Zohran Mamdani wins New York mayoral race

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0:36I'm in New York City where there is a palpable sense of excitement tonight around the remarkable victory of Zora Mondani, who has just been elected mayor of New York. New York, tonight you have delivered a mandate for change. a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city we can afford, and a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that. This is a really historic win in New York City. At 34, he is the youngest mayor in a generation, the city's first Muslim mayor, who ran a really unusual, really exciting campaign. But Democrats have won other races as well. They've won the governorship in Virginia and New Jersey with two very, very different candidates.

1:35So what does all this mean for the Democrats going forward? What does it mean for Donald Trump and his Republicans? There is a lot to unpack. Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. 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. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

2:13Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. Hello, it is Sarah here in Brooklyn in New York City. Hello, here's Marianna, misinformation, also in Brooklyn in New York City. I'm here for a different documentary I'm doing that happened to be in the same place as Sarah at kind of the right time. OK, and both of you exactly in the right place. And Brooklyn, I think in many respects, not only in New York City, but the right part of New York City to be in. And we'll get to that in just a second. I should say it's, what is it, just coming at four o 'clock in the morning here in London, in the gloom and loneliness of our studio here.

2:53But it's been quite a night. And we should start, I suppose, with the New York City win. But also, Marianna, a kind of sense of the way in which so many people in New York, although they expected this to happen, will still be beside themselves with delight. We went to go and grab a bite to eat and I realised that the result had come in because there were just cheers popping up. We were like, what's going on over there? And there was a watch party where we saw some people outside and they were all cheering. And then the entire walk back to our hotel, we could hear different groups of people who were cheering at this news and that the exit poll had come out at that time and that Mandani was very much looking set to be mayor.

3:38Sarah, I don't know what you found in terms of your experience of actually being at a watch party. Yeah, there's a level of enthusiasm and excitement in New York tonight that I haven't seen for a very long time to be perfectly honest. Certainly not on the Democrat side, where there were queues around the block of people trying to get into unofficial watch party events. It's just numbers of people coming out, wanting to be on the streets, wanting to be together to witness what is a historic moment in New York City. And young people, people who aren't normally involved in politics. There's a real kind of sense of a groundswell of support for Mamdami that goes beyond the normal reach of Democrat politics.

4:26and it's a level of excitement that it's taken. Yeah, it's been a very long time, I think, since any particular candidate has really managed to galvanise people in the way that Mandani's rather unusual campaign has managed to do. Yeah, and I mean, very different people and very different policies and all the rest of it, but you think back to Barack Obama, actually, and the kind of high spot of the enthusiasm for him and the way in which young people were out in particular supporting him, and I'm not suggesting at all that there is a similarity between them. Times have changed and the candidates are very different.

5:02But it really does strike me that this for the Democrats, I mean, Sarah, is this going too far to say there are lessons here? If you put the policies to one side, and we maybe ought to talk about those in just a second, but if you put the policies to one side, when it comes to the enthusiasm and when it comes to the abilities of the candidate, there is a big, big lesson here. Yeah, there's a huge lesson here. And unfortunately, it's not one that you can easily replicate in every other race that the Democrats have got to stand a candidate, because the difference is Mamdani is just a really, really good candidate.

5:35He is charismatic. He's eloquent. He's natural and authentic. He ran a really good campaign on social media, but he was also out on the streets in real life talking to voters. He started off this campaign by specifically going and talking to people in New York who had voted for Donald Trump a year ago and asking them what it is that they wanted, what they needed to make their life better in the city and adjusting his policies around that. He's got a reach and a natural way of talking to people that you just don't find in everyday political candidates, even in the candidates who've gone on to have really, you know, big wins in Virginia and New Jersey, more traditional candidates.

6:16They're not like Mandani in that he is a he feels like one of these once in a generation, quite special politicians whom people really, really can latch on to and feel as though they know and feel close to in a way that they often don't when they're listening to politicians give speeches. Let's hear the guy himself. So talking in Brooklyn, not far from where you both are just in the last few seconds. So Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

7:14We will hold bad landlords to account because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks. We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed.

8:00New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant. As you say, Justin, if you put the politics of it aside, yeah, there is something of the Barack Obama about him. But you can't replicate that easily, can you? It's not that often that we see somebody who really creates this level of excitement among voters. And uses social media, Marianna, in a way that older ones just can't. I mean, you think of the congressional leadership of the Democratic Party and their use of social media, which is, you know, plodding, to put it kindly.

