| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
| We are still at our core a democracy. | ||
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
| The U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting is taking place this weekend in Tampa, Florida. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss the themes for that meeting as well as issues around in cities around the country is David Holt. | ||
| He is the U.S. Conference of Mayors Vice President as well as Mayor of Oklahoma City and Todd Gloria, the organization's second vice president and mayor of San Diego. | ||
| Mr. Mayors, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Mayor Holt, we'll start with just an overview of the group. | ||
| We know it's mayors, but tell us who's part of the organization, how many members there are, and your mission. | ||
| What do you focus on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, absolutely. | |
| So the U.S. Conference of Mayors was actually formed 93 years ago. | ||
| You know, we think mayors are a really unique group of political leaders in our country. | ||
| And nearly a century ago, it was considered advantageous for the mayors, especially of larger cities, to get together and exercise collective action, advocate in Washington. | ||
| And we've had a lot of success through the years. | ||
| We also share best practices. | ||
| We obviously come together at these annual meetings to do that. | ||
| We hear from thought leaders and important national and international leaders. | ||
| I think it's a really unique organization. | ||
| I mean, if you look around at all elected officials across the country, there's many associations, right? | ||
| There's a governor's association, there are associations for legislators. | ||
| There's a similar association in our world that also involves city council members. | ||
| But there's something pretty unique about mayors, in my view. | ||
| There's also, I would argue, at this time, and you're looking at somebody who's a registered Republican and a registered Democrat, there's also something pretty unique in our organization that we've really retained our bipartisan, really kind of almost non-partisan character. | ||
| If you look at some of the other organizations, they've really lost that to some degree in this kind of polarized age. | ||
| But we come together for an annual meeting every June. | ||
| We then come together as well in January for a DC meeting. | ||
| And you asked how many members there are. | ||
| There's hundreds of members. | ||
| Of course, there's thousands of people who could be eligible, but we generally have a few hundred members who actually are participating in dues paying members. | ||
| And you have to be a city of 30,000 to be a member of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. | ||
| And we get great participation really from that level all the way up, obviously, to cities of over a million people. | ||
| Our two cities are top 20 cities, but there are mayors here from all cities of all size. | ||
| And as I said, Republican, Democrats, and Independents, which I think is pretty special about our organization. | ||
| And Mayor Gloria, as your counterpart just noted, there are cities of various sizes. | ||
| They're being represented there by their mayors. | ||
| When you are coming together and talking about some of these topics, what are some of the most pressing issues or issues that are repeatedly talked about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Timmy, I think that's one of the things that's very interesting about the Conference of Mayors is that it doesn't matter Red State, Blue State, Big City, rural town. | |
| What you see is a real commonality on the issues that we all care about. | ||
| And so, I think first and foremost is reducing the cost of living for our residents, specifically and very particularly around the issue of housing affordability. | ||
| I think it's quite shocking that it's not just cities like mine on coastal California that are dealing with the affordability crisis across the board, but particularly around housing. | ||
| That's true even in some of our smaller mayor cities where they really are struggling with making the rent or being able to see buying a home. | ||
| In addition, keeping cities safe, you know, the first and most important responsibility that we have as mayors is to keep our residents safe, our communities safe. | ||
| And we are mayors that are serving in a time of historic reductions in crime. | ||
| That isn't always played out in the media, and so this is a wonderful opportunity, as Mayor Holt was mentioning, to share best practices, find out what's going well in San Diego. | ||
| We're one of the safest big cities in America, the lowest homicide rate amongst the top 10 cities in this country. | ||
| So, issues around affordability, around crime, and then obviously dealing with the issues of the day. | ||
| And there could be a host of stuff from immigration and tariffs to political violence to issues around health care and education. | ||
| So, it's a very rewarding place to come together and figure out how to solve the problems. | ||
| People want mayors to solve problems, and that's what this conference helps me do better for the people in San Diego. | ||
| C-SPAN has been covering the conference yesterday, and we'll also have coverage of today's events. | ||
| As you just mentioned, there's a lot of topics that are very sizable, they're very complicated, and the panel discussions can be maybe 60 minutes, 90, 90 minutes. | ||
| That's a pretty short period of time to talk about some big issues. | ||
| What's the approach? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think only on C-SPAN is 60 or 90 minutes short. | |
| I think we're used to a very fast-paced mayors. | ||
| It's potholes to homelessness to whatever. | ||
| But the approach is, as was mentioned, is to bring in some of the best experts in the country. | ||
| When you have, in this case, over 200 of America's mayors all in one location, we can bring in some of the most thoughtful people who have the access to the best information to help us figure out what's the best way forward. | ||
| And so, it really isn't just these meetings. | ||
| You know, we gather in other parts of the year. | ||
| We also have virtual convenings where we're able to share information. | ||
| And I personally feel like San Diego is the eighth largest city in the country. | ||
| We have access to a lot of good information, but the conference really is the next level. | ||
| And it's the ability to synthesize that data with colleagues who are dealing with the same issue and figure out what's the best way forward. | ||
| And so, when we issue resolutions, it's informed not just by those experts and that data, but by the considered wisdom of hundreds of America's mayors from all over this country saying this is the right way forward. | ||
| It's one of the things I find most valuable about the conference. | ||
| Our guests right now are Mayors David Holt. | ||
| He is the Mayor of Oklahoma City, as well as the U.S. Conference of Mayors Vice President, and Todd Gloria, who is the U.S. Conference of Mayors' second vice president, and also the Mayor of San Diego. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for either one of them, you can start calling in now the lines: Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Mayor Holt, I wanted to ask you: I'm showing a headline right now. | ||
| You can't see it, but it says, Memphis Mayor attempted kidnapping suspect makes no plea. | ||
| Very, very remorseful family says we have seen, it's been in the headlines, attacks on lawmaker safety. | ||
| What are you hearing from members of your organization and what's being done to ensure their safety? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, I mean, I think you got to look at it from several angles. | |
| I mean, first of all, of course, is just the macro view that we as a country have got to stop dehumanizing each other, stop talking in apocalyptic terms. | ||
| You know, we need to get back to you know serious discourse about serious issues. | ||
| But I live in and serve as mayor in a city that has got a scar in our downtown that reminds us of the evils of political violence and what happens when you take things to the extreme edge. | ||
| And the bombing in 1995 was sort of the natural outcome of creating that ecosystem where that sort of thing makes sense and it's absurd, just as kidnapping a mayor or assassinating a Minnesota legislator. | ||
| I mean, these things are absurd to us, but again, when you're sort of in this ecosystem of social media and talk radio and all this just nonsense where people talk about every issue as if it's literally the end of the world and they dehumanize people, suddenly everybody becomes soldiers in a fantastical war. | ||
| And that's not real life, but that stuff intrudes into real life as we see. | ||
| So I think that's the first issue. | ||
| And I think mayors are very good at that. | ||
| I mean, we're serious people. | ||
| That's one thing I think that has historically set us apart, and especially in the current discourse, is like we talk about issues seriously, we respect people of different viewpoints, and we don't play this kind of professional wrestling game that so much of politics has become. | ||
| And I think that we're not contributing to what is happening. | ||
| So we certainly encourage people to sort of emulate our style and to kind of pull back from that precipice. | ||
| Now, more specifically, that's like how you create a better environment for political discourse. | ||
| But if you fail at that, you obviously have to have some guardrails in place. | ||
| And we're certainly talking a lot about the protection that may be necessary more and more for elected officials. | ||
| A country can't function if people don't feel safe serving. | ||
| And we see that, obviously, in other countries that don't have as functioning a democracy as ours. |