Inside Mamdani’s campaign to be mayor of New York City

0:00Anthony:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. How has America shaped the world? I'm Asma Khalid, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. As the United States marks its 250-year anniversary, we've been exploring the surprising and often hidden ways the US has shaped the modern world. And today on the show, we answer your questions about this moment and what to expect in the years to come. From the BBC, it's the United States at 2.50. Listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:39Anthony:How did a virtually unknown 33-year-old socialist Democrat, who polled close to 0 % when he launched his campaign last year, become the frontrunner for one of America's biggest and most powerful positions? Zoran Mamdani. He's leading the race to become the next mayor of New York. He's doing it with big promises, which many say are idealistic and can't be delivered. Voting starts on Saturday, and last night the candidates had their final live debate. You have never had a job. You've never accomplished anything. There's no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half million lives.

1:18Who was leading the state? It was you. Governor Hochul. You were leading the state for 10 years, screwing the city. Zoran, your resume could fit on a cocktail napkin. And Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library in New York City. You're the savior of the Jewish people? You won't denounce globalized intifada, which means kill Jews. There's unprecedented fear in New York. I have never, not once, spoken in support of global jihad. That is not something that I have said, and that continues to be ascribed to me, and frankly, I think much of it has to do with the fact that I am the first Muslim candidate to be on the precipice of winning this election.

2:05President Trump has to respect you. He has said he'll take over New York if Mandami wins, and he will, because he has no respect for him. He thinks he's a kid and he's going to knock him on his tuchus. But I've been spending the last year listening to New Yorkers, and I know what actually keeps you up. It's whether or not you can afford to live a safe and dignified life in this city. I have plans for our future. My opponents only have fear.

2:29Anthony:So in this episode, two things. First, what does Mamdani want to do in New York? And secondly, can he deliver it? Welcome to AmeriCast.

2:41AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir. Right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world. Oh, dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question.

2:57Anthony:Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

3:06Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Bureau in Washington. And it's Anthony right next to Sarah here in Washington, D.C.

3:13Anthony:And it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. And I should say right at the beginning, this episode is coming to you very much by popular demand. A lot of you, particularly on the Discord server, have been asking us to look at Zoran Mamdani, the man, the phenomenon, the whole business of what is about to happen in New York in much more detail. And that, Sarah and Anthony, is what we're going to do today. Yeah, and joined by a guest, a New Yorker who's actually followed Zoran Mandami around a lot of his campaigns, spent time with him out on the streets, had dinner in his apartment.

3:47And he has some very interesting thoughts on just how Mandami might handle Trump if he's elected, as well as why his election campaign seems to be going so well.

3:57Anthony:OK, first things first, Anthony, we ought to set out, first of all, why being mayor of New York is so important. I mean, there's an obvious reason, isn't there? New York is a big place. It's the size of a medium sized country when it comes to its economics and indeed its population. But it's more than that. Yeah. New York is America's most populous city. It's also, if you ask New Yorkers, it's most important city. And they have grounds for saying that because it is the financial capital of the United States, if not the world. It is a major port. It is also a cultural center for this country. It is a center of media, which I think has a lot of relevance because things that happen in New York and in New York politics tend to resonate across the country, say, real estate developers who make their name in New York and sometimes go on to higher office.

4:50I think we can think of one in particular who has done that. It also has one of the largest police departments in this country, a police department that's larger than the Army of Belgium, I believe. And it has about$116 billion in its annual budget and 300 ,000 employees. So New York City is a big place, and it is a very important place when it comes to American politics. So even though we're just talking about a mayor, this is just one city, it is a mayor that has a unique platform and cultural visibility in this country compared to no one else in this country in local politics. There's been a lot of very famous mayors of New York, haven't there?

5:28I mean, I'm immediately thinking of Mike Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, but I'm sure you can remember others. Bill de Blasio, who also came in as a kind of a progressive reformer just a few years ago. And then there was a lot of hype around him as the new face of the Democratic Party, the kind of Bernie Sanders, who actually got elected to an influential office. And then that all kind of petered out. The list goes on and on. And it can be a very powerful position, a position where someone has a vision and political skills can really change the face of New York. Think about Rudy Giuliani, what he did with fighting crime or Bloomberg, the way he He changed New York's finances and the operations of New York and modernized some of that.

