With the announcement of Councilman Andrew Cohen’s nomination to the Bronx Supreme Court on Aug. 10, the race to fill his District 11 City Council seat just got a whole lot more urgent.

 

Currently, there are six candidates vying to replace Cohen, with five having formally declared their intent with the City’s Campaign Finance Board. Jessica Haller, a tech entrepreneur, environmentalist and mother of four, announced her candidacy in late January, expecting at that point to spend much of her time in one of her favorite places – outside – knocking on doors. When the coronavirus pandemic hit in early March, she said she quickly had to change tack.

 

“I probably hosted one of the first ZOOM political events in the country, because we did it really quickly,” she said, adding that she was that little bit ahead of the curve because her children’s school had closed about two weeks before the statewide PAUSE order went into effect. “I eventually found that they’re not so much fun,” she said, referring to the ZOOM meetings. “People got ‘zoomed’ out,” she added. Instead, Haller switched to hosting composting events, while simultaneously organizing petitions and getting people involved with the City budget discussions, which quickly became a hot topic.

 

As a climate activist, Haller is running on a campaign centered around sustainability, resilience, and equity. If elected, she said she will use her environmental experience and technical know-how to build sustainable neighborhoods in the Bronx, where she has lived for the last two decades. She also plans to modernize public transit, make buildings energy efficient and resilient, bring 21st century skills to public school children, strengthen community for seniors, and promote economic opportunity for all.

 

On the last point, she said the way to go about this, especially right now, and even if it seems counter-intuitive, is to repeat the proven success of the New Deal, post-WWII era and invest, rather than cut spending. She advocates for what she calls a type of ‘Civilian Conservation Corps’.

 

“Almost like a green jobs kind of investment mechanism where we put people to work in the local economy,” she said. “You invest in the people to build yourself out of the hole that we’re in.” As an example, she said it wasn’t enough to defer rent, but allow a store to go out of business anyway. “That landlord’s got to drop the rent,” she said. “Get the next entrepreneur in with whatever it is – the hair place, the bookstore, the fruit stand into that vacant lot so that the community can start to recover, and so the landlords have to be incentivized to help kickstart the economy in a way.”

 

Though she considers herself to be the most progressive of the candidates running [as of July], she said she is hesitant to label herself a progressive. “I am probably the most progressive on sustainability and climate, and those issues,” Haller said. She is also in favor of taxing the top one percent. “There’s no other way,” she said. “We cannot cut our way out of this, right? We have to come up with new revenue ideas.”

 

On the other hand, when it comes to allocating funding and resources, she is not a fan of litigating by hashtag, “#DefundthePolice,  #CanceltheRents; maybe it’s not as simple as #CanceltheRent?” she said, in response to a question about what could be done to help some of the smaller landlords who are struggling to pay their mortgages right now.

 

“I have a friend who is a small, local, commercial landlord who owns tiny parts of the Bronx,” she said. “She’s suffering because she’s trying to keep her people employed when there’s no money coming in, or what happens when the elevator breaks, or what happens when the taxes have to get paid? So, the #CanceltheRent is not as simple as that. I have some ideas, and it would take me to figure out what to do there, but it’s definitely not as simple, right?”

 

When it comes to fundraising, Haller is used to it. “I spent my career asking people for millions of dollars to invest in whacky start-ups – some not so whacky,” she said. “Like, ‘Hey, can I have $10 million?’ or whatever is very different. So, to say to someone, ‘Can you invest in me? And you can’t even give me more than $1,000, and I’d really just like $175, because that optimizes the match,’ I’m able to do that,” she said.

 

In fact, of the five formally declared candidates in the race, Haller trails Eric Dinowitz only, having raised $55,827 to date, and having spent $17,456 so far. When it comes to donors, she has 386 contributors with an average donation of $145 dollars. Around one fifth of those contributions come from donors outside New York City.

 

By comparison, under one third of Dinowitz’s contributions come from donors outside the City, and Dinowitz has fewer contributors at 311, with an average donation of $236.

 

Haller is also no stranger to the world of finance, having worked previously in data analysis for MasterCard. However, it is as a climate activist that she found her true calling. Former Vice President Al Gore named her a leader of the Climate Reality Project before “An Inconvenient Truth” became a thing. In that role, she is charged with educating the public on the climate crisis.

 

In her previous career, she said she helped the Bloomberg administration’s $3 billion Willets Point development understand the impact of climate change on that development so that today it is built to withstand climate and sea level rise.

 

“When we first saw it –  by 2050, it was going to be underwater, and you can’t do a $3 billion development in 2008, and have it to be underwater in forty years,” she said. “So, that is an indelible mark on the city that I’ve already made in just being able to think about, ‘How do we impact’? For me, sustainability is, ‘How are we impacting the world?’ and the resilience is, ‘How do we withstand the way the world comes back at us?’”

 

Haller is an active member of 21 in ’21, an initiative to raise the number of women serving on the New York City Council from the current 12, to 21 of the 51 members. As a mother, she said she was proud to receive the endorsement on Aug. 10 of Vote Mama, the first political action committee (PAC) to support Democratic moms running for office. “Here are the three numbers you need to know,” she said. “51 members of [City] Council, 12 women today, and two mothers. How do we legislate for childcare? And how do we think about impacting families compassionately, health care, and all of this with two moms in the room?”

 

Though she doesn’t have conventional, political experience under her belt, Haller’s campaign is gaining momentum. Asked how she differentiates herself from the other candidates, she said she sees Dinowitz and Dan Padernacht, who is also a candidate in the race, as career politicians, and added that there was “nepotism involved”. “I’m looking at this in a more holistic way – sustainability, resilience, equity,” she said. “They’re all connected and using those lenses to measure everything. I don’t believe the other two guys are. I am following my passion to go make a change, and to be a change maker. I think I’m more people-centered, and definitely more planet-centered. I also have a business degree, so I also want to do this in a fiscally responsible way.”

 

Haller received received the endorsement of The Jewish Climate Action Network (JCAN), Bronx Climate Justice North (BCJN), and North Bronx Racial Justice (NBxRJ).