Zohran Mamdani Says He's Ready for Donald Trump

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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick.

It has to cross your mind.

I'm 33 years old.

I'm running 20 points ahead.

The guy that's right behind me has the likability factor of a traffic jam.

It's very likely that you're going to be the next mayor of the city with a $115 billion budget, a president that calls you a communist half the time, and he's threatening the city in many different ways.

When you go home at night, and you're thinking about this emotionally, and people are questioning your experience as well, naturally, simply on the basis of age.

When you're staring at the ceiling at 3 o'clock in the morning, as you must do.

I know.

You know, I have to be honest with you, I don't have trouble sleeping.

At all.

I don't.

Because you're walking across the city half the day.

Because I'm quite tired when I get to bed.

Zoron Mamdani is running to be mayor of New York City, and the polls have him at least 15 points ahead of Andrew Cuomo.

Mamdani is 33, he serves in the state assembly, and he's a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

And a a year ago, almost nobody had heard his name.

But doubt never enters your mind.

A lack of what if I let them down never enters your mind.

The weight of that hope

is one that I do wrestle with, and the responsibility of living up to it.

But doubt, I wouldn't say.

In the Democratic primary in June, Mom Dani pulled off a huge upset, not unlike Alexandria Casio-Cortez did when she ran for Congress as a young Democratic socialist herself.

Momdani beat former governor Andrew Cuomo, who was trying to stage a political comeback.

Cuomo is still in the race as an independent, and the Republican Curtis Slewa trails long in the distance.

It seems on one hand like an astonishing launch for a guy who would be New York's youngest mayor in generations.

and the first Muslim to hold the office.

But this has not been an easy run, not by any stretch.

Mamdani's message of affordability clearly resonates with voters, but his call for more taxes on the rich has spooked the state's governor, Kathy Hochl.

In Congress, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have balked at even endorsing Mamdani.

And Donald Trump threatens to withhold federal funds if New Yorkers elect him, calling such a vote a rebellion.

He's a communist.

We're going to go to a communistic senior.

That's so bad for New York, but the rest of the country is revolting against it.

But Zora Mamdani is clearly very good at this, very good at politics, at connecting to people.

And last week I went to his busy campaign office in Midtown Manhattan.

It was just four weeks out from Election Day.

You did a very interesting video early on.

You've done many videos, but one of the most interesting is you went around the city

and asked people why they may have voted for Trump.

And you got a range of answers, and then you talked to them further, and some of them resolved the conversation by saying, I'll vote for you.

What's your overall impression of why so many New Yorkers voted for Trump

and why would they abandon them in a sense, ideologically, and vote for a guy from the DSA?

You know, I specifically went to two of the neighborhoods that had the largest swings towards Trump.

Some of the largest swings were taking place in the hearts of immigrant New York.

And I went to Fordham Road in the Bronx.

I went to Hillside Avenue in Queens.

And

I wanted to ask New Yorkers a question and to listen to them.

And when you ask a New Yorker an open-ended question,

you do not know where it will take them.

And

what I was struck by is the focus of two things at once.

One,

the inability to afford life today in this city.

And the sense that that which was so difficult to purchase today, be it groceries, be it child care, be it public transit, be it rent, was far more within reach four years ago.

And so a message of a cost of living crisis, a message of cheaper groceries, a message of a more affordable life, very much spoke to the crisis that people were living through.

And amidst this,

a

diminishing faith in

the ideal of democracy, the value of democracy, in part because of its inability to deliver on these material concerns, but also because amidst being told that there wasn't enough money for so much of this kind of an agenda, here there were billions of dollars being sent for wars abroad.

And

it really stayed with me in that for many of those New Yorkers, and I would argue for many Americans across the country, it's not necessarily a question of

making a decision by virtue of the ideological commitments of the candidate in front of you or what organization they, you know, consider their political home or their journey at large.

It's a question of: do you see yourself in their agenda?

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, you have,

in a sense, are the first first major politician to

get the vote of and recognize a huge proportion of our city's population, which is people who are Muslim and or Asian,

from South Asian countries as immigrants or children of immigrants.

That was a kind of unrecognized thing.

We've never had

a mayor from that background.

And at the same time, you've had your troubles with the black vote.

You've been in black churches.

You've taken on, you know, more advisors to help you with this.

But what accounts for your difficulty with black voters in this city?

