’s below the prices that are elsewhere in the market. It seems like one of these things that’s sort-of a very modified socialist idea.
Josh Greenman
I wanted to talk a little bit about immigration because it’s such an important federal responsibility. And you talked about the migrant crisis at the beginning. You worked for IBM. I assume everyone at IBM had their work authorization through very specific channels if they were an immigrant — they were H-1B, or through some other special program. You said you think that migrants should all have work authorization. That would be, I assume, from the federal government, not from the state. How would that work? When would it kick in? And would it be broad universal work authorization? Immediate? Explain a little bit more about that.
Julie Won
I think our immigration crisis starts way before even that. Right now, what we’ve seen is a huge pendulum swing of…”Let’s not let anybody in” under Trump to “Let’s let everybody in with an open door” to now having a national fight over who should come in and who should be naturalized and who should have even birthright citizenship in this country.
So when we think about the idea, especially from a technology standpoint, the CBP app made it extremely accessible for people to enter the country, and that is a good thing. But it wasn’t enough, because there weren’t enough people to actually process all of the applicants that were coming in through the CBP app. The idea that the Biden administration had to have a phone application where you can apply directly is a good thing, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t a thought-out process, and the processing itself is what we need to fix in comprehensive immigration reform on a national level because we have to think about the qualifications that you have to have to come into this country, and right now we’re fighting over even who should have refugee status, asylee status. And we have to make sure that on a national level, that the government is coming up with a thoughtful process.
Josh Greenman
Let’s talk about the migrants that you were mentioning before. [Let’s say] I’m a migrant, I’m coming from South America, from Mexico. I’m claiming that I’m fleeing persecution. It’s undetermined whether I’m actually fleeing persecution or not. I arrive in the United States. When do I get authorized to work under your vision and where can I work? And does this apply to everybody seeking asylum immediately?
Julie Won
So I think it’s going to have to be by status of what you’re entering from, but I do believe that we should have a processing before people enter. And for some, where there’s an emergency, like a climate emergency or there’s a war and people have to be entered immediately, then we should also have TPS [Temporary Protected Status], the way that we currently do, and we shouldn’t just arbitrarily take it away or be very, very cherry-picking who does and doesn’t get TPS.
But first and foremost, I think we have to have a processing before people even enter. And in addition to that, when there is a subset of people who have to enter immediately, making sure that they have authorization to work, because that’s what we were able to do in New York State. We were able to register them with individual tax ID numbers so that they have a history of paying taxes in New York State for the work that they’re doing. Because statistics have historically shown that immigrants are not criminals, the majority of them. Some are, and we have to make sure that that is taken care of. But for those who are simply here to work, allow them to work and pay taxes.
Juan Manuel Benítez
Your opponents are against ICE. They want to abolish ICE. What’s your position when it comes to ICE?
Julie Won
So when it comes to ICE, there’s two different major responsibilities that they have to do. First and foremost, when they do have to work on the criminalities of an immigrant, then it goes through DOJ and they still have civil rights, but it goes through the court process. But for the civil arm that are currently raiding our communities and just breaking up families and mistreating them, that really should be unfunded, defunded. And also, we have to make sure that there’s a proper replacement for that. So that way, even if you’re here in this country undocumented and you believe that those individuals should go through processing to make sure that they do become documented or are deported if they did something extremely horribly wrong. But [ICE] should not have unaccounted ability to go through with masks and just kidnap children and adults without any criminal history.
Nicole Gelinas
So is there an upper limit to immigration that you think Americans will politically accept?
Julie Won
Look, I think that there’s not going to be a uniform consensus on how many people can or cannot enter the country, but the reality is everybody, for the most part in this country, they are some sort of...ancestrally, they probably are of immigrants. And we have to understand, I don’t think we’re ever going to have some sort of overall consensus of what the magic number is, but I think we do have to come up with a process of how we process these people who are trying to enter the country and how we allow them to work.
Nicole Gelinas
And in terms of processing, if I come here, I apply for asylum and I’m rejected or I said I was going to apply for asylum, but I didn’t, what should happen to me? What does the process look like?
Julie Won
Well, the hope is that you process people before they enter, unless they are here for an emergency purpose. So that the majority of them have come in with authorization. But right now, it’s almost impossible to have those processings, which is why people just choose to enter early instead of after. And the whole idea of the CBP app was that you would get the paperwork, you would get their passport, and you would get as much identification as possible for every single person that was entering. But the app fell short because there was no back-end processing after somebody applied on the application itself because of the volume in which it happened, and that volume was extraordinarily high because we had four years of people not being able to enter at all.
Nicole Gelinas
Anecdotal evidence shows that many people who came in during the Biden years were economic migrants. They would not qualify for asylum. So what should happen to those people? They would be rejected before they come in?
Julie Won
No, I don’t think they should be rejected before they come in because we rely on them to even put our food on the table for farming, for whatever it is that they do, even construction work. We know that they’re a very integral part of our economy, so we have to figure out how to make sure that they can work here legally, and ideally it’s before they enter, especially when they’re economic migrants. But currently we’re not doing that, so you’re putting employers at risk as well, where they’re forced to hire these folks, putting their businesses on the line and themselves on the line to criminality when they just want to be able to work.
