Episode 24: Local Matters Westchester: Peter Chatzky on His Run for Congress

[music] Local Matters Westchester, a podcast where we interview the Voices Shaping Westchester, with Adam Stone, publisher of the Examiner News, featuring Martin Wilber, former editor-in-chief of the Examiner News, a long-time journalist in the area, and now Senior Reporter for the Reporter in Vepip, and Shane McGaffey, former stage manager of PCTV. Welcome to Local Matters Westchester. I'm Martin Wilber, one of the co-hosts of today's show. With us today is Peter Chatsky, the current bryorkliff manner, Deputy Mayor, who's also a former mayor, and he's one of the many Democrats running for his party's nomination in the 17th Congressional District next year. Peter is also a business executive, and we welcome him to the show in the coming months, we'll be inviting all of the Democratic candidates in the 17th Congressional District race, as well as incumbent Republican Congressman Mike Lawler. Thanks you for coming on the show, Peter. Where to have you in? Keep having me. You're a background in politics as far as we know is in local government, in the village of bryorkliff. What made you jump into this race for the nomination and the 17th Congressional District this time around? Honestly, I've always loved what I do locally. I view my job as basically solving local problems, hearing constituent needs, addressing them, coming up with sometimes creative solutions. I think it's widely known within the community as really enjoying what I do and being pretty effective at what I do. My wife had been pointing out recently that a couple of factors, one is that she knew how much I enjoyed doing this. She thought that it was time to swim in a bigger pond than just bryorkliff. And honestly, I think our federal government needs it. We're in obviously horrible shape. Anybody watching this, I know many, many friends my age. Certainly, I know people younger who think this is the worst government they've ever had in their lifetime. So it was an opportune time to really get involved. And I'm stepping up to do that. How do you make the leap of what adjustments do you have to make aside from going from maybe local, very local issues to more national issues? But what other adjustments might you have to make to make the leap from local village government to Congress? Bryorkliff is a pretty small district. Well, I'm talking about reaching 7800 voters to get my message out. I was very involved in starting up a lot of the social media for bryorkliff, a lot of the messaging, Nixel apps for emergency access. I'm very big on communication. So the first thing that hit me is wow, this district is a lot bigger. 770 or 80,000 people, the cost of a single mailing could be $50,000. So the two things, much wider audience, much bigger audience to spread your message to and a much more expensive audience to spread your message to those were the things that it also I have the luxury of having an awesome village staff. They're very capable. I worked very closely with them. They're great. I had to build a whole new team to sell a different product myself. And that was an experience more correlated to my years of experience, decades of experience building companies. So I relied on both. This kind of brings those two together. Peter, I'm stone here. I'm curious. It's a crowded, democratic field right now. What are the qualities that you think sets you apart from the other candidates? So first, I should say there are seven of us running recently, an eighth jumped in. I know all of them pretty well. I'm actually pretty friendly with several of them. I think they're all really smart, dedicated people. They're all great. In my mind, any one of them would be a better choice than Mike Lawler who currently holds the position. Having said that, we all bring different things to the table. We all have different backgrounds. We all have different experiences. I am a lifelong Democrat. I'm the only lifelong Westchester resident in the race. I spent my life here. I will admit in case anybody is fact checking, I was born in Seaford Long Island. I live there the first nine months of my life. I don't remember those nine months that well. Most of my life that I remember has been here in Westchester. I'm the only one who has started a business and run a business for 40 years. That's a long time to be running a software company, software as an industry that changes. It's very dynamic. I've had people work with me for 20, 25 years, even more than that now. I've collected people, built coalitions within my company that have stayed there a very long time. I know I'm doing that job right. I understand the needs of small business. 99% of businesses in our country are small businesses. It's a big part of the constituency. I'm the only one running who's been elected five times. I understand the public service part of the job as well. I really view, I see my role in Congress as just extending what I'm doing locally on a much larger stage. Solving problems, listening to constituent concerns, acting as sort of a liaison between federal government and local issues and getting those resolved. And speaking of local issues, national issues get a lot of attention in a campaign like this, especially in a high profile, what's viewed as a swing district. But are there a few local issues to this district? Do you want a highlight that are especially important to you? I think several of the local issues I have either personal experience with or I have political experience with. Housing is a crisis in our country. We have a housing shortfall of something like 4.7 million units of homes. That's a problem throughout Westchester as well, not