Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google | Wherever You Listen
In November, New York City may elect as its next mayor a man who was pretty much unknown to the broader public a year ago. Zohran Mamdani, a thirty-three-year-old member of the State Assembly and democratic socialist, won a primary upset against the current mayor, Eric Adams, and the former governor Andrew Cuomo, who was trying to stage a political comeback. Mamdani now leads the race by around twenty percentage points in most polls. His mayoral run has been remarkable, but far from easy. Mamdani’s campaign message of affordability—his ads widely tout a rent freeze in the city—resonates with voters, but his call to further tax the top one per cent of earners has concerned the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul.
In Congress, the Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have yet to endorse him. “There are many people who will say housing is a human right, and yet it oftentimes seems as if it is relegated simply to the use of it as a slogan,” Mamdani tells David Remnick at his campaign headquarters, in midtown Manhattan. “It often comes back to whether you’re willing to fight for these ideals that you hold.” Donald Trump, for his part, has dubbed Mamdani a communist and has threatened to withhold federal funds from New York if he’s elected, calling such a vote a “rebellion.” An attack by the President “will be an inevitability,” Mamdani says, noting that the city’s legal department is understaffed for what may be an epic battle to come. “This is an Administration that looks at the flourishing of city life, wherever it may be across this country, as a threat to their entire political agenda. And New York City looms large in their imagination.”
Zohran Mamdani’s campaign was chronicled by Eric Lach, a staff writer covering New York politics and life.
New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