8:48This guy really has got it. Yeah. And I think, you know, we've chatted about it quite a lot, how the Democrats have really struggled with how to win, if that's the right verb, social media. And Donald Trump has been miles and miles ahead in terms of his ability to really build an online persona, to create loads of content, to create an online movement that has lots of energy and excitement about it in the form of MAGA. And actually, although this is obviously on a much smaller scale and it's just in New York and all of the caveats that we've chatted about before, I think that if you were the Democrats, regardless of whether you think that, you know, he is the kind of person that will progress within the party or not, you would look at what he's done in terms of really building that social media profile and creating that kind of content and think, right, this is at least a step for us in the right direction.

9:43I mean, could we say, though, Sarah, before we get carried away, when you look at the opposition that he had, and I'm thinking particularly of Cuomo, we should say a bit about him because he was running, wasn't he, as an independent, but running in a pretty somnolent way. and he was the main opposition because the Republican wasn't really anywhere. I mean, can you also say, well, hang on a second, this was one good candidate amid a field of frankly complete duds? To a certain extent, yes. And, you know, we also have to say the politics of New York is very different from the politics of the rest of America.

10:22And what works here in a solidly Democrat, solidly blue city wouldn't necessarily work in every swing state across America. But the other thing that's been fascinating about this race, exactly as you point out, Justin, is it was really Democrat on Democrat. I mean, we were more looking at the established, more right wing part of the Democratic Party versus this insurgent young left winger with the Republican Curtis Sliwa barely in the race. Mamdani came through the primary process. He beat Andrew Cuomo, who was a very popular Democrat governor of New York some time ago, who ended up leaving office after allegations of sexual harassment.

11:05He tried to win the Democratic nomination. He failed. He was badly beaten by Mamdoumi. And he decided to run as an independent instead. And they were far and away the leading candidates. So this was an argument essentially among Democrats that we were looking at here. The event I went to this evening was actually run by the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Mamdani is a member. He was the official Democrat candidate, but he's never shied away from calling himself a Democratic Socialist. And as well as everybody being ecstatically excited there, everyone I spoke to had criticisms of other Democrats.

11:43They weren't talking about Donald Trump. They weren't talking about Republicans. What they were saying to me was, look, Mamdami is a new kind of politician who's offering something that traditional establishment Democrats aren't. He's got fresh ideas instead of just criticising Donald Trump. And every time Andrew Cuomo appeared on the television screens around this event, people were booing and hissing. And there were chants of, well, a word beginning with F and Cuomo over and over again. And so there was a kind of intra-Democrat bitterness about this, which shows you it's really quite a different race than, you know, what we might be talking about in the midterms in 2026 or the next presidential election.

12:27This was a civil war within the Democratic Party to a certain extent and one that, you know, Mamdame and his left wing ideas have triumphed on tonight. I mean, that puts me in mind in a way. I mean, again, completely different circumstances and candidates and all the rest of it. You think of how Trump came to power and the Republicans. You think of those early debates where he said he criticised the Iraq war. Well, it didn't just criticise it. It said it had been lied about and kind of made the Republican Party feel incredibly uncomfortable about itself and having to defend its recent record. And then you've got exactly what you've just described, Sarah.

13:06You've got this guy, Andrew Cuomo, who, yeah, who was popular. I'd forgotten actually how popular. had been in your right to remind us, but actually certainly isn't now and just has everything about him that you can hang on the old guard, including disreputable behaviour, to put it mildly. And that sort of that sense of someone who is able to run against the party, it just seems to me this time round is is incredibly important. And when I say this time round, I mean, but also crucially in the next presidential election, where it just seems to a growing number of people, I think, that the policies in a way don't matter, being left, being on the right of the party, whatever.

13:51What matters is the ability to communicate to people a sense of a complete change from the past. And that, Marianna, is what he has done, which Cuomo obviously couldn't. One of the things that the Democrats have struggled with from a perception point of view, not just on social media, But beyond that is this idea that they are very much the sort of political elite. They are the establishment. And Donald Trump and the various politicians around him have succeeded in really painting that narrative. We've chatted about people like Gavin Newsom, for example, who's been testing out different, the Californian governor, a Democrat, who's been testing out different social media strategies and trying to sort of play Trump at his own game and writing all these tweets in capitals and everything else.

14:35But even clips of him I saw yesterday were people saying, look, this guy is such a politician, like he's in a suit and he's smooth and he's talking in this certain way. Whereas someone like Mandami, although he does wear a suit, so does Trump, et cetera, et cetera. And so you basically need to seem not like a politician. Well, on that subject, what's he going to do, Sarah? Well, he's now going to have a bit of a battle. And this is going to be really fascinating, isn't it, to see whether Democrats actually want to try and harness the movement that he's put together or whether they're in opposition to it.