Juan Manuel Benítez
Can you talk a little bit about your own personal immigration experience?
Julie Won
Sure, yeah. I came to this country in ‘98, and it took me over 10 years to get my citizenship. So for Korean Americans, there’s always a multiple path of coming to this country. But for me personally, it was after the Korean War, a lot of Korean nurses were able to get specialized visas to work in hospitals. First it was to Germany, and once that Germany contract ended, a lot of those same nurses were offered contracts in U.S. hospitals, and that’s how one of my— So it’s very complicated, but my father is one of nine siblings, one sister, eight brothers, and the eldest brother is my uncle. His wife is a nurse, and his wife’s sisters are all nurses, and one of the sisters was the one that got a US offer to come to this country through her nursing degree. And from the nurse, she ended up marrying an American citizen, and she got citizenship. And in the ‘90s, the U.S. was very, very lenient on allowing siblings to get citizenship and allowing your family members to be extended an ability to come to the U.S. to have green cards. So that’s how my uncle was able to come with his wife, especially because they had a child that had brain cancer. So the U.S. expedited them, and once he came, he extended the invitation to his brothers to come to this country, and that’s how I ended up here.
Juan Manuel Benítez
And you weren’t a citizen for many—
Julie Won
Over 10 years.
Juan Manuel Benítez
10 years. So you were here with a green card?
Julie Won
No, we did not get a green card right away. But I just remember the most exploited thing is the notarial fraud. So, legal services in every immigrant community that exploit people like myself, who know that my parents don’t speak proper English, but they’re desperate to become citizens fast. So it would used to be in the papers a lot. You see it on the streets a lot, where they have signs that say, “Oh, I’ll help you get your citizenship. I have connections with judges. I have connections with the government. Call this number. Pay us this much.” And I just remember, so many of my family members, as well as my neighbors, and people in the Korean community, and my church, all talking about this one person who took over $30,000 and then disappeared. And this would happen over and over again. So that’s one of the bills that I passed last year, to double the fines and penalties for notarial fraud, because I was seeing it all over again during the migrant crisis.
Juan Manuel Benítez
It happened to your family?
Julie Won
Yes. I think it’s very common.
Ben Max
When you mentioned welcoming migrants in the shelters, you have a pretty diverse City Council district that you represent. Did you have to deal with— there’s a lot of inter-immigrant-wave questions, especially at this time where there was seemingly a rise in resentment among people who had come to the country previously and were not then put up in shelters and given “free” stuff. Did you have to manage that?
Julie Won
So for the most part, I’m extremely, extremely grateful because my community was so welcoming. We had welcome dinners where we were able to have resource fairs, so that they could meet the nonprofits that do a variety of services in the community, and they were willing to partner with us, as well as free meals, ‘cause we had so many complaints about how horrible the migrant shelter meals were. So we would have catered meals from local restaurants that were hot and delicious, of their cultural competency so that they enjoyed eating it. And in addition to that, we would also do collections for donations for clothes, for shoes, for luggage bags, and everybody overwhelmingly was so supportive.
My district also had the highest amount of rapid response training for citizens who wanted to protect undocumented citizens. And as you saw with the latest case with Yuanxin, a six-year-old Chinese boy who was detained and deported from my community in a local school, we had over a hundred people that came to rally for his freedom.
So luckily, my district is very, very supportive. I would say that there was a small subset of people who’ve come to my office really upset for those reasons that you described. Because like myself and many immigrants who came here in the ‘90s and 2000s or even before, there were no free hotel shelters. There were no free dinners. There was no free food. But I would also say that with many conversations, especially when they learn I am an immigrant also, and just because we have all this trauma of immigration, doesn’t mean we need to knock everybody that comes here and smack them in the face with more trauma. If we can create a better pathway for other people instead of closing the door behind us and ripping the carpet under their feet, we should do it. And most people were very susceptible to that, and they came into the fold with the community.
Josh Greenman
But aren’t you at all concerned? The U.S. is already a magnet for people from all over the world, mostly for economic opportunity, but for other reasons too. If work authorization were to be pretty much immediate, are you concerned about how much more powerful that magnet becomes? You know, we had even Obama saying, “Don’t come,” to some people who were just trying to come seeking authorization. Does that message get very, very hard to send to people if you’re saying at the same time, automatic work authorization if you do get here? And then related to that, what’s the difference practically between being an illegal immigrant, an undocumented immigrant, and a legal immigrant if work authorization becomes immediate?
Julie Won
I’m not saying that work authorization is automatic for anybody that wants to come. But I also don’t think that it should be a class warfare like Trump, where they say, “Oh, you can only come if you have these certain degrees of higher education to let you come to this country.” You know, I hear stories, like for example, at my hair salon, the woman that cuts my hair, she came from Vietnam after the Vietnam War, and she tells a story of how easy it was. You landed here, and then they just handed you a physical green card and it was like, “Here you go.” And then she was like, “And then I was here.”
