Allow Zohran Mamdani to Reintroduce Himself

New York’s mayoral frontrunner has been working to build a governing coalition by meeting with all comers, including the business community that’s been bashing his plans. By Fola Akinnibi and Laura Nahmias

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Allow Zoron Mamdani to reintroduce himself. New York's mare apparent
has been working to build a governing coalition by meeting
with all comers, including the business community that's been bashing
his plans. By Fula A. Kinneby and Laura Namias read
aloud by Mark Lydorf. One afternoon in late September, passers

(00:22):
by gawked as Zoron Mamdani stepped out of a black
suv in Midtown Manhattan and strode to a small lectern
his team had set up on the sidewalk. A gaggle
of reporters, photographers, and TV cameramen was waiting their sight
lines clear on the stretch just south of Central Park
known as Billionaire's Row, a line of ultra luxury apartment
buildings so tall they cast shadows over the park. Mamdani

(00:45):
was standing in front of a building with an eighty
seven and a half million dollar listing inside a four bed,
seven bath. Excuse to talk about the cost of living
in America's priciest city. This is a part of New
York City that can boast the cost of an apartment
exceeding two hundred million dollars, he said, a world apart
from the material concerns of most residents, whether they can

(01:06):
afford their rent, their childcare, their groceries, location aside. Mamdani's
remarks mostly matched the stump speech he's spent this past
year drilling at parks, church services, mosques, picket lines, rallies,
and other events throughout the five boroughs. The city needs
lower rents, cheaper transit, affordable childcare. But this press conference

(01:27):
also captured a moment in time, a transition of sorts.
It had been about three months since Mamdani's decisive victory
in the Democratic mayoral primary, and just a few days
since the sitting mayor, Eric Adams had announced he'd no
longer seek reelection. Mamdani was now firmly New York's mayor apparent.
Already New Yorkers of all political persuasions were clearly getting

(01:49):
used to the idea. Two minutes into the speech, as
Mamdani accused his chief opponent, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, of
ignoring those who are struggling, a man driving by in
his BMW you suck, mam Donnie, the guy yelled, thank you, Sir,
Mamdani replied with a grin. Seconds later, his speech was
interrupted again, this time by indeterminate whoops and cheers from

(02:12):
a more supportive group in another passing car. Witnessing all
of this, a man who was forced to step into
the street to get around the press conference sighed loudly
in resignation, perhaps at the inconvenience of the sidewalk, and
said to no one in particular, He's gonna win. Unless
this is your first article back after a year long
news blackout, you know the basics. Mamdani, a three term

(02:34):
State Assembly member from Queen's with a slim legislative record,
was almost totally unknown among the electorate at the beginning
of twenty twenty five. Then came an expert social media
blitz and a whole lot of ground game, as Mamdani
shook every hand he could find, including by hoofing the
length of Manhattan just before primary day. He also honed
his elevator pitch, focusing on proposals to one makes city

(02:57):
buses fast and free to ride, to freeze rent in
rent stabilized units, which make up roughly one quarter of
the city's housing stock, and three offer free childcare for
every city kid aged six weeks to five years. He
says higher taxes on the wealthiest will cover the costs.
Mamdani's message has found an audience in New York City.

(03:18):
Public transportation can cost eighteen hundred dollars a year, the
median asking rent is thirty four hundred dollars a month,
and childcare can cost as much as twenty five thousand
per child per year. By the time the primary came
around in June, his campaign had fifty thousand volunteers who'd
knocked on one point six million doors. He beat Cuomo,

(03:39):
who'd mostly avoided public events, comfortably, for the Democratic ticket,
and every recent poll suggests he'll do it again in
the general election on November fourth. Cuomo is now running
as an independent. Mamdani, a thirty four year old self
described Democratic socialist, is likely to spend the next four
years running the financial capital of the world. As soon

