BONUS - Zohran: The Final Stretch

Speaker 1 Hey, here he is. What's going on? It's the boy, Big Z.
How are you doing, man?

Speaker 2 Doing well, man. I remember the last time we spoke, I had just scarfed down a

Speaker 1 tomato soup at Panera alone in Albany and ran back to myself.

Speaker 1 The life of a politician. The life of a politician.
Feel bad for me.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, I don't need to do any introductions here.
I know you're a busy man. Let's get right into it.
Obviously, our guests here, Zoran Mamdani, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2 Great to be back.

Speaker 1 As you said, the last time we spoke, it was before Andrew Cuomo had even officially entered the race for mayor.

Speaker 1 And even then, even before he entered the race, you were down 20 points in the polls. Since then,

Speaker 1 you ran a political campaign that has

Speaker 1 really caught the attention of the nation. You crushed him in the Democratic primary.
And there was a wake-up call to everyone in the entire nation, certainly the Democratic Party.

Speaker 1 But obviously, obviously, the race continues. He's running as an independent.
So my question is, Election Day is on Tuesday and the waning days of this campaign.

Speaker 1 What is your view of the state of the race? And what is your message to your supporters and to the people of New York writ large?

Speaker 2 So I continue to be confident about where we are, but I am not complacent. This is still an election that we have to win.
It's not one that's going to be given to us.

Speaker 2 And just this morning, my mom called me and she was like, which poll should I be trusting? Which one is real? Should we be excited?

Speaker 2 And I was like, at the end of the conversation, I went to the same thing that I always say, which is ABC, always be canvassing, right?

Speaker 2 Like the best way to deal with any of your anxiety, the best way to look at a bad poll, the best way to grapple with the question of this few days left is to get out there and speak to people.

Speaker 2 And, you know, my friend Charlie went to a canvas in Hell's Kitchen the other day, and he shared after the fact that he knocked on the door of some guy who said he was just tuning into the race now.

Speaker 2 And there are many of us for whom this election has been everything we've lived and breathed and dreamt and slept for more than the last year, there are a lot of New Yorkers who are too busy just trying to afford to live in this city.

Speaker 2 And those are the New Yorkers who are tuning in these last few days. Those are the New Yorkers we got to get out there and speak to.

Speaker 1 Just, I will say, I canvassed for you on the day of the primary, which was the hottest day I think I've ever experienced in New York City.

Speaker 1 It was great, but then like to go to a party that night, see the results roll in, and see you wash out Andrew Cuomo before even the second round had a chance to even be counted felt great.

Speaker 1 So I will just recommend if you, if you go out and canvas in these waning days, even if you haven't done so far,

Speaker 1 it'll make hopefully Tuesday night very exciting for you. I will say that

Speaker 1 regardless of how this election turns out, regardless of the outcome on Tuesday. Okay, well, it's not.
What are you doing?

Speaker 1 Well, I will say, regarding your opponent, Andrew Cuomo has...

Speaker 1 run one of the most disgraceful political campaigns in the history of New York City, if not this country, both by refusing to bow out after he was so resoundingly rejected by the electorate, but then what this campaign has become as he tries to do anything to save his political career.

Speaker 1 I gotta say, Zoran,

Speaker 1 do you have a favorite hysterical political attack against you in these in the waning days of this campaign?

Speaker 1 I know it's all very personal, but is anyone specifically that's been most amusing to you?

Speaker 1 I know I have one.

Speaker 2 There was a video he put out where he was filming something, and then somebody yelled my name at him, and he yelled back, Yamama.

Speaker 2 And then he chose to post that. That wasn't like a somebody was there, they caught it.
He shared it. But I also, you know, well, you were just talking about that night

Speaker 2 of election night in the primary. He called me at 10:14 p.m.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 one of the things I told him is, now I want to do the work of uniting the party in delivering for the city. And he said, that's the key.

Speaker 1 And then he

Speaker 1 went on

Speaker 2 to launch a campaign that is

Speaker 2 such an illustration of everything that is both broken in the Democratic Party, but also in politics at large. And it is becoming increasingly desperate with each day that we get to Election Day.

Speaker 2 And if anything, it seems like an attempt to try and tear the city apart. And, you know, we believe in New York more than we believe in any of Andrew Cuomo's capabilities, so we'll be fine.