And, you know, when you look at parts of history, there were times in U.S. history where anybody and everyone was welcome, and then there are parts of history like now where it’s much more difficult and there has to be a balanced approach to how we allow some people to come, but I don’t think that the qualifications should only be set to people who qualify for an H-1B visa so that they can work a white-collar job. Because we know from our economy that over a trillion dollars of taxes are from immigrants and migrant workers, and we need them to succeed as a country and for our economy.
So I don’t have an exact formula for you today to say this is how we should have a benchmark of who qualifies for work authorization, but this current system of like people just free willingly come and then they are stuck in this limbo of three to five years or more of not being able to work legally, and then you have all these exploitative issues where you’re working under the table like my parents did for a while, and you have no legal protections. You don’t even have a single day off. I think we have to come up with some sort of way to make sure that we have work authorizations for people before they enter, and having a filtering process where obviously it’s not going to be for anybody and everyone in the world to come, but we have to make sure that there’s some sort of process in place, because it can’t be one or the other like we have now.
Akash Mehta
Can I ask one more immigration question? What level of criminality should lead someone to be subject to deportation, and also should lead New York state and local agencies like police and sheriff’s departments to collaborate with immigration enforcement?
Julie Won
I think we did a really good thing last year with the City Council to decriminalize street vending, for example. You know, we knew that ICE was going after anybody who even had, like, the smallest misdemeanor if it was seen as a criminal offense, like selling churros on the street. That is not OK. I think the same way that we’ve had bail reform on a state level is the same way we should qualify what qualifies as an extreme criminal to be deported or to not be allowed citizenship, and I think that is correct. But I don’t think we should go after super punitive issues that have been societally created as a structure for immigrants because they are just trying to make ends meet by doing what they can as a street vendor.
Akash Mehta
And how would you evaluate the governor’s approach and position on collaboration with immigration authorities?
Julie Won
We have to protect sanctuary city laws, and there should be zero collaboration with ICE. And even in Wykoff Hospital, when a lot of our community members were fighting with ICE to protect their immigrant neighbors who were at the hospital, I think that is the way that we should be. We should not allow any collaboration with ICE as a city that is a sanctuary city.
Nicole Gelinas
So on street vending, how would you make sure that the vendors aren’t just competing with each other and pushing their pay down? I mean, that’s one of the many reasons we have rules for street vending. Should anybody be able to obtain a license?
Julie Won
Street vending has existing laws for qualifications of how to become a street vendor and how to become licensed. The problem was, a lot like citizenship, that it was a processing issue, and also the number of licenses available. So we just passed a law last year increasing the number of licenses, and therefore there’s going to be less people who are doing it unregulated and now competing to make sure that they can hold onto those existing licenses so that they are doing it legally.
Nicole Gelinas
So should there be a limit on the number of licenses?
Julie Won
There already is a limit existing even with the expansion.
Nicole Gelinas
And that’s good? We should keep the limit?
Julie Won
The number of licenses that we expanded to was the number that had been thoughtfully analyzed by Street Vendor Project and all the coalition members like Workers Justice Project.
So I believe that that is the number that we have come to understand that that is the rightful number. I’m sure as time goes on, we may change it saying, “Well, actually we have an excess number of licenses that are being unused.” Or we may say, “Hey, that wasn’t enough. We still have a large subset of people who still need licensing,” and we may have to expand it, but time will tell.
Josh Greenman
The Council and the Congress are very, very different jobs. What specifically about federal law and federal tools is interesting to you and motivated you to run?
Julie Won
Yeah. There’s a lot, but I would say my primary focuses are two major issues. One is immigration, as you know, which we’ve spent the majority of our time on now because it’s a personal issue to me that I’ve lived through and that I want to make sure that I’m a part of as we come up with comprehensive immigration reform. But secondly, also AI. Right now, just like the Industrial Revolution when all of our jobs went offshore and left a lot of people jobless, we’re going to see the same thing where week by week I’m getting phone calls of mass layoffs. Like, even my neighbor this week, he works for Meta — there is an expectation of 700,000 people being laid off this week.
So these are masses of people who are going to be jobless, and what we do as a country is going to be extremely important in a time like now. So that’s why after being contracts chair for the last few years, I’ve now become workforce development chair — and we’ve never had workforce development as a committee before, which is crazy in City Council, because I see that we’re at the precipice of a really important time for our country.
One, I think about AI, how politically we’re having this conversation about “ban AI,” well, the issue is it’s open source and we can’t really ban it and it’s decentralized. But the root cause of why the public sentiment is so negative towards it is because, one, of job losses or the fear of becoming obsolete, and two, also because of the amount of hallucinations that we’re having with AI that is misleading people.
So those are two things that I want to work on right now. I just introduced the bill yesterday on consumer protections for AI because I think in addition to job loss, which I want to work on as workforce development chair, for hallucinations. For example: teenagers committing suicide ‘cause ChatGPT told them to; seniors who call my office who’ve been scammed and phished out of their EBT cards because somebody used a deepfake voice recording of their grandchild saying, “Grandma, send me this money. I need to graduate from college. I need to buy these textbooks” — and now she’s out of this money. And there’s nowhere to report that to and have an investigation unless you have the funds yourself to have a lawsuit.
