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- [00:04]
Shamitza Basu
This is in conversation from Apple News. I'm Shamitza Basu. Today, how Zahran Mamdani's bid for New York mayor has already changed politics. Zahran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, is currently leading the race by a double digit margin.
- [00:29]
Zahran Mamdani
We believe in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world that working people deserve a dignified life.
- [00:40]
Shamitza Basu
Just a few months ago, Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, was a little known New York State assemblyman. Then in June, he stunned New York politics by defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, a win that catapulted him onto the national stage. Now Mamdani is back up against Cuomo, who is running as an independent, and Curtis Sliwa, a Republican. Making his second run for mayor, Mamdani has created a campaign centered on affordability, promising to freeze rents, make buses fast and free, and make childcare free for babies as young as six weeks. And since his primary win, his campaign's energy has only gathered more momentum.
- [01:22]
Eric Latch
There's a certain level of Beatlemania moving around the city with this guy.
- [01:25]
Shamitza Basu
Now, that's Eric Latch. He's a staff writer at the New Yorker who recently profiled Mamdani for the magazine, spending time with him at campaign events and at home, delving into his background and trying to answer the question, if he gets elected, what's his path to delivering on his campaign promises?
- [01:43]
Eric Latch
This is a huge job. The city of New York employs 300,000 public workers. These agencies are enormous. The budget's $116 billion. There's a lot of decision making, a lot of stuff that's going to have to get hashed out. And that's what's in front of him.
- [01:55]
Shamitza Basu
And it's not only New Yorkers who are pay attention to this election. A recent YouGov survey found that over 70% of Americans say they've heard at least a little about this race. And 70% also said what happens in New York is very or somewhat important to the United States as a whole.
- [02:12]
Eric Latch
This idea of how a city functions, what to expect of a city, questions of cost of living, questions of mass transit and cars, questions of remote work and office buildings. What happens here and the political decisions that get made here do end up reverberating out.
- [02:33]
Shamitza Basu
We started by talking about Mamdani's unique biography and how his life has shaped his political platform.
- [02:42]
Eric Latch
Mamdani is the son of a renowned and quite influential scholar of African colonial and postcolonial politics. That's his father, Mahmoud Mamdani, and also the son of a renowned and quite influential filmmaker, Mira Nair. Then Zoran. He's born in Kampala, spends his first five years in Uganda. And then when Zoran is five, the family moves to South Africa where his dad is teaching. They spend two years in post apartheid South Africa, which makes a huge impression on Zoran. I mean, Nelson Mandela is a hero at an incredibly impressionable age.
- [03:22]
Shamitza Basu
Yeah, he evokes him often.
- [03:23]
Eric Latch
He evokes him often. And we see that in the campaign. He cites him a lot and relies on him. When he won the primary in June, the win was, you know, came as a shock to everyone. And he spends, I mean, I was there at the campaign's victory party. Mamdani, the candidate and his team disappear for like an hour and a half to sort of furiously try to figure out what to say, you know, to try to meet this moment. And when they come out, one of the things that they come out with is this Mandela quote.
- [03:50]
Zahran Mamdani
In the words of Nelson Mandela, it always seems impossible until it is done.
- [03:58]
Eric Latch
Which is also sort of, you know, evoking Mandela. But also this is something that Bernie Sanders often said when he was running for president in 2016 and 2020. And Sanders is the sort of other kind of big political hero for Zoron. So he's trying to sort of wed all these kind of threads together.
- [04:16]
Shamitza Basu
Mamdani is an interesting candidate in that he both has this background that you just described his upbringing living in multiple countries before coming to New York. He's a Muslim. He's talked about his Muslim faith. He would be New York City's first Muslim mayor if elected. And yet at the same time, it seems like he really redirects away from identity based questions when asked.
- [04:40]
Eric Latch
Yes.
- [04:41]
Shamitza Basu
How would you describe how he talks about himself, how he positions himself as a candidate?