to that extent, but I believe we're 21, 25,000 homes short of what we need. That's something I have addressed in Barcliffe. We've tackled that. We affordability is an issue throughout this district and it probably starts with housing costs and housing related costs. There is a West chester County model for affordable housing that of course Barcliffe follows. It requires basically a developer to allocate 10% of any projects more than five units for affordable housing. But that's really not enough and it still doesn't address all the problems associated with the housing shortage. So this is something I've really spent a lot of time trying to tackle in the last couple of months, especially in Barcliffe. We have come up with different methodologies that encourage developers to build a wide variety of housing types. I think that really addresses a lot of the need much more so than simply focusing on the affordable element. For example, if you build not just single-family homes, which by the way, 75% of all land in the country is a residential land is single-family lots. Even instead, you give density bonuses to a developer in exchange for a wide variety of studio apartments, one bedroom, two bedroom, townhouse units. You have a mix of possibilities which encourages first-time buyers to come in at a lower price. More importantly, I think at least to me, someone who's been in Barcliffe over 30 years. It gives me an option to step down now that I am empty nesting and four kids are in four different states, none of which are New York, which by the way means I hate all of them. They're gone. I have a big empty house that my wife and I would love to stay in this community, pay less in property maintenance, pay less in taxes, pay far less for utilities. You can do that if your community has a wide variety of different types of housing stock. That is a national problem that I think we're making a lot of success locally. We expect over the next two, three years to add 250 units of diverse housing here in Barcliffe. Given that we only have 2700 homes, that's a huge chunk. Tonight we have a board meeting. We are hearing a presentation from a developer who is stepping up to the exact kind of specs that we most need here in Barcliffe. Diversity of housing on one large parcel. It sounds like Peter that from the comments a little bit earlier in the discussion that if you were not to get the nomination, it sounds like you would almost certainly support whoever would get the nomination. Is that the fair to say? Wow, this interview turned pessimistic so quickly. Yeah, it is. Listen, I think there are great people running. One of my concerns when I when I thought about jumping into the race, I literally spent a solid two months calling everybody I could think of to hear all the downsides, almost to talk myself out of it. I wanted to hear every negative that everybody could think of. At the end of the day, I said to my wife after about two months, I said, "I have a real chance I can pull this off, but I may lose, and I'm trying to balance spending such a big investment of time and energy into a project that I may just end of the day completely lose." She said, "You're going to raise the level of conversation, and that in itself is a worthwhile contribution to our democratic process." She sold me on that idea. It's hard to argue with that. As long as I don't stumble and as long as I continue to get better at speaking publicly, something I'm really working on, by the way, even though I've been doing it for about 10 years, it's something quite different when all of a sudden you realize your words are going to be repeated on X and on Blue Sky and on every social media that's out there. You have to be, I get more careful about what I'm saying at least, so you get a little nervous about that, I guess. But listen, I just think that everybody can do their part to make our democracy run better, and right now at this time, this is my role, I think, my calling. Congressman Lawler, even though it's called a swing district, one relatively handily in the last election, the voters supported him in this district. What might be different this time around in your view? I think there's some huge differences. One is he has a lengthy record now that he has to be held accountable for. That is something I don't think the party, I don't think voters did a particularly good job in the past of paying as much attention as they should have to. There's a difference between people's words and people's actions, and he's a pretty good example of that. He also, I think, did a respectable job of building coalitions of voters that might not naturally have voted for him. I think what we have seen in the last couple of years is there is a, there's just a fleeing of voters from the major political parties. You have non-affiliated voters now making up a giant chunk of the electorate, and really you need candidates that are going to reach out to those unaffiliated voters. I think they're really the key elements here. He did that very successfully in the past. I think he reached groups that might not have all pounced together to vote for him, and I think any candidate has to do the same thing. If they reach out and build a good coalition. Have you done any internal polling that gives any gauge for either the primary and/or the general election? I'll tell you what I'm most excited about. I have, I've won five times in dryercliff. We all run here as independence. We don't have a political party system here in dryercliff. So to win, you almost absolutely need to reach voters either outside your own party or voters that are in a sign top, either party. In dryercliff, if you look at the breakdown