Bringing working-class voters back to the Democratic Party in the Hudson Valley

Village of Tarrytown Trustee Effie Phillips-Staley is one of the many Democrats vying for the chance to challenge Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in the 17th Congressional District next year. A huge pickup opportunity for her party, she said that rather than devolve into a chaotic storm of name-calling and political gamesmanship, candidates are aligned around the idea of sending the people’s choice into the general election with the full support of Democrats in the district.

Phillips-Staley is carving out a progressive lane for herself. She believes the party has seen defeat in recent years, and to Lawler, because it has abandoned its working-class roots for donors and corporate interests, and voters have noticed and abandoned ship. While she hasn’t suggested she could change her party’s approach if she were in office, she said she could change the way that the district is represented. Phillips-Staley caught up with City & State to talk about her campaign, Democrats’ efforts to defeat Lawler and the broader progressive movement. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What would you want voters and people watching this race to know about you?

I am a trustee in the village of Tarrytown, a parent who has raised my children locally in this wonderful part of the world and a person who’s been committed to social justice my entire life through my work in the nonprofit sector. I decided early in life that the work that I did had to advance a better world. This is very idealistic of a young person to decide when they were in college, but that has been the guiding principle of my life, and it’s directed everything I’ve done, from Hispanic advocacy to advocating for renters while I’m a trustee in Tarrytown.

So would it be fair to say that you identify as a progressive?

Yes. I am, and I always have been. I believe firmly that the role of government is to help people live their best lives, to enable people to thrive and live the American dream, and I believe that that agenda is the progressive agenda.

I ask because when Jamaal Bowman ran for reelection last year, there was a whole dynamic where George Latimer was challenging him and declared that he was also progressive. In your mind, what does it mean to be progressive?

I grew up as the daughter of an immigrant from El Salvador who taught English language learners in public schools, and my father was a pressman at the U.S. Mint. You know, a guy from Oklahoma with a high school degree who literally made money, like on coin presses, and we could live what became a middle-class life in a nice house that my family could afford with really good public schools, and this enabled us an immense amount of social mobility. I believe that that was in part structured by a government that was kinder to working-class people, that treated working-class people a little more fairly than it does now. So I was a progressive then and I am a progressive now, fighting to make sure that our government returns to one that actually looks out for working people. This is something that we see the Trump administration, and we see Mike Lawler dismantling at this very moment when it comes to health care, when it comes to housing affordability and certainly, when it comes to the way our immigrants are treated within this country at this moment, which is absolutely appalling and illegal.

What made you want to jump into the race? I can’t remember how many people had already declared by the time you entered, but it seems like the list keeps growing.

It’s a great question, and there are a few of us for sure. After Trump, the second time, I turned to people I work with closely within the Hispanic community, and I said what we all knew, that it was going to be pretty bad this time around. It was going to be bad for working people. It was going to be bad for immigrants. It was going to be bad for our democracy, and because I am an elected official, the question I put forward among these peers was, what can I do? How can I really be the public servant we need at this moment? They suggested that I consider a run for Congress, and to be honest, I didn’t expect that, but I gave it an immense amount of thought. I looked at the field as it was emerging, and I thought to myself, I believe that I am the strongest when it comes to coalition-building across people and communities who are typically overlooked by the Democratic Party. I think the Democratic Party has done a really poor job creating a large enough tent. I think we saw that when we saw many voters from the working class, many Hispanic voters, turn to Trump in the last election. That was the Democratic Party’s race to lose. I believe, given my experience, particularly, working with diverse groups and working with working-class groups, is exactly what we need to bring people back to the party that will really take care of them, because the Republicans make an immense amount of promises, but in the end, they are not going to deliver, and people are going to suffer, particularly around affordability issues. That’s why I jumped in.

Should you win this crowded primary and then defeat Mike Lawler, how would you plan on being effective in Congress?