Speaker 2 But that is who he has been.

Speaker 1 Well, along those lines, I have to say, my personal favorite was when he accused you of being divisive to the city of New York, and particularly being divisive to the city's Sunni Muslim population by you yourself being Shia.

Speaker 1 And I'm wondering, is that an issue that you've encountered on the campaign trail before?

Speaker 2 I think what happened in that moment is he just found out about Sunnis and Shi'as. He was like, I've got to get this into an answer to show them that I know.

Speaker 2 But I think it's, it's, I mean, a guy who couldn't. visit a mosque for 10 years is now trying to lecture me on his perceptions of division within the the Muslim community.

Speaker 2 I can tell you, I haven't seen the kind of excitement we've seen across the entirety of the Muslim community in so many years as to what's happening in these next few days.

Speaker 1 Again, going off Andrew Cuomo, obviously, like he has, in running as an independent, more or less openly courted the support of Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Trump voters, and certainly his

Speaker 1 donors, the same people who fund his campaign. He's now going to them with his hands out.

Speaker 1 But like the specter of Donald Trump, our current president, does loom over this election. I mean, he has more or less said, if you're elected, he's going to take it.

Speaker 1 You know, he's going to take, I don't know, some extraordinary measures to prevent that from happening or to, you know, fuck with you in your term as mayor.

Speaker 1 So like for the forefront of my mind right now, as we've seen in cities like Los Angeles, D.C., Chicago, and like New York has experienced this as well, and I'm sure it will experience more of it if you're elected.

Speaker 1 Basically, the siege of these cities by federal paramilitary law enforcement. Should you be elected mayor on Tuesday? What can you do with the office of mayor?

Speaker 1 What are you going to do to protect New Yorkers, be they citizens, documented, undocumented, from this, you know, basically occupation and attack on their lives and their lives and civil liberties?

Speaker 2 I think the first thing is to make clear that we're protecting every single New Yorker, and we're not doing so on the basis of their documentation. We're doing so on the basis of whomever lives here.

Speaker 2 They deserve a mayor that sees them as part of the city and part of their responsibility. That's who I'm going to be.

Speaker 2 And what we've seen under the current mayor is someone who, you know, the allegation quite literally is that he was able to retain his personal freedom in exchange for furthering the administration's immigration agenda.

Speaker 2 So the relationship is so

Speaker 2 close between City Hall and Washington, D.C., that it often feels like we have an ambassador as opposed to a mayor.

Speaker 2 And the key to this is not having any coordination with ICE in the manner that Eric Adams has offered. You know, he went on national TV and opened the door to civil enforcement.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's disgusting.

Speaker 2 And, you know, we've seen estimates that have ranged from up to 5% decline in student attendance at schools across New York City because of a fear from families of whether their kids will be safe when they go to school.

Speaker 2 And Eric Adams has time and again refused to take the opportunity to tell New Yorkers, New York City schools, New York City sites, sites of contractors for New York City will not allow ICE agents into those properties unless they present a signed warrant that is signed by a judge.

Speaker 2 And that, the absence of that information, it's what allows so much of this fear to take hold across the city.

Speaker 2 And we heard from Tom Homan himself on national television not too long ago that the more educated a population is as to its own rights, the more difficult it is for the federal government to terrorize and intimidate them.

Speaker 2 So this is part of the posture that I will take of actually protecting this city.

Speaker 2 And I also think we've seen in California, the mayor of LA, the attorney general of California, the governor of California came together filed a lawsuit against the feds judge found in their favor that the deployment of the National Guard was illegal and the attorney general found that for every dollar they spent there on legal fees they won more than thirty thousand dollars in funds that would have otherwise been withheld by the feds so I give this to you as an example of the courts the the policies, the funding, the posture, all of these things are critical to actually defending this city.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, and I think both you and your political campaign, what you represent, but also just New York City as a city, like as a history, as a place in this country, stands as like a living, an ongoing living testament against everything the Stephen Millers of the world are attempting to erase.

Speaker 1 And like, how are you as a New Yorker and as like the figurehead or like the leader of the city of New York?

