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Max Politics
The New York Editorial Board on Mayor Mamdani's First 200 Days & More
01:27:38
In this special episode, hear members of The New …
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Leanna Zagair
Foreign.
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Ben Max
Hello and welcome to Max Politics. This is Ben Max. It's coming to you from New York Law School and its center for New York City and State Law. Thanks for tuning in a special edition of the show for you. What you're about to hear is the audio from a live event where a group I'm part of the New York Editorial Board got together in front of a live audience to discuss how Mayor Mamdani is doing a little over six months into his tenure and and some of the broader political trends in New York Takeaways from the recent primary is a little bit of a look ahead to the general election this fall. The event, hosted by ABNI, the Association for a Better New York, featured nine members of our 11 member group of veteran journalists who get together regularly to interview candidates, public officials and other civic leaders for in depth, rigorous editorial board style interviews. And then we publish the full transcripts and often the audio to our substack. We what you'll hear is welcome remarks by ABNI CEO Emma Foman, who will say a little bit more about the New York Editorial Board in introducing us. And that's followed by a hello from me, the intro of our nine members in attendance, and then the conversation is off and running. Following our discussion as a group, we took a bunch of audience questions, which is always an interesting part of these types of events. So do stay tuned for those. And if you want to learn more about the New York Editorial Board and read some of our interviews. If you're not a regular reader or subscriber, just find us on substack@nyeditorial board.substack.com and very briefly before the audio of our event which took place on the evening of July 23, 2026 at the Green Space in Lower Manhattan. If you've missed any recent episodes of Max Politics, I've had some very interesting conversation with great guests. Most recently, I was joined by City Council Speaker Julie Menon to discuss a variety of important topics in the news of late and some of her legislative priorities. Also recently on the show, a bunch of post primary conversations analyzing the results with some of the winning candidates and others. And if you want to hear more analysis of Mayor Mamdani's first six months or so in office, I had a good talk here on Max Politics with strategist Matt Wing where we went through many aspects of the Mayor's tenure, governing and political movement thus far. Plenty to check out if you missed any after you listen to this special episode from me and my colleagues at the New York Editorial Board.
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Emma Foman
Hi everyone. Good evening and welcome. My name is Emma. I'm the CEO of the association for a Better New York. And I want to thank you all for being here and thank you to the New York Editorial Board for joining us. Clap to that. Clap for that. All these esteemed, brilliant folks. I also want to start by thanking Matt Wing and his civic studio, who I can't see at this moment, Matt directly in front of me, Wingspan, for sponsoring tonight's festivities. Give that a clap as well. And because our first podcast recording was such a hit, we're thrilled to be back for another political nerd fest here at the Green Room. So for those of you who are new to abny, we aim to strengthen New York civic fabric and create opportunity for New yorkers by convening 260 nonprofit, corporate, corporate, labor and philanthropy leaders in partnership with government. Many of folks know us through our convenings and events. We also do research and grant making through our foundation. We launched a recent breakfast salon called at the Table with City Commissioners that we kicked off with dot. Commissioner Mike Flynn made a power breakfast with the police commissioner. We have an upcoming tour of the Gateways Hudson Tunnel project next week. And we recently released a report at an Amity Talks panel on defining economic justice called Growth Matter that really looks into the state of the New York City workforce and how to make sure economic growth provides opportunity and mobility. We also had a really exciting trip with the Abney Women Leaders Network to see our New York's newest team, Gotham fc, trounce the Washington Spirit at Citi Field. So it was a great time. And with the Knicks triumphant win and the 39 Days of World cup mania, it has been quite a summer of sports. And since I worked on the World cup when I was at City Hall, I wanted to make sure that in my role here at ABNY that we were bringing the fun and the economic benefits all across the city. So we launched the World cup for all initiative and partnered with about 30 organizations across all five boroughs to bring watch parties and youth tournaments and community festivals to every corner of the city. So we've been quite busy, but since the primary, I've actually just been kind of, kind of emotionally counting down to tonight's podcast taping with the brilliant team at the Editorial board. And for those of you who aren't familiar, the New York Editorial Board is an informal group of veteran journalists working to fill some of the space left from the retreat of newspaper editorial boards from the civic life. You may have read or heard some of their candidate interviews before the last primary. But I will say this, we are all just smarter, simple, sitting in this room with them. So I'm excited to hear their thoughts about the recent primary. Also, we're about 200 days into Mayor Mamdani's tenure and eager to hear their thoughts on what's next for the general and start thinking of your questions because we'll have time at the end. So think of them now. And without further ado, I'm going to introduce Ben Max, who will introduce all of the folks on the New York Editorial Board. Thanks, Ben. I'm keeping this, actually.