of political parties, it is roughly 40% or so. Democrat is 30% Republican, and 30% some odd percent unaffiliated. So I have actually won five times in a political district that mirrors CD-17 as a whole. Those percentages are roughly the same in CD-17, the percentage of unaffiliated Republican and Democrats. So I'm very optimistic that I have an experience to reach the right kind of voter that that dryercliff is a microcosm of, although wealthier, the political party I think is really in sync with the district as a whole. And I'm hoping I can translate that into a bigger audience. One challenge for every candidate, just about unless you're independently wealthy, is fundraising. And in a crowded primary field, how do you deal with that? And how much of a factor might that be in the primary, what along the general election? So money is an interesting battle in the primary. And I know because I speak to them, other candidates are having a similar experience. You often call somebody, and the most likely response is, "Oh, I've spoken to five others who are also running or four others, sometimes six others that are running." I can tell stories because we have shared them. I have called the best friends of some of my fellow candidates in this election not realizing they were best friends. I've called business partners of people running in this election, not realizing that they were business partners of my fellow candidates. It is a challenge raising money when most of the typical donors to Democrats are thinking we are going to support whatever Democrat wins the primary. And money is limited, especially now when people are watching dollars, they're spending. There's a lot of financial pressure. The economy is not great. People are kind of hurting. So I think it is an issue that people are holding back. Listen, I was fortunate enough, I contributed a lot of my own funds to my campaign in part to let my staff know that I'm not going anywhere. I recognize that whoever makes it to the general is going to have tens of millions of dollars thrown from all over the country. This is probably one of the most important races in the country. And I think that money will be coming in the general. The key is to make sure you have enough funding to get your message out in the primary. And so far, I think we're all struggling with that, but I'm comfortable that I have enough money to make it to the end. And Peter, Congressman Lawler cites the Luger Center as crediting him as one of the most bipartisan members of Congress. Do you think that's a fair characterization in today's political climate? You're looking at the voting record, I guess. I'm not really sure exactly how they're coming up with that. I could tell you, I know very few Democrats who would claim that he is a nonpartisan member of Congress. In this district, at least. I know he likes to tout that a lot. I don't know exactly how that statistic is calculated, but I know he is pretty calculated. And I know his voting record seems to be 100% with Trump. I don't know how you finagle that to present yourself as working across the aisle. I can't think of a bill. He has voted on while Trump has been in office. That's been against Donald. By the way, that emphasis assumes a premise that the district is very politically moderate over all in terms of that being a strength that he wants to emphasize. Is that how you read the district as well? Again, I think what he's trying to appeal to is that large chunk of unaffiliated. I mean, those are the people you really have to convince that you're sort of commensacical that you're going that I think those in many cases, those are people who truly believe that rising tide lifts all boats, right? And they're less concerned with which party gets them there, and they're more concerned that everybody benefits. And I think that's a noble way to look at this, actually, because I do think as a country we'd be better off if we were a little less partisan, and we were much more focused on what would lift all boats in that water. I don't think we are in that position today. I think the two parties are at war. They're at loggerheads often. I think there is a difference in the focus between one party looking at wealthy billionaire class doing even better and another party trying to get a little more equity and equitable arrangements in all kinds of things. Healthcare is the obvious one. Income levels is the other one. It's, you know, it's, we're very polarized here. We'll take a quick break right now and so we can hear from Adam Stone and a word from our sponsor. When we decided to start this podcast, I wanted to reach out to one local business to be the debut anchor sponsor. And I immediately thought of Sawmill Club Genesis in Mt. Kisco. I'm a member myself and being a member has allowed me to live a better and healthier life in a family-friendly environment. And there's just really great variety at the club. I can't recommend it enough. Check them out on SawmillClub.com. Peter, I hate necessarily going to site social media, but everyone that looks at social media seems and on some places and some quarters as well as with the Republican National Congressional Committee. There's been, I don't know if you've found this, but there's been a sort of painting you as a far left or over in that direction left. Would you say that that's accurate and in the picture of you and where you stand on some of the major issues of the day or what do you make of that? I know that Mike Waller has been every time one of us entered the race. He said, "Another clown joins the clown car." I was very proud to be called the caboose for quite some time. I know just a couple of weeks ago in the eighth