(04:00):
as that started to become clear, some of New York's
wealthiest businessmen declared war. It began, as so many of
these things do. With Bill Ackman, Socialism has no place
in the economic capital of our country. The hedge fund
billionaire and Donald Trump backer wrote in a lengthy June
post on x arguing that Mamdannie's disastrous platform would drive

(04:22):
away the city's wealthy and hamstring the government's efforts to
pay for anything. Hedge fund billionaire Dan loebe equipped that
it was hot commie summer and suggested New York Governor
Kathy Hokel was a pickmy for endorsing Mamdannie. In October,
billionaire developer and supermarket magnate John Katsimatides told Fox News
without evidence that the real estate industry was worried about

(04:44):
property values falling by as much as half under a
mayor Mam Donnie. During the same segment, host Maria Bartiromo
said she worried New York City would become like London,
where you feel like you're in cutter or Saudi Arabia.
Katzimatidis agreed, claiming the UK went through Brexit because they
woke up and they were forty seven percent British and

(05:05):
they said, what the heck is going on? Disentangling these
kinds of comments from the policy arguments can be tough.
Mamdani is a Ugandan American and a practicing Muslim who's
made his advocacy for Palestinian rights central to his political identity.
He's also been one of the few mainstream American politicians
willing to call Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide, which

(05:27):
has made him a target for all manner of overheated rhetoric,
even as it's helped him attract a diverse swath of
young voters. But broadly speaking, the refrain from this prominent
slice of the business community has been that if he's elected,
their leaving and the city's one percent is estimated to
contribute about forty percent of the personal income tax revenue,

(05:47):
so they command outsize attention. Partly for this reason, while
he's worked to build ties with unions, elected officials, the
Jewish community, and voters who aren't sold on him, Mamdani
has also spent much of the power past few months
engaged in something of a second primary with New York
business leaders. There was the friendly call with JP Morgan
Chase chief executive officer Jamie Diamond, as well as conversations

(06:11):
with Michael Sullivan, the chief of staff at Steve Cohen's
hedge fund, point seventy two, white Shoe lawyer Brad Karp,
developer Jed Walentis, and others. Those who've met him come
away with the sense that he's smart and attentive. Zoron
has not compromised his point of view, says City Comptroller
Brad Lander, who ran against Mamdanni for the nomination and

(06:31):
is now a supporter. But he is able to engage people,
really across a broad spectrum, to listen to people. Mamdani
sat down with Bloomberg BusinessWeek in early October at his
campaign headquarters in the Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea, fresh from
a campaign event in Queen's Clad in his signature suit
and tie, he was characteristically energized as he discussed his

(06:52):
vision for the city, his relationships with its business leaders,
and the intersection of both. He stressed his interest in
finding points of common ground with the business community, though
he was quick to add that he has no intention
of compromising the core of his agenda. Honesty is critical,
and honesty means understanding disagreements that exist and also not
allowing them to preclude the possibility of agreements elsewhere. Mamdannie says,

(07:16):
I've gone to meetings with the heads of the most
profitable companies within this city and the most innovative companies
in the tech sector, and I'll have people come up
to me and whisper in my ear. I disagree with
you on tax policy, but I love the free buses.
New Yorkers understand the value, he says, to hashing things
out in person, even if things get heated. It's not

(07:37):
just that politics has felt removed from people's lives. It's
that politicians have felt removed as well, he says. New
Yorkers deserve to have a mare. They can see, they
can talk to, they can yell at. There will be
no shortage of yelling from one New York businessman. In particular.
Beyond Cuomo's vocal complaints about Mamdanni's lack of experience in
city government, the US President has taken to calling Mamdani

(08:01):
his little communist. Already, Trump has sent troops to Chicago,
Los Angeles, Portland, and Washington, d C. And used a
meeting of military officials to suggest US cities as training
grounds for soldiers. It's not clear what his administration has
planned for New York, or what any Mare will be
able to do about it. With early voting under way, however,

