Democratic Party

Eric Adams

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ERIC ADAMS

18th Borough President of Brooklyn

Eric Adams is a politician serving as the 18th and current Borough President of Brooklyn, New York City since 2014. He is a candidate in the 2021 New York City mayoral election in the democratic primary.

Adams served as an officer in the New York City Transit Police and then the New York City Police Department for over two decades, retiring at the rank of captain. In November 2013, Adams was elected Brooklyn Borough President, the first African American to hold the position. 

Eric is a lifelong New Yorker. He received his master’s degree in public administration from Marist College, and is a graduate of New York City Technical College and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is also a proud product of New York City public schools, including Bayside High School in Queens. Today he lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where he has resided for over 20 years.

Eric Adams will participate in The Common Good New York City Mayoral Series with Eric Adams, on April 15 2021. He has one book, Healthy at Last: A Plant-Based Approach to Preventing and Reversing Diabetes and Other Chronic Illnesses.

Ray McGuire

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RAY MCGUIRE

Businessman

Ray McGuire is a former Citigroup executive and a current candidate for Mayor of New York City. In this crowded race, McGuire has raised over $2.5 million for his campaign since January, and is on pace to outraise every Democratic candidate for mayor in the past 32 years ahead of the June primary. 

Raised by a single mother in Dayton, Ohio, Ray McGuire graduated from Harvard University’s joint JD/MBA program, before coming to New York to work on Wall Street.

Ray aims to help New York City recover from the pandemic with his Comeback Job Accelerator Plan, create new oversight of policing practices, and find a path to permanent housing for the city’s homeless population.

Ray McGuire participated in The Common Good New York City Mayoral Series With Ray McGuire, on April 23 2021.

Maya Wiley

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MAYA WILEY

American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist

Maya Wiley is a nationally recognized racial justice and equity advocate. She is a leader in city government and in spurring democratic change. As Counsel to the Mayor, she delivered for New York City on civil and immigrant rights, women and minority owned business contracts, universal broadband access and more. After leaving City Hall, she held police accountable as Chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and worked to improve public education as a Co-Chair of the School Diversity Task Force. At the New School, where she served as a University Professor, she founded the Digital Equity Laboratory on universal and inclusive broadband.

Maya is a veteran of both the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and the ACLU, was a former Legal Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC — where she argued against Trump’s attacks on our civil liberties and democratic norms — and was the founder and president of the Center for Social Inclusion. Maya was also Senior Advisor on Race and Poverty at the Open Society Foundations, the largest funder of human rights work the world over.

Maya Wiley participated in The Common Good New York City Mayoral Candidate Speaker Series With Maya Wiley, on March 25 2021.

Honorary Advisory Board Member: Bernard Schwartz

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Bernard L. Schwartz is a visionary industrialist and a giant in the aerospace industry, as well as a private investor, a progressive public policy advocate, and a philanthropist. A renowned international dealmaker with a reputation for honesty and fairness, he is currently chairman and CEO of BLS Investments, LLC, a private investment firm he founded in 2006. 

Prior to establishing BLS Investments, Schwartz served for 34 years as chairman of the board and CEO of Loral Corporation and its successor, Loral Space & Communications, a satellite communications company formed in 1996. He is well known in the business world for his forthright style, his integrity, and his consistent advocacy for his workers, emphasising people over profits at his highly successful companies. Loral Corporation, a Fortune 200 defense electronics firm, employed as many as 38,000 employees at its 25 locations. At its height, Loral attained annual revenues of nearly $7.5 billion and had a market value of $13 billion.

In addition, from 1989 to 2005, Schwartz was chairman of the board of K&F Industries, a worldwide leader in the manufacture of wheels, brakes and brake control systems for the aviation industry. He also served as chairman and CEO of Globalstar Telecommunications Limited until 2001, a low-Earth orbit global mobile satellite telecommunications network launched under his leadership in 1991.

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Deeply troubled by the growing economic disparity in America, Schwartz also manages the investments of the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, which supports think tanks and economic policy advocacy organizations that focus on developing policies that promote U.S. economic growth and job creation initiatives. It also supports universities, medical research centers and New York City-based cultural organizations. Schwartz is a life-long Democrat and an active supporter of the Democratic Party.