15:06Chuck Schumer, leading Democrat in the Senate, one of the most important voices in the Democratic Party, who also happens to be a New York senator himself, of course. He went and cast his vote this morning and wouldn't say who he'd voted for. All he said was, I voted and I look forward to working with the next mayor of New York. He wouldn't say whether it was Cuomo or Mandani that he had voted for. So, I mean, it was very obvious this morning that Mandani was going to have a big victory. And even then, Chuck Schumer couldn't throw his weight behind him. So what we're going to go into now is this mayor-elect has got to raise the money to try to pay for the promises that he's made of universal free childcare, free bus travel, some of the other things that he's promised New Yorkers.

15:54He doesn't have the power to raise income taxes or corporate taxes to pay for that. That's the Democratic governor of New York who would have to do that, Kathy Hochul. She has said during the campaign that's not something she intends to do. So you're going to have a bit more of a blue on blue battle, a civil war within the Democrats over whether or not he's going to be able to get the funding to deliver his promises. So, you know, the battle inside the Democratic Party, I think, is going to go on for some time because for all that, you know, we can say, look, this is a model for how to succeed as a Democrat in the Trump age.

16:33Don't forget that Republicans have seized on this already to say this radical, dangerous left winger, this is what the Democrats are really about. Now, finally, we've seen their true colours now that this guy's been campaigning. And they're going to try and paint the whole party nationwide as being as radical as Mandani is. So lots and lots of establishment figures are not going to want to fall in behind him and give him what he wants and adhere to his left wing agenda. They're probably going to be battling him for months or years to come. Yeah, I mean, here's a question. Does Donald Trump, is this a good thing for Donald Trump?

17:11Does Donald Trump actually behind the scenes and he's called him a communist loon and all the other things. And there's going to be a whole lot more of that now. But actually, is he a going to welcome it? And B, is he making a mistake to welcome it? And I think back to the pre Donald Trump number two period. In other words, the period where he wasn't yet the nominee. And we had a guy called Jim Messina on the pod. I don't know if you remember this, guys. I mean, a very senior Democrat, incredibly switched into the party, had all the chops to tell us what the deal was. And I remember him saying to us, I pray every morning, he said, for a Donald Trump victory.

17:58This is in the nomination, so that Trump was the nominee on the Republican side, because he thought Trump is pretty easily beatable by, as it was then, Joe Biden. And I just wonder whether on the Republican side now they think, hey, the guy we can we can call him a communist. It'll lead to all those wars within the Democratic Party that you've just described, Sarah. But actually, we think because he's such an unprepossessing character in the rest of America, outside New York and perhaps some of the other big cities, that actually we'll be able to use him as a boogeyman. We'll be able to frighten people away from the Democrats with him.

18:38And Trump will welcome that and other senior Republicans will welcome that. And I just wonder whether in welcoming that kind of fight, they might be making the same mistake, frankly, that Jim Messina was making to us all those years ago. I mean, it's definitely possible, but I just I don't think Mandani either has the national reach to appeal to voters in the Midwest who supported Donald Trump a year ago and are going to be asked to possibly change their minds a year from now and three years from now, because he's not going to become a figure on the national stage during that time. I don't think Mamdani necessarily even has ambitions to do that.

19:20And as we've mentioned before, he cannot run for president because he wasn't born in the United States. He was born in Uganda. And that means that he's constitutionally ineligible ever to run for presidency. I think for a while it might suit both Democrats and Republicans to have such opposing figures. But yeah, I'm not sure that Mamdani really represents the future of the comeback of the Democratic Party. Yeah, it is. It's the wider movement. If he does make a difference, I'm going to take your points out. I mean, it's not going to be him. But I just wonder whether there's a sort of galvanizing thing that he does to the Democratic Party that is inconvenient for the Republicans, to put it mildly.

19:59And we should talk as well, shouldn't we, about the other victories that the Democrats have had, because they're also pretty inconvenient for the Republican Party, because it just seemed to me to get the Democrats back into a place where they can now say, if they're not saying it's Mamdani for everyone, which they're not. they've actually got a much more subtle message, which is that it is who you want, where you are, which is what we've been talking about for quite a long time. Because we should mention and talk a little bit about the other two very big victories that they've had in Virginia and in New Jersey, Sarah, because both of those, I mean, I suppose population-wise, probably about the same, actually, isn't it?