Speaker 1 Like, I would hope that you continue to like be a living, not just a living testament, but like a legal and physical blockade against the assault on the idea that like America is a place for immigrants or that immigrants have a role to play in the history and future of this country.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. And I think it even goes back to, look at New York City's law department.

Speaker 2 It was a law department that used to be on the front lines of some of the most seminal civil rights cases in the history of our country.

Speaker 2 And today it has been underfunded and subject to such austerity that it has fewer lawyers than it did before COVID.

Speaker 2 This is what we're looking at where we are abdicating our responsibility to show an alternative to Trump's politics because instead we're looking to mimic it.

Speaker 2 And it's time for us to actually turn the page on that. And that's what I'm looking forward to doing.

Speaker 1 Okay, like along these lines, I do have to ask you this question. And, you know, full disclosure, I've already voted for you on Tuesday.
But like, I'll take questions away.

Speaker 1 One of the things that, like, I have to admit, like, as a supporter who's done like, you know, multiple fundraisers for you, did make me raise my eyebrow, was your announced intention to retain Jessica Tisch as police commissioner.

Speaker 1 Again, the last time we spoke was in the aftermath of the NYPD crackdowns on the Palestine, the pro the pro-Palestine protests at CUNY, at Columbia. Jessica Tisch oversaw that.

Speaker 1 So I guess my question is: shouldn't there be some professional consequences for someone who violated the civil liberties of New Yorkers that egregiously?

Speaker 2 You know, what we found from Eric Adams time and again is first he said that the story was that Columbia was begging him to be able to send cops on campus.

Speaker 2 And then it was revealed at a town hall he did on the Upper West Side that he was actually begging Columbia.

Speaker 2 And so I put the responsibility of the way in which the police have been deployed time and time again, especially as it pertains to protests, firmly on the shoulders of Eric Adams.

Speaker 2 And I've been very clear, I'm not sending the police to enforce violations of college codes. The police should be caring about criminal codes.
That's what their job is.

Speaker 2 And what I've found, frankly, Eric Adams stacked the upper echelon of the NYPD with corruption and incompetence when Commissioner Tisch got in there, started to root out much of that corruption, take on the sexual abuse scandals that have been taking place, and start to deliver some accountability while reducing crime.

Speaker 2 I'm looking to build on that under my administration and deliver the public safety agenda I've been running on. That's an agenda that calls for the creation of the Department of Community Safety.

Speaker 2 It's also an agenda that calls for the disbanding of the Strategic Response Group.

Speaker 2 And it's an agenda that speaks about the necessity of delivering safety and justice together because New Yorkers have too often been told it's one or the other.

Speaker 1 And in terms of that, what makes you confident that Jessica Tirsch is the woman who will work with that agenda rather than stymie?

Speaker 2 You know, I've seen in the work that she has done and also in

Speaker 2 the commentary that she has shared in public as to her focus being on public safety, that to me is what gives me the confidence as a unifying purpose in this job at hand.

Speaker 1 Okay, like here's another specific question that I'm actually looking for like an answer on.

Speaker 1 You know, when you go to fill out your ballot in this election day, there is a series of six ballot initiatives also that people will be asked to fill in. It's like six questions.

Speaker 1 Do you have like a strong position on any of these six yes or no questions, particularly questions two through four, which deal specifically with like

Speaker 1 new authorities or like new uh methods of approving affordable housing will voting yes on these policies help your uh affordable housing agenda or like how does your campaign feel about these questions two through four specifically so i i haven't yet taken a position on the back of the ballot and on on the ballot referendum questions but i'm going to be voting on election day and when i do get to a position when i do vote i'll be sharing that publicly All right.

Speaker 1 Well, we only have a little bit of time left, but like I assuming all goes as planned on Monday and what we're all hoping for that, you know, and

Speaker 1 just a fuck Tuesday Tuesday is election day

Speaker 1 Jesus Christ oh man yes election day is election is held on Tuesday this upcoming Tuesday uh should all go according to plan this Tuesday what will the first hundred days of a mamdani administration look like what are you looking to do like hitting the ground running what are you trying to like what is the thing that you're going to focus on immediately that you can get done the most the quickest it's it's going to be that focus on on cost of living.