(08:22):
what's clear is the path Mamdani's campaign has offered for
the elected Democrats, who've spent this year mostly stumbling around
in the dark. It has animated the young voters the
party has struggled to capture, and in large part with
a business proposition, a better deal, we could transform city
government to make it a place that New Yorkers look
for help, Mamdani says, as opposed to yet another example

(08:45):
of why their faith in politics is diminishing. Mamdani is
fond of the borrowed quote. Occasionally he'll lean on Jay
z for an entrance. Allow me to reintroduce myself. My
name is Zoron Kuami Mamdani, he says on a fall
visit to a church in the Caribbean neighborhood of Flatbush, Brooklyn.
His middle name is an homage to Kwami in Kruma,

(09:07):
the first prime minister of Ghana. Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda,
to Myra Nayer, the Indian American director of Mississippi Masala,
starring Denzel Washington, and the Indian Ugandan scholar Mahmoud Mamdani
of Columbia University. After a stint in South Africa, the
family moved to New York City from Mahmoud's work when
Zoran was seven. Raised near Columbia on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

(09:31):
Mamdani is the product of both the city's private schools,
the Bank Street School for Children, and its public system,
the Bronx High School of Science. He left the city
to attend Boden College in Maine, where he earned a
degree in Africana studies and co founded the Liberal Arts
School's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. He returned
to New York in twenty fourteen and spent the next

(09:53):
few years working on a string of local progressives losing campaigns.
Mamdani knocked on doors for a Muslim candidate in Eastern Queens.
He led paid canvassing for a Palestinian American Lutheran pastor
running for city council in Southwest Brooklyn. He managed a
state Senate campaign for another progressive, Ross Barkin, in a
Republican held district. The work gave him a view far

(10:16):
beyond the neighborhoods he was used to, and a sense
of who voters are and how they think we are everywhere,
recalls Barkin. He was someone who believed in not compromising
your message, but also understanding that where you were and
how you frame your message matters. By twenty nineteen, Mamdani
was living and working in Queens at a housing justice

(10:36):
nonprofit called Chaya. He'd meet with homeowners all over Queens
to help them avoid foreclosure, says Anetta Citron, the organization's
executive director. At the end of that year, he announced
his own primary challenge to a five time incumbent in
the State Assembly for a district that includes his neighborhood
of Astoria and Long Island City. Those twenty twenty races

(10:58):
came to be colored by the early days of the
COVID nineteen pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, which
led to a summer of protests in the city and
around the world. Mamdani identified rent as the biggest issue
in the campaign and called for defunding the New York
City Police Department. He won the race by four hundred
and twenty three votes. Early on, Mamdannie's colleagues in the

(11:19):
State Assembly were surprised and impressed by his interest in
the mechanics of the chamber, mainly the process of bringing
in passing bills. They were also struck by his willingness
to throw himself into working for others legislation. His own
record in the legislative body has proven to be slim,
with four bills passed in his nearly five years there,
but he also managed wins outside the chamber, using many

(11:42):
of the same tactics that would later serve his mayoral campaign.
In twenty twenty one, after participating in a fifteen day
hunger strike, he helped a coalition of advocates win what
would become four hundred and fifty million dollars in debt
relief for cab drivers. He also won and later lost,
funding for a free bus pilot in each borough in

(12:02):
twenty twenty three, through a campaign called fix the MTA,
as in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city's
trains and buses. He announced that effort with a video
reminiscent of the visuals that have defined his mayoral campaign,
Mamdani on a bus, on a train, on subway platforms,
interviewing New Yorkers, and talking to food cart workers while

(12:23):
describing a serious issue in a pithy way and proposing solutions.
When Mamdani first told colleagues he wanted to run for mayor,
they were surprised. I told him I would be his
ride or die and I would support him on day one,
But I didn't think a democratic socialist could win, says
State Senator Jabbari Brisport, Mamdanni's close friend and roommate in Albany.

