Current Affairs Radio Hour: Mamdani in Diversity Plaza

KEPW Newsday recently visited with Nathan Robinson, editor of the magazine of politics and culture, Current Affairs. In this edition of KEPW Newsday Presents: From the Current Affairs Radio Hour, Nathan Robinson discusses the next mayor of New York City.

Nathan Robinson: Socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani has pulled off what has been called the biggest upset in modern political history in the New York City mayoral election. Running on a platform of free buses, free childcare building, city run grocery stores, and freezing the rent in rent-stabilized apartments, Mamdani defied the odds. 

[00:00:42] As the New York Times noted, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo had formidable advantages. He had almost universal name recognition and was leading in the polls before he even entered the contest. A pro-Cuomo Super PAC of $25 million shattered campaign spending records during the primary, and both Republican and Democratic billionaires did everything they could to ensure that Cuomo would prevail. 

[00:01:12] Mamdani has showed here the viability of the kind of program that leftists have been arguing for since Bernie Sanders ran in 2016: uncompromisingly bold, committed to social democratic policies, focused on economic issues without sacrificing a concern for racial or gender justice, pro-labor, anti-fascist, and delivered in plain language with humor, warmth, and solidarity. 

[00:01:42] I actually interviewed Zohran Mamdani last year for this program, and he presented an uplifting vision of New York becoming the city that it was always meant to be: 

[00:01:54] Zohran Mamdani: …which is a place that working people can flourish, that working people can dream of more than simply getting off the wheel to go to sleep and getting back on the hamster wheel in the morning to go back to work.

Because what we have right now is a crisis where the people who’ve built this city, who sustain this city are the ones who are being pushed out of this city, all while we are concerned about this imaginary flight of the wealthy from New York City when it’s in fact the working class who are leaving this place that we call home.

[00:02:24] What a Mamdani mayoralty would look like is spending each and every day figuring out how we could make this city more affordable and how we could bring a shred of dignity back into the working classes’ life on a 24-hour basis. On and on and on. 

[00:02:40] Nathan Robinson: Zohran Mamdani benefited hugely from New York City’s generous public financing law for elections, which allowed him to focus on organizing instead of fundraising. And actually Mamdani himself pointed out that advantage when we interviewed him. 

[00:02:56] Zohran Mamdani: There are a number of things that give us a pathway to winning. And one of them is the fact that in New York City there’s a public matching system. So if you are a New York City resident and you give anywhere between $10 to $250 to a candidate running for mayor, the city will match that eight times.

[00:03:14] And so a $250 donation then becomes north of $2,000 in terms of its worth for a campaign. And what that means is, if you raise around $1 million, you will then get an additional, you know, about $7 million or so from the city, enabling you to run an $8 million campaign. And I think that–.

[00:03:31] Nathan Robinson: That’s kind of crazy. That’s wild. I mean, that’s cool, but that’s, how did, how did that happen? That’s awesome.

[00:03:38] Zohran Mamdani: The idea of it is to empower small-dollar donors. (Yeah.) The idea is to take on the very special interest you’re talking about. I think it’s the kind of thing that would be very difficult to pass today. (Yeah.) But I’m glad that it does exist. 

[00:03:51] Nathan Robinson: If you want to run an insurgent anti-establishment campaign of the kind that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously ran against the now-completely forgotten Joe Crowley, you really need (or at least could benefit from) an opponent like Andrew Cuomo or Crowley, someone who embodies all the terrible things about the political establishment.

[00:04:18] But let’s not overstate the role of luck in the opponent he got, because Zohran Mamdani is also just really, really good at this. He’s good at this in a way that I’ve been desperately hoping a left politician would be for some time, and only Bernie Sanders seems really to be able to pull off.

[00:04:34] When you see Zohran Mamdani speak, all of these smears against him and the, you know, the AI videos that Andrew Cuomo, put out, for instance, all these smears start to seem ridiculous because Mamdani is very likable, compassionate, and sincere. And it’s obvious that he’s not what he’s being accused of. He’s not an antisemite, he’s just pro-Palestine, and in fact, he’s eloquent and he’s empathetic in condemning antisemitism.