- [04:46]
Eric Latch
Yes, well, he does. I think it's double move. I push back a little bit on the idea that he shies away from it because I think he does two things. One is he does this move that I think he learned watching Bernie Sanders run for president, which is something I've come to think of as the Bernie pivot, which is talking in public, giving speeches, giving interviews. He doesn't want to be knocked off his message. Like he, you know, it's tough to get him to talk for any length of time without him going back to the campaign rhetoric that he's now made famous where he wants to freeze the rent in the city's rent stabilized apartments, he wants to make the city's buses free. He wants to provide universal childcare. And then sort of on down the list of the things that he's put at the center of his campaign, which are about governing expectations and promises. But I think the thing that he's done, I mean, this is something I covered Sanders 2020 presidential race a little bit, and Bernie was, like, allergic to telling a story about himself of, like, kind of weaving himself into the narrative, in contrast to somebody like Barack Obama, you know, who made his sort of life story and America's story a kind of twinned thing. And Mamdani has done that, I think, a little bit. And especially when it comes to New York, you know, I think Mamdani has told a story of being an immigrant in New York and somebody who kind of learns New York consciously, you know, because he gets here and he's seven or eight and he's still a kid. And that's also sort of reflected a lot in the way that he talks about both the city and what it needs, but also about himself. And so I think it's those two moves that sort of make up his pitch to voters and to his. His audiences.
- [06:27]
Shamitza Basu
I mean, some of that fluency, of course, it feels, like, hard to talk about his candidacy without talking about his online presence, but his use of social media in this campaign has been particularly effective at reaching people. Can you describe. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people now, not just in the New York area, have happened upon, scrolled upon, some kind of Mamdani campaign content on this. Yes.
- [06:50]
Eric Latch
It is also kind of amazing that in 2025 that politicians can continue to be shocked by the power of organizing on the Internet. And that, like, you know, that that can continue to yield surprise is sort of like, you know, it's kind of one of the more. I hate to speak for him, but I, in this one case, I do think that he thinks that this is almost stupid, how easy it was for him to have, like, the Internet all to himself. I think he was the only one doing anything interesting there. And that's where the people are, right? That's not about being lefty or ideological commitment. That's just like, the world, right? And so he made a series of videos over the course of the campaign that regularly went viral. The first one to sort of hit was just after Trump won reelection in November 2024. He went out Mamdani, and it was like a sort of man on the street interview video where he was just asking folks in the Bronx and in Queens, in neighborhoods that are broadly sort of black or brown or immigrant communities, working class communities. And these are places where, you know, in the aftermath of the election, there was a lot of talk in New York about how relatively Trump had done in these districts. And Mamadani just went out and just to talk to people on the street, you know, it was like, what's going on here? Why do you think this happened?
- [08:07]
Zahran Mamdani
Did you get a chance to vote on Tuesday?
- [08:08]
Eric Latch
Yes. And who did you vote for? Trump. Ah, the million dollar question.
- [08:13]
Shamitza Basu
Trump. Trump.
- [08:14]
Eric Latch
Donald Trump. Well, actually, the early voted, I voted for Trump.
- [08:16]
Zahran Mamdani
Honestly, I didn't vote.
- [08:18]
Eric Latch
She voted for Trump. I voted for Trump.
- [08:20]
Zahran Mamdani
I vote for Trump.
- [08:22]
Eric Latch
And got responses that range from, I'm concerned about cost of living issues that I didn't feel like Democrats are addressing, or I'm concerned about the war in Gaza was something that, like, people talk to him a lot about, or I'm just kind of tuned out or I'm sick of this. All the swing is because people want lower prices. They probably believe that Trump will give them that market price.
- [08:41]
Zahran Mamdani
Energy, gas, la comida.