Nicole Gelinas
Do you see the regulation of AI being best done at the federal level, the state level, or the local level?
Julie Won
Ideally, it’s on a federal level. And if we’re, you know, nationally we’re constantly having this conversation about how we’re in an arms race for AI with China, well, China has been light years ahead of having a national regulation, multiple national regulations on AI, whereas our country has failed to do so. I believe today the White House is having a meeting and putting together some sort of advisory committee on regulating AI, but we are still far behind in regulations, which continues to reap on the fears and the alarming of what we’re facing. So it should be on the federal level, but because we aren’t, we have to do it on a city or state level until the federal laws are in place to really protect all of our citizens, then we have to overrule federal preemption and allow those laws to be in place.
Josh Greenman
What do those regulations look like? What do the big principles of regulation look like?
Julie Won
First and foremost, I think it’s AI security and safety on how it’s used when it comes to biosecurity to make sure that AI isn’t being used to create some sort of new COVID-19, for example, because it can be capable of doing so.
And instead we should really make sure that it’s being used to cure cancer or something, something good for our survival. And also for deepfakes images. I think these are very basic. Anything that is created by AI should have some sort of watermark to make it clear that it was AI-generated, not human-generated, so that you could tell the difference between AI and something that is real. Because that’s also another fear where people are like, “How am I going to know what’s real or fake anymore?”
Josh Greenman
That gets you into the similar territory with gun regulation, which is that nobody who wants to nefariously create a deepfake is going to actually do the water stamp part of it.
Julie Won
Well, that’s why with consumer products like Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and OpenAI, that you force them to do it. Even if the users themselves may try to get around it, at least the default is that the watermark is there.
Akash Mehta
You said we can’t ban AI. We could dramatically slow it. Bernie Sanders has a bill to impose a moratorium on new data centers. There’s a bill in the New York State Legislature that would do the same. Do you think we should?
Julie Won
We could.
Akash Mehta
Do you think we should?
Julie Won
Well, I think for our own safety, if we don’t have data centers, and now we know with companies that it doesn’t even have to be Earth. Because when we talk about data moratoriums, it’s because of its horrible impacts on the environment mostly. You know, on our water supply, our energy supply, as well as any other effects that we don’t even know because there’s no transparency or accountability in all of these AI companies in disclosing the data of how much water they’ve used, what it does when it’s regurgitated back out to the public, and what the water, what the electric grid is going to take. But we know that there are current companies now that are putting out models of having it on certain parts of space where it’s completely facing the sun at all times, so that means that it has no impact on our environment. But we never want to lose to another country like China in this AI development, because it’s already happening. Just like the Cold War against Russia, we can’t allow our country to fall behind in this development, but we shouldn’t do it at the sake of our environment at all.
Akash Mehta
So, whether it’s data centers or taxes or other regulatory tools that have been proposed to slow down the development of AI, you don’t think we should do that because then China will lead the progress?
Julie Won
I don’t think we should slow down the development of innovation, but we have to have strong regulations. So for example, what I propose is that if you are going to lay off a certain number of people, then the company should either pay a severance fee to that individual as well as the state and the city and the country, like a tax. Or in reverse, if you don’t want to pay that, then you have to prove to us that you spent a certain amount on upskilling and reskilling those individuals to make sure that they had other strategic capabilities that you could put them in within your own company or elsewhere so that they’re not left jobless.
Josh Greenman
Is that only for AI job losses or other job losses as well?
Julie Won
AI job losses are going to come outside of the AI companies—
Josh Greenman
So the severance you’re proposing— if I get laid off for another reason—
Julie Won
Right. If you’re a journalist—
Josh Greenman
Would that have applied in that case?
Julie Won
No because you can’t do it in retrospect before the bills are written and these regulations are in place.
Josh Greenman
I’m saying after the bills are written, does it apply only to AI-fueled job losses or to any job losses? Do you have to document that the job loss was because of AI?
Julie Won
You will have to prove that it’s because of AI, because you can’t pay for every job loss in the world. But what I’m focused on in terms of AI policy is no matter what industry you’re in, if you’re using automations or AI to lay people off and replace them, then you should be responsible for making sure that they were re-skilled and retrained to make sure that they had some sort of other capability. Or we should talk about UBI and thinking about four-day work weeks. If we need less employees to do the same amount of work, then what are we going to do to protect our workforce in this country?
Juan Manuel Benítez
So do you think we’re going to end up needing universal basic income [UBI]?
Julie Won
I do foresee that in our future, yes.
Juan Manuel Benítez
How soon?
Julie Won
You know, I’m not an engineer or a scientist, so, I don’t know. But what I do know is that it used to take me 26 days to build a phone application, like, with my team — not myself, but with my development team. And now what I’m hearing from them directly is that it only takes 12 days, and that only took less than one year for that to happen. And if we continue at this speed, then I imagine half a year from now or a year from now, it might take two days.