And will that change?

I started this race polling at 1%.

And that's being charitable and perhaps rounding up.

And in fact, at that point, to be included in a poll was in itself a success.

And

I remember many of my early conversations in

speaking to pastors, trying to get in front of a congregation.

And it it took quite a few months.

And our first church that I spoke in front of was...

Because they told you they were that, where were Eric Adams?

Some of it was that.

Some of it was, who are you?

You know, and

a reasonable question for

a state assembly member from Western Queens, for whom most New Yorkers had no idea.

And,

you know, the first church that I got into, the church in Crown Heights, was because I had been following up with that pastor, Reverend Rashad Raymond Moore.

I had called, I had texted, and then he happened to come to speak in Albany at the governor's state of the state.

And I ran down the stairs at the end of that ceremony, and I said, Reverend, how are you?

Please, I'd love to.

And we set up a meeting, and then I went and I spoke at the church.

And then from that moment on, this is maybe about February, I would average probably about a church a weekend.

And then by the end of it, two churches every Sunday.

And at this point, it's multiple churches on a Sunday and also Seventh-day Adventist church on a Saturday.

And I remember sitting with another pastor in Queens who had endorsed Cuomo in the primary.

This is in the spring.

And I asked, why did you endorse Cuomo?

And he said, I endorsed Mario's son.

And I endorsed him because Mario was good to us.

And part of the reason I don't begrudge.

the journey that I've been on, the initial response that many have had, is because I'm not just running against Andrew Cuomo.

I'm also running against a legacy of his his name and his last name specifically and what that means to somebody.

I think it's a lot of people be of a certain generation to have any

in with Mario Cuomo.

Yeah, and

I think that also tells the story that has often been told as if it's a story of race when I think it's actually more a story of generation.

You know, part of the reason we won the primary is because we won young black voters.

And that was part of us winning young voters across the city.

And now the work is to earn every single vote beyond that.

This focus on affordability is a focus that seeks to build on the work of so many incredible black leaders in this country, but also in this city.

And you know, just this past Sunday, I spoke at a church where

Dr.

King had actually recuperated in the parsonage of after he was stabbed in 1958.

And I stood on that, in that same church.

and spoke of his quote that he said decades ago, which is, what good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger.

But I'm going to ask you a question

inevitably

about socialism.

And whenever you're asked this question, you quote Dr.

K.

Yes, I do.

Yes, you do.

It's 1961.

Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism.

But there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God's children.

Fine.

However, however, sir, socialism means something.

To be a social democrat is different from being a democratic socialist.

It's not an academic thing.

You know this as well as I do.

To be a democratic socialist means you're for democratic means of achieving socialism.

But socialism, by any definition, means at least to some degree the state ownership of enterprises, to some degree.

And that can vary depending on if you're Edward Bernstein or Karl Marx or whoever you happen.

Why do you gravitate toward socialism?

My journey into calling myself a democratic socialist begins with Bernie's run in 2016.

And his campaign was a formative one for me and for many across this country, both in giving us that language, but also

in

explaining the core tenet of it, which to me continues to be a belief in

dignity as the cornerstone of politics.

that

I think that every New Yorker should have whatever they need to live a dignified life.

And what I mean by a dignified life is that that which they need is not then something that they can be priced out of.

And so the focus of our campaign has been on housing, it's been on childcare, it's been on public transit.

And in some senses,

forgive me for interrupting.

So what you're saying is anything that's a necessity, housing, food, education, should not ever be given over to market

instability or prices, it has to be there.

It has to be free.

I think no, I think that it has to be a fixture in each and every person's life, right?

My landmark policy on housing in this race is about freezing the rent for rent-stabilized tenants.

We live in a which has been done previously by non-socialists.

Yes, it has.

We have a city of eight and a half million people.

About two and a half million live in rent-stabilized housing.

The city determines the rate of the rent increase or lack thereof of that housing through the rent guidelines board, of which the mayor appoints all nine members.

And if I believe that housing is a human right, then it is incumbent upon me to use every tool I can to ensure that it is as affordable as possible.

And here we have an example of where the city has a direct means by which to ensure that affordability.

How is it being a Democratic Socialist, in your view, different from being a social democrat or particularly a liberal member of the Democratic Party?

It often comes back to whether you're willing to fight for these ideals that you hold.

