Episode 488 - Getting Buffaloed (w/ India Walton)
Bad Faith
Bad Faith
4.5 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2025
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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In 2021, DSA candidate India Walton successfully won the Buffalo, NY primary over establishment incumbent mayor Byron Brown. She would have been the first socialist mayor of a large city since Frank Zeidler left office as mayor of Milwaukee in 1960. But she never became mayor. Brown sued to get on the ballot, failed, but then launched a successful write in campaign. Though she was backed by WFP and had secured endorsements from Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, and AOC, Governor Hochul declined to endorse Walton, Echoing the current Zohran Mamdani moment. Now, Walton returns to Bad Faith to give her unique perspective on what it's like to win a Democratic Party primary, only to be beaten by the Democratic Party establishment, to offer advice to Zohran Mamdani, who once campaigned for Walton in Buffalo, and to unpack her feelings on the viability of using the Democratic Party as a vehicle for real change.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I don't know. |
| 0:01.0 | You know, |
| 0:02.0 | you know, |
| 0:03.0 | you know, |
| 0:04.0 | you |
| 0:05.0 | know, |
| 0:06.0 | and |
| 0:07.0 | the We're going to be able to be. We're mind, India, are we going to do it this time? |
| 0:46.7 | Is it going to be different this time? |
| 0:49.9 | I sure hope so. |
| 0:52.0 | All right, let's just get into it. |
| 0:53.5 | I'm here with India Walton. |
| 0:55.1 | You know her as the winner of the 2021 Buffalo mayoral primary race. |
| 1:01.9 | But if you recall history and, of course, the last time that she was on bad faith |
| 1:08.8 | four years ago at that time. The Democratic establishment |
| 1:13.1 | stole the outcome from her, the incumbent. What was he like a 20-year incumbent? It was a political |
| 1:18.9 | dynasty situation, wasn't it? It was 16 years as mayor, but before that he'd been a state |
| 1:23.7 | senator, before that he'd been a common council person and he was actually the chair |
| 1:28.9 | of the state party at one time. Well, there you go. A genuinely establishment figure, Byron Brown |
| 1:35.3 | started a writing campaign and managed to arrest the election back from its rightful winner. India |
| 1:42.9 | Walton, welcome back to Bad Faith. Hey, thanks for |
| 1:46.0 | having me. Now, so for obvious reasons, people are really curious to know what you make of the |
... |
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