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- [00:00]
Galen
Hey, there, listeners. Galen here.
- [00:02]
Nate Silver
Today's episode is the audio from a conversation on Substack that I had with Nate Silver and Michael Lang, who is an elections analyst in New York City. We talked about the Democratic mayoral primary, which I'm sure you've heard about by now. Zoran Mamdani, the New York assemblyman, overperformed expectations and is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for. Of course, we get into the weeds of New York City politics here, but we talk plenty about the national lessons that can be learned from Zorin's campaign, if there are any. For paid subscribers of the GD Politics podcast, you'll have the full episode right here. Otherwise, you'll have a preview that will cut out at a certain point, at which point, head over to GDPolitics.com and become a subscriber. Today, as a paid subscriber, you'll get about twice as many episodes, and you'll also get updates when we post something to your email, so you'll never miss an episode. You can join the subscriber, chat, ask some questions, and also you'll have access to all the videos for all the podcasts.
- [01:06]
Galen
All right, here's the show, and we are live. Nate, I was telling Michael before you got into the waiting room that if you were also wearing a navy shirt and glasses, we were going to have to shut the whole thing down.
- [01:18]
Michael Lang
Um, you know, I usually wear the contacts. I thought. I thought. I thought we'd mix it up. Three white guys with glasses talking about New York. It's a certain genre, I guess, that we're going for.
- [01:29]
Galen
Well, okay, to that point, I think, obviously we're here to talk about the New York City mayoral primary, but as they did in the debates, as the candidates always do in situations like this, I think we have to prove our worthiness of New York, prove our New Yorkerness. I think Michael might have us feed on this, but, Michael, why don't you introduce yourself and. And lay out what. Why you count as a New Yorker.
- [01:57]
Zoran Mamdani
Oh, hi. My name is Michael Lang. L A N G E. I'm a political writer based. Born and raised, based in New York City. Did a lot of writing on the New York City mural race. I guess I will take credit for saying that Jerome Lamdani was going to win, although he won by way more than I expected him to. And.
- [02:17]
Michael Lang
And Michael, it counts. It counts. You went on a limb.
- [02:20]
Zoran Mamdani
Thank you. Thank you.
- [02:21]
Michael Lang
You didn't have it. Pure fifty. Fifty. It. A hundred percent analysis was great. So. Subscribe to Michael's newsletter.
- [02:27]
Zoran Mamdani
Yes, thank you. Thank you. Wow. That, that's the validation that I was seeking, I guess. How can I prove my native New Yorkerness? I was born at Roosevelt hospital on West 58th street, which is now Mount Sinai West. So I guess that shows you how things have kind of changed. Colson Whitehead said that you're a New Yorker when what was there before is more real than once. They're. That they're now. And quite literally the place I was born has changed.
- [02:55]
Galen
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. I got you beat then. I was born at St. Vincent's Hospital, which is now a luxury high rise. So I think I might actually have you. Have you beat there.
- [03:08]
Michael Lang
You were born in New York. You were born in New York City, Galen.
- [03:10]
Galen
I was. Okay, here's the story. I was born in New York City. My parents were living in Morningside Heights, moved to Flushing for affordability reasons. Then when we started going to school, had to get into school. We moved to working class suburb Ossetting, N.Y. lived there until I was 10 or 11. And then we moved to a rural town in upstate New York outside of Syracuse. And then I moved back to New York City in my professional life. So kind of like the whole, I'm, I may not be the biggest New Yorker, but I'm the most New York.
- [03:43]
Michael Lang
You know, like Mitt Romney was born, I think, in Detroit. Right. And like, I don't know if you'd consider Mitt Romney a consummate Detroiter, maybe, maybe a Michigander. But like you're. I think you're stretching the definition. Okay.
- [03:55]
Galen
But I've also lived the majority of my life in New York City or the longest I've lived.
- [04:00]
Michael Lang
That counts. Yeah.
- [04:01]
Zoran Mamdani
I've lived my whole life in New York City absent just my time in college. Oh, no, I never. This was not a born and. And left thing. Like I am, I am here, ironically. I went to, I went to Boston College. A lot of great New Yorkers go to college in Boston, then come back like aoc. But ironically, I was very. I was. When I was in college, I was very. I started getting involved in politics here. But I wish I did a little more in Boston because I kind of missed the Michelle Wu rise. And, and she's someone that in hindsight, I, I think is very similar to someone like Saran Doni. Right down to the free buses and the expanded rent control, rent stabilization, things like that. And that's.
- [04:39]
Michael Lang
Yeah, I guess people will make, people will make that comparison for being a more favorable pathway. You'll hear probably Brandon Johnson's name might some Chicago friends texting me right about. Oh, no, you know, he's very unpopular, but like, there are. Yeah.