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, as opposed to it being something that you have to do.

But you're definitely saying that you'll fight harder for it than others.

I think that you mean what you say.

What separates it from other

styles of

ideology or politics or theory, to me in practice, has been a separation also of

whether you are willing to reckon with the broken system of the broken nature of the system we have around us and taking on the entrenched interests necessary to deliver these kinds of ideals in practice you say you you you you you reminded us that you worked for bernie and you were excited about bernie i volunteered i've i i volunteered you volunteered fair enough i think in very hard i think in 2012 you also did some work for obama in pennsylvania myself yes yes yes yes i went i i think it It was not 2012.

I think it was actually for the first election.

2008.

I think so.

But I door knocked for President Obama, yes.

And yet, if I read your generation correctly, there is a distinct disappointment, particularly on the left side of the political spectrum, broadly speaking, with Obama.

I wonder how you look back at the Obama experience.

I know he called you the morning after you won.

Tell me about that conversation, and tell me about your sense of Obama vis-a-vis Bernie.

Because it seems to me that you admire Bernie Sanders' politics a good deal more than Obama's in retrospect.

The call the morning after was quite a privilege to receive.

And

what I appreciated about it so much was that the focus of it was

both on the question of hope and the importance of hope in our politics and what the transition to governance looks like.

There comes a responsibility with inspiring others and with creating hope is that you must deliver on that.

I think in your counter-posing of Bernie and of Obama, I also think of it as different points in my own life.

You know, Obama, 2008,

I am,

I'm sorry to say this, I'm in high school.

You're killing me.

I know.

I just wanted to

say sorry before I stabbed you.

At least I did it from the front.

Yeah.

We'll all die someday.

Better to know that it's coming.

You were in high school in 2000?

I was in high school in 2000.

I'm probably going to let that slide.

Andrew Como is probably going to have a press conference about it tomorrow.

It's true.

I was.

I don't know if you just gained some votes or lost a few.

It's always a little bit dicey.

The good thing about my youth is that I grow older every day.

Yeah.

Join the club.

But

these years are the end of high school, the beginning of college, and then through the end of college.

And Bernie is a few years after college.

And,

you know, I think

I had this very interesting experience after

college where I found out that organizing was a job.

I didn't know you could get paid to organize.

And I remember when I was looking for jobs in my second semester of my senior year, the public interest research group was creating something called ChangeCore.

So I went to Boston for the training, and we had an incredible

cohort of organizers.

And we really put through our paces and did a number of kind of capsules and seminars.

And then I was posted for my first posting in Seattle.

And I ran moveon.org's remote phone banking office.

So I took these volunteers that existed online, brought them into a physical space.

We made close to 400,000 phone calls for that midterm election.

So I go from moveon.org to the Texas Public Interest Research Group, talk about the Affordable Care Act.

I then come back to Denver.

And over the course of this time,

I

am also getting to know my cohort.

And we're making maybe about $750 every two weeks.

And the way in which we're told to make it work is we find somebody that we can just crash on their couch in whatever city that we're in.

And so we start to organize internally.

and start to put together an aspiration of a union within the organization.

And they don't take too well to it.

And when we come back to denver for the mid-year you know retreat um the organizing starts to build and one member of the cohort is fired who's seen as being particularly disruptive perhaps particularly a leader of this organizing effort and i was one of those who was very very much invested and i saw the writing on the wall i give this to you as a as an example of what also the experience was with liberal politics and testing out the meaning of some of these things.

Is it a morality tale to say liberalism let you down?

No,

it's more to say that.

I know you were critical of Obama for, you know, because of drones, for example, which was a very common critique.

I mean, the most radical thing about Obama was identity.

First black president.

But he was not a radical.

He is not a radical.

You describe yourself as a radical.

You do continually.

Well, when have I described myself as radical?

I will send you, as I say, we'll send you.

There is a space between you.

Describe that space.

I think

the point of my sharing that story

is also

the limits that I found within a certain kind of politics

and

a desire for a politics that spoke to the broken nature of a status quo that wasn't specific to Republican politics, but also a far larger status quo that also included the Democratic Party.

And ours is also a campaign that is built around a very specific set of politics that also looks to

the ways in which our own politicians here in New York City have failed us and our own politics has failed us.