(12:45):
I'm very glad he didn't listen to me. Early in
the year, Mamdani was pulling in the last place at
one percent, tied with someone else. He jokes that if
he wanted a camera to appear at a press conference
he called back, then he'd have had to bring his own.
But he was confident in the pillars of his platform
on the basis of his own face to face conversations

(13:07):
with New Yorkers about what they wanted to see from
a candidate. We listened to them, and we heard these
issues again and again, Mamdannie says, Housing, childcare, public transit, groceries,
cost of living, cost of living, cost of living. When
Erase's two principal candidates have spent much of the past
few years described as either embattled or disgraced, someone else

(13:30):
can start to sound pretty good. And in an Adam's
Cuomo contest that was shaping up to be both light
on policy and at arm's length from the public, Mamdanni
went the other way. His viral men on the Street
social media videos tied public policy choices to everything from
why people voted for Trump to the rising cost of
meals at helal carts, and Mamdanni promised to reverse those trends.

(13:54):
On the ground, he seemed to be everywhere during the primary,
knocking on doors, shaking hands, smile, sisling, hugging people. It
was a lesson learned from the campaign losses. We built
an incredible field program, but you cannot do that in isolation,
Mamdannie says. And the campaign did so while still competing
in the conventional ways of the mayoral campaign on TV,

(14:16):
in mailboxes, on the radio. And that's the same spirit
will bring to governing. As the volume of Mamdani's supporters grew, however,
so did the volume of his wealthiest and most powerful detractors.
He understood he'd have some more hands to shake once
the primary was through. We'll be right back with allows
Zoron Mamdani to reintroduce himself. Welcome back to allows Zoron

(14:43):
Mamdani to reintroduce himself. In the days after his primary win,
Mamdani moved to reintroduce himself to the city's business community.
He had help brokering these early conversations from Kathy Wilde,
president of the Partnership for New York City, a business
law group with three hundred and fifty CEOs in its ranks.

(15:03):
Wild a veteran of New York City politics, also arranged
a larger scale meeting where Mamdani took questions from one
hundred and fifty of the group's members. He has provided
reassurance that he is smart, that he wants to build relationships,
that he is potentially somebody that will listen. She says,
he has worked hard to address the gaps in his coalition.

(15:24):
I think he's using every minute of every day to
try and reach more people. One senior finance executive, who
spoke on condition of anonymity because their conversation was private,
says he walked away from one such meeting impressed with
Mamdanni's ability to put politicking aside to genuinely listen and learn.
The executive says he also appreciated Mamdani's sincerity, though he

(15:45):
remains skeptical that someone with his experience will be able
to put together a team that can make city government work.
The next mayor will take office in January, which he
notes is coming up fast. Mamdani has met with leaders
from the prior three mayoral administrations to better understand the
hows and whys of city government. Also, the who's learning

(16:07):
from the successes and failures of that which came before
is key to navigating a complex job, he says, and
all of it is premised on the understanding that who
you hire around you is one of the most important decisions.
He's already promised to keep Police Commissioner Jessica Tish in
her job, a crowd pleasing personnel move. He's also managed

(16:27):
to impress groups that originally endorsed Cuomo, winning over the
powerful Hotel and Gaming Trades Council in part by promising
to walk a picket line with them if needed. Next year,
just around the time the FIFA World Cup comes to town,
a voluble arsenal Fan Mamdani has announced plans to appoint
a World Cup Czar before next year's tournament. He's pitching

(16:48):
the event as a chance to rebound from the damage
that growing anti American sentiment and travel fears have done
to city tourism this year. The mayor of New York
City is globally visible and locally powerful, yet the city
doesn't fully control its own purse strings. Much of that power,
including the setting of residence tax burdens and the operation
of the MTA, is held one hundred and fifty miles

(17:11):
north in Albany. Mamdani's campaign estimates universal child care will
cost six billion dollars annually and free buses about seven
hundred million dollars. To pay for this agenda, he's proposed
a two percent levy on New Yorkers who make more
than one million dollars a year and an increase in
the state's corporate tax rate. These are suggestions the mayor

