How Zohran Mamdani Became the Main Character of New York City

21:14Not even that. I just think it's like, you know, you're not running in a Republican primary in, like, Missouri. Again, these things that were, like, pitched, I think, before the primary as kind of like, oh, no, this is what's going to do him in. He made a case that, you know, no, he was going to reach people exactly through those ways.

21:36Naomi Fry:So we're not the only ones who are interested in New York City power brokers. Martin Marty Scorsese is too. In a minute, we'll consider the many pop-cultural depictions of the political machine. On Critics At Large, from The New Yorker.

22:00This week on the political scene from The New Yorker, Trump's rupture in the world order.

22:07Naomi Fry:Europe caught between two adversarial great powers. That's basically dialing back the clock to not only pre-World War II, but really it's a pre-20th century view of the world. And I would say it's a world of permanent insecurity that we're looking at. Join me, Evan Osnos, and my colleagues Jane Mayer and Susan Glasser every Friday on The Political Scene, available wherever you get your podcasts.

22:44Naomi Fry:Eric, this is a culture show. So far, we've been talking politics. I'm so sorry. Politics. No, no, no, no. I invited you to talk politics. And politics are also culture in their own way. But I think it would be great if maybe we can turn to like actual culture and think about how TV shows and books and movies have used the kind of like machinations of like New York City politics and kind of the machine of mayoral politics as fodder. Yeah. Because it's definitely something that's been mythologized in art over like many, many years. Are there any particular texts? What springs to your mind first when I say the words New York City politics?

23:43Where to start? Where to start?

23:45Naomi Fry:Where to start? I mean, I think— Do you want to start with Gangs of New York, maybe? I think I want to start with Gangs of New York. Okay. So Gangs of New York, the 2002 Scorsese movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Cameron Diaz kind of randomly. It's about 19th century, mid-19th century New York City politics. Civil War era New York. Civil War era, 1860s, yeah. And I told you before we started taping that I haven't seen this movie since it came out. And I remember not liking it very much. Yeah, and I think it was because it was kind of like the moment of transition between Scorsese using people like, you know, Pesci and Robert De Niro transitioning into the young Leonardo DiCaprio and me being like, what the, who is, why he can't hold this, et cetera, et cetera.

24:41Naomi Fry:But I want you to tell me a little bit about the movie because I know a lot of people like it and that it is a very important text for kind of like New York City politics. I love this movie. I love this movie. And, you know, part of why I love this movie is because I think Daniel Day-Lewis is incredible in it. But really why I love this movie is because it does the thing that I think the best kind of literature and culture about New York City and New York City stories does, which is it plays with fact and fiction. It's sort of about like myths that also kind of make gestures at reality. The book it's based on, which is called The Gangs of New York, by a journalist named Herbert Asbury, it's published in 1928.

25:30And it's basically this collection of kind of legends and tales of and sort of like gothic stories of New York City underworld.

25:48Mm-hmm.

26:11These are real stories. The Gangs of New York is also a big source text for one of my favorite books, Low Life by Lucy Sante. And the way that the kind of character of the street and the dichotomy between – like one of the things in Gangs of New York, the movie that I love the best, is when they have – these actually happen. And they would have these uptown rich folk would do these tours of the slums. Of like the, you know, Gangs of New York is set in the Five Points, which was like the most notorious of the New York City slums. And, you know, there was all kinds of like there's Leonardo DiCaprio's character grows up in the old brewery, which is this like decrepit old factory building where like supposedly like 15 ,000 people lived at one time.

26:56You know, and like what these stories have and then like kind of the thing that I think they gift us is like grittiness as a quality. The kind of like seediness of New York.

27:07Naomi Fry:But it's what's interesting to me, too, is this sort of like how does that disgustingness, right, of these sort of rogues and outlaws and the gritty streets and so on. How does that interact with politics? I mean, one of the main things, as I recall it from watching Gangs of New York years ago, was the whole Tammany Hall thing, which was kind of like the organization, you know, machine that kind of animated and kind of brutal and usually at least somewhat criminal ways, the Democratic Party. Can you tell us a little bit about Tammany Hall? Yeah. Tammany Hall is the Democratic Party political machine that kind of really comes to power in the middle of the 19th century.