Schwartz is often called upon to express his views or provide counsel on matters ranging from U.S. economic growth and competitiveness to job creation, investment in infrastructure, innovation, technology, and research and development. He has established programs at numerous organizations that examine current U.S. economic policy and competitiveness, and consistently challenge current orthodoxy to develop policy proposals that will further U.S. economic and technological success and create jobs. These organizations include: Third Way, The New School, Council on Foreign Relations, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Century Foundation, Roosevelt Institute, and the Center for American Progress. He is publisher of Democracy: a Journal of Ideas, a quarterly publication that spurs debate on economic and foreign policy issues.

A lifelong New Yorker, Mr. Schwartz also actively supports New York University Langone Medical Center, New-York Historical Society, Thirteen/WNET Educational Broadcasting Corporation, Baruch College and the New York Film Society. Schwartz serves as a trustee or board member of several of these organizations, most recently joining the Honorary Advisory Board of The Common Good.

Schwartz graduated from City College of New York with a Bachelor of Science degree and holds an honorary Doctorate of Science degree from the college. His book, JUST SAY YES: What I've Learned About Life, Luck, and the Pursuit of Opportunity, was published in 2014.

Former Senator Jim Webb

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Jim Webb

Politician

Jim Webb is the former Democratic Senator from Virginia. He wrote, introduced, and guided to passage the Post-9.11 GI Bill, the most significant veterans legislation since World War II, and co-authored legislation which exposed 60 billion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan wartime-support contracts. A long-time advocate of fixing America’s broken criminal justice system, Mr. Webb was spotlighted in The Atlantic as one of the world’s “Brave Thinkers” for tackling prison reform and possessing “two things vanishingly rare in Congress: a conscience and a spine.” He went on to give a response to the State of the Union which has been regarded as one of the stronger State of the Union responses in recent memory. 


He previously served as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan and is the recipient of the Purple Heart. Webb is also an Emmy Award winning journalist, a filmmaker, and the author of ten books. Since retiring, Webb has continued to be a prolific writer and has written for many national journals including USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.


Jim Webb participated in The White Working-Class Political Revolution with David Kuhn, Charlie Cook, and Moderator Clyde Haberman on January 7, 2021. Kuhn, Webb, Cook, and Haberman discussed how the white working-class was driven away from the Democratic party and towards Republicans and how that schism continues to drive class conflict and political polarization today. The discussion also broached the Democrats inability to make inroads with this demographic and if white working-class voters support Republicans in spite of their own policy preferences.

Felix Rohatyn

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Felix Rohatyn

Banker, diplomat

Felix George Rohatyn is an American investment banker known for his role in preventing the bankruptcy of New York City in the 1970’s and for serving as United States Ambassador to France. He was also a long term advisor to the U.S. Democratic Party.

Rohatyn became widely known in the 1970’s for successfully restructuring New York City’s debt and resolving the city’s fiscal crisis. While running MAC for the city of New York, Rohatyn continued his deal making at Lazard, and he completed such deals as Sony’s acquisition of Columbia. Rohatyn was United States Ambassador to France 1997-2000 during the second Clinton Administration and is a Commander in the French Legion of Honor.

In 1990, he received The Hundred Year Association of New York’s Gold Medal Award “in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York.” Rohatyn is also the recipient of The International Center in New York’s Award of Excellence. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Trustee for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi

U.S. Speaker of the House

Nancy Pelosi was elected as a member of the House of Representatives in 1987, winning a special election of California’s 8th district. As a member of the House of Representatives, she has served on the Appropriations Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. In 2002, Pelosi was selected to be the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, making her the first woman in history earn the honor. Four years later, she again broke new ground for women in U.S. politics. After the Democrats won majorities in both the House and the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections, Pelosi was chosen to become the first woman to take the post of speaker of the House.

As the leader of the Democratic Party in the House under a Republican president, Pelosi was a vocal critic of President George W. Bush’s stance on the war in Iraq and advocated for the withdrawal of troops from the region. Pelosi remained House speaker until November 2010, when Republicans gained control of the House and elected John Boehner to the role, relegating Pelosi to minority leader. After Democrats reclaimed control of the House in the 2018 midterms, Pelosi was once again elected House speaker at the beginning of 2019, placing her on the front line in the battle with President Donald Trump over his demand for $5.7 billion for a wall spanning the U.S.-Mexico border. The stalemate turned into a contentious 35-day government shutdown, with the speaker drawing most of the president’s ire for her control over congressional funding. However, shortly after Pelosi effectively canceled the traditional State of the Union address, scheduled for January 29, President Trump agreed to temporarily reopen the government.