(17:33):
doesn't have power over tax policy, so he'll need Albany
to make them happen. Mamdani has been starting to build
this coalition too. When he appears for impromptu press conferences
across the city, he's typically flanked by a few state
level electeds. He's won over Assembly Speaker Carl Heasty and
his state Senate counterpart Andreas Stewart. Cousins. Millionaire taxes poll

(17:55):
extremely well, Heasty said at an event announcing his support
for Mamdani. Governor Hockel has endorsed him as well, though
she's resisted the idea of a tax increase. Mamdani now
says that while a tax increase would make the most sense,
if the funding comes from another source, he won't complain.
I'm absolutely flexible because the most important thing to me

(18:16):
is that we fund these programs, he said in a
September interview with Bloomberg News. One local official who appears
skeptical of Mamdannie's bus plan is Jeno Lieber, the powerful
CEO of the MTA. While Lieber has declined to comment
directly on the election or Mamdannie's free bus proposal, he's
said that making services free risks extending an expensive subsidy

(18:38):
to those who don't need it, and encouraged further study
before any major changes to the MTA's operations. Mamdanni has
said he'll enact his rent freeze on stabilized apartments, but
that issue falls to the city's Rent Guidelines Board, which
makes decisions on how much prices can increase from year
to year. Basha Gerhard's, an executive vice president at the

(18:59):
Real Estate Board of News New York, a trade group,
says this may be difficult in practice, noting that the
board's nine members are appointed to staggered terms and can
be terminated only for cause. Seven of the board's members
have either reached their term or will before adams Leave's office,
and his administration is considering stacking the board on their
way out. Mamdani says he's confident he'll deliver the rent

(19:21):
freeze no matter the board's composition. And then there's Israel.
Mamdani's positions have become a lightning rod for critics eager
to conflate any cross words with anti Semitism. He's repeatedly
condemned Israel's actions in Gaza, and while he said he
supports Israel's right to exist, he would not recognize any
state's right to exist with a system of hierarchy on

(19:43):
the basis of race or religion. He said he'd enforce
an international criminal court warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netan, Yahoo,
though the New York Police Department doesn't have the authority
to do that. In a podcast interview in June, shortly
before the primary election, Mamdani drew condom Nat for saying
that the slogan globalized the Intifada, which many people interpret

(20:04):
as a call for violence against Jewish people, was often misunderstood.
He later said he'd discourage use of the phrase and
wouldn't use it himself. Post primary, Mamdani has worked to
strengthen tize with the Jewish community, using the same strategy
he's used with the business community, showing up and listening. Lander,
the comptroller in the city, government's highest ranking Jewish official,

(20:27):
has helped with the effort. Mamdani attended Yam Kipper services
with Lander and US Representative Gerald Nadler. It's not typical
for non Jewish elected officials to go to high holiday services,
Lander says, adding that Mamdani has made significant outreach in private,
in public, in serious conversation with so many people. The
city still has its share of synagogues that have disavowed Mamdani,

(20:51):
but it helps that his views on Israel appear to
be in line with the electorates. A New York Times
Sienapol conducted in early September found that a plurality of
life likely voters, thirty nine percent believed Mamdani was the
candidate who best addressed the Israeli Palestinian conflict during the campaign,
compared with seventeen percent for Cuomo. Almost half of respondents

(21:12):
forty eight percent, said American critics of Israel today are
mostly not anti Semitic. I've heard from Jewish New Yorkers
about their fears about anti Semitism in this city, and
what they deserve is a leader who takes it seriously,
who roots it out of these five boroughs, Mamdani said
during a televised debate on October twenty second. I look

(21:32):
forward to being a mayor for every single person that
calls the city home. Not just those who voted for
me in the Democratic primary, not just those that vote
for me in this general election, but all eight and
a half million New Yorkers. And that includes Jewish New
Yorkers who may have concerns or opposition to the positions
that I've shared about Israel and Palestine. If the past

