Rep. Dan Goldman knows Washington. Now he’s getting to know his NYC district.

Rep. Dan Goldman doesn’t deny he needs to know more about his district.

It was one of the recurring knocks against the 47-year-old Democrat and heir to the Levi Strauss denim fortune when he was running in a crowded race to represent the 10th Congressional District, which covers parts of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. As he reached his 100-day mark as a freshman member of Congress, Goldman was still learning the contours of the district, where millionaires in swanky SoHo apartments, residents of crumbling public housing, and working-class immigrant communities will decide whether he merits a second term. While Goldman won a commanding victory last November, he was one of 13 candidates on the primary ballot and won by fewer than 1,700 votes.

Hear WNYC senior reporter Brigid Bergin's report chronicling a day in the life of Rep. Dan Goldman:

During the recent congressional recess, Goldman — who served as the lead attorney in Donald Trump's first impeachment trial and was later an MSNBC analyst — was back in the city, and Gothamist spent a day getting a firsthand glimpse at how he’s adjusting to his role here, as opposed to sounding off against his Republican counterparts in Washington, D.C. His team says it has helped 450 constituents resolve issues with federal agencies so far, like working with NYCHA and the U.S. Postal Service to help fix broken mailboxes at Campos Plaza II in the East Village and working with the Department of State and Immigration Services to secure travel documents.

“There is no issue that is too small,” he said during an interview in Tompkins Square Park last week.

His district encompasses areas of Manhattan south of 14th Street and stretches across the river to Brooklyn, where it extends from Dumbo in the north to Sunset and Borough Parks in the south. It includes a plurality of white voters and growing immigrant communities from China, Mexico and other parts of Latin America. There’s also a significant Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish population in Borough Park and a Puerto Rican community rooted on the Lower East Side.

“When I'm in the district, I end up spending very little time in the district office because I want to be in the community meeting people and organizations where they are,” said Goldman. “It's also a good way for me to learn parts of the district I don't know that well.”

Goldman has successfully notched headlines for his debate skills in House committee hearings. He serves on the Committees on Homeland Security and Oversight and Accountability, as well as the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. He’s also used the rules of the House to take swift action, like filing an ethics complaint during his first week in office in response to fraud allegations against Rep. George Santos, a Republican who represents the 3rd Congressional District.

In the district, Goldman’s approach is more measured. As a moderate Democrat, he talks about encouraging a civic-minded business community and addressing major policy challenges, from immigration reform to affordable housing, through incremental changes as opposed to sweeping systemic reform.

It’s an approach that’s won him early praise from those similarly aligned on the ideological spectrum, but one that also elicits deep frustration from more left-leaning constituents.

The business of immigration reform

When Goldman arrived in Sunset Park at 9:30 a.m. last Tuesday, he stepped gingerly out of an Uber. His home in the city is in Tribeca, where the median household income is almost two-and-a-half times higher than in that part of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is also home to many progressive, working-class voters, whom he is seeking to make inroads with after many opted to cast primary ballots for his closest challenger, Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou.

Goldman was wearing navy blue pants and a blazer with a light blue button-down shirt, but constituents paid more attention to the knee-high orthopedic walking boot on his right leg, which immediately prompted the ice-breaker question of “what happened?” at his stops throughout the day.

The father of five told Gothamist he tore his calf muscle playing tennis, but rarely mentioned that again throughout the day.

“It’s actually, oddly enough, called ‘tennis leg’ because it happens a lot when people play tennis or racket sports,” he added. “I’m just getting old.”

Goldman’s first appointment was with a group of about 40 people at Mixteca, a two-decade-old community organization that works on issues affecting the Mexican and Latin American immigrant communities in Sunset Park. Goldman, wearing his boot, awkwardly climbed the flight of stairs to the second floor, where he was greeted and then invited to take a seat at the front of the room, surrounded by community members.