27:55Sort of roots are earlier, but sort of really comes to the fore. And it's basically a bunch of crooks that run the town.

28:01Naomi Fry:Yeah. Like that's what it is. It's basically about power and patronage and control. And the way it kind of like feeds into the stories of New York has to do with like basically truth and hypocrisy and like who's truth. And so basically in Gangs of New York, you have the figure of Boss Tweed, who's this early Tammany Hall. He's like the most notorious of the Tammany Hall bosses. In Gangs of New York, he's played with Popeye Gusto by Jim Broadbent. And he is the one who gives this speech to Bill the Butcher, Daniel Day-Lewis' character. Bill's got mixed feelings as regards the Irish. Bill, deliver these good and fervent folk to the polls on a regular basis.

28:45and there'll be a handsome price for each vote goes Tammany's way.

28:52My father gave his life making this country what it is. Murdered by the British. Daniel Day-Lewis is kind of nativist, kind of like Maggie-ian kind of figure of like America for Americans. Right. And Boss Tweed is like kind of like, well, we need the Irish because we need their votes, you know, and that's how we keep control of the money. Right. And that's how we can keep control of the power. And it's sort of like kind of mutant idealism. Like Tammany was infamous for these ways of like revealing hypocrisy, you know, both in their own members and in sort of their enemies. So like actually Citizen Kane like is like Boss Geddes, who's the guy who does in Orson Welles like Citizen Kane's character by revealing to the world that Kane is like not a family man.

29:35And he's having an affair with his failed opera singer girlfriend and basically is like, get out of this race and stay out of politics or I'll like reveal, you know, like your infidelity to the world. And Cain tells him to fuck off and then Geddes ruins him.

29:51Naomi Fry:Right. And these figures, I mean, you know, what they were about is like these arguments about like what power is for and what it can do. Yeah. And there were like very cynical debates about like to expect government to like be good for everyone is naive. And so basically what it's about is like your friends. Get as much as you can for yourself and your friends and your family. It's very Trumpian. You know, it's like it's very Trumpian. It's the same way that Trump holds up hypocrisy to like Democrats' noses. And it's like the whole like sort of like, oh, is America so innocent kind of thing. You're just as bad, et cetera.

30:23That's the kind of thing that like Tammany Hall bosses, you know, presented themselves to the world of the public image of them that lasted.

30:30Naomi Fry:And Trump is, you know, a born and bred New Yorker, of course. And a classic political boss. And a classic political boss. You know, and I think this sort of fight between like the hopeful desire for innocence and honesty vis-a-vis a kind of corrupt machine. You know, like a movie like, this isn't exactly City Hall, it's more the NYPD, but like a movie like Serpico or something. Like the Sidney Lumet movie starring Al Pacino from 1973 where Frank Serpico, Pacino is kind of like an honest cop and he comes against this machine at every turn that is the corrupt NYPD. that is trying to force him to his knees.

31:09And not just an honest cop, but a hippie cop. A hippie cop. A kind of avatar of like youth culture and like idealism.

31:16Naomi Fry:Yes, yes. You know, running up against like the old ways and the old machine and the old stuff. Isn't it time to let the old ways die? Exactly. And, you know, it's interesting to look at this. I mean, this is such a race through a very rich history. So there's so much we're missing, But it's so kind of curious to ask or to think about how is this kind of like matching up with what we see in the city today? You know, there's like an enormous wealth disparity. There's an affordability crisis. The city's a mess, quote unquote, you know, sort of like post-COVID contraction. And then like the emergence of this kind of like bright-eyed progressive candidate like Zoran, you know, of course it doesn't map on exactly.

32:00Naomi Fry:I'm just kind of like positioning it. I've been thinking about this a lot. I think this is like, you know, in the late 19th century, early 20th century, when you had these Tammany Hall bosses with delightful names like Honest John Kelly and Charles Silent Charlie Murphy. You start to get at the end of the 19th century the rise of this figure who at the time was known as the reformer. And it's sort of age of optimism. They were, like, basically upper-class New Yorkers who were sort of presented to the city. So, like, Boss Tweed famously went down in, like, a huge corruption scandal. And, you know, in the aftermath of that, like, Tammany pledged to, like, kind of clean itself up or whatever.