[00:05:07] Now, he is also pretty pragmatic about his socialist commitments. He understands like the famous ‘Sewer Socialists’ of the early part of the 20th century, including the famous socialist mayor of Milwaukee who was in office for over 20 years, that a left administration must first and foremost deliver good governance that actually makes people understand, believe that he is fighting for them, that he is trying to take care of their basic needs.

[00:05:37] His victory speech was full of pledges for what he was actually going to deliver and how it was going to make a difference in people’s lives and having government that people can trust and believe in. Again, he talks about making government work more efficiently and effectively, not just embodying the ideological aspirations of socialism. 

[00:05:57] And actually, that’s what gives me a bit of hope that he’s actually going to, despite his inexperience, which is often noted, be a pretty effective mayor. If you listen closely to what he’s saying, he talks a lot about running a competent administration, getting really, really skilled experts, and his transition team looks pretty good. 

[00:06:16] The other thing I like about Mamdani, though, is he doesn’t back down. He’s pragmatic, but he’s also principled. Now the pragmatism element means, for example, he’s not proposing to nationalize (or I guess municipalize) all of the grocery stores in New York. But he’s talking about trying a pilot program, five city-run grocery stores in food deserts, and he’s going to see how it goes. If it doesn’t go well, he says the program wouldn’t continue.

[00:06:42] People have characterized that as free groceries, but it’s actually a pretty modest program, and that kind of pragmatism means being sensitive to political realities. But it doesn’t mean bending on core principles.

[00:06:56] Now, I was pretty encouraged throughout the campaign by the way, that Mamdani consistently resisted pressure to disavow the pro-Palestine movement, for instance. He hasn’t gone the way of some progressive politicians and shied away from confrontation with the powerful. That victory speech was full of joy, but it was full of fire. It honored his campaign workers, but also promised that there was going to be a fight ahead and it named the enemy:

[00:07:26] Zohran Mamdani: If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. This is not only how we stop Trump, it’s how we stop the next one.

[00:07:59] So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.

[00:08:33] Nathan Robinson: Now, watching Mamdani’s rise has been a strange experience for me because about a year ago, Current Affairs ran that interview with him, which we entitled, Could a Democratic Socialist Mayor Be Just What New York City Needs? 

[00:08:45] Now, of course, as a socialist myself, I personally thought the answer to that question was, yes, it is exactly what New York City needs, but I’m under no illusions about the difficulties that leftists face in American politics. Mamdani’s campaign (as I think he himself would acknowledge back then) was a huge long shot.

[00:09:02] And other than Current Affairs, just about the only publications covering his campaign back then were Democracy Now and Jacobin Magazine. Now, when we spoke here on Current Affairs, I was very impressed with Mamdani. He was relentlessly on message coming back constantly to his affordability pitch. He was so good at that, that when someone asked him about the Kendrick Lamar- Drake feud, he managed to pivot his answer back to affordability.

[00:09:30] And when we spoke, he gave clear, concise answers that spoke to the basic material needs of New Yorkers. Well, I’ve had my fair share of excitement followed by crushing disappointment in my time watching American politics, for example, the two heartbreaking Bernie Sanders campaigns in 2016 and 2020, or Abdul El-Sayed’s 2018 gubernatorial race in Michigan.

[00:09:57] So after we turned the tape off from that interview, I actually asked Momdani, I told him, you know, I’ve been disappointed so many times. I worried this was a protest run or run to make a point. I asked him to promise me that if he was going to run and get people like me excited, he wasn’t going to be running a protest campaign, but would actually win, run to win.

[00:10:17] Can you, I remember specifically asking him, could you just go and win this thing, please? And he laughed and he promised me that he would go and win, which at the time was quite implausible. But then he did, he had to win. And I watched as, as this guy who I was talking to, who had seemingly had no chance, went and won the thing, just like he said he was going to. 

[00:10:42] His victory has still been a bit surreal, given that when he did confidently tell me he was going to succeed, it seemed so incredibly unlikely.