Speaker Pelosi was hosted by The Common Good in 2012: House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Twitter: @NancyPelosi

Martin O’Malley

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Martin O’Malley

Attorney, 61st Governor of Maryland

Martin O’Malley has served as the Governor of Maryland, Mayor of Baltimore, and a city councilor.

In 1999, O’Malley ran for Mayor of Baltimore. Widely considered an underdog candidate, O’Malley campaigned on the promise of reducing crime, improving schools, and rebuilding broken communities. He went on to earn 90 percent of the vote. In 2007, O’Malley was elected as Governor of Maryland. Under his leadership, Maryland made sweeping investments in public safety, college education, affordable healthcare, and economic growth. The state recovered 100 percent of the jobs lost during the national recession, and was one of only seven states to maintain a AAA bond rating. Recognizing the threat that climate change posed to Maryland’s coastal communities, O’Malley took action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, invest in renewable energy, and grow green jobs. He signed marriage equality into law, abolished the death penalty, and passed the DREAM Act to expand the opportunity of a college education to more local students.

In 2015, O’Malley left office. In 2016, he ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

Twitter: @MartinOMalley

Robert Shrum

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robert Shrum

Political advisor

Robert Shrum has been a senior adviser to the Gore 2000 presidential campaign, the campaign of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and the British Labour Party. In addition to being the chief strategist for the 2004 Kerry-Edwards campaign, Shrum has advised thirty winning U.S. Senate campaigns; eight winning campaigns for governor; mayors of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other major cities; and the Democratic Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Shrum’s writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The New Republic, Slate, and other publications.

The author of No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner (Simon and Schuster), he is currently a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service. He is the Director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and the Carmen H. and Louis Warschaw Chair in Practical Politics at the University of Southern California, where he is a Professor of the Practice of Political Science in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Shrum spoke at The Common Good’s Elections 2012 Forecast – Mehlman, Shrum, Wolffe – November 17, 2011.

Twitter: @BobShrum

Tommy Sowers

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Tommy Sowers

Academic, politician, entrepreneur

Tommy Sowers was the 2010 Democratic nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in Missouri’s 8th congressional district. He is a former U.S. Army Special Forces officer where he achieved the rank of Major.

In 2010, Sowers ran and lost against incumbent Representative Jo Ann Emerson. After the campaign, Sowers worked as the Senior Advisor to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the nation’s first and largest non-profit focused on improving the lives of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families.

In 2015, Sowers co-founded Goldenkey Networks, Inc., which includes GoldenKey, a venture backed real estate startup. Sowers currently serves as the Southeast Regional Director of MD5 National Security Technology Accelerator, a US Department of Defense program that works with research universities and the venture community to provide solutions for the immediate problems of warfighters.

Twitter: @sowers

Markos Moulitsas

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Markos Moulitsas

Founder of Daily Kos, publisher

Markos Moulitsas is the founder and proprietor of Daily Kos—a weblog focusing on progressive, liberal, and Democratic Party politics. In its first year, Daily Kos attracted over 1.6 million unique visits and about 3 million pageviews. It is now a part of Vox Media.

Moulitsas was named the single most successful entrepreneur of the progressive movement by NY Times magazine writer and author Matt Bai. Moulitsas is also co-author of the critically acclaimed book Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics, and author of Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era. He is a contributing columnist to Newsweek Magazine and a weekly columnist at The Hill newspaper. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the world by People en Español, clocked in at third in Forbe's Web Celeb 25 rankings, and was listed 26th in PC World's list of the Most Important People on the Web.

Moulitsas spoke at The Common Good as part of the 2008 Democratic National Convention Panel.

Twitter: @markos

Governor Eliot Spitzer

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Eliot Spitzer

Lawyer and Politician

Eliot Laurence Spitzer is an American lawyer, political commentator, and former Democratic Party politician. Currently, he is the host of Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer, a nightly news and commentary program on Current TV. Prior to that, he was the co-host of In the Arena, a talk-show and punditry forum broadcast on CNN from October 2010 to July 2011. He served as the 54th Governor of New York.