candidate jumped in. I think I like to think in his heart, I'll always be the caboose. I do think that if you look at who's painting me as far left, a lot of those tweets, a lot of those posts are coming right from the Republican National Party, little flattering to have garnered their attention so early in the race. I know Mike Waller has been echoing some of that or the Waller War Room is one of the accounts that's been echoing that. I probably am more left than some of the candidates. I'm far more pragmatic than others based on my actual experience in office. I'm a doer. I just want to get things done. I think in many cases, the more traditionally viewed left policies are actually beneficial to the country. I'm a big proponent of getting people to work. I think that as individuals are prosperous, the entire country is prosperous. Or say it the other way around that you'd like. For the country to be prosperous, individuals have to be prosperous. I know from running a business for 40 years, that the way you encourage happiness and effective and productive employees is by offering, for example, generous healthcare, elder care, child care. You have to achieve a work-life balance. If that is a leftist position, so be it. I'll take that label. I know that it works. I think I'm the only candidate who so far, at least, has been calling for universal healthcare. I think it's an imperative thing for such an advanced country to be offering all of its citizens. It's we spend a fortune. It's still the number one cause of personal bankruptcy, medical debt. That's unacceptable. I think the number of uninsured people are rising the costs for all of us. I think Obama was exactly right about this, by the way. The key to bringing price of medical insurance down is to get more people into the system. Ideally, everybody in the system. It works just like any other insurance. Car insurance, homeowners, you're going to spread out the risk among multiple insurers to bring down their costs. They're going to have fewer claims that more people are in the system. So I'm a big proponent of that. Others have called for universal healthcare. Mandeir Jones did or Medicare for all to go from where we are today where the healthcare lobby is so strong and so influential. Is there maybe a place where you can start moving the bull down the field instead of maybe going from the deep long throw from one end of the field to the other? I'd be happy to get a whole series of base hits rather than a grand slam as long as we're moving in the right direction. I think the Democrats have to aim a lot bigger than we have been aiming. I think that if you set out to compromise on your legislation, you're going to end up with water down legislation. This is a benefit. I think that just has to be sold to the other party properly. If you want the nation to be productive, if money is the driving force of everything, do all you can to get people working and keep them working and keep them happy and keep them going. That's where solid, national medical care can be beneficial. I will also say that I took care of my mom in the last few years of her life. I don't know any elderly person on Medicare who thinks it's a horrible system. Medicare offers basic level of government-funded insurance, but there are premium plans that you can partake it. I don't think very wealthy people should have to sacrifice if they want to pay extra for a concierge service. There's plenty of room in our healthcare system for the profit motive. If you still want profitable companies, let them get the high end of insurance. But I do think our country has to do a far better job on the lower end of insurance, making sure that we're not using emergency rooms as basic primary care service because that's a nightmare for everybody. Speaking about the debate within the Democratic Party between, you could say, the left and the center left, Governor Holkhoel made news recently by endorsing Mr. Mondani in the New York City mayoral race. What is your take on that endorsement and what's your position on his candidacy? I think the most important thing here, and I get asked this a lot. I think we have to be backing our democratic system in this country. He, he, Mondani, ran a great campaign. It addressed the concerns of his constituency. He focused on affordability. That was a primary issue he saw in New York City. There's a whole separate sort of, um, scholastic argument about whether his policies are doable, whether they're implementable, whether he has the experience. A lot of those things are only going to come out once you try to do them and see if they're successful or not. He found a great campaign. I have a conference that anybody who can run a great campaign can probably also run, um, their seat in government pretty well. He's relying on outside advisors. He's staffing up. He's getting good advice. I think he did a good job with that. I understand Holkhoel, um, backing the winner of a perfectly, um, legitimate democratic process. And I would too. I would back, whoever wins a democratic process. You think that's kind of like a strike just in case, because he is the front runner now. If you believe the polls and the four-way race and it's a way to get them on the same page in case the Trump administration tries to do what they've been doing in Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles with the National Guard. Yeah. I mean, preemptively in case he takes office. Yeah. Like, I'm not sure that would explain, you know, unless he's so confident he will take office. Why should then that on one thing? Everyone's going to have that same problem. Trump will, you know, we are a blue state or New York City is a blue