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Ben Max
Thanks, Emma. Thank you to Emma, thank you to Abni and the green space, and most importantly, all of you for being here tonight. I'm Ben Max. As Emma said, I work at New York Law School. I'm the program director at the School center for New York City and State Law. And we have set up there a journalism project to help give some infrastructure and support to initiatives like the New York Editorial Board. So very happy to have that connection. I'm going to briefly introduce the members of the board who are here and then we're going to get into our conversation. We had 11 members of the board at the start of it and everyone's still participating. So we're missing two of our folks tonight, Christina Greer and Josh Greenman, who we miss. But let me introduce everybody who's here and many people here have other parts of their titles, but I'm going to give you the brief ones. So Ben Smith is co founder and editor in chief of semafor, and he took the initiative to get this group going in the first place and he'll be our moderator tonight. Juan Manuel Benitez is a professor of local journalism at Columbia University. Akash Mehta is editor in chief and founder of New York Focus. Alyssa Katz is editor in chief of the Forward. Miles Miller is a senior reporter for Bloomberg News in New York. Leanna Zagair, next to me, is editor of the Manhattan Institute's the Bigger Apple Policy Newsletter. Nicole Jolinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Harry Siegel is a senior editor at the Citi Reporter. Many of you in this room are probably familiar with all of those outlets and institutions. Many people on this stage have their own podcasts as well, which I didn't mentioned, but you can find them all. And Ben is one of those people. And I'll turn it over to you.
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Ben Smith
Thank you. Thank you, Emma, so much. And thank you, Matt. Thanks. Thank you for that introduction. It's really so fun to see the hardcore of the sickos who are obsessed with New York City here and also and among the many, many friends and familiar faces, including the great Bob Liffe, who when he was at the Daily News taught me to not treat politicians with too much respect, which is something that it's hard to learn as a young reporter, you know, but when I heard him, the way he talked to people on the phone, it was like, ah, okay, yeah, but so yeah, so anyway, we. This project is really about the role of journalism in New York civic life and the extent to which and really was sparked by our shared frustration when the New York Times got out of the business of endorsements, which were one of the few kind of like genuinely pulls toward a kind of public spirited conversation with politicians who mostly just deal with special interests all day. If you're running for office, all you do is have meetings with people who want very, very, very specific things out of you. And I think our view is this kind of conversation is a way to sort of pull people back toward a kind of shared interest and often to challenge people who don't have a lot of. Don't spend a lot of time talking to people who don't necessarily share their worldview. And it was one of the best things about New York politicians is that with I think, the sole exceptions of Andrew Cuomo and Jack Schlossberg, they. They're eager to engage with the media. They see the media as a really important and valid part of. They see journalism as a very important and valid part of civic life, which was really reassuring actually in this process. And when we kicked it off, we were interviewing mayoral candidates and I think Brad Lander and. Or Andrew Cuomo and Brad Lander were sort of the obvious credential two people were going to. And Akash, you were like, no, no, you have to talk to this like assemblymen who I had never heard of from Queens. And so Zoran was, I think, the second interview over my total skepticism. Honestly, I don't know how other people felt. But I just wonder, just to go back there, what did you see in Zoran Mamdani in that moment that made you think, wait a second, this guy is one of the really serious candidates for this office.
