Five boroughs. One mayor. Mad drama.

0:01There are nine people credibly running in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary. The city's deranged ranked-choice voting ensures every New Yorker gets to vote for five of them. Yesterday, candidate Brad Lander briefly made headlines when he got arrested by ICE. You don't have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens. But the smart money says this race comes down to two, Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani. Let's see what the tabs are saying. The Post? Zohran Mamdani has barely ever had a job with just three years in the workforce, including his rap career and a gig for his mom. The Times? Mamdani narrows Cuomo's lead in New York City mayor's race.

0:38New poll finds. The Daily News. Accused New Jersey killer used fake police lights to pull over wife's lover. Cops say. It's New York's most exciting vote since Jimmy Fallon asked Robert De Niro to pick a movie. Coming up on Today Explained, the old guard versus young cardamom.

1:06I'm Brian Lehrer. I host The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, New York Public Radio, from 10 a.m. to noon Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. Everybody in New York City calls into your show. What's the wildest call you've taken about the mayoral race? Just this morning, it's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good Monday morning, everyone. I opened the phones just for people who call themselves late deciders. And I had no trouble finding people who have voted for any of the top four candidates. I think it's got to be Cuomo for me. Brad Lander. I did Adrian Adams because I'm from Queens. Even had somebody call who I was wondering if they were a unicorn because one of my callers said, I was team Cuomo for the longest.

1:53And I was going with his experience and all what he did for New York State. But then I saw Mandani on the debate stage. So I voted and I ranked Mandani first and then Cuomo second because I'll be fine with Cuomo. And those are the two bitter competitors who you would think nobody in this ranked choice voting system would rank both of them. But it's a crazy election, especially with this ranked choice voting system where you can list up to five in your order of preference. Okay, so as you alluded, Brian, the two candidates who everybody sort of seems to think it will come down to are Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo.

2:32Tell us about these two men. So, Mamdani, think young Bernie Sanders as a starting point. I am once again asking for your financial support. He's a 33-year-old state assembly member from Queens. The name is Mamdani. M-A-M-D-A-N-I. You should learn how to say it. His assembly district overlaps with the congressional district of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has endorsed him. He is a democratic socialist promising a lot of free stuff to make life more affordable for the working class. I am running to be your next mayor to make this city affordable. I will do so by freezing the rent for more than two million rent-stabilized tenants, by making the slowest buses in the country fast and free, and by delivering universal childcare.

3:17And I will pay for this by taxing the 1%. As a young progressive, Mamdani also shows the fight that many Democrats have said is lacking in the party since the re-election of Donald Trump. I am Donald Trump's worst nightmare as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in. And the difference between myself and Andrew Cuomo is that my campaign is not funded by the very billionaires who put Donald Trump in D.C. And some people may know that Mamdani's mother is the renowned Indian-American filmmaker Meera Nair. Andrew Cuomo also doesn't exactly come from an unknown family.

3:56Tell us about him. Well, his father was a three-term governor. Governor Mario Cuomo, rebuilding New York for the future. So he grew up in this. And many listeners may remember he resigned in a sexual harassment scandal after 10 years in office in 2021. Governor Cuomo resigns under escalating political pressure after the bombshell report accusing him of sexual misconduct. The best way I can help now is if I step aside and let government get back to governing. At 67, he is more than twice Mom Donnie's age. And he did both liberal and conservative things in office. You know, he banned fracking and assault weapons and helped legalize gay marriage in New York with a bill passed in Albany, the Capitol, before the Supreme Court did it for the nation.

4:47That's the power and the beauty of New York. The other states look to New York for the progressive direction. He was also, however, not always seen as a friend of public higher education or mass transit by some critics. Cuomo is running on fewer specific policy things and more on this aura of experience and competence and strength in a troubled time. Today, our New York City is in trouble. You feel it when you walk down the street and try not to make eye contact with a mentally ill homeless person or when the anxiety rises up in your chest as you're walking down into the subway. Cuomo argues that he's the guy who can save New York from disorderly streets and subways, a Rudy Giuliani sort of law and order conservatism.

5:38But at the same time, he argues he would be the strongest Democrat to stand up to Trump on behalf of the city. He sent troops into cities all across this country, but he never sent them into New York when I was there, and he never will when I am mayor. A job looks easy when you haven't done it. Experience matters. How are these two guys campaigning, both outwardly facing toward New York City residents, and then maybe even more broadly than that, and how are they approaching each other? Cuomo is saying... Inexperience is dangerous in this case. Mr. Mondami has had a staff of five people. You're not going to run a staff of 300 ,000 employees.