And that that failure hasn't necessarily just been one of not enough New Yorkers being able to see themselves in it, but also the choices that have been made of what to focus on and what to ignore.

In terms of policy.

In terms of policy, in terms of people.

When I went to speak to those voters on Fordham Road and on Hillside Avenue,

there's a tendency to treat all of these issues that we're facing as if they were created by Donald Trump.

When, in fact, the most salient of them are the ones that existed prior to him, that he has diagnosed and then exploited.

I'm speaking with Zaran Mamdani, a Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City.

We'll continue in just a moment.

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It feels good to pause for a moment sometimes and look around at what's what.

Let's try and do that.

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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick, and I've been speaking today with New York City mayoral candidate, Zaran Mamdani.

Now, if he wins the election next month, Mamdani would be the first immigrant in generations to serve as a mayor of a city that's now more than a third foreign-born.

He'd also be the first Muslim.

Mamdani was born in Uganda to Indian parents.

His father is a Columbia professor, Mahmoud Mamdani, and his mother is the filmmaker Mira Nair, who made Monsoon Wedding and other movies.

Mamdani grew up in New York.

He worked as a political organizer, and he dabbled some in rap music.

He became a citizen in 2018, and in 2020, He won a seat in the State Assembly.

He represents a district in Queens.

I'll continue my conversation now with Zaran Mamdani.

You come from parents from the left, distinctly.

In fact, your mother was profiled in the New Yorker years and years ago.

Your father's book was just reviewed in the New Yorker by Kellefasana.

And yet they sent you to a pretty expensive private school, Bank Street.

You went to a high school that was public school, but it's

for gifted kids who do it all on a test.

And then you went to Bowdoin, which is an expensive expensive private college.

How do you feel about that educational legacy of your own

and would you do the same

for your kids?

And how do you want to see this change?

The key is to ensure, and I would say this is true with education, but also with all public goods, that they are at such a level of excellence

that all will choose to use them, not just those who cannot afford that which is being provided by the private sector.

And

my vision for this city is one where those options that New Yorkers will choose to go to, the best ones, are within our public school system.

And Bronx Science was an illustration of a glimpse of that,

of the promise that that education can hold for many.

I moved to New York City when I'm seven years old,

and

I

go to Bank Street, which is this very progressive middle school on the Upper West Side, just a few blocks from where I live.

Progressive in its politics, but

private and expensive.

Yes, in its pedagogy.

I mean, in terms of its outlook.

And I'm both a student at Bank Street, and then there's this one period where my father goes back to Uganda to write a book on Makerere called Scholars in the Marketplace.

And I go back with my father for about

much of that year.

And I enroll into the Aga Khan School.

in Kampala.

And I have gone in just a space of a few months from a school where the worst possible grade you can get is a check minus to a school where I find that corporal punishment is still very much in vogue.

Did you get?

I wouldn't say hit,

but

I did learn that if you don't underline every sentence in your homework and then get it signed by your parent, that you will have your ear rubbed together in the manner when

you're going down a rope and your hands are

painful.

You know,

it wasn't something I'd experienced in 112th in Broadway.

But I think it's

this is

part of

my own childhood has been

understanding that

to be able to grow up without having to question whether that which I need would be that which I had is something that every child should have.

Ideally, of course.

Yes.

Of course, of course.

But would you send your kid to Bank Street?

I would send my kid to a public school.

And I think part of this is that.

Even if you had the means and it was markedly, the quality of it was less.

Well, see, I don't think that that's the hypothetical that.

We're not asking hypothetical.

Yes, but by the time that I have a kid, I'll have been the mayor of this city.

And the schools will be that transformed.

Ideally.

You know, if you don't have an ambition to actually change the city around you, then I don't think you have a business in running.

We allow the exceptions of systems to tell us the story of the system as a whole.

And I think the importance here is that

how can we make our public education such that

even if you have the means, it's still where you choose to go.

And there is an immense amount of work to be done in doing so.

And yet, I also think that it is critical to the success of

governance as a whole, because schools are where many New Yorkers will engage with government the most.

I think part of schools are the whole ball of wax in a way.

But what confuses me when I'm thinking about these things, we have 150,000 kids in charter schools.

And they're public, but they're not, they're quite different from ordinary public schools, district schools.

90% of those kids are black and Latino, and they want to be there.

And yet, people

are very anxious about charter schools.

I think you are.