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Akash Mehta
I don't remember it this way, but
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Ben Smith
I will take the credit, just go with it.
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Akash Mehta
And yeah, I think it's a really interesting document to look back on now because he was polling at 2%, I think. And you know, and it was, I think, the first really substantive conversation he had and I remember being really impressed that despite the fact that this was his first, in some places, at least, tough interview, he was so ready with, you know, I mean, like, we asked questions. We stopped doing this, but, like, for the first few interviews, we would ask questions about, like, specific facts and sort of, you know, budget numbers, and he blew them out of the water. Like, he knew his stuff despite never having worked in city government. And, yeah, I think, in retrospect, I don't think this was on it any of us, you know, had a theory of the case at that time. But I think, in retrospect, looking at his tenure as an assembly member, it is really interesting to see how he. I mean, of course, he was working on. He was. You know, he had statements, and he was in the press conferences on the biggest things that you would expect a DSA member to be on, like the tax the rich campaign. But what he really sort of made his. What he repeatedly did was to make issues sort of not at the center of New York politics, like the taxi worker strike, like his bill to. Have Columbia and NYU pay property taxes and send that money to cuny. And like, of course, his bill to strip charities that are funding illegal settlement activity of their nonprofit status in the West Bank. He would center these issues that sort of spoke to larger conversations and then get a huge amount of media and sort of mobilization around them. And that's what he did in the campaign.
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Ben Smith
Yeah, I think I'm gonna. I think we all live through the campaign, so I'm gonna skip ahead to the merrilty, and I think just sort of ask some of you who've stepped a number of these issues so deeply, kind of how he's doing and what you see as his central challenges. And I think I wanted to start with public safety, which is. I think Mamdani actually probably would be the first to say kind of the table stakes of a successful mayoralty. And, Nicole, you have, I think, like a. We're living in a moment of really unprecedented li low crime in America and in New York, even though people don't necessarily feel that way. So what is your report on kind of the state of public safety in New York, and how's Mamdani doing?
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Nicole Jolinas
Well, thanks, Ben, and thank you, everyone, for coming to see us this evening. This holds true across the issues that Mayor Mamdani campaigned on. With one exception, which we can talk about later. Mamdani does well as a mayor and as an executive, when he is either repudiating or ignoring the very things that brought him to the mayoralty so last
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Ben Smith
year, spoken like a Manhattan Institute fellow,
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Nicole Jolinas
once he saw that he actually could win, he made it very clear he was no longer a defund the police candidate. He had been posting in 2020, 2021. Very clear that he was def. An ideological defunder. Ran away from that very quickly in the campaign once he actually started to get some traction. One of his campaign proposals last year though was create a Department of Community Safety billion dollar plus agency a year that would take over many of the aspects of the police department, particularly police department dealing with people in mental distress. But this was kind of splitting the difference between defund and fund the police, which we are going to take a lot of these NYPD jobs where the public sees these interactions that end up in tragedy and move them from the police. Never did that. We have an office of Community Safety very different from a department where a department would need a city council vote and need to be created. This office only has a couple of people. And so far, seven months into his mayoralty really hasn't taken any duties away from the police. So it's a long way of saying the Mamdani NYPD looks a lot like the Eric Adams nypd including of course who is commissioner and the Jeskatish NYPD tried and true Preventative policing tactics updated for new age is basically what is letting Mamdani say that crime is down on his watch, which is true. If you look at the seven felony index crimes down about 7% this year. Murders and shootings are at extraordinary rates. I mean we may end this year with less than 300 murders for the first time in 10 years. Other felony crimes, assaults, although they're down this year, they're still a quarter higher than they were before 2020. But that's not something that we can blame Mamdani for. He is now the third mayor De Blasio Adams and now this Mayor where we have gotten away from this idea that we want to bring total index felony crime back down to where it was before 2020 and the further we normalize these levels of assaults, that's not good. But certainly any idea that we were going to see an explosion of crime on the watch of a Democratic list. Mayor he knew because he's very good at what he does, that that would not be good for him or for the city. And so far that has not happened.