- [08:45]
Eric Latch
Most of these people are working families. They're working one to two, three jobs. And rent is expensive. Foods are going up, utility bills are. And then he sort of goes on to make these videos where he's trying to hold attention, talking about wonky political stuff, you know, and so he's like, willing to sort of make himself a bit of a clown in the pursuit of that. So he jumps into the ocean off of Coney island on January 1st. Polar bear plunge. Talk about freezing the rent.
- [09:12]
Zahran Mamdani
I'm freezing your rent as the next mayor of New York City. Let's plunge into the detail.
- [09:18]
Eric Latch
He is, you know, pokes his head into like halal carts all over town to talk about the price of chicken and rice and inflation.
- [09:25]
Zahran Mamdani
Would you rather pay $10 for a plate of halal or $8?
- [09:29]
Shamitza Basu
$8.
- [09:29]
Eric Latch
$8. I think $8 is the way to go.
- [09:31]
Zahran Mamdani
If I was the mayor, I'd be working with city council from day one to make halal eight bucks again.
- [09:37]
Eric Latch
Mamdani, the trick that he's doing is that he is playing in the space, but at some point in these silly videos makes the Bernie pivot and talks about freezing the rent or making the buses free or early childcare.
- [09:51]
Shamitza Basu
It goes back to the repeat.
- [09:53]
Eric Latch
It goes back to this policy agenda, which is what he's selling, what he's asking people to buy into.
- [09:59]
Shamitza Basu
Let's talk about some of those campaign promises and some of the messaging that he keeps returning to and talk a little Bit about feasibility. We don't need to get into the super nuts and bolts of how city politics works. But this gets at some of the criticisms of him also as a candidate that some people have in terms of feasibility. And we've seen this happen before historically with New York City mayors who come in and they're ready to go.
- [10:23]
Eric Latch
It's not a proud lineage, New York City mayors. It's not. Yeah.
- [10:27]
Shamitza Basu
But, you know, it is a very high profile lineage. Right on the national stage. Let's start with rent freezes.
- [10:33]
Eric Latch
Yeah.
- [10:34]
Shamitza Basu
Feasibility. What are the barriers to freezing rent?
- [10:38]
Eric Latch
Yeah.
- [10:38]
Shamitza Basu
How likely is it that he could get that done?
- [10:40]
Eric Latch
Yeah. So forgive me when I'm going to put my wonk hat on here for as brief a time as I can, and then I'll take it off. So basically, the proposal here is New York has these fairly unique rent control laws on the books. And so in large apartment buildings, which are buildings with more than six units built before 1973. Stay with me, please. How much a landlord can increase the rents in those apartments is determined by this board called the Rent Guidelines Board, the members of which are appointed by the mayor. And so if the mayor essentially wants to sort of telegraph to everybody that he wants the rents frozen, it's very likely that the board will be responsive to that. Mamdani's predecessor, Bill de Blasio, who was the mayor two mayors ago in New York, effectively froze the rent in these apartments, which make up about a million units and which is about a quarter of the overall housing stock in the city. So it's a pretty giant pot. And it's also sort of one of the last kind of refuges of the city's shrinking middle classes. And so the counterarguments to this from the landlords is that these buildings are expensive to maintain because of the way the law is written. These are older apartment buildings, which undeniably, you know, the city's housing stock is old and crumbling. No one disputes that. And, you know, what the landlords and their representatives say is that if you freeze the rent, the costs on the building don't get frozen, and so the landlord's going to get squeezed and it becomes harder to make repairs on the building and sort of keep the building going. And what Mamdani has basically said is that he's committed to freezing the rent for four years, just the mayor's term in New York City. But he insists, you know, that he's not trying to punish landlords. And sort of where this seems to be going is that this is all gonna be part of, like, a larger debate about how to tackle, how to address the overall housing crisis in New York City. Because I think the thing that Mamdani figured out and which was very effective is that this is a part of the debate where the mayor holds cards, has cards to play. And now he's sort of in a conversation in a sort of wider game about who holds which other cards and how that's gonna play out.