6:23He's never dealt with a city council. He's never dealt with the Congress. He's never dealt with the state legislature. He's never negotiated with a union. He's never built - Mondani points out Cuomo's scandals. To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace. I have never cut Medicaid. I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA. I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records. And I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo. And furthermore, the name is Mondani. M-A-M-D-A-N-I.

7:00You should learn how to say it. There also are overtones in this race of what's going on in Israel and Gaza. As a member of the DSA, he also identifies with a position, and he has said this, that Israel should not exist as a Jewish state. He says it should be a pluralistic democracy. That's the DSA position, like the United States. No religious or ethnic group should have automatic power in any country. He argues. Do you believe in a Jewish state of Israel? I believe Israel has the right to exist. Not as a Jewish state. As a state with equal rights. He won't say it has a right to exist as a Jewish state.

7:40And his answer was no, he won't visit Israel. I said that. That's what he was trying to say. No, no, no. Unlike you, I answer questions very directly. And I want to be very clear. I believe every state should be a state of equal rights. Obviously, that's not going to be very acceptable to many Jewish voters who at least think Israel should exist as a Jewish state, even if they think that what Netanyahu is doing in Gaza is monstrous. And Cuomo is all the way on the other side of that. He's trying to run hard on anti-Semitism and paint Mamdani as somebody Jews can't trust domestically. Cuomo signed on to be a lawyer to defend Netanyahu at the International Criminal Court against charges of war crimes.

8:28So that would put him all the way on the other side of anything having to do with the Middle East. Neither of those have anything to do with running New York directly, but those things are coming up in the campaign. Is this a typical tone for the New York City mayor's race? Oh, it's a rough and tumble. city in politics. But yeah, it's going to be a rough campaign. You mentioned ranked choice voting, which I think once upon a time, New York thought would really help it in elections. But right now, I cannot read a single op-ed without hearing that ranked choice voting is destroying New York. Explain how it works and why it has become so controversial in this race in particular.

9:16Okay. I would say ranked choice voting is simple, not simple. It's simple in that all you have to do is list up to five candidates in your order of preference. It's not so simple in that candidates have tough choices around who to say they might also list in ways that help their chances more than hurt. But a big piece of news on Friday was that Mamdani cross-endorsed with the third place candidate in the polls, Brad Lander. Brad and I are officially telling our supporters. Rank me number one. Rank Zoran number two. Let's send Andrew Cuomo. Back to the suburbs. They are both progressives. They both want to defeat Cuomo, but they both want to win themselves.

9:58You know, there are multiple ways to get to 50 percent, but you have to block your main rival somehow. And I think it's this complexity that is causing it to be controversial. But, you know, there are many advocates of ranked choice voting who think that it's good for building coalitions like we're seeing in some of these cross endorsements so that not everything in politics becomes binary polarized. You moderated the final Democratic mayoral debate. You've also interviewed both of these men before. What's given you the best sense of who they are and what their ambitions are? Well, I would say Cuomo is trying to run in much the way Trump ran last year.

10:45How did Trump run last year? He ran, America is going to hell. I'm the person to rescue it. And by the way, don't think about my scandals. They're witch hunts. Andrew Cuomo is running on. New York City is going to hell. I'm the person to rescue it. And oh, by the way, don't think much about my scandals. their witch hunts. So part of the issue there is whether New Yorkers accept the premise that New York is going to hell. Mamdani is running on being not just a fresh face because he's young, but somebody who's going to turn the page in New York City politics from, like anywhere else, being beholden to a lot of corporate and wealthy special interests, and that that's why a lot of people are hurting economically in New York City.

11:42So that's a lot of the case that he's making. And, you know, we're going to have to see eventually which of those cases people buy into more. But let me say this, Noel. The final part of the story for now is that after all of this, Cuomo and Mamdani might both be on the ballot in the fall for the general election. Governor Cuomo, former Governor Cuomo, is going to run now as an independent, regardless of whether he wins the Democratic primary. He's forming a third party, the Fight and Deliver Party, so he can be on the ballot whether or not he wins the Democratic primary. The Working Families Party has said that if Cuomo wins the Democratic nomination, it's prepared to run a candidate on its own ballot line.