Speaker 2 And one of the key parts of delivering on this, as you can see right there, is freezing the rent for rent stabilized tenants and starting to build out the rent guidelines board that will actually be responsive to the facts of what New Yorkers are living through and not the directives of a mayor who's looking to reward their real estate donors, which is what we saw under Eric Adams.

Speaker 2 So to me, that's going to be the crux of those first hundred days. And I think also what New Yorkers deserve is a mayor who's working as hard as they are.
and somebody who's not learning on the job.

Speaker 2 So for me, it's not just November 4th, January 1st. It's actually November 5th to December 31st, the time of the transition.

Speaker 2 That's when you start to build out so much of what you're going to be delivering from day one.

Speaker 1 Is that complicated by the positions Eric Adams has filled on the way out the door that seem to be entirely opposed to something like a rent freeze?

Speaker 2 You know, he is trying to. I think at one point he was looking at a reality TV star who stars in the show, I think it's Selling New York, which to me is like a very odd thing.

Speaker 2 It feels a little bit too like, if you wrote that in a second, it's a full on the nose.

Speaker 2 You got to give me that again. But look, Eric Adams, what he's doing right now, what he's trying to do, it's a continued betrayal of working class voters, many of whom actually voted for him in 2021.

Speaker 2 And I'm still just as confident of our ability to deliver on this rent freeze because what we're going to do is utilize every tool at our disposal to finally turn the page on what's just been rent hike after rent hike after rent hike under Eric Adams.

Speaker 1 All right. Mr.
Mondani, I know you got to go. You're a very busy man.
But the last question I want to ask you is,

Speaker 1 like, what do you think your campaign pretends for the future of American politics?

Speaker 1 I know like for myself, people my age and younger, they've been told so often that like they can't have any of the things they want, that it's just not possible. It's just not reasonable.

Speaker 1 Should you be elected, upending a lot of the conventional wisdom, what do you think that like that holds for like a message for like the future of this country and what is politically possible in it?

Speaker 2 You know, I'm trying to keep my horizons kind of similar to that New Yorker cover where

Speaker 1 the great Saul Steinberg. Yes.

Speaker 2 I see it over there. I'm like, that's the corporate tax rate I want.
And then I see the rest of it. I'm like, that's the city I serve.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think it's been so exciting to be a part of this campaign, my friend.

Speaker 2 Like, truly, building something with so many other New Yorkers who have been told time and again that politics could never be more than celebrating the little that so many have,

Speaker 2 it's an opportunity for us to show that an affirmative vision is not only a necessity, it's also actually the way in which we fight authoritarianism.

Speaker 2 If your democracy cannot deliver on the material needs of working people, people will not care about saving your democracy. They can only save something that is looking to save themselves.

Speaker 2 And that's what we have to show once again, the fabric that has been split apart in our politics. It has to be stitched back together with working people right at the heart of it.

Speaker 2 And there's no easy segue here, but I do also just want to shout out Sharif's famous halal food, if anybody's ever

Speaker 2 31st and 6.

Speaker 2 Because I think the other lesson this campaign tells is you can talk about inflation using the cost of halal.

Speaker 1 Very good. Sir, one last very quick question.
Are the Knicks going to the finals this year?

Speaker 2 Come on, brother.

Speaker 1 We're going all the way.

Speaker 2 There's no number of cease and desist letters James Dolan can send me that's ever going to give me to say a different answer.

Speaker 1 There you go. Zoran Mamdani, wishing you the best of luck.

Speaker 1 Remember, election day is on Tuesday, but you can still say early. Tuesday.

Speaker 2 How good are these polls? I'm like, well, a lot of my supporters think the elections on Monday.

Speaker 1 All right. Zora Mamdani, just a reminder, we will have links in this episode description to Canvas Phone Bank.
I will make an appeal again.

Speaker 1 Get out there and work for the outcome that you want to see on Tuesday. So, Zora, thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for this campaign.
It's really been inspiring.

Speaker 2 Truly, Will, it's been a joy to build this. And I see you paraphrasing Mahatma Gandhi there at the end.
Be the change you want to see in the world.

Speaker 1 I see you.

Speaker 1 A little bit of light plagiarism. I wasn't even aware I was doing, but you know.

Speaker 2 All right, thank you, my friend. Thank you guys.
Thanks. Bye.