- [13:03]
Shamitza Basu
Right. So feasible has been done before. He will have to decide how exactly he wants to chart the path forward. What about free buses? That's something he talks about a lot too.
- [13:12]
Eric Latch
Yeah. Free buses is again, you know, New York is the largest city in the country, certainly one of the centers of global finance and global wealth and power. But the odd thing, and this has been true for centuries in New York, is that New York doesn't control all of New York. The power of New York is sort of carved up. So New York controls some things locally, and then the state government in Albany controls other things about New York. And then the Federal government, Washington D.C. controls other things about New York. And the public transit system is more or less controlled by a state entity called the nta. But it's New York's buses, you know, so New York makes demands. And again, this gets down to, this is politics. This is about argument and power and decision making. And so can a mayor by himself make the city's buses free? No. Could the MTA just stop collecting the fares on the buses? Yeah, the mta, the public transit system overall relies on the money from those fares to fund itself. And so if the money doesn't come from there, it has to come from somewhere else. And then you sort of, again, you're talking about math. You know, City hall veterans who I've spoken to who have evaluated some of these proposals, you know, to your question of feasibility, they're not like it's impossible, just it would be a choice and there would be trade offs to that choice.
- [14:30]
Shamitza Basu
Right, right. I imagine the answer is gonna be similar to something like free childcare, which he's talked about.
- [14:34]
Eric Latch
Well, you know, but free childcare is, I think, a much more complex subject because free childcare doesn't just involve money, it involves labor. And who does the free childcare?
- [14:44]
Shamitza Basu
Right.
- [14:44]
Eric Latch
In New York City? You know, going back again, two mayors to Bill de Blasio. De Blasio's marque policy initiative was universal pre K. So this was school for.
- [14:54]
Shamitza Basu
Young kids, which is childcare relief for parents. Basically.
- [14:57]
Eric Latch
In a huge way it is, but with Universal childcare. It starts from Mamdani's proposal, starting from the age of six weeks, I believe. And that involves rules and regulations about how many teachers you need per classroom. It's quite a job to recruit and staff and get that done. He would have to put a lot of muscle and follow through behind it. That would be beyond just the kind of politics of who he pisses off to get that done. That's a tall order. And, you know, I do think that there's a difference, it's a helpful kind of difference between the free buses and free childcare. Like, actually free means different things in different contexts.
- [15:33]
Shamitza Basu
Yeah, sure. It means subsidized in certain senses, or it means otherwise funded. Which begs the question, how is it funded? Let's talk a little bit about Mamdani and how he would plug in with a player like Governor Kathy Hochul, or just how someone who sits in the New York City mayoral level has to plug in with state level players or even national players.
- [15:55]
Eric Latch
So, yeah, that's a helpful sort of way out of the wonky thicket that I just navigated us into. So the flip side of these proposals, you know, Mamdani has said that the way he'll fund it, the way he's answered the question of, like, well, how are you going to pay for it has been, well, we're going to raise taxes on the wealthy, we're going to raise taxes on corporations. But again, this gets back to this question of like, New York doesn't just control all of New York. To raise those taxes, he would need Albany to do that. And so that leads to the door of the governor, Kathy Hochul, who. Mamdani is a leftist politician. He's a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Kathy Hochul is not those things. She is a moderate and quite cautious mainstream Democratic politician, and she isn't behind raising taxes. She's got a reelection campaign herself next year, 2026. She's up for reelection.
- [16:45]
Shamitza Basu
But.
- [16:46]
Eric Latch
But they have spent the summer, Mamdani and Hochul, in this delicate approachment between the two of them. And they've both said nice things about each other.
- [16:57]
Zahran Mamdani
I'm excited to welcome Governor Hochul to our movement and to show the partnership at hand between City hall and Albany.
- [17:07]
Kathy Hochul
I've had major differences with the candidate, Zoran Mondami, on many issues, but I believe he's touched a nerve. He's created an energy around the will to just focus on what'll make New York City even more exceptional, and that is to make it more affordable and.