city by Trump's word. So, so we're bad on his list. We're on the left side of his list. And, you know, he's sending in National Guards to penalize these blue states just like the Salt Tax is a penalty for, you know, how dare we have Democrats in the state. Now, your answer was a bit more of a political answer, which is fair, but do you, substantively? Do you have any concerns over Maldonis positions on Israel? Are you more in alignment? He recently made a controversial statement about ordering the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. If you ever visit the city, what's your take on that whole conversation? Wait, are you saying I made that statement? I don't think I made that statement. Oh, uh, uh, uh, Mr. Maldonis did. He may have made that statement. Uh, I don't, he has millions of New Yorkers, including many prominent Jewish New Yorkers supporting him. Uh, I think some of the criticism of him is probably tethered to his own roots. Um, not so much his actual words or his actual positions on items. I was not comfortable with his use of the Antifa, um, and, and globalizing the Antifa. I think that was, I don't understand what he meant by it. Although he did try to explain that he used that term in a different way than other people have interpreted it. That one I'm not so comfortable with. I do see he's getting a lot of support. I have, uh, probably distinguishing positions on Israel from some of my fellow candidates in this race. I don't think that absolutely criticizing BB Netanyahu and some of his policies. I don't think that's an absolute anti-Semitic stance to take. I think that people can, um, hold people in government accountable. It's no more anti-Semitic to criticize BB Netanyahu for a position than it would be anti-American to criticize Donald Trump. And I do think, um, I'm Jewish. I have family in Israel. It's important to me that Jews feel safe all over the world. I do see rising anti-Semitism. I think that he has not done a particularly good job, um, based on reporting and what I'm seeing, probably all the, the highly confidential information that someone in government may currently have. But I think he could be doing a better job with humanitarian aid to people in the consul's dream. No question about it. And I do think, and this is what you called controversial. I don't find so controversial. We have US law that, that says we have to withhold aid even to our allies, even in times of war, if they're not upholding the highest standards of humanitarian aid that we used to demand in America. And I think that we have lost some moral ground here, especially under the current administration. And there are probably countries looking at us saying who are we to demand anything like this? We haven't demanded it. I think we can do a better job. I think that would actually keep Jews safer all over the world. If we weren't perceived as following the leader, we currently have in Israel who probably is not doing the optimal job of providing that humanitarian where do you stand on the um, support for Ukraine? Um, if you know, just watching and then reading the news from the administration, there's constant wavering of where they stand with between Russia and Ukraine. And um, what's, uh, what would you like to see United States do and it would be to stand with Ukraine or something else? It would be to stand with Ukraine. I, I think wars, I favor diplomatic solutions all the time to war. I think that that's a obviously terribly horrific experience. I don't, I think Donald Trump is been inconsistent with his positions, which has led to a lot of confusion. It's probably wasted a lot of money as well as we, you know, say we're going to send arms and don't send arms. I think this is a perfect example where you need additional countries getting involved as allies and negotiating helping negotiate a solution. Same thing, Israel, uh, Palestine, uh, obviously this is beyond us. I didn't think that was a, uh, such an obvious statement to say in the past, but these days we don't seem to have people in government who can help out here. Peter, what are you hearing about the impact of the big beautiful bill on local healthcare and particular on area hospitals and how it's going to impact Medicaid? Are you, are you talking to local stakeholders in the local healthcare industry? You know, this is an area where I've been amazed by Mike Lawler's reaction to be honest. He didn't interview. I believe it was Chuck Scarborough. He may have done it more than once where he basically said there is no problem. There's no problem in Rockland hospitals. There's no problem in Westchester hospitals. Hospitals are parroting talking points of, uh, actually it's unclear. I guess he, he thought hospitals were sticking up for medical unions in New York State and everybody else complaining about, um, slashes to, to Medicaid. You know, the congressional budget office estimated, I think the number is one trillion cut from Medicaid over 10 years. Hospitals, that number may be off by 25%, but you're talking huge amount of money. And this is based on congressional budget offices, personally, a nonpartisan, you know, review of this. Westchester Medical Center is the only level one trauma center, I think, between New York City and Albany. It's, it's a vital part of this community. I know it has a parent center. There is a neonatal intensive care unit, an organ transplant program. I know there's a stroke center there. My mom had to go there. There's a separate children's hospital. It's an unbelievably valuable facility to our community. How they are going to just survive without any cuts or any degradation of service given these tremendous cuts in Medicaid. It's