32:42But at sort of certain times, basically, the machine would go too far and there would be this kind of, like, throw the bums out kind of— They would get too greedy. Too greedy, too blatant, you know, and then there was a sort of, like, natural reaction to that.

32:55Naomi Fry:Right. And so like the early figures that counter that tend to be these kind of like upper crust white New Yorkers who sort of are like above it all and sort of unbought and clean. I'm talking about figures like William Strong, Seth Lowe, John Perroy Mitchell, the famous boy mayor. And they would basically say we can clean up city government. And they would often fail. They would come in and then they would often like just kind of flop or people would get sick of them or, you know, they'd actually turn out that they'd be sort of more loyal to their rich buddies than the city at large. And then Tammany would come storming back into power.

33:36And then we get these figures that like break this dynamic that are like – I mean the big one is like LaGuardia, Al Smith, also the governor is sort of slightly different. I think these guys who basically like come in, like sort of introduced the idea of like modern government, modern politics as we think of it now in New York City.

33:53Naomi Fry:Which is characterized by what as opposed to the older way. It's basically professionalization of government in the 20s and 30s, especially sort of during the New Deal is like basically when a lot of this – there's just basically it's also about the money to do it. Like how big the city government should be and then kind of what it can do. And so basically like these figures become, again, the sort of the push-pull in like the sort of stories that we tell about New York. Often it's this tug between the machine and the reformer. Yes. You know, and it's sort of like naked, honest power, you know, versus like, you know, risking it with idealism.

34:31Right. And sort of who wins in that kind of struggle. I mean Batman is all about this stuff.

34:38Naomi Fry:Batman, exactly. You know, it's like – That's so – I didn't think about this, but that's so interesting. Yeah, it's the lone hero coming out at night and cleaning up this town, you know? Yes, yes. Batman comes out of, like, the late 30s. Like, New York is thinking all about this. Gotham City. I mean, this is even, like, in the Christopher Nolan universe of Batman. Like, Harvey Dent, the, like, white knight DA, who then basically turns bad and has half his face obliterated and then is sort of revealed to the world as this monster. Like this is like – these are the kinds of tropes, the push-pull between sort of the gravity of the machine and the sort of directness and bluntness of power politics versus like the risk of idealism and the perils of idealism and the hope and then often failed promises of reformers.

35:29Like that's the history of New York City politics.

35:38Naomi Fry:New York looms large in the cultural imagination, but why do people in other states or even other countries care who the mayor is? This is Critics at Large from The New Yorker. Stick around.

35:57Hey, listeners. This is Liz Mainz-Amanzadeh, the New Yorker's Puzzles and Games editor. If you're someone who likes making lists and organizing your bookshelf, we think you'll love Catalogs, our new daily game that challenges you to put things in order based on a hidden rule. You might be asked to sort peppers by spiciness, world capitals by population, or Martin Scorsese movies by release date. You can play Catalogs every day at newyorker.com slash games and in the New Yorker app for iOS or Android. Here's a helpful hint. The app gives you free access to our entire archive of catalogs, along with our word scramble game Shuffalo and the mini crossword.

36:36So download the New Yorker app for new games to play every day.

36:47Naomi Fry:So, Eric, one thing that I've been thinking about over the last couple months, And I mean, we care, obviously, about the New York mural race. You care about it professionally, of course, because that's like hopelessly. That's hopelessly because that's your area of coverage. It's one of your beats. But we also just care about it because we both live in New York. But the question is, why do people outside of New York care? Like, why do people in America care? Why do people internationally care? Why is the New York mayoral race and who's going to be mayor of New York such kind of a lightning rod for people all over, not just here?

37:33Naomi Fry:Like, who cares, really? I mean, there's like practical and material political reasons that I think that's true. But I also think I try to think about when I work on my stories, like what the reader will get who doesn't live here. Yeah. And I often think about something that happened to me in 2019. I was in Iowa. I was following the Democratic— I remember you brought me a refrigerator magnet. Kiss me, I'm Iowish.