- [17:24]
Eric Latch
Hochul, to your point about childcare, one of the things that she has sort of expressed more receptivity towards is Mamdani's childcare proposals sort of fit very neatly into her political identity and the things that she wants to sort of champion as governor. And so they've had a kind of gingerly productive summer of kind of trying to figure out where, at least publicly, where they think that they can work together.
- [17:49]
Shamitza Basu
You know, one point of criticism of Mamdani is his lack of experience, his youth. He just turned 34 in the past couple of weeks. He's been a state assembly member in New York for several years now. If he wins, he would be the youngest mayor that New York City has seen in over a century.
- [18:08]
Eric Latch
Yes.
- [18:08]
Shamitza Basu
What have you heard of those criticisms? How has Mamdani tried to counter them?
- [18:15]
Eric Latch
Yeah, I mean, it's a big open question is kind of like, how will he govern if he does become mayor here in a couple of months? Because he hasn't been an active, invisible participant in quite a number of big, major policy issue areas and fights that he's going to inevitably run into as mayor. I mean, like, the big one is managing the police department. You know, like, that's just, you know, he, as a slightly younger man, you know, at the height of the George Floyd protests in 2020, was actively posting online in support of the defund the police movement and making really strident arguments about the function of police in society. And essentially arguing that the police were bad, you know, were sort of a detriment to public safety, I think is one of the things that he said at the time. And now he's had to change that positioning and the language that he uses to talk about the police.
- [19:12]
Zahran Mamdani
My statements in 2020 were ones made amidst a frustration that many New Yorkers held at the murder of George Floyd and the inability to deliver on what Eric Adams, of all people described as the right for all of us to be able to enjoy safety and justice, that we need not choose between the two.
- [19:33]
Eric Latch
He's pledged to work with the police. He says he no longer supports defunding the police. And he says that policing is, he believes now is a critical component of achieving public safety. And yet if he becomes mayor, he's gonna, on January 1st, be in charge of, as I write in the article, a police department larger than the Belgian army. I mean, it's a gigantic, complex, huge load bearing element of the city infrastructure and bureaucracy and government. And every mayor going back decades has had their time in office defined by their relationship to the police. Department. So the idea that this is just gonna be a side issue, I think, is naive. I mean, it's like, that's just not the way the job of mayor works in New York. And he's gonna have to make all sorts of decisions about how he wants the police to police protests, how he wants the police to deal with homeless encampments, how he wants the police to deal with on the subway, and, you know, reports of gruesome murders and violence that, like, even if they are not part of statistically some overwhelming crime spike, do sort of seize into not just the imaginations of, like, Americans in general consuming national news, but New Yorkers at the neighborhood and block level. And because of his youth, I think New Yorkers and everybody else is just gonna be in a position of just watching somebody wrestle with these things and have to sort of make decision in real time in a way that that's just a function of, like, he's new, you know, he's just at the very beginnings of a career here.
- [21:10]
Shamitza Basu
How do you think Democrats nationally are watching Mamdani and thinking about the party's popularity in this moment, or I should say lack of popularity in this moment? On the national stage, I've heard a lot of hand wringing and people having conversations about, you know, can Mamdani's campaign sort of provide a blueprint for Democrats elsewhere about how to reach voters? Clearly, he is resonating with his base in New York. Help us understand how New Yorkers looking at an issue like this versus how Democrats nationally would look at a campaign like this.
- [21:47]
Eric Latch
Yeah, I mean, the relationship of New York City to the rest of the country is complicated enough usually. And then the relationship of its politics to the politics of the rest of the country has obviously always been this kind of debate about how much does this House matter?
- [22:01]
Shamitza Basu
Yeah.