Ben Max
You sound like you buy into this idea of using satellites and space technology to power AI. You think that’s a very viable plan and path?
Julie Won
Yes. They already have prototypes that have been used, and it seems like that’s the least negative impact on our Earth and our environment, and I think that’s the only path forward because we don’t want to decimate [the environment], and we just don’t have enough energy. And I think it’s counterproductive for us to go back to using fossil fuels in order to power AI. And what I also am interested in is, for example, DeepSeek. China has figured out a way, without all these expensive AI data warehouse centers, to have powerful AI tools that are being built open source, unlike the U.S., where it’s extremely expensive to have something of similar speed.
Josh Greenman
You talked a lot about AI layoffs, which are concerning to everybody, but you also worked at IBM trying to improve government efficiency, right? Can’t AI be an ally of making government more efficient for the people who pay for it? And if so, how does one’s attitude toward preventing AI-fueled layoffs in the private sector then carry over to the public sector where there may be productive uses of AI to make a bureaucracy work more cost-effectively?
Julie Won
A hundred percent. So right now, I’m hoping to get a Council initiative funded for an AI Corps. So just like AmeriCorps, we want to make sure, because there are so many new college grads, because we’re seeing the greatest amount of job loss to AI in associate-level jobs, especially for those who studied computer science or engineering, because there just aren’t any entry-level positions open anymore for the most part in the country. So we want to take those individuals and bring them into the government, just like AmeriCorps, and say, “Hey, we’re going to have you shadow this commissioner,” an executive-level position in a city agency, state agency, and a federal agency, and watch how they work, watch what’s important, and where you can suggest certain automations that we have to have to save them time. We know that for the state, they’ve already started sampling this, where instead of having to read a document that is proposed to you for a briefing, like you just saw me drop my briefing on my way here. Instead of reading a six-page document, now they have something that within a four or five-minute podcast, they just listen to the briefing.
Josh Greenman
Well, could that extend to reducing the number of government employees? There are more than 300,000 people who work for the City of New York, for example, and many, many more than that who work for the federal government. Do you foresee AI as a tool to thin the ranks of publicly-funded employees?
Julie Won
My goal is not to cut any employees anywhere, but it’s to make sure that we are using them to be more strategic with their talents and their skills to protect our workforce. Because we have to use AI as a coworker to do things that are administrative that you want to pull your hair out and, and like punch yourself for, instead of having to do it for hours on end because that is all that you have been told that you can do.
Akash Mehta
You were a federal tech contractor. You were contracts chair in the Council. I saw that you have a bunch of bills on procurement. In recent years there’s been a lot of public attention paid to mismanagement of tech contracts, including in New York City with MyCity and BigApple Connect. What do you think effective oversight of contracts, especially in tech, looks like? And do you think we over-rely on outsourced functions in government?
Julie Won
So right now, about 30 to 40% of our city’s budget is spent on contractors, and that’s a large amount of money. And as you saw during my tenure as a contract chair, I had a lot of oversight hearings on misspending and corruption. I passed seven bills on contracting accountability and transparency because one of the issues or the loopholes that we saw with the Adams administration is emergency contracts, which allowed him to go through without abiding by a lot of procurement rules that allowed him to line the pockets of his friends. So that’s a huge problem.
But I think another issue is these quasi-city-state agencies like the Department of Health, H+H —Health and Human Services, as well as the Department of Education. Because they don’t report directly to the city, it was almost impossible for me to get my hands on contracts to review them. I think the public deserves full transparency. Everyone and anyone should be able to subpoena those contracts, and they shouldn’t even have to subpoena it, we should just be able to pull it from the database publicly, and that should be available on a website for every single journalist, for every single person on the street so that we have full accountability and transparency. Because what we also see is that there has been a lot of the same people making money, over $40 billion every single year, from these very same contracts for decades, and sometimes generations within their families because they must have known somebody in the government at one point in time. I think now we have things like blockchain, and we have other technologies that will provide transparency and clear accountability and tracking on every single person that touched that contract so that there’s no one who can hide how that contract was administered and by whom.
Nicole Gelinas
So one type of AI is the field of driverless cars. And there’s a big safety issue there. There’s also a big workforce employment issue. What do you see as the optimal regulation of driverless cars at the federal, state, or local level?
Julie Won
For the State of New York, we’ve already pretty much banned self-driving cars. But you know, we also had that exposé which showed that they weren’t autonomous at all. There was somebody offshore who was behind a screen driving or at least assisting in the driving of Waymo. And I also believe New York City’s streets and roads are much more complicated and dangerous than other cities, because our roads are just more congested — there’s a lot more pedestrians, there’s a lot more risk. And I think that the technology is just still not there.
Nicole Gelinas
So what should we do? Should we keep it banned?