38:06See, we are friends. Yeah, that was back in our office, our joint office days. Anyway, so I was in Iowa following around the Democratic candidates for president. And I had met some sort of party, you know, activist, organizer types in Cedar Rapids. And one night, a group of them invited me to dinner. And they were like, we're going to go to the best restaurant in Cedar Rapids. And I was like, sounds great. Where are we going? And they're like, meet us at this place. It's called Cobble Hill.

38:37Naomi Fry:Oh, my God. And Cobble Hill is the name of a, you know, very lovely, gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn. And I show up at this restaurant. And it's just like it's a Brooklyn restaurant that's been like exported to the prairie. And it's packed. I think the chef had cooked in New York City for a bunch of time. And then he went home to Cedar Rapids and he opened up his little Brooklyn restaurant. You know, but it was like to me, you know, it's like I actually experienced this a lot in Iowa. It's sort of like all the little towns in Iowa have a little coffee shop now where you can get like a latte.

39:08And it's like that's not all just like New York feeding into that. But New York is a big part of that. New York is just like – we do kind of like pace the culture. The dialogue between the city and the rest of the country is a very active and productive one despite what like enemies of the city like want Americans to believe. It's like we are a big part of America here.

39:28Naomi Fry:Yeah. And it matters. It just flat matters kind of like what we decide here. And like to pull it back to the political, it's like, you know, things that are tried here that because we are at scale and we have like the money to try things then end up, you know, politically sort of like dispersing around the country. And then also it's just like there's a lot of power here. So like we produce leaders that often end up being like important leaders. I mean it's not for nothing but it's like Trump, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, AOC. It's like these are New York City people. Right. Right. And I think that to forget that part of the story kind of risks missing the story.

40:05Naomi Fry:And do you think people see this or how much, not just people, but you as a kind of analyst and constant temperature checker of this race and the Zoran versus Cuomo and Adams of it, see this as a kind of harbinger of either things to come or a reaction against national politics? I mean, beyond the municipal level. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's like I think what Zoran has reminded everybody is that part of what New York contributes politically to the rest of the country is a lot of like left energy. I mean, AOC had done that before him, you know, and sort of like it's easy to forget now. But it's like before primary day, it was like there was this question about whether the left was sort of receding in New York.

40:54But that's one of the things that, like, Momdani's win has reminded everybody of, you know, that it's like there are many, many people in this city who are willing to dedicate their time and effort to, like, supporting a certain political agenda and political goals, you know. And, like, when those people get together, they can be quite powerful. Yeah.

41:17Naomi Fry:I mean, there's been a lot of fear mongering on a kind of more national level, a kind of Fox News concerted effort about this kind of socialist Muslim. Yeah. Neo Marxist sleeper cell. Like – and also a lot of kind of backlash about like this is actually a child of privilege, right? But back in New York, he's trying to impose on us the kind of like Marxist politics that he supposedly is running on. I mean these are the dichotomies that like reformers have had to deal with. And kind of making a cartoon of New York, especially like the rest of America, is like a long tradition too. Yeah. But it's like we contain multitudes, as the poet said.

42:01That's the challenge ahead of Mdani and that's the challenge for like any reformer left mayor that presents himself.

42:08Naomi Fry:Yeah. Eric, you know, I've been thinking it's like we talk a lot about parasociality, right? We talk about it with podcast hosts. No, we and the culture. We and the culture. You know, in recent years, I think it's become a term of art how we invest certain figures with affect, you know, emotion, belief, hope, dreams without necessarily knowing if they will fulfill those hopes and dreams and emotions and all of that. And of course, this happens in politics. We've seen it. We, you know, the politician is father or very occasionally mother, you know, or the politician is a kind of like strong leader or like or changemaker.

42:55Naomi Fry:You know, it happened certainly with Obama and happens with Trump, surely. You know, will you have a beer with this guy? Will you want to have – is he your friend? And so I think this is a question with Zoran as well. You know, the kind of parasocial relationship that voters have with these figures. Is that always kind of bound to failure or is that something that politicians, in the case of someone like Zoran who's just new and untested and so on, like something that can bear itself out in a positive way? I think that this is one of the benefits of telling New York City stories because these sorts of like – they probably didn't call them parasocial relationships at the turn of the 20th century.