You don't want to see any new ones.

Why?

What is

it's a real dilemma?

Well, I've shared my skepticism on charter schools, and what I've said is a skepticism that is in part born out of

the ways in which certain students are pushed out of those schools, disproportionate rates of suspension for certain sets of students, and the manner in which

You know, when I was at the heart of a fight in Albany to finally fund our public schools that had been required by law in the campaign for fiscal equity.

So much of the funding that we actually won, the vast majority of it, went to charter schools specifically.

And these are questions that I've raised publicly and I've shared.

They also don't preclude me from meeting with New Yorkers who feel very differently.

Is it a funding question?

We now spend in this city $42,000 per pupil in schools.

That's a lot.

It's a hell of a lot.

And

yet, wealthy parents are still plucking their kids out and sending them to private schools, not

middle-class people and working-class people.

If they can get their kid into a charter school, very often they'll do that.

What's the level of spending?

What's the level of government reform on the part of your office?

And do you want to devolve power away from

your office, which I'd like to know more about, that is going to make schools better the way you want them to be?

I don't think it's as simple as just a question of funding.

I don't think it's that if we were to reach a certain point, then everything would be solved.

I think there's also a real question of governance, of focus, of even internal reform.

What I mean by that is that the Department of Education is the agency that city government spends the most on, of any agency.

By a lot.

We spend about $10 billion within that department on contracts.

Now, some of those contracts are ones that are individualized per school district.

There is an immense amount of money that I think could be saved were we to standardize a lot of this.

Some of these contracts are also ones where we are procuring curricula that is then to be taught by teachers only to then find out later at the end of the process that the curricula that the city has already procured is not actually teachable within the context that it's being procured for.

And my point here is

there has also been

a strange history where we have hollowed out public capacity,

replaced it.

with the outsourcing of much of these contracts in the name of saving money.

And yet what we find is an ever-ballooning amount of money that's being spent on them.

We're talking about a city that's still paying McKinsey millions of dollars to design a trash can.

A city where, for the first phase of construction for the Second Avenue subway, we spent more money on consultants than construction.

So, I cite these examples to say that to me, it's not that I want to get the $42,000 per student to $45,000 and then things will be better.

It's that I want to make sure that every dollar is actually going into the benefit of the classroom.

Because I don't think that's the case when you're spending so many dollars out of the classroom, And so much of this is either, you know,

it's a question of inefficiency.

It's also, there's a real issue of patronage within our politics.

And in some ways, this is specific.

Is it a union part of that system of patronage?

I would say that the first place to look is what this current mayoral administration has been doing.

And the first place I want to go, frankly, is Tweed or Central, the upper management of the Department of Education.

We're talking about the kind of apparatus that exists beyond teachers and students in the schools of this city and the fact that there are many positions there where I couldn't quite explain to you what the job does.

But I might be able to tell you who that person knows.

Smarter governance, more efficient governance, and I have to say.

And an interest in governance.

I've been a little bit surprised that you've seems to have taken a deep interest lately.

in the Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson abundance agenda.

I would not have thought that of you six months ago.

Well, I think that the most important thing is delivering.

And if that is your framework,

then you have to be willing to listen to everyone who can bring you closer to that.

I mean, do you think that was you a few years ago?

Do you think have you kind of become,

I look at the circle that was around you a year ago, mostly activists.

That stands to reason.

And now it's different.

There are people from other campaigns in the Democratic Party, Patrick Patrick Gaspard.

How's your relationship with Brad Lander now?

Is he going to be your friend?

It's a good relationship.

He's a friend.

Will he play an important part

in your being mayor?

I think that's what we're continuing to talk about, about personnel and those kinds of commitments.

But I would push back a little bit on your characterization.

Okay, go ahead.

In that, you know, I moved to the city when I'm seven years old.

I grew up as a young South Asian man in this city.

I see one of the clearest illustrations of a betrayal of city government in the way in which it treats its taxi drivers.

And

on the medallion issue.

On the medallion issue.

For a long time, these medallions were sold by the city to largely immigrants as a surefire ticket to the middle class.

In the early 2000s, the value continues to be around $200,000 or so.

The city starts to sell it all the way up to $1 million.

This is prior to Uber and Lyft.

Even at that point, the way in which the price is outstripping the value, it sets these drivers up for failure.

