Chi Ossé bet big on the councilman-as-influencer strategy

New York City Council Member Chi Ossé was not the first lawmaker to try to defeat the maligned broker fee in New York City. Upper East Side Council Member Keith Powers tried to cap the fees in 2019 – but ran up against opposition from the powerful Real Estate Board of New York. Then in 2020, the state was able to curb the fees for about a month before a REBNY lawsuit reinstated them. Last year, Ossé himself tried to do it, and he couldn’t even get a committee hearing. 

But last week, the City Council passed his bill requiring that the broker fee be paid by whomever hired the broker (usually the landlord) with a veto-proof majority. It’s been hailed as a major tenant triumph, and the mayor’s unlikely to try to challenge it, though REBNY will almost certainly fight it in court.

So why was Ossé successful this time? In his victory video posted on Instagram and TikTok, the Bed-Stuy council member put it this way: “I knew that I wouldn't beat (REBNY) with traditional methods, but as a Gen Z digital native, I had a new weapon – short-form video like this – to mobilize the people.”

@chi4nyc

Some good news…come to City Hall tomorrow @ 12 PM to help us get this passed!

♬ original sound - Council Member Chi Ossé

Social media and short-form videos have been around for a while, obviously, but in the past year, Ossé, the first Gen-Z member of the council, has changed the game for how members of the body interact with the people they represent. With frequent, engaging, precisely edited content on TikTok and Instagram, he is unabashedly approaching his job as a social media influencer. And in doing so, he has transformed his younger constituents – and everyone else’s younger constituents – into an audience whose attention he can leverage to accomplish his legislative and political priorities. 

“I think he was able to generate attention around the bill in a way that made the bill synonymous with himself,” said one council source. “People know this bill is a Chi Ossé bill. This is a Chi Ossé-led victory, and I think that there's lots of benefits to that, not only as a council member delivering for New Yorkers, but also as a candidate who's going to run for reelection next year.” 

“That’s when everything changed”

For Elijah Fox, Ossé’s communications director and social media maven (and fellow “Gen-Z digital native”), the link between online influence and real world political influence is simple: “If in 2021 there were 1.1 total million votes cast in the mayoral election, and we have 2 million unique page impressions every month, there must be some political power tied to that fact,” Fox said. He said Ossé, whose reach extends far beyond his 100,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram thanks to the all-powerful algorithm, is recognized on the street across the city. “Two million pageviews in a city with 1 million voters is relevant at minimum.”

Ossé’s office put out calls on TikTok and Instagram for people to show up in person for the broker fee bill, and they did, according to Council Member Julie Menin. 

“We had a very packed hearing, with enormous turnout at the hearing on both sides of the issue,” said Menin, who is chair of the Consumer and Worker Protection Committee. “He and his team did a great job with the social media to get people to know about the issue, to get involved in the issue, to come to the hearing and rallies.”

@chi4nyc You can end forced rental broker fees forever. Come to City Hall June 12 at 10am to support the FARE Act. We need strength in numbers to win. SIGN UP to TESTIFY through the link in my bio #broker #nyc #rent #landlord ♬ original sound - Council Member Chi Ossé

Fox said the first time they had success with a short-form video was in April of last year, when Ossé filmed himself, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and others blowing whistles, soundtracked by Nas’ “Ether,” to drown out Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was rallying for Trump in New York City. The video is rudimentary compared to his latest ones. It’s barely edited. But it caught on. 

In June of 2023 they tried something a little more involved – carefully scripted and edited with visuals. In the video, Ossé describes a successful community policing pilot program in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where residents responded to emergencies, not cops. Fox called it “the first one that was like a smashing viral success” with 650,000 views. “That's when everything changed,” Fox said. “That was like, we totally grasped the power and reach of algorithm-based social media distribution, and leaned really heavily into it.”

Since then, you can see the videos get more sophisticated and engaging, and you can see Ossé getting more comfortable filming them and Fox getting more comfortable directing them. There are more and more elements like sound effects and visual jokes. In one FARE Act video, Ossé walks around Herbert Von King Park with Ilana Glazer of “Broad City” fame.

“You put out a 60-second video, and, you know, there could be an assumption that it came together very quickly,” Fox said. “But that'll often be hours and hours of research and then writing, and then there's editing. And a finished product, even if itself very short, required a lot of labor.”

New York City good government regulators including the Conflicts of Interest Board and the Campaign Finance Board generally want politicians to keep their personal, campaign and official government messaging separate and clearly labeled. How does that work for a politician influencer?

Ossé maintains two separate Instagram accounts like many of his colleagues, but his office said his one TikTok account, @chi4nyc, is a personal account, not a campaign or government account. Many of his videos, written, shot and edited at least partly by staff, fall undoubtedly in the realm of public service: explaining his broker fee bill from inside City Hall, explaining why the G Train wouldn’t be working properly all summer, showing off new compost containers in his district. Others are clearly political: updates from the Democratic National Convention or campaigning with Bowman. There’s also the personal – like a simple video of Ossé doing the Charli XCX “Apple dance.”

After I asked about this, Ossé added the words “personal account” to his TikTok bio, per a Conflicts of Interest Board social media advisory opinion. But that opinion (which dates back to 2017, before most of us had heard of TikTok), also finds that city government employees shouldn’t make content for their bosses' personal social media accounts. Ossé’s office said Ossé does personally post to his TikTok account. They noted that many other City Council members appear to mix personal, staff-made and political content on a single page, and that they haven’t gotten any questions from watchdogs on that front. A spokesperson for the council said, “The Council advises its members to follow Charter Chapter 68 (outlining conflicts of interest), (Conflicts of Interest Board) Rules, and all applicable advisory opinions, including this one, and provides annual training on them to promote compliance.”

A good old-fashioned legislative push

The Fairness in Apartment Rental Expenses Act is a big deal. It is a huge legislative accomplishment for a new member. It has been covered to death in every New York City media outlet you can think of. Social media was not the only reason it got passed. 

Ossé’s colleagues talked about his singular focus on this bill, garnering more than 30 sponsors. He got stakeholders in real estate and many of the big labor unions (such as HTC and 1199 SEIU) to come on board and show up to rallies. Where he cast progressive protest votes against the New York City budget in 2022 and 2023, he voted for the budget this year, putting him more in line with City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. While Ossé’s public relations were at their peak, REBNY’s government affairs operatives Reggie Thomas and Ryan Monell had both recently departed – and the landlord and real estate group had been in this opposition fight for several years now.

“I think it certainly helps that there has been previous conversation about this, and we got people acquainted with the idea of reforming these laws,” Powers said. “Of course, we also have a new City Council in place, and we have a council member who's already organized and motivated to help get this passed.” 

Often in politics, you’re working the inside game and the outside game at once. To illustrate the fact that you really need both, look at Dianne Morales. The 2021 progressive candidate for mayor also had impressive TikTok chops that got the town abuzz, but her campaign ultimately collapsed due to real-world internal strife. This broker fee legislative fight has shown that Ossé knows the inside game, but he’s now emphasizing his outside game as he takes a victory lap. And it’s working for him. By coincidence, the evening after I first spoke with Fox for this story, I was having a drink at a bar in Brooklyn, not in Ossé’s district. I overheard one guy at the table next to me say to the other, “did you hear they banned broker fees?” I interrupted them, told them I was a journalist, and asked if they knew who was responsible for that law. I swear to God, the guy said, “Chi Ossé. I love Chi,” and explained that he saw Ossé’s videos on Instagram.