just inexplicable, right? So, uh, you know, and, and if Lawler wants to blame that on New York State, and it, he'd have to justify how New York State's budget, probably 30% of it, of the revenue probably comes from the federal government. So I don't understand how you could be in the federal government and say, uh, it's a state problem. By the way, we're cutting a lot of the revenue that you're going to be getting from it. That's, that's just spin. It's no secret that, you know, New York State, the Northeast, and also Westchester County, um, is, you know, one of the most expensive places to live from, uh, a, from from Washington, if you were to get there, uh, Peter, um, what steps could be taken to western the load, um, on, on the area in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, in particular. Uh, well, first of all, part of the reason it's expensive here, most local taxes go to schools, right? 70 cents on a dollar typically goes to school taxes. We have awesome schools in New York. So, you know, if you're going to compare New York, uh, to Kentucky, I guess, or someplace where they're, um, not subsidizing the federal economy. The way we do, it's kind of an unfair comparison. Uh, it is expensive. I think there are items, though, that are ridiculous, like utility prices, um, whether you're conned or nice egg, uh, I would do something in Congress to reign in the unfettered price that we're seeing from utility companies. It's up double digits year after year after year. Um, in Breyercliffe, we've actually implemented some laws to demand better service from connet. I think in the federal government, I would use congressional's power. These are, these are local monopolies. And they are licensed monopolies. That comes with some privilege to be a monopoly. It's some recognition that, you know, um, I think the key is public benefit. That is always the determination to allow a monopoly. There's public benefit. I think it's hard and harder to make that case when you have a utility that is not doing maintenance on schedule, deferred maintenance, always cost more down the line when there are shareholder profits that are paramount and, you know, much more important, uh, to make investors money than to provide service to consumers and customers. That, that imbalance, uh, should be addressed. If it needs to be addressed on a federal level, because you're talking about monopolistic power, so be it. Um, I, I think there should be federal oversight. If you have public service commissions that aren't doing their job, if the state is not doing a good job, um, and residents are suffering, those are Americans that are already being stretched thin, and their dollars are being stretched in. I think federal government is room to step in. I've read in a couple of places, at least, that, uh, the surge in energy crisis, and it's not just conned and iseg. It's really nationwide. Um, a lot of it has to do or a good piece of it has to do with the explosion of the, uh, AI data centers, and I'm not sure how have the government. I mean, that's the wave of the future. It seems like, and I'm not sure what the federal government can do to offset that in some way. Um, there are so many instances where our infrastructure is not keeping up with the math. AI is one example where if you are forward thinking, um, you worry about the electrical grid and our power supply and look for various options to stabilize that and to increase power that's available for consumption here in our country. Instead, you have an administration that's doing away with all sorts of alternate energy. Um, you know, coal is, uh, probably not ideal for the future. And if you're putting, um, policies in place to protect people and their current jobs, I say, you're far better off giving people training to do the jobs that we're going to need in the future. There's all sorts of electrical grid improvements we should be making on a federal level. And they had to be made locally for local support that money should come from the federal level, because they should understand it's benefiting the whole country. Um, there's job training we need to be doing for new technology. There's a lot going on that where we're failing. I'm worried about our water supply, but it's another issue. There's as you gut, um, environmental programs throughout the country, we're going to have a problem. And there's a lot of building that needs to take place. That building has to be sensitive to environmental concerns. All of this fits together. And, um, short-sighted thinking is going to really be our downfall here. We have to invest in the future and that requires some long-wage planning. It's not being done today. Speaking of AI, do you any additional guardrails need to be erected? What's, do you engage with AI in any way, shape or form in your own campaign? What are your thoughts on the technology in general? Yeah, I'm not going to talk about how we use AI in our campaign. Nice try, but that's, that's, you know, really our secret sauce. So I don't want to get into that yet. I do think, uh, however, where the emphasis should be on new technology is, is training. I think there are many, many jobs, uh, probably an unpredictable number of jobs that will be impacted by AI. And now is the time to start retooling. Um, there will be disruption. People will be laid off. It's hard to imagine that doesn't happen. It happens all the time with technology progress. This is something I deal with and I have been dealing with for 40 years, uh, as I implement technology in different banking operations. I've seen it. Um, but I think the key there is to prepare people for the new tools to be more effective and more efficient in what