6:15So it is, but it also is a role with a certain amount of limitations. There are limits to power and limits that Momdani, with all of his promises, could run head on into if he gets elected.

6:28Anthony:Yeah, we need to talk about some of those limits because it is really interesting what he can and can't do. Before we get, though, to him, just on the subject of who the candidates are this time round, Something immediately strikes me from what you've just said, Anthony, in that list of people, that list of famous New York mayors. It's both parties and Republicans can win and have won very successfully and govern successfully in New York in the past. But this time round, if we go through the candidates and there is a Republican candidate, are we saying we are certain that he can't win? I think we're fairly certain he can't win.

7:07This is Curtis Silva, who's been around in Republican and New York politics for quite some time. I believe he founded a law enforcement group, an independent law enforcement group, the Guardian Angels. I think that's what they're called, that had a certain amount of notoriety in trying to clean up the streets of New York. But he doesn't have a broad popularity base. And according to polls, he is not a real factor in this. And it takes a unique set of circumstances for Republicans. like Rudy Giuliani or Bloomberg, although he kind of switched back and forth between Republican and Independent and Democratic, for them to break through and win a race in New York.

7:46But in this circumstance, he's really kind of the third in line here for the job. The big name that everyone might remember, of course, is Andrew Cuomo, right? Yeah, absolutely, because he was governor of New York. And during COVID, he was much lauded and praised, wasn't he? Everybody thought that he was running New York better than Trump was running America at the early stages of COVID. And he was being talked about as having a great bright future. But then there were some sexual harassment allegations and he resigned under a cloud and that all got very, very messy. And we might have thought we'd seen the last of him.

8:20But no, no, he came back to fight to get the Democratic nomination to stand for mayor. He didn't. That went to Zoran Mamdami. So he is running, well, essentially as an independent here, but everybody knows he's a Democrat. Everybody remembers him being a Democratic governor of the state. And so potentially you could be splitting the left-wing vote there, which is what seems to be giving Zoran Mamdami such a great chance.

8:45Anthony:Yeah. And we should mention the incumbent, shouldn't we? I mean, there is a mayor of New York at the moment, but he's dropped out, hasn't he? Eric Adams, this is the guy accused of various pieces of corruption and weirdly close now to Donald Trump. He hasn't endorsed anyone, has he? But he's not going to be much of a factor. In other words, he doesn't have a block, really, does he, of people that he can deliver to a candidate. Is that right? He was polling in the single digits, the low single digits, as the incumbent running for re-election. That kind of prompted him to drop out. And apparently after the debate that we heard clips from just then last night.

9:23He went to a Knicks NBA game and sat next to Andrew Cuomo. So the two of them have been linked together, but he is basically a non-factor in this race. The big factor, of course, is Zohran Mamdani, who is polling near a majority of the entire race, and he is a newcomer to the scene. Yeah, he's not exactly, Anthony, what you might expect for somebody who is so far ahead, is he? He's very young. He's the first Muslim mayoral candidate for New York, and he's pretty left wing. And we'll get into some of the details of his policies and the very big promises that he's making. But he has really burst onto the scene in New York.

10:05He's captured a huge amount of attention. He's very charismatic. He's got a big, big following, very devoted following from younger voters as well. And it's that it's his personality, as well as his politics that have really shaken up this race.

10:19Anthony:Yeah, let's get a taste of that, Sarah, because the thing that first brought him to a lot of people's attention was his ability on social media and the videos that he was putting out and the appeal of those videos, both in policy terms, but also just his ability to communicate. Every politician says New York is the greatest city on the globe. But what good is that if no one can afford to live here? City Hall is engulfed in corruption. The cost of living is the real crisis. New Yorkers are being crushed by rent and childcare. The slowest buses in the nation are robbing us of our time and our sanity.