20:41The population of New Jersey is probably about the population of New York. and I guess probably roughly the same for Virginia. In other words, population-wise, New York is important, but of course it's not a state, and we're talking about statewide elections in both New Jersey and Virginia and statewide victories for the Democrats, and we haven't talked about those for some time. Yeah, and in two states, Virginia and New Jersey, which lean Democrat but are not solidly blue. They have both had Republican governors in the recent past, but tonight they've elected two Democrats, two women, who are good friends, who serve together in the House of Representatives and who very much make up the centrist, moderate, more cautious face of the Democratic Party.

21:32In fact, they were part of, they called themselves the Mod Squad when they were in Congress, Mod for moderate. And they ran very different campaigns from Mamdani, but both of them won. Abigail Spanberger has been elected the first female governor of Virginia. And this is what she said just after she had got the news. And just a few minutes ago, Adam said to our daughters, your mom's going to be the governor of Virginia.

22:05I can guarantee those words have never been spoken in Virginia ever before.

22:15So she's a former CIA official who is pretty, you know, strong on national security, who had a campaign that was absolutely focused on affordability and opposition to Donald Trump, saying he didn't keep his promises to stop prices rising. The cost of living has not reduced in the nine months since he has been in the White House. He's let you down. I'm the one who can help you with this instead. And she ran a solid campaign, which she did very well in. Now, of course, it's worth remembering that Virginia is where a huge number of the federal workers who've been laid off since Donald Trump came to power are voting in.

22:54So she probably had a particularly susceptible electorate there. But she's, you know, she's taken over from a Republican governor with a very, very solid victory there and much more the kind of candidate that the party leadership want to be promoting right across the country, saying that this is the sensible and moderate face of the Democrats. Yeah, and very much so with Mikey Sherrill as well in New Jersey. And in a way, I think for the Democrats, an even sweeter victory in New Jersey, because New Jersey also has had Republican governors. You think of Chris Christie, very famous Republican governor from there.

23:30And actually, this time round, some of the polls were suggesting that Donald Trump's supporters in New Jersey, and he did pretty well, he didn't win, but he did pretty well in New Jersey last time round, the last presidential election, that actually some of them were sticking with the Republican candidate, and it was a bit closer than was comfortable for the Democrats. But in the end, Actually, she won pretty easily, Mikey Sherrill. And again, Sarah ran from a position kind of almost personally. You think of Mamdani and who he is and the and the vibes that he exudes is the completely opposite stuff that comes from Mikey Sherrill and from Spanberger as well.

24:10So Mikey Sherrill, again, that that defense background. She was a helicopter pilot. I was reading the other day that she's got four kids and a dog named Goose. And it is crucially, and I suppose this is the thing that draws them all together, is that word affordability and this sense, actually, that the Trump administration has not done what it promised to people that it would do. And you look back to what we used to say about the Biden administration and Joe Biden endlessly saying to people, inflation is not really a problem and the economy's going fine, etc, etc, and people in their real lives not feeling it.

24:48You've got this sense now, haven't you, with all of these victories, but actually particularly the New Jersey and Virginia ones, that people who matter right across America don't seem to be quite enthused about Donald Trump as the Republicans still are. Yeah, and Donald Trump himself has posted on social media saying the reason that Republicans didn't do particularly well is because his name was not on the ballot. There might be some truth in that, actually, because he does tend to overperform other Republicans. And he blamed the shutdown as well, saying that that was another reason why Republicans lost elections tonight.

25:23I think it's important to point out it is not unusual for the party that's not in the White House to do well in elections that take place one year after the presidential election. We always have these governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia just 12 months out from the presidential election. And I mean, almost always it's the other party that takes them because nine months into a presidency, you haven't been able to deliver everything that you promised. And, you know, it is it's a kind of normal voter reaction, isn't it, to go the other way at that point? And it's the thing that we've we've said time and time again, which is that and it's the point that you were making, Justin.

26:02But, you know, there are various scandals that can affect Donald Trump. Affect might be the wrong word, but he finds himself kind of embroiled in Jeffrey Epstein being an example of that, even though he strongly denies any kind of connection to him. He's been grappling with that for the past few months. But ultimately, it's that feeling for people that their day to day lives don't look better or don't look different that makes them go, actually, hang on, I'm going to vote against these politicians and in favour of the other ones because I'm not getting what I want out of these ones. And I guess it remains to be seen what happens over the next even 12 months, but before the midterms to understand to what extent people are just rebelling against the incumbent administration and how much it's a kind of bit more personal than it's about people not wanting Donald Trump to be president.