Many are describing Democrats' victories across the country in last week's elections as a "blue tsunami." In New York State, those gains included the party regaining a supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature.
Rockland County Democrat Joe Rand was among a half-dozen candidates to flip Republican-held state senate seats. He spoke with Lower Hudson Valley Bureau Chief Elias Guerra. They began with the topic of the "blue tsunami" and what it represents about how Americans feel.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Rand: The warning lesson that you get from it is that when you win, be conscious of the fact that that the voters put you there for a reason and be aware that you don't necessarily take the opportunity to do everything you've always wanted to do ever. Because if you do that, you have a tendency to then push the pendulum to the other side, because that's what Trump did.
Trump thought he was invulnerable and he made — he did all these things that that caused the undoing of MAGA. You know, the war, the tariffs, immigration enforcement. Everything he did caused problems that that then led to this reaction.
Guerra: Understood. And one of the things you talked about during your campaign was transportation or the lack of transportation, specifically between Rockland County and New York City. And there will certainly be a lot of Hudson Valley listeners on the west side of the [Hudson] River who will identify with this. Can you talk to me about some of the challenges for Rockland County residents in terms of transportation?
Rand: We pay a lot to the MTA and we really don't get much in return. We're one of the few counties that compared to Westchester, [which] has a wide array of train stations and train lines that run into the city directly, we have very few train lines, very few stops. They don't take us directly to the city, and they don't have a lot of direct express line trains that go. So, you're looking at often an hour and a half to get into the city by train in what is a three and maybe four-seat ride that you're gonna have to take. And that's just not great. And it's a problem.
And you know, it costs a lot to commute into the city. And if you if you don't have those kinds of options, it really does make it tough. And it used to be [said] that ‘well, you don't have good transportation options, but it's so much cheaper on the west side of the Hudson that it makes up for it’. But it's not cheaper anymore with average sales prices in Rockland County at almost $900,000 and Westchester about $600,000. Like these aren't cheap counties to live in. And a lot of the people that live here commute [to NYC] and it can get very expensive to commute.
Guerra: And what are your plans for changing and to do about this in [New York] State Senate?
Rand: I'm thinking only in Rockland County, because that's what I represent. But in Rockland County, what we need are more reliable Hudson Link buses that come when they say they're gonna come, take the time that they're supposed to take, that they're lined up with the train schedules in Westchester. So [that] you can take a Hudson Link bus from Rockland to Tarrytown and get off and not have to wait half an hour in the cold for the train to come. So, that's one thing. Just more reliable Hudson Link buses would be great.
Also, I would love to see better trains. We have the trains that are operated through the MTA in conjunction with New Jersey Transit. They're old trains. I mean, they're really old trains. If you see them, it's like they could film a movie set in the 1950s in those train stations with the trains that they're using.
We need newer trains and also, we need express lines. We need more express trains. It shouldn't take you an hour-and-a-half to get into the city, which is what it takes when you take one of the the non-express. And it's dispiriting. You know, you get on the train and you stop, you make twelve stops in Jersey before you get to Secaucus or Hoboken to get into the city. And it's it's it's it's suboptimal. It's not ideal.
Guerra: And I understand that you also spent a fair amount of time talking with the Orthodox Jewish community in Ramapo. Can you talk to me about some of the things that you were hearing in terms of how this community is experiencing the affordability crisis and everything that's going on right now? And also in terms of, what they are hoping to see you achieve in the state legislature?
Rand: You know, in running for the State Senate, I made a decision very early on that I was going to be a senator for all. I was gonna be a senator for all the communities in Rockland County, and that included Ramapo. And yes, there are tensions that we see sometimes between the Ramapo Orthodox community and some of the communities outside Ramapo. But I think that that's something that State Senator should be working to diffuse, should be working to bring people together, to show them that they have much more in common than they have that's different.
And that's what I've learned from spending a lot of time up in on the Orthodox community is that they care about the same things that everybody else cares about. They want safe streets, they want more sidewalks, they want clean water and clean air, they want their kids to get a good education, they want public safety, they want — Affordability is a big issue with them as well. They would love for taxes to be lower and they would love for services to be very top-notch level.
Guerra: I think you said, you “agree with progressives 80% of the time”. Talk to me about your plan for working with some of the more progressive ends of the legislature. It sounds like they have plans for working on issues like universal healthcare, public utilities, taxing the rich, and just how you plan to navigate this very ideologically diverse group of legislators.
Rand: I think that in most cases, I think I agree with even the most progressive of DSA members, I agree on the goal that they're trying to reach. I think we're all trying to reach a goal where people get affordable health care, where people have the ability to put food on the table, where people have good paying jobs and safe jobs, and people have housing they can afford. And those are all goals that I think we all share. The question is how do we get there in a way that is manageable as well as doesn't result in you know dramatic shift in our tax bases or in what the government can afford to pay.
So that's the rub. I mean, I would love to — I think we'd all love to do everything that's on the list, but the question is can we afford to do it? And that's where sometimes it's gonna require identifying the priorities of what goes first
Guerra: And what is on your list in terms of the most important policies to tackle affordability right now?
Rand: Well, it's tough for me to say what the most important policies are. I can tell you what I have the most expertise in, and that's housing, because I worked in housing for over 25 years. And I can absolutely say that the solution to the housing affordability challenge is that we need to build more affordable housing.
And I look at affordable housing in two ways. There's the capital ‘A’ affordable: that's housing that is somehow government subsidized, and that could be on the supply side with government actually building housing, that then people can rent or work towards buying. Or on the demand side with the government providing subsidies like Section A rental assistance for people. That's the capital ‘A’ affordability that's government subsidized in some way.
But there's also the lowercase ‘a’. There's also, can we can we incentivize building and remove red tape to building so that people can build more housing at more affordable levels so that housing itself becomes cheaper and easier for people to buy, more attainable for people.
And I think the governor made a big step forward in that with eliminating SEQRA review last year on certain types of parcels, which did reduce the cost and the time that it takes to do some building in Rockland County, that made it a lot cheaper for people to build throughout New York State. But there's other things that we could be doing to eliminate red tape, reduce costs, [like] incentivize builders to build entry-level housing so they don't always rush to build luxury housing. That's the affordable housing I think we have to really focus on. The lowercase ‘a’, where [it] doesn't cost the government anything, but the government is finding ways to incentivize more construction. Because the only thing that's going to get us out of housing affordability problem is more supply. It's a supply-demand problem. We do not have enough supply of housing in New York State and we need it.