Julie Won
I think it, unless the technology is foolproof and we know that it’s not going to endanger human beings, I’m not opposed to what currently is. But I do think that there are some jobs that are extremely dangerous for people. So I know that a lot of use cases that people have studied are truck driving across the country. Where people are taking drugs to stay awake to meet their timelines, and that causes a danger not just to the driver, but to anybody else on the road
Juan Manuel Benítez
Can we talk about housing really quickly? You know that housing is so important in the district. You were in favor of the Long Island City rezoning, but you’re not so sure about Sunnyside Yards. Why?
Julie Won
So Sunnyside Yards is a really hairy project, just like Amazon HQ2, right? Before Amazon HQ2, there were two other forms of that project, and it failed. And it was a fourth or fifth try with me to get OneLIC passed. So my community, as you know, is a hyper-engaged community. We’re a hyper-educated community, and it does not want to be messed with. And Sunnyside Yards was shut down by AOC, Gianaris, Van Bramer, and I’m pretty sure that Zohran at the time was against that project, too, because that’s what the housing organizers tell me.
And it’s not that the project is a bad project, but it’s a matter of one, how will you work with the community, and what are the legal approval processes that you will take to go through this project? Still no answer. And also in terms of funding, where will the money come from? And the City of New York has already told me officially, the Deputy Mayor of Housing has told me officially that they will not move forward with this project without federal funding.
So unless there’s a congressional appropriation of this project. Funding it just for the deck, which is $21 billion—
Juan-Manuel Benítez
The president is in favor, right?
Julie Won
The president does not control the purse. It has to come from Congress.
Josh Greenman
So would you work for that congressional appropriation?
Julie Won
I’m open to it. But we have to come to an alignment with the City of New York on what the approval process would be because whatever they choose, whether it’s GPP [state General Project Plan] or ULURP [city land use process], the public deserves to know what they’re getting into.
Ben Max
Right. That would become clear at some point in development, right? So you sound open to it, but what would be your key principles to moving forward? Figure there’s federal funding there — big if, but what would be your requirements?
Julie Won
In a hypothetical world, if there was federal funding, I think what’s important to note is that if someone had approached me, as somebody who has read the feasibility study, who has been part of the community board, who is now the Council member. If someone approached me and said, “Hey, Julie, do you want to work on this together?” What I would’ve proposed is that what we do first in terms of funding and building out is the north side of Sunnyside Yards, where it’s the most narrow, and opening it as an actual station. Just like Penn Station or Moynihan Station. When you allow the station to function, and then you grow the commerce around it like shops, restaurants, then it becomes a hub. Right now, it’s a no-man’s-land. It’s kinda just an open scar in the middle of my district that separates Sunnyside from Astoria and Long Island City. So I think that’s what the central focus should have been of making a more—
Juan-Manuel Benítez
The mayor didn’t talk to you about this?
Julie Won
No. Or AOC, or Gianaris, or anybody.
Juan Manuel Benítez
How do you feel about that?
Julie Won
I think that is poor politics, honestly, ‘cause you have to work with your colleagues, especially your congressional colleagues. Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, who actually represents the district, also was not aware. If you need the help of Congress—
Ben Max
Don’t you think [Mamdani] was kind of going there to give Trump something big and exciting to sort-of think about that would need a huge amount of obvious outreach and follow-through, but he was kind of just trying to almost distract the president with something, you know, a big building project to get him excited about. And then it’s like, if there’s any chance of it moving forward, you come back and you start to do that outreach?
Julie Won
I don’t believe that I need to humanize the president the day after the State of the Union address, where he was extremely dehumanizing to our trans neighbors and our immigrant neighbors. I think the timing was very strange. If anything, that was a distraction to the left on what he had just said in the State of the Union address less than 24 hours before.
Josh Greenman
So do you think there ought to be new federal tools, changes in federal laws to make it easier to build in places like New York City?
Julie Won
100%, especially construction costs.
Josh Greenman
And what do those look like specifically?
Julie Won
So I think one of the biggest problems with our housing policy in this country is, unlike many countries of our caliber and GDP across the world, we don’t have a comprehensive housing policy at all, the same way we don’t have a comprehensive city housing policy either. Which is why I’ve always pushed for neighborhood-led housing planning, because we have to think about it cohesively. It’s not just about the housing, but how are we also making sure that there’s enough school seats, that our sewage and plumbing infrastructure is up to date, that we have resiliency so that our housing that we built isn’t underwater in five years, and making sure that the community is moving together for those who currently live here and those who will move in.
Akash Mehta
One of your opponents, the borough president [Antonio Reynoso] has talked about how he has transitioned on the issue of housing and become much more of a YIMBY. I’m curious if you think he’s gone too far in that direction.
Julie Won
You know, very often in this race I feel like Goldilocks, where I’m like always in the middle of the three where it’s not too hot, not too cold, and I’m just kind-of just right. I think that the borough president’s view on making sure that we build housing, it’s important because we have a supply-and-demand issue where we have a shortage of housing. But I think it’s a matter of what kind of housing is really needed, which is affordable housing. But I know that it’s not an easy dichotomy because what we struggle with is currently an overreliance on the private market to figure out how to build enough affordable housing for us and make sure that it pencils out because there just isn’t enough subsidy for us to build 100% affordable housing. We also can’t build Section 8 housing anymore, so what does this really mean for us?
