I just sat down with the candidate upending the New York City mayoral race.
Zohran Mamdani was hardly a household name even just weeks ago. But his campaign for mayor is surging in the polls, such that I am now getting emails from candidates I have never heard of, asking me to “Stop Mamdani.” Instead, I thought I’d talk to him.
There are many competing stories about the present state of New York City: that it’s a hellhole of crime and disorder, that it has grown feral and ungoverned, that it is too damn expensive, that it is losing the engines of stability and mobility that nurtured earlier generations of New Yorker brilliance and sent it out into the country and world. The one thing that unites New Yorkers across difference is the sense that the city needs a fundamental change. Mamdani is offering one flavor of such change.
Why, he asks, in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, do 500,000 kids go to sleep hungry every night, and a majority of renters spend 50 percent of their income on their apartments?
Mamdani, a state assemblyman in New York, is interesting, because, like his Queens neighbor Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, he has actively sought to understand why many of his own constituents voted for Donald Trump last year. As he explained in our conservation, it makes sense to him even though it might seem to make no sense: many immigrants and people of color in Queens and elsewhere in New York were simply desperate for answers, and didn’t feel like life changed enough under Joe Biden, and were up for trying shit.
Mamdani is trying to offer a different path, and it’s one worth paying attention to: free buses, rent freezes, accessible childcare, and more. It is a progressive policy vision that, as he explained to me, is animated by something more philosophical — a desire to have life in New York feel less cruel, miserly, mean. To allow dreams to breathe.
We talked about a lot: how he plans to balance the desire for safety with the demands of justice; whether women in City Hall would be safe if his rival Andrew Cuomo completed his comeback and became mayor; who he wants the Democrats to run as a presidential nominee in 2028 (guess); whether he would order the NYPD to thwart Trump’s immigrant disappearings; and the best place to get biryani in Queens.
You won’t want to miss this one, even if you don’t live in New York City (and you’ll want to move there after you watch).
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