In March, his office helped 22 recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, with the paperwork they needed to travel to Mexico City last month as part of a study abroad program. A half-dozen "Dreamers" were there that Tuesday to share their experiences.

Araceli Ortega, 40, said it’s been 22 years since she has seen her mother, who returned to Mexico because of a family emergency when Ortega was 18. “It was like heaven when I saw her again,” she said through tears.

At one point, an attendee asked Goldman what needed to happen to achieve immigration reform, a thorny complex problem that’s been stuck in the quagmire of D.C. politics for decades.

“So I’m new in Congress and I’m trying to understand a lot of the debate and different positions,” Goldman began, but he suggested that change could come from business leaders putting more pressure on Republicans.

“We're starting to see much more of the business community supporting immigration reform because they want the excellent workers, they need employees, they need opportunities for their businesses to hire people,” said Goldman.

Meeting constituents where they’re at

During a stop on the Lower East Side, as Goldman loaded bags of apples into a colorfully painted community refrigerator outside the Trinity Lower East Side food pantry, a constituent stopped him with a question.

“What about the rent being too damn high, what are we gonna do?” asked Linda Jacobson, 83.

What followed was a 10 minute back-and-forth, in which Goldman’s suggestions — such as building more affordable housing, forcing warehoused stock back on the market to reduce rent, and looking for opportunities on federal land — were met with Jacobson’s frustration.

She sees too much luxury office and residential development going up, and no place for poor New Yorkers. “It makes people disrespect the government,” Jacobson said, adding said he needed to make capitalism less cruel. She wanted to see elected officials show interest in changing the system, and invoked the names of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

He said he heard her, and thanked her for stopping. After their conversation, Jacobson called his response “typical.”

“He knows he can’t do anything, so he’s going to do what he can, which is very little,” she said.

Goldman, meanwhile, had a different view of their exchange. He finds the real estate and business communities generally care a lot about the city and the “cruel capitalism” that Jacobson talked about comes when there’s a determination to “squeeze every dollar out of a deal.”

“What I hope to bring is to encourage business development, but to do it with more civic-minded engagement … while still facilitating and incentivizing building, because we really need the additional housing,” he said.

He also said he has enjoyed getting to know Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democrat, while working together on issues related to the environment, immigration, NYCHA and Rikers Island. From his view, they are aligned on many issues, even if their styles differ.

“I think it's important to move the dialogue in the way that Sen. Sanders does and AOC does, while also working within the system to incrementally build on one change after another,” said Goldman.

A team effort

Goldman's approach has garnered early praise from some of his colleagues.

“Dan Goldman is off to a great start and he’s been a wonderful asset to the team both in Washington and here at home,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic Leader who represents the nearby 8th District, told Gothamist while in Brooklyn. “He’s been moving around the communities that he represents on the ground pretty actively and I'm confident that he will continue to provide the highest quality level of representation.”

Goldman’s staff provided similarly effusive testimonials in a 12-page memo to reporters detailing his accomplishments in the first 100 days in office, the type of curated document that usually comes from a campaign. It linked to articles and the numerous press releases his team has issued about his work in Washington and his district.

The rest of the day included introductions to local leaders running programs focused on climate justice at Loisaida and alternatives to incarceration at Avenues for Justice. The meetings involved a number of questions about their respective projects, including a sophisticated effort to track emissions from buildings on the Lower East Side and a training program that helps young court-involved people with everything from job training to housing support.

“I find that with each different organization I meet with, I am not only learning, but I am drawing connections to other organizations,” said Goldman. He said developing a better understanding of what his constituents are facing is critical information so he can better represent them in Washington. He also repeatedly lauded his staff for helping him navigate it all.

Being out and about in the district does open one up to the unpredictable, from constituents and otherwise. While Goldman was sitting outside a coffee shop on East Ninth Street, a bird pooped on his pant leg.

A staffer was quick to offer a Tide pen to clean it up.

“Oh man,” said Goldman. “It’s supposed to be good luck, right?”