(21:53):
decade has proven anything, it's that no amount of careful
political balancing, coordination, or concentration is trump proof. The year
began with the federal government taking eighty million dollars in
congressionally appropriated emergency funding right out of New York City's
bank accounts after Elon musk erroneously suggested the funds were
being used to fund luxury hotels for migrants. The Adams

(22:17):
administration is suing to get the money back. The hallways
of Manhattan's Federal Courthouse have become a hotspot for immigration
and customs enforcement arrests of people leaving their hearings. More recently,
the Trump administration has stopped payments from a much larger
pool of money, some eighteen billion dollars, subsidizing construction of
the Second Avenue subway and a new interstate train tunnel

(22:40):
under the Hudson River. MTA officials have called the moves
blatant efforts to punish New York. It also temporarily revoked
one hundred and eighty seven million dollars in state counter
terrorism funds. Trump hasn't been subtle about his interest in
the mayoral race. At an October cabinet meeting attended by
Argentine President Javier Mais, a journalist asked if economic support

(23:02):
of the South American country was contingent on its election results.
In response, Trump launched into a tirade against New York
City and Mamdannie, saying he won on a fluke and
doesn't know a damn thing. The president, whose urged Cuomo
to stay in the race, went on to say, I'm
not going to send a lot of money to New York.
I don't have to, and before confirming that the financial

(23:24):
aid to Argentina was in fact contingent on Malay's reelection,
Trump threatened to send federal law enforcement and troops to
clean up New York. If Trump decides to follow through
on his threat, Mamdani won't have much recourse beyond his
messaging and the legal system. He cited Illinois and California's
use of the courts as models for defense against the

(23:44):
White House's deployment of National Guard troops in Manhattan. Legal
challenges have forced the Feds to begin addressing over crowding
and a lack of basic hygiene at courthouse holding facilities.
Mamdani has called out the administration publicly for its clawback
of funds and called the New York ice arrests brazen,
while adding that the Trump administration has been gleeful in

(24:06):
the cruelty they impart on New Yorkers. In the event
of a full on troop deployment on city streets, he
suggested his relationships with Hochel and New York Attorney General
Letitia James will help with a coordinated response. Mamdannie has
emerged as a close James ally as she faces mortgage
fraud charges. Trump pushed his Justice Department to bring the case,

(24:27):
which appears to be in retaliation for her pursuing and
winning a civil fraud case against Trump and his companies.
James made her first public statements after the indictment at
a Mamdanie campaign rally in Washington Heights. I see the
courage that is embodied in Zoran, and that's why I'm
supporting him, she said to applause at the thirty two
hundred person event. He is a leader fighting for a

(24:50):
better future for the city, and he, like me, knows
what it's like to be attacked, to be called names,
to be threatened, to be harassed. There's a lesson in
there for National Democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative
Hakeem Jeffries, the opposition leaders and New Yorkers who spent
months pointedly not endorsing Mamdani. Jeffries did so on Friday.

(25:13):
Schumer hasn't announced a decision. True, he hasn't had to
make good on his promises yet, and his bravado might
not survive contact with the National Guard. But just as
he's offering New Yorker's help with their bills, their commutes
and their kids. He's standing on values too. That's set
him a clear starting point for negotiations with his opponents.

(25:34):
If he can win over business leaders or at least
cut deals both sides can live with. Even Trump just
might have to respect that, at least until he has
a bad day. Mamdani says he isn't taking anything for granted,
including that he'll be the next mayor. His campaign has
also continued to push voter registration efforts and build up
its ground game, including in Cuomo, leading neighborhoods and Republican

(25:57):
strongholds such as Staten Island. His plan, he says, is
to carry that grassroots support into his administration. On one level,
this means keeping his steps up, shaking hands, maintaining his
base of support where he can, but it can also
mean wielding the bully pulpit to mobilize that support and
put his campaign promises into practice. This is the greatest

(26:19):
city in the world, he says, but it takes constant effort.
We have to earn it every day. We have to
prove it every day. We have to win it every day.