12:27That would likely be Mamdani. They both have other party lines that they can run on. But I guess New York City will cross that bridge or tunnel if we get to it. Brian Lehrer, you can find the Brian Lehrer Show at WNYC.org. Brian, thank you so much for taking the time. We appreciate it. Very welcome, Ella.

12:51Coming up next, Dem on Dem violence. The New York City mayor's race is giving the Democrats agita and some ideas.

13:09Support for the show today comes from none other than HIMSS. Erectile dysfunction can make you feel like you aren't yourself. HIMSS says they can help you get back to the best version of you with personalized ED treatments that are prescribed by licensed providers, including daily meds that support more spontaneous moments. Sounds fun. HIMSS says they offer access to ED treatment options, including trusted generics that cost 95 % less than brand names if prescribed. And since HIMSS is 100 % online, you can get the care you need from the comfort of your own home. No sitting around under fluorescent lights.

13:43Reading a week's old magazine while you wait for an appointment. Remember magazines? You can get simple online access to personalized affordable care for ED, hair loss, weight loss, and more by visiting HIMSS.com. slash explained. That's hymns.com slash explained for your free online visit. hymns.com slash explained. Actual price will depend on product and subscription plan. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. See website for details, restrictions, and important safety information.

14:18Support for the show comes from BoxyCat. There's a lot to love about having a cat in your home. But there's one thing that even the most ardent cat lover could do without. Stinky litter boxes. Boxy says that they can help. Boxy wants to be the last kitty litter you ever try. They say the difference is in their formula, which includes probiotics that can stop bacteria that cause odors. Plus, Boxy says their clumping power is superior, making it easier to scoop so your litter box can be less stinky without any of the fake fragrances. Here's our colleague, Andrew Malnizik, to tell us more. So my sister is that cat mom.

14:55She calls them her children. So when it comes to trying anything new for them, she's incredibly skeptic and always a little hesitant. That's why I was so excited to hear that she was really enjoying Boxy's cat litter. The first thing she noticed, there was just zero issues transitioning to cats. There was no drama from them, which, you know, cats can kind of push back and be a little bit drama. It was really a If you're tired of switching litters looking for the one, get Boxy at B-O-X-I-E-C-A-T dot com. It's the last litter you'll switch to. Enjoy 30 % off with code EXPLAINED at BoxyCat.com slash EXPLAINED.

15:35That's B-O-X-I-E-C-A-T dot com forward slash EXPLAINED.

15:49doors, please. The next stop will be today explained. Today explained will be next. Stand clear. David Friedlander is a features writer with New York Magazine, often covers politics, and we called him to ask, is it fair to map New York's mayor's race onto national politics? I mean, it is and it isn't. You know, obviously, like, it can kind of be a little bit of an awkward fit, as is true any time you sort of pull out one race in a, you know, large and diverse nation. But that said, I mean, this sort of like fits the divide fairly neatly, I think, in terms of like a lot of people who think wonder about where the Democratic Party should go.

16:27And should the Democratic Party make more of an effort to kind of like win back voters who may be Trump curious? Of all the confounding results in this past election, perhaps the strangest phenomenon was the surprising number of people who voted for Democrats down ballot and then checked off Donald Trump for president.

16:50The Democrats forgot that they had people who needed work here, too. They let in other people who took jobs from Americans. What we still need is lowering the cost of living. Or should the party kind of energize this base, be, you know, activate social media users, that kind of thing. Because, you know, Mandani, like he sort of rose in this race really by social media and by some eye-popping ads. I think that really caught the public's attention and imagination. Did it catch the young public's imagination or did it catch everybody's imagination? I think mostly the young. He's a real phenom. I've been covering, you know, New York politics for 20 years.

17:35And I've never seen anything quite like this in this city. The size of the rallies he's getting, the number of volunteers on his campaign. And yeah, like they're mostly young. A lot of them are probably like not from New York City, but are transplants elsewhere. You know, Mondani is really doing well among college educated voters. Well, Cuomo's strength is on like working class voters of color. To speak to some of those striations within the party, you wrote in New York Magazine about the rise of the Liberal Tea Party. Who's included in that movement and what do they want? I think the biggest example was David Hogg.

18:20I think what I'm doing that's different from before is I'm challenging the status quo in a direct way and head on. And that really scares people. But frankly, I think right now, nobody should be comfortable when our country is in a moment of crisis. There's a couple of other candidates across the country, you know, running for congressional seats. And not only do they want to pull the party leftward, but they also want to sort of pull the party downward and make it younger, I think. My name is Kat Abogazale. I'm running for Congress in the 9th District of Illinois. And Democratic leaders need to be talking about what's happening right now and actively working to stop it.