- [04:52]
Galen
The two paths, right? It's the Michelle Wu or Brandon Johnson. Nate, we got to get to Top line takeaways, but first tell us why you count as a New Yorker. Why you're qualified. Why you are qualified to speak on this substack live.
- [05:07]
Michael Lang
You know, I think because, like, I get really defensive when, like people from not New York criticize New York and pretend New York is like some type of hellhole. Like, especially like the free market Silicon Valley types. I mean, look at the rent in New York, right. Which is a big theme. Affordability in the campaign.
- [05:26]
Galen
The girls are crashing out online.
- [05:30]
Michael Lang
I mean, look, I think people misunderstand. I think people don't understand the incredible diversity that you have in New York, including politically. Right. It's like not monolithic, progressive and that. That texturedness. Right. I don't know as well as Michael, but like, I've lived in a few different neighborhoods now, and I'm somebody who gets around the city and the texturedness of New York. Like someone was saying online the day like New York is ugly. I think New York, if you're like walking, you're running like the Williamsburg Bridge or something. There's so many beautiful. It's not beautiful like quite a conventional way, but I think New York is kind of pret. That's how I'm a New Yorker.
- [06:04]
Galen
Well, let me.
- [06:05]
Michael Lang
Let me corner of it.
- [06:06]
Zoran Mamdani
That was beautiful.
- [06:07]
Galen
On that point, let me tell you how I started my day. Going for a run in Prospect park and getting stuck behind a garbage truck that was going at exactly the same speed that I was jogging, picking up all the trash in Prospect Park. So it is beautiful and also complex and quite smelly. But. Okay, Michael, since you are the star of the show in a way, since you predicted Zoran victory, why don't you start with your top line takeaway.
- [06:33]
Zoran Mamdani
My top line takeaway is that and shameless plug. I published an article in the New York Times yesterday about this very thing. So please check that out. There's a great interactive map. I don't get to do that very often, but Zoram Hamdani, he assembled this coalition that number one is of some of it's of the demographics in New York that are currently growing the most. Right. The young urban professional class. Young. A young and very diverse Asian and Hispanic electorate. And he did really well with people who are working class, middle class and upper middle class. But the Theme that kind of brings them all together is that they are overwhelmingly renters. Whereas Andrew Cuomo did quite well with the homeowning class, particularly the black homeowning middle class, and then the ultra wealthy, right. Fifth Avenue, Central Park, West Riverside Drive, and then also with orthodox and acidic Jews. But he's kind of started the race with. With really pronounced advantages everywhere across the electorate. Right. And over the last couple months, Zoran has really, really basically whittled into that. Into that lead and reduced his coalition, like, quite significantly. I was saying earlier, Nate, before you jumped on, I was like, this is the most embarrassing 36%. I can. I can remember 36. Much higher than what Eric Adams had on the first round last time. But it really. I mean, just looking at the map, it really felt like Cuomo's coalition was a shell of what it once was, and in many respects, it is. The last time he was on the ballot in New York city, he won 66% of the vote against Cynthia Nixon. Now, I mean, he was. I mean, he was. It was crushing. Only up by seven, but by the final round, it'll probably be between 11 and 14%. He was crushed by the very person that he wanted the one on one with. So be careful what you wish.
- [08:28]
Michael Lang
So let me. I remember that night of the 2018 gubernatorial primary. I was like, out. Out with my friend at, like, kind of a hipster bar in, like, I don't know, central Manhattan, Flatiron. Do they stuff. There are any. And there was like, a younger couple next to us, and they were expressing dismay. Oh, you know, looks like Cuomo's gonna win. And my friend is. She's kind of a moderate Democrat. She's like, well, of course he is. Right? Like, it's. Cuomo's really popular.
- [08:56]
Galen
And.
- [08:56]
Michael Lang
And what did you think that Cynthia Nixon could win? So what changed? Michael, or Galen, for that matter? I'm taking over hosting duties, I guess. What changed between 2018 and 2024? How much of it? Or 2025. Excuse me. How much of it is New York versus New York State? How much of it is the sexual harassment scandals or scandals? How much of it is the mood shift in the country? What do you. What do you think?