10:53Working people are being pushed out of the city they built. A mayor could change this. And that's why I'm running. Yeah, I think it's interesting to see the laser-like focus he has in this clip and throughout his entire campaign on economic issues, on cost of living issues. You know, there's a lot of talk about Democrats focusing too much on cultural issues and getting distracted. Well, here is someone who is of the left, who is not talking about cultural issues so much, even though he has an interesting cultural background. He is talking about affordability. And I think that is one of the things that has really resonated with a lot of New Yorkers and allowed him to slip past some of the critiques of him as lacking experience or being too extreme on the left.

11:37Anthony:Tell you, I heard praising him the other day, Anthony, and that was David Axelrod. is absolutely mainstream Democratic Party, but has always said and was fiercely critical of the Biden administration because he always said we need to have a message that everyone understands and it's relevant to everyone. It seems to me if you've interested David Axelrod, who brought Obama to the White House and is very much a centrist and is also the son of Jewish emigres from Europe, incidentally, and that is relevant as well when you think of Mandami's position, particularly on the Palestinian issue. It just seems to me you're getting somewhere.

12:22Yet not just David Axelrod, Justin. I've seen on social media your favourite Democratic advisor, James Carville, also saying exactly the same thing, saying he teaches politics and he would use this campaign as a model for how to stick with the campaign discipline and get your message across. Right. And let's be honest, there are some very real problems with affordability in New York City. I think the average New Yorker spends more than 50 percent of their income on housing. The cost of housing is high. About half the houses, apartments in New York City are rent controlled, which means there is a city agency that determines how much rent can go up, which on one hand, If you have one of those rent controlled apartments, it's great.

13:04You know, you live a much better lifestyle than you would if you had a non rent controlled apartment because those rents go up. But it also is contributing to scarcity in the city. They just aren't building a lot of new housing. And that is driving up prices as well. I think the bigger picture is he's making proposals in the same way that Donald Trump does. He identifies needs and concerns of the Americans, comes up with something to say, this is what I want to do. People say, oh, well, you know, that's not realistic. But at least they believe that the candidate understands the nature of the problem and wants to do something about it.

13:36Yeah, Anthony, that's exactly right. Because I've been thinking as well that there were sort of echoes of Trump in this, because I'm not sure that the people voting for him necessarily believe that he will be able to do everything that he's promising. But they like the idea that they think that he's on the same page as them, and that even just trying to address some of these issues would be a big step forward. And so, yeah, there is there is something slightly Trumpian about making big promises in the hope that it's the vibes that people get from what it is you're saying you would do.

14:06Anthony:Let's listen to how he deals with the criticisms that say, you don't know what you're talking about. You can't do any of these things that you want to do. You don't even have the power to do them because they're not done from the mayor's office. So that was very much a feature, wasn't it? That debate that we've had a little clip of. Let's hear a bit more of it with Andrew Cuomo kind of kicking off the attack on him. You have never had a job. You've never accomplished anything. There's no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half million lives. You don't know how to run a government.

14:40You don't know how to handle an emergency. And you've literally never proposed a bill on anything that you're not talking about in your campaign. You had the worst attendance record in the assembly. and you gave yourselves the highest raise in the United States of America. You went from$110 ,000 to$140 ,000 and then you never showed up for work and you missed 80 % of the votes. Shame on you. Shame on you. It is always a pleasure to hear Andrew Cuomo create his own facts at every debate stage. We just had a former governor say in his own words that the city has been getting screwed by the state.

15:24Who was leading the state? It was you. Governor Hochul. You were leading the state for 10 years, screwing the city. No. You cut homelessness funding. You cut funding for the MTA. You did all of these things, my friend. That's you. Four years. The first thing I wanna say here is I love New York debates. I love New Yorkers debating. I mean, it is throwing elbows, mixing it up. I love the accents. I love everything about that. We should also talk about a little bit about what Momdani is proposing because he is proposing some real policy issues. One is free buses. Another is state-run grocery stores in places where there isn't enough grocery markets and things, these food deserts, as they call free child care for infants in New York.