And there are suicides after suicides of drivers taking their lives because of the weight of this crisis.

And yet nothing is done.

And when I run for state assembly 2019,

I'm one of the first candidates to send a mailer out to constituents across the district with a focus on the taxi crisis saying that I'm going to end excessive medallion debt.

When I get into office,

one of the meetings I have is with Senator Schumer.

And Senator Schumer, with whom we don't always agree on an update, who's yet to endorse you, and Hakeem Jeffries has yet to endorse you.

You got to sneak it in.

I did.

Come on.

And we sit down and we have a conversation.

And one of the things that I ask Senator Schumer is to take a ride with me in a taxi with Richard Chow, who lost his brother to suicide because of the weight of this crisis.

And he agrees.

I think his father-in-law was a taxi driver,

and it has an immense meaning to him.

And we build a relationship specific to this issue of the medallion crisis.

And I build, I helped to build with the union, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, on the outside.

And as we're doing all of this, organizing very much with Senator Schumer and his team, who are leading the fight on the inside, these two things happening in tandem.

And

the final...

Part of this is going on a 15-day hunger strike and doing all of it while being in close coordination with

the push and pull on the inside and building an ever-expanding political coalition to come to the site of the hunger strike, to call the mayoral administration to push.

And eventually we win $450 million in debt relief.

We win a city-backed guarantee.

And I tell you this story because of the light pushback.

Fair enough.

That the story of the things I'm most proud of are also the ones that include working with those far beyond just those who would identify their politics exactly the same as mine.

Aaron Ross Powell, you've evolved.

People evolve.

They change.

And it's not just because you're running for political office and there are hot buttons in this city.

For example, your first political experience in an organizational sense was in college at Bowdoin, and you co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine.

And

there was a lot of talk then about...

And you wrote your thesis on Frantz Fanon.

And Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

And well, fair enough.

He always gets forgotten.

Fair enough.

But

now you're at a point where you've also denounced Hamas as well as shown enormous support for the Palestinian cause and describe what's happened in the last two years as a genocide.

In other words, your rhetoric and your language has shifted.

And is that only because you're running for mayor or because

people change?

This is the other part of youth, his growth.

And it stems also from

reckoning with the complexities of so many things.

I think one thing that has often been brought up as an example of this is the question of my views on policing.

And defund the police and so on.

And tweets that I sent in 2020 calling for defund and with critiques of the police department.

And,

you know, I grew up in this city thinking often about safety and justice.

And

time and time again,

reckoning with the absence of that justice whether it be learning about the central park five

or sean bell

or eric garner or reading about michael brown

or then to 2020

the murder of george floyd and feeling like the distance between these these notions had never felt wider in my life in this city and

reckoning with that distance and in the time since then

also understanding that in order to deliver that justice it still has to be intertwined with that safety and that

when you do so you do it with a recognition that

You're looking to lead, whether it be at an assembly level or it also be at a citywide level police officers who are putting their lives on the line every day, Muslim New Yorkers in my district who had been illegally surveilled on the basis of their faith, black and brown New Yorkers who were victims of police brutality.

You lead all of them together.

And you do so by understanding what it will take to deliver both of those things in tandem and the critical nature of the relationships around all of that that actually gets you to that point.

Zoran Mamdani, we'll continue our conversation in a moment.

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It feels good to pause for a moment sometimes and look around at what's what.

Let's try and do that.

We've been finding these incredible stories about right now that are funny and have feeling, and you get to see people everywhere adapting and making sense of this new America that we find ourselves in.

If you haven't listened in a while, I honestly think these are some of the best stories we've ever done.

This American Life, every week, wherever you get your podcasts.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick.

When Bill de Blasio was running for mayor of New York back in 2013, he ran on a progressive message about extreme income inequality, and he memorably called it after Dickens, a tale of two cities.

But de Blasio's tools to make a dent in income inequality as a mayor were pretty limited.

So I was thinking about all that when I spoke the other day with Zoran Mamdani.

Mamdani, as you know, is a young democratic socialist with big ambitions for the people of New York, and he's very likely to be elected the next mayor.

We'll finish our conversation now.

You have high aspirations for the city.

You have extraordinary political skills and you've reached loads and loads of people who were either indifferent to politics or so bummed out by politics, particularly the Trump period.

and that you've brought them in.

And you've said, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, and these are not minor things.