- [22:02]
Eric Latch
At the federal level, you know, it just so happens that two of the most prominent and powerful Democrats in Washington are New Yorkers, Senator Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both from Brooklyn. And they have had a very different reaction to Bom Doni. They have been downright cold. I mean, they have not endorsed him, and they've really expressed very little positive interest in aligning or working with or reaching some kind of understanding with the potential next mayor of New York City. And that hesitation, depending on who you talk to, has different layers to it. But the thing that comes up again and again, Democrats I've spoken to is that Mohamdani has been an outspoken champion of Palestinian rights and critic of the Israeli government and the Israeli government's war in Gaza. And both Schumer and, and Jefferies have been powerful supporters of the Israeli government. And then there's this question also of just how Mamdani plays nationally, because both Schumer and Jeffries are looking at this map for the midterms and the kind of politics that they feel will help them win races in the House and races for the Senate. And it's national, but it's also local because especially with the House races, there's a lot of districts in the New York City suburbs in Westchester and north in upstate New York and then on Long island where there are competitive House races that have been competitive for several cycles in a row now. And Democrats in these districts having to like, sort of explain or stand for or apologize for Mamdani is so very sort of something that I think these sort of party stakeholders, quote, unquote, are thinking about.
- [23:52]
Shamitza Basu
Let's stop for a moment and talk some more about the issue of Israel and Gaza, because this is one of those places where the tension between Mamdani and more centrist Democrats has really come out. He's been asked about it over and over again during the campaign. How has Mamdani been navigating this issue and how is his stance on it being received by Democrats nationally?
- [24:21]
Eric Latch
One of the bets that Mamdani made early on, after watching both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris struggle to keep the support of Democrats who oppose the war in Gaza, was to say during the primary. This is sort of easy to forget now, but during the primary, basically his opponents, not just like the Andrew Cuomo's of the world who are outspokenly pro Israel, but all sorts of Democrats in New York and then observers from elsewhere felt that Mamdani's position on the war would sort of bring him down eventually, that his outspoken criticism of Israel would hurt him in a city where there are around a million Jewish residents. And that like, basically that would be a wall that Mamdani would run into. And it wasn't. I mean, I think another mistake that his opponents made is thinking that, like, his support for Palestinian rights and his opposition to the war was somehow kind of faddish, you know, sort of part of a kind of recent movement Mamdani has. You know, it's like this is a subject that is very formative to him, sort of informs how he thinks about power and how he thinks about politics generally. His dad has written extensively about the conflict in the Middle East. As a college student, Mamdani founds a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at Bowdoin College. I mean, he is seeped in and informed by these. And a bet that they made early on, he and his campaign, is that the Democratic Party voters who are hate the war in Gaza and hate what they're seeing on their phones every day, Mohamdani was going to speak very clearly and very directly to them and say, I share your position, and I want to be a leader for you. And that people responded to that in the way that he basically expected them to. Those ended up being like a lot of his voters. And so I think that that is one place where coming out of 2024 and this debate in the Democratic Party about the party's position to geopolitics and the government of Israel, like, yeah, I mean, you know, Mamdani has made a contribution to that debate.
- [26:23]
Shamitza Basu
President Trump is clearly watching what's happening in New York. He has attacked Mamdani on occasion. He has questioned Mamdani's citizenship. He has threatened arrest and deportation at times. Also is kind of famously going after other big New York figures like Letitia James. If Mamdani wins, what do you think he's up against at the federal level?
- [26:47]
Eric Latch
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question.
- [26:51]
Shamitza Basu
I know he's been asked it, too.
- [26:52]
Eric Latch
You know, it's a great question going back to what we were talking about, about the way that New York City has relied on the federal government, you know, at this point, for a century or more, which has to do with dollars, you know, and federal spending and federal support for everything from the city budget to big infrastructure projects to, like, Trump just a few days ago said he was. He's canceling this Hudson River Tunnel. That's sort of a necessary project to keep the trains running in and out of the city and all up and down the Eastern Seaboard. People who have been in city government in New York, in city halls in New York, and have seen the ways that the federal government and the municipal government in New York have to, by definition, interact. Are worried about this. Yeah, I mean, it's a huge issue. That said, it's like that there are others who are just like, yeah, I mean, there's Trump and then there's just staffing and administration. The job of New York City mayor is hard enough. They can screw it up all by themselves. It doesn't necessarily need an aggressive and vengeful president to do that.