they do. So they're not this place so that they're not just sitting on a couch with, you know, no option for work. I think we should do as good a job training people for all sorts of, um, positions as we used to provide college education loans. There should be all sorts of loans for trades for whether that's carpentry or plumbing or using AI and any kind of business that it can pop up in. But when you're talking about that, crazy, do you, do you mean that Congress has a role in that? Are you just talking more generally about something that would be good in society? Oh, I think it's good in society, but I think Congress absolutely has a role here. The power of the purse is, is, is just it's so important that our tax policy really reflect the interests, and not just tax policy, but investment policy, uh, reflect the, the well-being of the entire country, whether that is healthcare, whether it's jobs training, whether it's preschool, universal preschool, whether it's better education programs, all these things, something that government, there is a role for government to make sure we're moving in the right direction. One issue that has, um, reared its ugly head again, and that is gun violence, both in the last weeks, uh, um, murder of Charlie Kirk, but also at school in Colorado and on our streets almost every day, virtually every day. Is there any hope that you see that this that gun violence can be curbed and how do you do it? Wow, I wish I had the answer to that off the top of my head. It, it does feel hopeless. It does feel like we're entrenched in our positions, and some of this comes back to how we are going to start reinterpreting our constitution. It's meant to be a living document that grows over time. I don't believe anything in there is impermeable, never meant to be changed. I, I know there's been so many explorations of the wording down to the comma of the second amendment, uh, but I think common sense at some point has to prevail. There is a way that people who want to can enjoy guns for hunting, they can use it for protection. Their home can be sanctuaries. When you start pulling those guns out of the house, many people, many, many more people are at risk. And I think we have to just come to our common sense that there's a difference between protecting your home and inflicting violence on somebody else. I, I don't know how we get there. Um, it seems we're very, very divided on this issue. And I would work, I would reach across the aisle, I would try to build a coalition. I know there's so many groups in the country that are impacted by this and, and are taking steps. I, I think, getting people to sit down and really talk about how we get from where we are today, which is starting to get if it's not already completely embarrassing on the world stage. Other countries don't have this problem. And why is that, right? We have somehow co-opted what was once having guns to make sure that we're never in a society where the government is a kingdom and we have no power as people and instead we're ending up with uncontrollable violence as well as a government that is running like a kingdom. So something is wrong here, right? The point was to make sure we could overthrow the government as individuals. So I'm not sure what the solution is here, but um, something's gotta give. You mentioned everyone knows that the, the countries deeply divided and just by registration, the, the district of congressional district 17 is politically divided, which is, you know, politics and debate is, is great, but how, what role and how would you look to do your part if elected to bring the district, the state and the nation together? I think what you're seeing with all those disenfranchised people who have left both parties because there's a lack of civility that's turning people off. There's a lack of progress that's turning people off. There's a feeling of hopelessness that votes don't matter, which I think really is the, the big risk for democracy. When people throw up their hands and stop voting, they're gonna get whatever government somebody else thinks they should have. And that's terrible spot to be in. I think we need to bring civics back, civics education back to school should be a mandatory course as far as I'm concerned before you graduate high school. By the way, so should some financial planning and financial literature be part of high school education, I think? We need to be really investing in our country in terms of a knowledge investment. And I think, I think we can start thinking long range about what are the best investments to make in our country. You're gonna take away a lot of the anger, which is so divisive here. And, you know, I would not like to be a leader of a privileged person who's serving in our government at its highest levels in Congress, in any of these positions, and not acting in sort of the most ethical, the most impressive way, because I think that's what's happening. People are being turned off by picking up the paper and reading what our leaders are doing every day. We have to just start acting better. It's, you know, your parents were right. Behave, right? I'm sure you both heard this, even if you're pretending you did not. I think our country could benefit from that. Is there any under the radar screen issue or question that we haven't asked yet that you might want to touch on? I'm surprised you didn't ask about my suite too. It's kind of legendary. I'm all over there. I'm, you know, this campaign, there is a lot of shaking hands. There's last sitting down for coffee. I don't think I've ever had as much coffee and I will admit I usually get a cookie with the coffee. I don't know why I'm not ballooning. Wait, why? I