[00:10:50] And I did get to watch over the months as all these different pieces fell into place, steadily, one by one, as he started putting together a campaign that is so good even his sworn enemies now have to admit, as Gerard Baker of the Wall Street Journal did in the op-ed page there, that ‘Mamdani did a better job of speaking to voters concerns about their living standards in a city in which what were once basic aspirations, like a well-paying job and a decent home to live in, have become unrealizable fantasies for many.’

[00:11:30] I actually spent a week in New York City recently, and I saw firsthand a bit of the Mamdani magic. There was the massive rally while I was there with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Queens, and more than 10,000 people showed up to that, which is a huge number for a mayoral election event in a non-presidential year.

[00:11:56] And I did get to midnight press conference the following Thursday that Mamdani was giving alongside taxi drivers and nurses. I was able to ask Mamdani to respond to Vice President JD Vance, who had just basically attacked non-English speakers and said it’s okay for Americans to want neighbors who don’t speak different languages from them. 

[00:12:21] JD Vance: I don’t know these people, they don’t speak the same language that I do and, and because there are 20 in the house next door, it’s a little bit rowdier than it was (Mm-hmm) when there was just a family of four, a family of five. It is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next door neighbors and say, I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. 

[00:12:43] Nathan Robinson: I asked him about that and I got Mamdani to give a pretty moving response. 

[00:12:50] Nathan Robinson (from Diversity Plaza):We’re standing here in Diversity Plaza, which in many ways embodies a very different America, the very one that he’s criticizing there. I wondered if you could comment on the vice president’s remarks and the America that you are defending.

[00:13:05] Zohran Mamdani: These remarks, this language from the vice president of this country: It betrays so much of the promise that we have as a nation. And I stand here in Diversity Plaza, proud to be an immigrant New Yorker, proud to call this borough my home, a borough where there are more languages spoken than most cities in the world, and proud to be on the precipice of becoming the first immigrant mayor of the city in generations.

[00:13:38] And the fact that the vice president would view someone speaking a different language in this country as something that should be avoided, as something that could be pushed out of our reality– it is so emblematic of the politics that we are trying to show a contrast to, a politics that has room for each and every person that calls the city home. 

[00:14:01] Nathan Robinson: I’m sure I don’t need to tell them that FDR really should be the model here and that you could read an article I did recently for Current Affairs about the New Deal and FDR and that kind of democratic politics. And one of the insights there is importantly, FDR was wildly popular even as he struggled to solve the most important crisis facing the country, which was the Great Depression. And the reason he stayed popular despite that struggle was because he stayed in touch with the people.

[00:14:31] He communicated to them that he was constantly fighting for them, and he was visibly taking steps to alleviate their pain.

[00:14:39] So Mamdani faces an immense challenge now because after 10 years of insisting that if we on the left are handed power, we could deliver for people. We don’t want to be like the dog who caught the car and then didn’t know what to do with it. Many eyes are now on Mamdani to see what he’s going to do next, whether he is going to crash and burn, whether he is going to sell out, or whether he’s going to provide evidence that democratic socialism is in fact the politics American needs. 

And if Zohran Mamdani defies the skeptics, defies the haters, and if he’s the best mayor in the history of New York City delivering on his agenda, well, then, he may massively improve the political fortunes of the American Left.

[00:15:22] But if on the other hand he disappoints, he may discredit the Left. And he may make it impossible to get socialists elected into office in the future. And so I hope that so, and Momani and his team know what they’re doing, but if they govern as well as they campaigned, I would say that New York City is now in pretty good hands.

[00:15:48] Now for the last 10 years, since we were founded in 2015, Current Affairs has been relentlessly making the argument that democratic socialist politics can win and that they need to be given a chance.

[00:16:04] Well, now we have that chance. It’s probably the most exciting moment in the history of the U.S. Left, but that means that the pressure is on and the fight is just beginning.

[00:16:19] Presenter: That’s editor Nathan Robinson, with the Current Affairs podcast. You can become a subscriber online at CurrentAffairs.org. This has been KEPW Newsday Presents, Sam Broadway, Executive Producer.