16:11Of course, all of this comes with a price tag, doesn't it, Sarah? Yeah, I mean, it sounds very expensive. And he's pretty straightforward about how he would raise the money, because you've got quite a lot of power to raise taxes as the mayor of New York. And so it would be increasing income tax on everybody who makes more than a million dollars a year. That would go up by 2%. And he wants to increase the corporation tax as well from just over 7 % to 11.5%. And he says even just the personal income taxes would raise$4 billion. I've heard him, though, interviewed about this and asked if there were other ways that he could do this.

16:45He's pretty flexible on the fundraising, but what he is doing is very open about saying, to achieve this, the richest people will have to pay more tax in order to fund these improvements for people who have less. He's very open and straightforward about that.

16:59Anthony:Although one of the things there is whether he does or doesn't have those powers, and actually the argument is for a lot of businesses is he doesn't have those powers. They really are. They reside with the governor of the state of New York, Kathy Hochul, who is a Democrat, but is not at all keen on Mamdani and also not at all keen on raising taxes. Because, of course, in America, you have a choice as a business, indeed, as an individual and people exercise that choice. You can go to a state with lower taxes and the big risk if taxes do go up, because there is a risk that people will go. Now, you can say they won't go.

17:34Anthony:They'll end up just paying the taxes and staying. But, Anthony, it's a live debate, isn't it? Can you actually raise the kind of money that he says he wants to spend? Yeah, and you point out rightly that Hochul controls that. She's a centrist. She has endorsed Mamdani, but I think it was kind of grudgingly. Very late, yeah. I guess Mamdani's theory is that he wins. He gets a mandate from the voters. He is able to use that to pressure other politicians and pressure the state to give him the flexibility. but it is going to take a lot of skill to try to get the state to go along with any of the things he's proposing.

18:14I mean, the mayor of New York has not so much power over taxing. And that is one, which concerned a lot of the wealthy people who live in New York. They're terrified that they're going to get hit with a billionaire's tax. And two, that it's also something that's very unrealistic for him to be able to pull off. Talking of the police, Anthony, whom you mentioned there, it is a very big issue in New York policing. And Justin, you've said in the past, I don't disagree with you, that among the stupidest things that Democrats could ever say was when they were campaigning to defund the police, and that turned off a lot of voters.

18:46Well, Mamdami is on that list. He had said way back in about 2020 or something, I think around about the time of the George Floyd protest, that the police should be defunded. He said that the New York police were racist and anti-queer. He was very, very critical of them. And that has come up, of course, during the campaign. So he has now properly apologised. He's gone round to various police stations and done so. He's done it on television, said that he was wrong about that, that he has learnt more since he was elected to the State Assembly. He's met far more police officers. He's sorry he ever said that.

19:18And he no longer has those views. Is that enough?

19:21Anthony:Yeah, I think it is, actually. And I think he has done what, in a way, Kamala Harris never quite managed to do, which is to stand up and address the things that they regret saying in the past and say openly, I regret saying this. I no longer believe it. I think he has that kind of Trumpian ability just to move on. And I'm not suggesting that he's moving on in quite the way that Donald Trump does. But fundamentally, I think in the modern era, you are able, if you can convince people that in your guts you're getting things right, you're able to move on. And it seems to me that Mandani does have at least a chance of doing it.

20:01Yeah. And another area where he's had to try to explain past statements and try to move on and done so fairly effectively, if you look at the polls now, is on Israel and the Gaza war on his past statements criticizing Israel, calling what Israel is doing a genocide. he has been able to thread that needle a bit too, coming up as one of these politicians coming out of kind of the Palestinian movement. And with his background as a Muslim, he was born in Uganda. His parents were influential figures. But it is interesting to see how he's managed to try to explain those positions as well. It's interesting, actually, that Mandami is polling quite well among Jewish voters, particularly younger ones.

20:47But this is an issue, and it's one that was brought up in the debate last night by the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa. Let me speak on behalf of my two sons. When they've heard some of the statements you've made, like in support of global jihad, and I hear some people out there saying the Jews, their time is due, which means the same thing. They're frightened, they're scared. They view you as the arsonist who fanned the flames of anti-Semitism. They cannot suddenly accept the fact that you're coming in like a firefighter and you're going to put out these flames. You've got a lot of explaining to do, a lot of apologizing to do.