The most important thing is to have the moral compass that we need to serve the people and to stand by it. I think that’s where Mike Lawler fails repeatedly. Mike Lawler serves Donald Trump. He could pretend to be bipartisan under a Biden administration. That was a convenient cover for him. He cannot in this moment, so it’s critical that we make sure we know who we’re serving, that the job is to be a public servant, and it’s not just of the donor class, not just of the power structures, but specifically of the people. This is where I think Mike Lawler certainly fails. The Democrats, sadly, have certainly failed. So the key to me, and what’s most critical to me, is making sure that I’m truly representative. That means being in all communities, listening to what people need and really fighting for those needs, making sure those needs determine policy. And now we know it’s sort of almost a universal need at this point, is fighting for affordability, affordability in housing, affordability in health care, and I mean really fighting, drawing a hard line and being very clear to the public and to other elected officials about what people need to thrive and be successful in this life, in this moment in time.

Do you think what you were talking about, as far as people not really feeling represented, is turning into this steam for progressivism?

I suppose, yes, we can call it progressivism. I mean, I am a progressive, but it’s really about centering public service on the public, and I think that that’s something that Republicans certainly don’t do, and it’s something that the Democratic Party has gotten away from. We’re paying too much attention to corporate interests. We’re paying too much attention to the donor class, and we’re not paying enough attention to the needs of people on the ground, like our housing situation is catastrophic. We need 66,000 new housing units in the 17th Congressional District to be able to bring the cost of housing down. People should not be paying more than 40% of their income, having to choose between paying rent or the food they buy or their car payments or child care, right? So, yeah, we say progressive and progressive is a label, but what that label really means is taking care of working people and making sure that our system is fair and serves the everyday person.

From your perspective, why has Mike Lawler been able to overcome a Democratic voter registration advantage twice now?

I think that Mike Lawler has been able to do that because he did that under Democratic administrations. He could pretend to be bipartisan; he could say one thing about reproductive justice and protecting women’s right to choose and not actually deliver on that. He could make the case for fighting for the SALT tax and not really fully deliver on that. He could, during a Biden administration, go across the aisle and work with other people in the delegation, but he can’t really do that now. So I can see how he won the last two times, in large part, and I’ll be very clear, because the Democratic Party has failed at really serving its base. The Democratic Party has looked up to the donor class and has looked to corporate interests more than it has looked at the interests of working people. And here’s a great example, like there are 30,000 registered Hispanic Democrats in New York’s 17th Congressional District. Only 4,000 to 5,000 vote. Why? That is on the Democratic Party. If the Democratic Party is not in the community, listening to the needs and addressing those needs as a matter of policy, why would people vote? So this is a big part of why I decided to run. It is exactly this failing that we have to reverse. We’re supposed to be serving people, but I believe by serving people, as many people as we can get in the tent, that’s how we’re going to win, because Mike Lawler is not serving people.

Do you anticipate this primary getting kind of nasty just with the number of people involved with it?

We get along surprisingly well, like the candidates in this race, and it’s because we all understand what the job is. The job is to take out Mike Lawler, and right now, the way we conceive of it is that he’s running against (eight) of us, right? We’re not going to do Mike Lawler’s work for him by attacking each other. It’s a waste of money, and whoever wins, I believe it’s going to be me, but whoever wins needs to be whole on the other side of this so that we can take him on. He is a formidable candidate, but beatable, and the dream in this, as the candidates talk to each other about it, is that on the other side of the primary, we’re all still going to be running against him, right? We’re going to be backing the candidate and supporting them. These are not normal times. This is not a normal primary. We believe, I think we know, that it’s an existential situation, and he has to be defeated. So hopefully we’ll hold it together.

Once this race ramps up, there’s going to be loads of reporters and strategists from out of the state coming into the district. Where do you recommend they go to eat or visit?

I’m a trustee in Tarrytown. Come to Tarrytown. Come to Sleepy Hollow, enjoy our fantastic restaurants. Enjoy the Halloween season, which is in full swing. I think Piermont is a gem. Piermont is a delight, and people should absolutely check out the restaurants there. I’ll be honest, Peekskill is one of my favorite places. Peekskill has a great waterfront. Peekskill has really great restaurants, and you know, the leaf-peeping is, of course, extraordinary up and down the Hudson Valley. Man, I can go on for days. There’s a lot, a lot of wonderful arts organizations, restaurants, recreation, hikes, you name it.