18:52Running for Congress against Nancy Pelosi here in San Francisco. My name is Shoyka Chakrabarty, and I wanted to do a quick campaign update to tell you all how things are going. I'm Donovan McKinney, and I'm running for Congress to take back this seat for us, always with the people. And, you know, there's this idea that just the Democratic Party has been sort of ruled by baby boomers for a generation or so. And I think they're really trying to change that. From the headlines, you might think that the trend is young Democrats are winning seats over old incumbents, old Democratic incumbents. It's a good headline.

19:24Does it actually reflect the times that we're living in, though? No, not at all.

19:56Okay. There's been a lot of talk about what went wrong for the Democrats in 2024. And so much talk, right? Do you think the party should look at this race to kind of test what they might want for 2028 or to look at it as an opportunity to further learn a lesson that was learned in 2024? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that this, you know, I think New York City mayoral races always tend to, like, invite these kinds of narratives. And, you know, I remind, you know, everyone that four years ago this week or next week, Eric Adams won the mayoral race. You know, he came out the next day and said, I'm the new face of the Democratic Party.

20:45If the Democratic Party fails to recognize what we did here in New York, they're going to have a problem in the midterm elections, and they're going to have a problem in the presidential elections. I think that's, like, invited some mockery now because he has so much sort of corruption and chaos swirling around him. But it really seemed like that was going to be the case, that he was sort of the kind of figure the Democratic Party needed. And I think that, like, this will be another test of that. I mean, it is like I think you will sort of figure out some direction of the party based on the results in a week, whether or not the party is going to like skew younger, you know, embrace social media, embrace kind of virality and embrace the enthusiasm of the young.

21:35or, you know, whether or not it's a kind of more like brute force march to the middle, you know, to win over voters like who may be Trump curious. You know, I mean, Andrew Cuomo, like he's been sort of for a while in this race, like he was kind of reluctant to criticize Donald Trump. And I think that in part that was like because, you know, the city really swung to the right in the 2024 election. In New York's 14th district, a number of voters cast their ballot for both Trump and one of the House's most progressive Democrats, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. According to the CBS News data team, Democrats have been losing ground in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens since 2016.

22:18You had a lot of, you know, Democratic precincts voting for Trump in ways that we haven't seen them vote for Republicans before. And so I think, you know, there's a real focus on sort of peeling those voters back. Based on what I've seen of their campaigning, these two men in particular seem to understand that populism is the mood of the moment. They are appealing to populist sentiment in different ways. At the end of the day, you have the son of a movie director and a respected academic and Mario Cuomo's kid, as my mother would call him. How are New Yorkers viewing these men as avatars of populism?

22:59Are they buying it? I don't know if it's populism, frankly, as much as it is a sort of frustration with the direction of the city or frustration with the direction of the country. And a feeling like the political class hasn't been there for me and isn't addressing my concerns and that it is just too hard to live here and too hard to get by. And I think they're both like approaching that on very different ways. But they're sort of like it's coming from the same place in a way. Like Andrew Cuomo, I think the sort of thrust of his campaign is that, you know, it's you go on the subway and there's a there's sort of, you know, people with mental illness or there's homelessness or the subway doesn't come.

23:45And like, so we're going to kind of clean, clean that up. And Mondani is kind of saying, you know, he talks about like, you know, free subways and free buses and, and, and city owned grocery stores. And it's a way of saying that the city has gotten like too expensive and too hard to live in. And so we're going to like make it easier for you and deal with the issue that like most makes you feel that way, which is affordability. I think they're sort of both coming out of the same instinct in a funny way. I mean, I think especially you're going to see a lot of Mondani knockoffs if he wins, even if he comes close to winning.

24:24I think that here's, you know, of like a candidate who is like authentic to themselves, who does not apologize for like previous stances they may have held, who really like sticks to their guns on a lot of these key issues and doesn't sort of negotiate them away when running for higher office.

24:56David Friedlander of New York Magazine. Peter Bell and Ann Rosen and Denise Guerra produce today's show. Amin El-Sadi edited. Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristen's daughter engineered. Laura Bullard checks the facts. Today Explained is taking Thursday off. Happy Juneteenth. We'll have a rerun on Friday. And we're back with a new episode on Sunday. Till then.

25:26Thank you.