De Blasio was able to do one big thing as mayor.

One big thing.

He did freeze the rent three times.

Okay, that's a little easier.

But

how are you going to pay for it is the big issue with you.

And in other words, where's it coming from?

And you can't just say, I'm going to move the checkers a little bit on the checkerboard of expenditures.

That's not going to work.

You're talking about multi-billions of dollars in which lots of costs

are baked in.

I think

first, that the aspirational aspect of you is going to outweigh the practical outcome and you're setting up the city for disappointment.

That's the case.

Sometimes people treat aspiration as if it is a crime,

that to dream of the city we deserve is

as if to engage in a politics that has no place.

My job is to earn every vote that I can over these next four weeks.

And there are also some New Yorkers whose votes I will only earn after being the mayor through them seeing what I'm doing as the mayor.

And that is fine because I want to continue to expand this coalition.

The agenda that we've run on since October 23rd when we launched the campaign, there are three major points.

Freeze the rent for 2.5 million rent stabilized tenants, make buses fast and free, deliver universal child care.

The reason I was lightly pushing when you said de Blasio only did one big thing was that de Blasio froze the rent three times.

And that is a key part of our agenda.

The other two points are the ones that require significant fiscal investment.

Making buses fast and free, you know, making them free is about $700 million or so a year.

Universal child care is about $500.

How much do we lose in fares?

Right now, buses collect around 45 to 50 percent.

And how many people are paying for it as it is now?

That's what I mean.

About 45 to 50 percent of people on the bus are paying for it.

And when the MTA did a blue ribbon study as to the nature of fair evasion, what they found is the highest rates of fair evasion are in the neighborhoods at the highest levels of poverty.

But to go to your point, let's say it's about $700 million on buses, $5 or $6 billion on your merchant child care.

These are real costs, real significant amounts of money.

I would argue a few things.

The first,

these are the kinds of expenditures that do happen in city and state politics.

I'm running against a man who found $959 million for Elon Musk in tax credits one year in Albany.

That's more money than it takes to make the bus free.

We're talking about a municipal budget of $116 billion, state budget of more than 252 billion these are not things you snap your fingers and then they're real and here they are and you're dependent on albany yes you have to work with albany and that's why i actually you have the support of kathy hogel the governor see i do and that i know you have her support you have her support on the specifics of your agenda we she when we spoke you're relying the thing that made me most excited was that we were speaking often about the affordability agenda so her endorsement Carl Hasties, the Speaker of the Assembly, State Senate Majority Leader Andre Stewart Cousins, those are the three people described as the three people in the room.

They've all endorsed the campaign and, more importantly, the agenda behind the campaign of affordability.

The President of the United States has offered to deport you.

Russell Vogt, Trump's budget chief, recently canceled an $8 billion infrastructure project here.

18.

18, forgive me.

And that's, I think, just for practice, that you can expect as mayor, a really full assault from Washington.

What can you do about that?

I think that will be an inevitability.

We have to treat it as such, as opposed to something that's simply just possible.

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.

And part of that is because it is an illustration of everything that they claim to be fighting against and the ways in which this city is

should and could be the model of an alternative to a Trump-style politics.

But part of the issue is that for too long we've been the answer as to how we got Donald Trump as the president.

But how do you stand up to him?

What are the mechanisms and means to do so?

I think there are clear mechanisms in the way in which you prepare this city, right?

We talk about Trump-proofing the city.

Some of them are ensuring that you actually provide the support and the focus to a law department of the city that has a storied history of being on the front lines of fighting for civil rights, but is at this point understaffed compared to even just a few years ago.

Too often we treat Donald Trump's pronouncements as if they are law simply by virtue of the fact that they come from his mouth, when in fact, what we are often discussing are the most obvious overreaches and illegalities that we've seen in modern politics.

But part of the ways in which that you actually stop that is that you're willing to fight that.

And I think we've seen in his first term and his second term that what Donald Trump most often respects is strength.

It is not cowardice.

It's not collaboration like we saw from Adams or coordination like we're seeing from Cuomo.

It's someone who's willing to stand up and fight back.

And the last point I'll just say is that we cannot allow this to become a contest between two individuals.

Donald Trump suspending these kind of infrastructure grants, Donald Trump speaking about deploying the National Guard.

It's not about Donald Trump versus myself.