- [09:22]
Zoran Mamdani
Yeah, that's. That's an excellent question. I mean, I think it's important to say that. That Cuomo wasn't even really at his and his true apex in 2018. That kind of came in 2020. People wanted him to take over from Joe Biden, you know, swap the sleepy Biden off the ticket for you know, Andrew Cuomo, who did all those daily pandemic briefings, which, you know, he was genuinely. Oh, yeah, good at that. Right. And also, you know, people wanted him to run for president in 2024. And then, so 2020 was kind of his apex. And then very quickly, you know, he has the fall from grace. Right. Sexual harassment allegations start coming out. It's revealed that they intentionally undercounted nursing home deaths during the pandemic by several thousand. They rewrote a report, and then there was a bombshell report by the New York State attorney general that basically found that these 11 allegations were certainly, you know, that they were very credible and that Cuomo's denials were not. And then there was overwhelming pressure on him to resign. He was going to be impeached by the state legislature if he wasn't. So he resigns, briefly mulls, and, you know, a comeback a year later, decides against it, waits in the wings for, you know, Eric Adams was. There were. There were always, you know, kind of the specter of legal trouble haunting his administration. He kind of waits in a way that was similar to how he waited out David Patterson, who also had legal trouble when he was the governor, New York's first black governor, New York versus New York's second black mayor. Adams basically leaves the field, you know, after his indictment. That then goes away, and the path is kind of clear for Cuomo to come back. But. But, I mean, I think there were. There were many ways that he could have run this race, but. Or won the race, but he just. He ran a shambolically awful campaign. I mean, people. You know, for a while, people were like, oh, you're harsh on him because you don't like him. And let's be clear, I do not like Andrew Cuomo. I am very pleased with what happened on Tuesday. But objectively, I mean, it was an atrocious campaign. They ran away from the media. They took. They took the voters of New York for granted. And I think all of us as New Yorkers, I take that very seriously. You know, when you take the people who live and work here every day, when you take their support for granted, and he absolutely did. It was an unbelievable arrogant. That, you know, the way they behaved, the insinuations that you were not a real New Yorker if you did not support Andrew Cuomo. But they were very, you know, they were preoccupied with all the wrong things. And I will say I. I took some. I took some flack for this because the first poll that really showed the race was tightening. They had A meltdown on the Internet, you know, with. They were yelling at the journalists, things like that.
- [12:03]
Galen
Like, always.
- [12:04]
Michael Lang
Always a bad sign. Yeah, always a bad sign.
- [12:06]
Zoran Mamdani
But they're like coming after Politico and it's like, guys like Politico is not really writing super negatively about you. And I distilled it as they were. They were trying to spin the political class of the city when it's like you are actually at risk of losing a lot of your working class support. And of course that was dismissed. But then you look at this map and other than black voters, they hemorrhage support with Asian working class voters, they hemorrhage support with Hispanic working class voters. They won Staten island by 9%, which is Staten. You know, that is the most Italian county in the United States. It's a very union dense county, but also the North Shore is very racially diverse. I mean, it was, I mean, again, an atrocious performance, commiserate of an awful campaign.
- [12:49]
Galen
Yeah, I mean, I think we can talk about some of the macro trends here as well. Which is one of the challenges for progressives when they've run in the past is they've got like, support amongst the, you know, white progressive professional class on lock, but they're not able to diversify that support. And it looks like Mandani was able to do that. And what was the issue that he probably did that on? Affordability. I mean, if you sort of just look at the streetscape of the city, the only evidence that there was a New York mayoral campaign going on was were all of these Make New York affordable signs from Zoran Mandani's campaign. And so. And he kicked off his campaign in the Bronx, by the way. He did not do very well in the Bronx. So I don't know how many of these voters he ended up winning over, but talking to Trump voters in the Bronx saying, what do you care about? And it was affordability, affordability, affordability. And so while he may not have got that exact type of voter, he was able to expand beyond the. I mean, if you look at the map, he ultimately did the best in places like East Williamsburg, Bushwick, Ridgewood, Greenpoint, the Commie Corridor, as you've taken to calling it, Michael, which is the kind of place you would expect to go overwhelmingly for an AOC type or even an Elizabeth Warren or what have you, or maybe Maya Wiley in the last mayoral primary or something like that. Big fans of Jumani Williams, the public advocate, et cetera. But it didn't stop there. I mean, the fact that he won Manhattan is a pretty big, I mean, what, these are all preliminary results, but the fact that Zoramdani won Manhattan and was getting some of those downtown places, was getting uptown, you know, like East Harlem and sort of Hamilton Heights area, I think is significant. And so, yes, Cuomo ran a very bad campaign. And I don't think that the lesson from this is that New York City is all of a sudden like a democratic socialist dream. I think that in a, in a general, under different circumstances, it could still be quite hard to win as a democratic socialist in New York City. But he was able to use an issue to sort of combine the two pieces of the Democratic Party that progressives have had difficulty combining.
- [15:10]
Michael Lang
Well, I mean, there is.
- [15:11]
Zoran Mamdani
Oh, sorry, Nate, go on.