And currently, if you asked the real estate industry now, they would probably tell you that with 485-x, it doesn’t work for anybody, and that’s how we’re ending up with a very slow growth of housing development and also only 99 units for all these housing buildings.
Josh Greenman
Would you be willing to share what your personal housing situation is? We’ve asked the other candidates.
Julie Won
Yeah, sure. Right now I live in a one-bedroom with two kids, and I’ve had to move in less than a year every single year because of safety issues.
Nicole Gelinas
What do you mean safety issues?
Julie Won
So now a little bit over a year ago, myself, Assembly Member Stephen Raga, and Borough President Donovan Richards had death threats from the same individual, and that individual ended up shooting somebody else and now is at Rikers. But it was an extremely alarming situation. I had not taken death threats this seriously until that incident, and now we’ve had to move, and now I currently have a new stalker who is on record, so now I’m moving again.
Josh Greenman
Can you talk about the process of finding an apartment and what the market looked like for you when you looked?
Julie Won
So I used to live in Sunnyside, and I’ve lived in Astoria before as well, and it’s much more affordable there, but it’s getting pretty pricey there as well. But because of my safety issues, I’ve had to move to Long Island City, especially for my children because New York City Council security has told me that I should put my children in a school where there’s more Asian children so that they can blend in more. So that has forced me to move back to Long Island City, where it’s extremely expensive. So we went from a two-bedroom to a one-bedroom, and we still pay over $4,000 for rent. But that’s still on the cheaper side because along the waterfront, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Long Island City rent for a two-bedroom is $8,000 to $18,000. So we just stay in a one-bedroom.
Nicole Gelinas
Have you found the NYPD response to these threats to be satisfactory? I mean, that doesn’t sound very satisfactory to me that your kids should go to school with more Asian kids. Is this a good response to these threats?
Julie Won
So for me, we work with City Hall. So City Hall has City Council-dedicated security. Not that we get security details like Congress members do, but that’s who we report it to. I don’t know about satisfactory. Do I feel more or less safe? I think as a person of color, I’ve never felt 100% safe in this country. I’ve been threatened on the subway even as a civilian for being Asian-American, for bringing the “Kung Flu virus” to this country. I’ve had people try to hit me with an umbrella when I was eight months pregnant because I was Asian. And they blamed me for whatever they believe China’s doing in this country. So I don’t know about satisfactory, but I will do what I can within the limitations that I have ‘cause I don’t get security. But especially as a mom now, this is the best I can do for them, and that’s what I’m trying to do.
Juan Manuel Benítez
Why do you want to do this? I mean, you’re facing death threats. Your kids are not having a normal childhood. And you could be working for the private sector making way more money. What is the— where does the ambition come from?
Julie Won
So I don’t think it’s ambition, but I feel that…Within the last four years, everything we’ve been able to accomplish as a community together shows us and gives us hope that there can be more change. And I don’t take death threats lightly. But like I said, I didn’t feel safe before. It is no different now. And I believe in the humanity of this country. At the end of the day, I meet more good people than bad people, that some of these unwell people are not the norm. They’re outliers, and it’s kind of the everyday life of any elected official, no matter who you are, you know?
I think some people have security details, they have drivers and stuff, and they might feel more safe. But talking to Donovan Richards, the borough president, he felt the same way that I did, even with his security detail. So I think it’s kind of just become, unfortunately, in this country, with such polarization, even the president being shot, attempted shooting multiple times, it’s kind of become the norm and it’s unfortunate.
But I believe that the same way that this country has given me an opportunity to succeed in the ways that I have so far, where it was enough for me to take care of my parents, and I am their retirement fund. And to know that for my children growing up in this country, representation is important. And to know that there are laws, that there is a budget that we can spend to make sure that in a few years we’re going to be opening up a school and my kids are going to know like, “Oh, wow, my mom worked on that. This park that opened has my mom’s name on it. Wow.” Like, you really can be a part of civics and make the change that you want to see in this country when you all work together as a community.
Nicole Gelinas
So speaking of the housing issue, you mentioned plumbing and flooding and some of the infrastructure. One important piece of the infrastructure is transit. And you mentioned construction costs. We also have very high transit operation costs. Would you support in Congress taking the LIRR out of federal jurisdiction so that the state could prohibit them from striking? Like we saw the strike over the weekend, and that would give the MTA more power to change some of these work rules and make the railroad more efficient.
Julie Won
I would be open to giving state jurisdiction, but not for prohibiting strikes.
Nicole Gelinas
Well, state employees can’t strike, but federal ones can. So they’re under the federal law that allows a strike.
Josh Greenman
The Taylor Law and at the state level—
Julie Won
Yes. I think workers should have the right to strike.
Nicole Gelinas
Including public sector workers?