43:40But like certainly –

43:42Naomi Fry:I myself had a parasocial relationship with Boss Tweed. Exactly. You know, I mean, perhaps not Boss Tweed, but certainly Al Smith. Okay, a reformer. Who was a, you know, he was the governor of New York in the 20s. And he was famously, he grew up in a Lower East Side tenement and was sort of an up from the streets guy. He was sort of a precursor to FDR in all sorts of ways. And then FDR sort of like, you know, in the complete opposite ways, it's like patrician kind of figure. But, like, people felt that they knew him, that he was not just the president. I mean, he used these fireside chats the way today's politicians use TikTok.

44:19Naomi Fry:Exactly. This discourse now about, like, does Mumdani or some other kind of, like, politician who's a hit, like, they don't talk like traditional politicians. But I think they don't talk like failed politicians. The good politicians have always found a way to kind of, like, transcend and connect. And is it always bound to failure? I mean, you know, it's like New York has examples of both. LaGuardia is like remembered as, you know, maybe New York City's best mayor ever. Protagonist of the 1959 musical Fiorello. Incredible. I mean, who knew really? Can we get a revival? Yes. The counter to LaGuardia, who's sort of seen as this great success, is John Lindsay, who's the mayor of New York City in the 60s.

45:03Because Lindsay is like this, you know, charismatic liberal Republican reformer who comes in in this kind of like Kennedy-esque wave of like here's the guy and he's going to be the savior. And then by the end, I mean, you know, he makes de Blasio look like, you know, the most popular like guy on the planet. He's blamed for setting the city up for its like crises in the 70s. You know, and it's like we've chosen both ways. We've seen both ways. And that's the city history.

45:32Naomi Fry:Who can tell? But sometimes I wonder, you know, I've lived in the city now for like 20 years and sometimes it seems to me, can we say that it's like the New York populace is just like a mayor hater? Like, is it fun to hate the mayor? Clearly it is. We need them to stand up there and take it. You know, it's like we like that's part of what we ask mayors to do is part of the job of mayor. It's been called the second hardest job in politics, right? Yes, that's kind of the old saw. After being president. Yes. And it's like it's a job with high visibility, big power in some ways, kind of limited power in other ways, but often ends up being kind of a receptacle for all sorts of anxieties and frustrations and kind of anger about, you know, the difficulty and unresolved, you know, paradoxes of city life.

46:25Naomi Fry:City life and American life in a way as well. in American life, you know, and we ask, it's basically what we're asking them to do is like resolve impossible problems. And some of them can sometimes like, you know, work it out for a little bit, but very few have kind of managed to do it over a prolonged period of time and no one solves things permanently. So what I'm hearing from you, Eric, is you're not going to run for mayor. I am not. I am now announcing my candidacy for mayor of New York City. If elected, I will not serve, et cetera, et cetera. Eric, thank you so much. Thank you. For sitting with me today.

47:07Thank you for enduring my rants.

47:09Naomi Fry:Oh, my God. It was a pleasure and an honor.

47:19Naomi Fry:This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michelle O 'Brien. Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Kondon Nest's head of global audio is Chris Spannon. Alexis Quadrado composed our theme music. And we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at Large at newyorker.com slash critics. Now, next week, Alex steps into the solo host chair. She's going to be talking with her colleague Lauren Collins about a totally different city, Paris. Make sure you tune in.

48:11Is Wuthering Heights really a love story? Should you be afraid of Virginia Woolf? And most importantly, is Mr Darcy handsome enough to tempt you? This is The Secret Life of Books. I'm Sophie G, academic and writer. And I'm Jonty Claypole, broadcaster and producer. In this podcast, we tell the story behind the story of the literary classics everybody wants to read, feels they should read, or has already read and loved. We reveal the secret histories, hidden players and big ideas behind the great books. We show how they came into being, why they matter and how they changed the world. The deeper we go, the weirder the questions.

48:47Is George Orwell's 1984 on some level a comedy? Is Dracula the Freddie Mercury of horror? And why do so many literary honeymoons go wrong? Whether you're a committed book nerd or just curious about the history of ideas, The Secret Life of Books is the podcast for you.