- [15:14]
Michael Lang
There is an important point here that gets neglected, which is like having a higher floor among your worst groups is important. Right. He got his core, the commie corridor, whatever else. Right. Upper middle class, kind of New York Times readers, even though the Times kind of anti. Endorsed it. We can talk about that. Potentially, people ignored that. It seemed like, but like, he has broad enough appeal and presented enough energy to, that Mamdani held his own. Even in Staten island, for example, Even in the Upper east side. Yes. The actual Central park east voted for Cuomo. You go just a couple more blocks in, right. And you start to see some Mandani precincts there as well. Yeah, Cuomo. I mean, you know, people like, with Cuomo wearing like, a lot of, like, ads on, like, linear tv. Right. I don't watch tv. Right. I read, I read the Internet and have conversations with friends, but mostly read the Internet and walk around my neighborhood a lot. And there was like, no presence whatsoever of, like, Cuomo's campaign. Right. He had no themes. He had no, he was not like a protagonist of the story, almost. He became an antagonist and allowed Bom Donnie to become the protagonist. Right. And, and like, I don't know. I, I. Because it's always easy to say post facto, this guy under permanent expectations, therefore, he ran a bad campaign. But, like, but it was bizarre and kind of entitled.
- [16:32]
Galen
Well, you said you asked him.
- [16:34]
Zoran Mamdani
I was asked what changed. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Go ahead.
- [16:39]
Galen
You asked what changed, Nate, between 2018 and now. And it's people's feelings about the Democratic Party. Democrats feelings about the Democratic Party to sort of, you know, take a page from your book, Michael. I also wrote something in the Times that came out on Monday that was called why Democrats Need Their Own Trump. And it was, you know, a headline that was meant to grab people's attention more than anything. But one of the main points is that in order to turn the page, a successful Democrat is likely to run against the Democratic Party. And Cuomo became, you know, what people's negative feelings about the Democratic Party, post Biden, post inflation, post all, you know, the 2024 loss. And Dora Mandani became, you know, what's that famous quote from the 1992 election year? I look at Andrew Cuomo and I think of last year's calendar. Um, you know, that's not a great place to be when you're looking at a party where a majority of Democrats themselves don't like Democratic leadership in Washington. And so, yeah, I mean, that's what changed. Democrats themselves don't like where their party is at.
- [17:49]
Zoran Mamdani
I think also, you know, Cuomo, as you said, Cuomo very neatly embodied this kind of atrophying establishment. Right. He himself was like a Clinton aide. I think also what makes this race so interesting is you can do all the, you know, you can look at it really from a national perspective, but you can also look at it from a local perspective. And you mentioned that when Jaron launched his campaign, he was talking to Trump voters in the Bronx, and, like, while he didn't win for him run the Bronx, he was also talking to Trump voters in. Along Hillside Avenue in Queens, which is little Bangladesh. Right? And a lot of folks, not only did they talk about cost of living, they also talked about the war in Gaza, things like that. That South Asian corridor along Hillside Avenue turned out for Madani incredibly well. Right? You mentioned that some of his best neighborhoods, Greenpoint, Ridgewood, et cetera, right below that is like Westchester Square, Jamaica Hills, Kensington, these neighborhoods with large South Asian populations that for once they kind of had a candidate of their own. And while, of course, he did well with kind of the younger urban professional class, he just dominated purely with voters under 45, with voters under 50 across all races. Right? And you cannot sweep all of Bushwick, sweep all of Bedford Stuyvesant, sweep all of Hamilton Heights without those types of margins. Cuomo was so reduced that in those neighborhoods, all he could win were public housing developments and senior centers. That was it because he was. He. He really. He hemorrhaged support. And it's because Mamdani, on all the mediums that young people use, he was ubiquitous there. Right? I. Everyone I knew was asking me, wait, this is like your guy, you know him? Da, da, da, da, da. Like, what's happening here? And where Cuomo was just not. He just was not present at all and very much distilled the generation gap in terms of how people feel about politics, but also just how they kind of consume their news and are met where they are.
- [19:46]
Michael Lang
I thought he also kind of presented a very, like, familiar New York archetype, Right?
- [19:52]
Zoran Mamdani
Yes.
- [19:52]
Michael Lang
You know, bright young guy. You're not even quite sure exactly what mix of ethnic groups he is, but he's well presented, he works hard, clearly very ambitious. And New York likes people who work, are ambitious.
- [20:03]
Galen
Right.
- [20:03]
Michael Lang
It likes people who are hustling a little bit. You can take it too far. With Andrew Yang, it became, like, too much of a shtick. Right. He was doing stunts, and this. This seemed to work. I mean, I think he also kind of, like, caught the media a little bit by surprise. People just assumed, oh, Cuomo's running, and there's a bunch of no names who can't coordinate. And so. So it's going to be Cuomo, and then we'll see if anything interesting happens in the general election. Right. And, like, the timing was good. I. I still wonder. I mean, his margin was so impressive. I think it's pretty overdetermined and coming on high turnout. Right. You know, I still wonder if there are alternate scenarios where. Where, I mean, once the ball got rolling, then I think it was his to lose. Right. I wonder when. I mean, when did you think, Michael, that, oh, my gosh, Cuomo is actually really in trouble.
- [20:50]
Nate Silver
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