It's about Donald Trump versus the city.

And that's why you need someone leading the city that can build a front of New Yorkers who have a wide variety of politics, but are united on the question of this city and the importance of it and the fact that the federal government shouldn't be attacking the very existence of it.

We live in very dark times.

Political violence is now something we talk about all the time.

Do you fear it for yourself?

Do you fear for your life, if I can be more specific?

I'm fearful for those around me.

I hear you, but do you fear for yourself as well?

I try not to think about it.

I make sure that we can...

Can you manage when people come up to you and say threatening things on the street?

You know, being a New Yorker means being at ease with much of what is thrown at you.

The other day I was doing a press conference about our affordability calculator, zoranfornyc.com forward slash calculator.

That was the best pivot I've ever heard.

You stuck in a few things?

I was stuck in a few things.

And there was a man who was biking around the press conference calling me a terrorist and telling me to go back to where I came from.

And we continued on talking about rent stabilization.

But what concerns me is a man from Texas who was just arraigned on on charges here in Queens a few weeks ago for making death threats to me, death threats to my family, death threats to my team.

And I just think about the fact that so often the people who have to bear the brunt of these kinds of threats, it's not me.

It's my district staff picking up the phone thinking it might be someone from Astoria who needs help staying in their apartment, instead being told that they want a bullet, an IDF bullet to go through their skull.

This is the language that they hear.

Let's conclude by having a series.

Forgive me for calling out a lightning round of very short questions, very short.

To work on your segues.

I'm trying to do that.

You now live in a one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, what our reporter calls a classic mini-three.

Are you going to move to Gracie Mansion if you win?

I'm definitely moving out of my apartment.

This morning was spending time with the super about the sink leaking.

I see.

Sink leaking.

Okay.

Most of our towels are on the floor.

Should AOC run for president?

It's been a pleasure and a privilege to be represented by Congressman Ocasio-Cortez, and I think she's an inspiration, not just to me, but to people across the country.

Should AOC run for president?

Javi, you know what I'm doing.

I know what you're doing.

I think the world of her.

I'll leave the decisions to her.

My colleague Eric Latch says that you have a copy of Robert Carrow's The Power Broker, which I think is distributed free to everybody

on your shelf in Astoria.

Does the city need more Robert Moses or more Jane Jacobs?

More building or more preservation?

The city needs someone

who can find inspiration in both.

They said you were good.

Top three New York restaurants.

Your go-to.

My go-to's?

My go-to's.

Kebab King, Jackson Heights.

You gotta go there for Biryani.

It's incredible.

I would say then finish it off with some pawn outside.

Last night, my wife and I were currently in 30-minute increments watching the Mission Impossible series.

And we just finished Mission Impossible.

30-minute

we don't have much time, so it's taken about three months to get through Mission Impossible 4.

We ordered from Pie Boat in Astoria.

They have a great dish I'd recommend called koinur.

It's like a very spicy raw beef.

The third place that I would recommend,

I would say

the lamb adana laffa at Ziara.

Where's that?

That is on Steinway.

And you get the mint lemonade, and then you have some hummus and some pita.

I don't know if you're helping.

In these restaurants, you're going to kill

your advertising.

Now,

you said you're going to move into a new apartment,

but you're not committing to Gracie Mansion.

Yeah, I'm not measuring the graces.

Gracie Gracie Mansion looks a little,

it's kind of not on brand, is it?

I don't think too much of brand, to be honest.

Would you give up your rent-stabilized place in Astoria?

Nothing much.

More like Ed Koch, would you hang on to the near-end?

My wife and I have just talked about the fact that a one-bedroom is a little too small for us now.

Do you have any announcements in this direction?

No, no announcements.

Because she'd kill you if they just

to dream of being able to live in a larger apartment than this one.

Thank you so much.

Thank Thank you, my friend.

Thank you.

Real pleasure.

Zoran Mamdani is the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York.

To get a full picture of the candidate, staff writer Eric Latch has chronicled Mamdani's remarkable rise in a terrific and deeply reported profile called What Zoran Mamdani Knows About Power.

Eric's profile of Mamdani goes, I think, a great deal deeper than anything you've read, and you can read it now online at newyorker.com.

And of course, you can also subscribe to The New Yorker on the very same site, newyorker.com.

I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today.

Hope you enjoyed the show.

See you next time.

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