think we're running around. All of us are running around like crazy event to event to event. It's kind of fun, but it's also impressive that I'm not following about part completely. I do think much, I guess we touched upon this. I would like to see money coming out of politics. I think it really is such a nightmare. I'm not just saying this is someone who struggled with fundraising, you know, as we all struggle, as we're approaching at quarter end tonight, mayor, but the amount of control that money is buying within our society just has to change. I think we all took a pledge not to take pack money at one point, which is interesting that we we all said it publicly. I hope everybody abides by that. You know, unfortunately, it is yet do have to get elected before he can affect change. I know some people are probably looking at I want to get in anyway. I can get in. Money is a problem in our country and it's weird to say that since I've been very successful. I've enjoyed having money. I've enjoyed working hard for it. Certainly not a spouse in communism is an alternative here, but I do think money in our government is especially I would like to see more sunshine. Everything up to the Supreme Court. I want to see who's holding what. I want to see who's being influenced by what. I want to I want to to shed some sunshine so we can have better transparency in government so people have a lot more confidence in decisions our leaders are making. And you also raise a point that many Democrats raise, and that's it's maybe a little bit apples to oranges, but income inequality and I had an elected official once who was an accountant and a tax attorney saying that how you how you achieve that is through the tax code. And the is the income inequality does seem to is having a tremendous impact. I remember growing up and you had middle middle class people you don't really have that class of people anymore. You know you either have people struggling paycheck to paycheck or those who were reasonably comfortable maybe not well people comfortable. And there's no there's a disappearing middle ground. So where would you rank income inequality? And all it goes with it on the scale of priorities. I think you're exactly right that this all stems from the tax code by the way. The wealthiest in this country have the most advanced advantages from our very own tax code. There are just things available to wealthy people, sheltering mechanisms, trust vehicles, plenty of things that if you were way lower on the economic scale, you just don't can't take advantage of this. We need it needs to be far more equitable needs to be simplified by the way. It also needs to be way more equitable. I think it's unconscionable that we somewhere 15 years ago we had the idea of a federal minimum wage. It was put into place without any mechanism to adjust the wage. So 15 years later it's been completely decimated by inflation. I don't know how as somebody who has written locally, I've written I think 70 local laws. I would never said a number without an adjustment in a law. I think that should be pegged through inflation. As an example, that's that's something that has to be done. People need to be paid better. And lower income people need to people working lower income jobs that needs to be bolstered. Way up there. And that goes in equality by the way. Also tethered to housing. It's tethered to our medical care. The fact that our medical care tends to be provided by employers is ridiculous. That's another reason I'm for you. Some kind of universal health care. When you lose your job and lose your health insurance, it's probably when you're most vulnerable and how you can pay for something. You're not working and you can still get sick. The problem. And then there's the looming crisis of social security, which if you take literally the latest forecast in about eight years or so will need to start cutting benefits unless something is done. I would say certainly for the last two administrations that there's been constant total. That's the third rail of one of the third rails of politics. Neither party is going to let that what that happened. But here we are eight years later. And it's still an issue and getting bigger in the mirror all the time. Do you see a will? Are you hopeful that there's a will? And how do you get there? Listen, that is math. I don't understand why that issue is so complicated. This is a basic math formula where if you're capping the amount of income that is subject to social security, you raise that cap that that is also another example where you haven't kept up with the times, right? You could have easily implemented social security income level caps that adjust with inflation adjust over time. We'd have far less of a problem that we have today. I think we have to get back to implementing laws based on data. We're getting further and further from this, especially as the current administration is just erasing so many sources of data that we used to rely on to do all these kind of analyses. But pegging things like social security with holding based on a salary cap that maybe is ever increasing probably makes a lot more sense than the system we have today. Right? And that would keep the system healthier, more robust, and it would be there for my children. Thank you, Peter. Peter Chatsky, one of the eight candidates for the Democratic nomination and for the race for the Congressional District 17 seat next year. And we want to thank you, Peter, for coming on the show and best of luck to you. Thank you for having me. Thanks everyone for joining us. And see you next time on local matters Westchester. So long. You've been listening to local matters Westchester.