- [27:54]
Shamitza Basu
Yeah. If Mamdani gets elected, which looks very likely right now, but I suppose a surprise could always happen. But say he lands in office. What do you think will be his first big challenge?
- [28:05]
Eric Latch
What people have said to me is staffing. I mean, it sounds mundane, but he has a lot of decisions to make about who is gonna be around him and how to staff out. I mean, the mayor doesn't appoint all 300,000 public employees in New York City, but he does appoint the agency heads and the sub heads and the people who staff him at City hall and advise him. Hundreds of decisions and something that he's gonna have to confront with each of these decisions. A choice that he's often, I think, gonna have to think about is does he want to pick somebody with experience who's been in the game, who's been in the fights, but who might not necessarily share his commitment to a certain kind of politics, or does he want kind of more people bought in to his program and who will, like, run into walls for that program, but who might not have the experience in some of these jobs and with some of these functions? And also, because this is one of the ways that I think city government is so fasc, I mean, this is very relationship based. You know, it's not just about decision making. It's about relationships and people and sort of, you know, who knows who.
- [29:12]
Shamitza Basu
The title of your piece is what Zahra Mamdani Knows about Power. What's your answer to that question? What does he know about power?
- [29:21]
Eric Latch
I think Mamdani has had a couple of insights into how to connect some of the tools available to politicians today in terms of messaging, in terms of outreach, in terms of discourse, kinds of the arguments that are being had, live arguments that are being had in this country right now with nuts and bolts city governance. I think that's what we were talking about with the rent freeze, Rent Guidelines board. In the wrong hands, somebody who wants to tell you about the right guidelines board could put you to sleep in, like, 30 seconds easily. It's not that it's not powerful, it's not that it's not important, but this is wonky stuff. And how to turn bureaucracy and complexity into sharp edged and grabby argument is an accomplishment. That's the rhetorical side. There's the coalition side that I think. I think a lot of his opponents certainly, but even the reporters, and I would even say that I even missed this in the primary. One of the things that Mohamdani talked about is he was going to turn out new voters. He was like, I'm not going to focus as much on some of the more traditional groups that get courted at election time. Moderate Jewish voters, working class and middle class, black voters in the outer boroughs. But he did say that basically that the city was underrating, underestimating just how many South Asian and Muslim residents had come to the city over the last couple of decades, how politically primed they were to, like, engage and how under canvassed they were in general and underappreciated they were as potential voters and as members of the city's political, not just imagination, but like, functioning like political economy and a political sort of environment. And he was like, I'm gonna go get those voters. And there was a lot of skepticism about that. And he totally did it. And I think it would be stupid for any mayor, mayoral candidate from here forward to run for mayor without a clear plan for how to attract exactly these voters. That was one of the bets that he made early on, and it 100% paid off. Governing and what comes next, huge challenge. New York City mayors in general, like we said, it's not like they've all been great successes. But if he does nothing else than bring in this nearly million people into the city's political imagination in the way that past waves of immigrants from the Germans to the Irish to the Jews to the Italians have been brought in, that's a real contribution already to the city's politics.
- [32:19]
Shamitza Basu
Eric, thank you so much for your time.
- [32:21]
Eric Latch
Thanks for having me.
- [32:26]
Shamitza Basu
We'll include a link to Eric Latch's profile of Zahran Mamdani for the New Yorker on our Show Notes page. And every weekend you can find new episodes of Apple News in conversation in the Apple News app. Just tap on the audio tab, that's the little headphones at the bottom to find it.