Julie Won
Yes, I do. I genuinely do. And I do believe that we need more funding for infrastructure overall. My focus when it comes to transportation is rewriting or redesigning our federal guidelines, because right now the City of New York is constantly clawing at the feds to make simple changes to the City of New York because the current federal guidelines weren’t written for cities like us, for urban cities. It was written for the suburbs, where it’s car-centric, and it’s not pedestrian-centric for our own safety. So for us, we’ve already had four deaths of children who were mauled to death by cars. And for us to change those intersections to have simple things like a streetlight, that takes a fight with the feds because it doesn’t fall under their federal design guidelines for certain reasons, and it’s not okay.
Josh Greenman
You mentioned getting harassed sometimes on trains and stuff by people who are unwell. Do you think that we struck in New York City, New York State, and at the federal level, the right balance between providing care for people who are deeply disturbed and sometimes requiring them to get care and institutionalizing them? We had a massive deinstitutionalization movement obviously decades ago. Are we at the right place, or do we need to change the balance at the federal level and/or city and state?
Julie Won
I’m a public servant, and I can barely afford to have more than one mental health therapy session every other week because the copay is still extremely high for me to get mental health services. So for a working person to have mental health services, it’s this expensive, and we also have a shortage of social workers and mental health providers. It is virtually impossible for a homeless person to get a decent mental health service provider. And we know right now that there’s an overlap of mental health issues with homelessness, and we have to make mental health services more affordable. We have to pay people fairly, we have to compensate them, and we also have to continue to figure out how to actually make it accessible because right now, it simply isn’t even for a normal person.
Josh Greenman
Do you think we have the right threshold for affirmative institutionalization, for lack of a better word, of actually holding people 72 hours, evaluating them, Kendra’s Law, all of that. Do you feel like New York currently has the correct balance, or should we go more in the direction that Mayor Adams wanted to go? Or should we go less in that direction?
Julie Won
I think what we have is where we’re at, but unfortunately, it’s more complicated than what you try to force people into. So for mental health services, I don’t know about you, but it took me over 26 years of my life — I was 26 years old when I finally admitted to myself, I need to see a therapist every single week to be mentally well. Because there’s a lot of cultural stigma in Asian-American communities to get mental health services. And even if I put you in a room with a mental health service provider, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to be susceptible to therapy. You know, there has to be a willingness for that individual as well to be willing to work on themselves and their mental health, because simply diagnosing them with medication in a psychiatric ward is not going to really make them fully whole. So I think mental health issues are much more than just, “oh, what are the thresholds on which we call them, whatever these diagnoses are,” and we lock them in a room, because we’ve seen this in history on Roosevelt Island, not too far from home, and it doesn’t work that way.
Juan Manuel Benítez
Did you try to get the mayor’s endorsement? And what are your thoughts on Claire Valdez?
Julie Won
I have not sought the mayor’s endorsement because I came into the race in February. I’ve worked closely with the mayor for many years. He was my Assembly member. My thoughts on Claire Valdez is that she’s my Assembly member, and she’s a very nice, kind, respectable person.
Juan Manuel Benítez
Do you think she’s doing a good job as an Assembly member?
Julie Won
She is in her first term, and I believe she’s about a year in. So I think the jury is out. We’ll see. You know, it would be the same if anybody asked about me my first year, being like, “She’s been in office for a year. What do you think about her?” People are like, “We need to see.”
Akash Mehta
And then, and then more broadly, you mentioned a few minutes ago that you see yourself on many issues as the Goldilocks candidate. I’m curious on what other issues do you see yourself as the Goldilocks candidate? And more broadly, at least according to conventional wisdom, you are the underdog in this race. Why should voters elect you as opposed to Claire Valdez or Antonio Reynoso?
Julie Won
Yeah, I was going to say that if Claire is the favorite with Zohran Mamdani, and I believe Antonio Reynoso was here not too long ago saying that he was the underdog. If he’s the underdog, then I must be the feral progressive raccoon that is uncontrollable.
You know, I’ve always come from my community, and I’ve always been a community organizer. I’ve always run with community endorsements, community support. We launched this campaign with 350 volunteers. We’re now at 400, and we’re knocking doors every single day. We are constantly community organizing. We’re getting ready for a block party. We had a big Mother’s Day celebration. So at the end of the day, I think what differentiates us is that I’m the only mom in the race, I’m the only immigrant in the race, and I’m the only tech worker in the race, with work experience in technology. And at the end of the day, I’m always going to run a positive campaign as I always have. And for voters, they deserve a choice. I don’t agree with anybody in power saying, “You should not run for office.” And to have seen that this past year for my colleagues who are City Council members, who are told, “You should not run,” and to stomp on them, I don’t think that’s OK.
Akash Mehta
You mean Chi Osse, or?
Ben Max
Alexa Aviles?
Julie Won
Yeah, both of them.
Nicole Gelinas
If there were ranked choice voting, would you rank one of your opponents next, and which one?
Julie Won
If there was ranked choice voting in this race, I would rank…It’s a little hard because all of us have very similar policy perspectives, but I would say in terms of relationship, like from my personal interactions with them and the time that I’ve spent with them, I would pick Antonio Reynoso because I just know him personally, better on a personal level, where I’ve had more conversations with them and have had more interactions with them.
Everyone
Thank you very much.
Julie Won
Thank you.