In this blogcast, Burnes Center for Social Change Senior Fellow Seth Harris is joined by Claudia Irizarry Aponte, a senior reporter covering labor and work for THE CITY; Lucia Gomez, former political director for the New York City Central Labor Council and National Immigration & Worker Rights Coordinator for LiUNA; and Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO to discuss the results of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary with a labor lens.
Watch now to learn whether Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s messaging about working-class and middle-class cost-of-living issues was a deciding factor in his primary victory over former Governor Andrew Cuomo, and the divide in the labor movement going into the primary election. Watch as these experts assess whether these NYC primary election results teach us anything about the future of working-class politics in other parts of the country.
Claudia Irizarry is a senior reporter covering labor and work for THE CITY, a nonprofit local news outlet in New York, and adjunct professor at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Her reporting on the dangerous and exploitative conditions of the city’s app-based food delivery workers resulted in landmark local reforms and was awarded the James Beard Award in 2022 and the Edward R. Murrow Award in 2021, among other honors. Her work has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, City Limits and NPR’s Latino USA.
Lucia Gomez is the National Immigration & Worker Rights Coordinator for LiUNA, an American and Canadian labor union. Prior to her work for LiUNA, she served as the political director for the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO. She led the development and implementation of the Council's political agenda, lobbying, and electoral campaigns, with a focus on advancing workers' rights, racial equity, and labor organizing.
Michael Podhorzer is the former political director of the AFL-CIO. He founded the Analyst Institute, the Independent Strategic Research Collaborative (ISRC), the Defend Democracy Project, and the Polling Consortium, and helped found America Votes, Working America, For Our Future, and Catalist. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