Prior to being elected governor, Spitzer had served as New York State Attorney General. Spitzer was born and raised in New York, by real estate tycoon Bernard Spitzer. He attended Princeton University for undergraduate studies and then Harvard Law School for his Juris Doctor. It was there that he met his future wife, Silda Wall. He went on to work for the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and subsequently the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to pursue organized crime. He launched the investigation that brought down the Gambino family’s control over Manhattan’s garment and trucking industries.

In the 1998 election, Spitzer defeated incumbent Republican Dennis Vacco by a slim margin to become New York State Attorney General. His campaign was financed by a controversial multi-million dollar loan from his father. As attorney general, Spitzer prosecuted cases relating to corporate white collar crime, securities fraud, internet fraud and environmental protection.

He most notably pursued cases against computer chip price fixing, investment bank stock price inflation, predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders, fraud at American International Group, and the 2003 mutual fund scandal. He also sued Richard Grasso, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange over a compensation package perceived to be excessive.

Twitter: @EliotSpitzer

Read more:

Tim Mullaney, ‘Related Cos., Eliot Spitzer Propose Senior Living for Highrise Near Hudson Yards’, Senior Housing News, 12 June 2019

Errol Louis, ‘Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer Weighs in on the Mueller Report’, Spectrum News NY 1, 18 April 2019

Richard Bockman, ‘The Closing: Eliot Spitzer’, The Real Deal, 1 January 2019

Senator Jon Tester

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Jon Tester

American Politician

R. Jon Tester is the junior United States Senator for Montana, serving since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He previously served as President of the Montana Senate.

Tester was first elected to the Montana State Senate in 1998, after his neighbor, a Republican State Senator, decided not to run for re-election. He was elected the minority whip for the 2001 session. In 2002, he won re-election with 71% of the vote. In 2003, he became minority leader. In 2005, Tester was elected President of the Montana Senate, the chief presiding officer of the Montana Legislature’s upper chamber.

His election as President marked a transition for Montana Democrats as they moved into the majority leadership of the Senate for the first time in more than a decade. Term limits would have prohibited Tester from running for state Senate for a third time. While serving as Senate President, Tester supported increased funding for public education and cutting taxes for small business owners and the working poor. He also worked to make health insurance more affordable and require public utilities to use more renewable energy.

He has made government reform a top priority issue. Tester criticized Republicans in Congress for making policy that is designed “for those who write the biggest campaign checks.” He has stated that Washington culture is “controlled by K Street cronies.” He has spoken against gay marriage and flag burning, but sees Constitutional bans on each issue as unnecessary. Instead of avoiding class issues, Tester has also taken them head-on. On Meet the Press, he asserted that “there’s no more middle class” because of Bush Administration policies.

Tester is a more liberal Democrat on other issues. He is pro-choice and supports embryonic stem cell research, and he has also voted to increase funding for Medicare and SCHIP. In the Senate, Tester continues to advocate increased funding for public education, just as he did in the Montana Legislature. Tester supports middle class tax cuts. He has voted against repealing the Estate Tax and Alternative Minimum Tax, policies he sees as favoring only the wealthy. When criticized for being soft on national security, Tester stated that “the Patriot Act has very little to do with the War on Terrorism” and asserted that “I don’t want to weaken the Patriot Act, I want to repeal it.”  Tester is also a strong supporter of alternative energy, voting to increase wind and solar power funding and decrease emissions. He states that the Kyoto Protocol needs American support in order to have global legitimization.

Twitter: @jontester

Bill Thompson

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Bill Thompson

Politician

As Comptroller of New York City from 2002 through 2009, Bill Thompson was responsible for managing the finances of the nation’s largest municipality and supervised a staff of 700 professionals. Thompson was given the opportunity to run for a third term in 2009, but he chose to run for mayor instead. As the Democratic nominee, Bill came within just a few percentage points of beating Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

As the head of the Board of Education for five terms, he oversaw a school system with 1.1 million students and 130,000 employees. Thompson is also Chair of Governor Cuomo’s Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprise Team. In 2012, he stepped down as Chairman of the Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority to focus on his campaign for mayor.

In addition to his eight years of public service, Thompson has private sector experience. He currently serves as the Chief Administrative Officer and Senior Managing Director at Siebert, Brandford, Shank & Co., the nation’s largest minority public finance firm, where he underwrites loans for schools, roads, bridges and infrastructure projects.

Thompson spoke at The Common Good in 2013: NYC Mayoral Candidate Series: Bill Thompson.