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Ben Smith
And what do you make of. There's like. And maybe it's just that like every summer in the tabloids is the summer of blood, obviously. And like, you know, it's like there's sort of. There's never been a year in the city. Obviously any crime is too much. There's very scary stabbing on the Upper west side today. But what do you make of the sense that maybe, I mean, I guess I'm curious if you could elaborate a little on the sense that like kind of broad crime is down, but there are very visible categories that are freaking people out right now.
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Nicole Jolinas
Yeah, I mean, people are not crazy to perceive public safety differently than they did from, you know, say, depending on how long people have been around. 1990, of course, was the peak of crime. Until 2019. Virtually all types of crime steadily fell every year. You could see this slow and steady, sometimes fast and steady progress and basically feel safer every year. In 2020, 2021, we had a 53% increase in the murder level. That was the biggest such increase in such a compressed time period ever. And assaults soared. And we see that continuation that, well, murders and shootings are down because the police has always been good at and is still good at containing the gang crime, the gun related crimes. In the hotshot high crime neighborhoods, particularly in the summer months, random assaults continue to be a serious problem both above ground and below ground. They're up compared to seven years ago. And it just seems, you know, you're not likely to be the victim of a random assault. But if you're thinking about how do I protect myself from crime? Very difficult to figure out. What can you do as a person to avoid being the victim of a random assault on the subway? So this is both a perception and a reality that drives public concern.
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Ben Smith
And Ben, just to sort of tick through the big issues on sort of the Mamdani agenda. Housing is another place where. Where I don't know, I think, I guess I'll just ask broadly, how's he doing and how is he doing compared to I guess what we expected when we talked to him?
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Ben Max
Well, I think we've seen from him even an acknowledgment and action to back it up that he's sort of rethought some of the older progressive approaches to housing development and what you might call sort of abundance minded politics and has sort of taken an approach that I think he's even called sort of an all of the above approach which I think has a lot of appeal to a lot of people. And he's I think trying on housing and other issues to kind of do it all, which I don't know how long that can last. And I'm always reminding myself, you know, he's been in office X number of months, not even seven at this point. So all these points that we're making up here tonight can quickly shift. But I think it's extremely important for his political brand that he came through with the rent freeze. Is that good policy? That's another conversation. Right? I mean, there's a lot of questions about what's going to happen with the rent stabilized housing stock in this city, especially some of the most distressed properties that are largely or all rent stabilized. That's a real issue. And I think there's a lot to discuss on that about the question of whether he and some of the people in his administration want that housing to become more distressed so they can help buy it up or help nonprofits do so. So that's a very interesting theme to watch. On the other side of the equation, he's seemingly taking a very pro growth, pro housing supply approach. We still need to see what that looks like because he hasn't had to make a lot of decisions on that yet. They put out a housing plan that's got a lot of interesting elements to it. But one of the biggest things that's in that plan that we're going to have to see how it comes to fruition is a promise to go even further than the city of yes did on Transit Oriented Development. And that'll be a fascinating piece of the puzzle because it's going to coincide with the development we think of the Interborough Express. And so they're already talking about some of those rezonings. And I think these are going to be very interesting tests, not to mention the very specific projects that come up along the way about whether he is a very sort of YIMBY mayor or not.
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Ben Smith
Yeah, I think a lot of the. I mean, we talked to a handful of the socialist candidates, and my impression was a lot of them hadn't, weren't so much like motivated by hostility to the private sector as having never really dealt with it. Having spent their lives in academia or nonprofit or political work. And like, it was sort of interesting to see Mamdani kind of discover on the campaign trail this other path to building housing, which was private markets. And Miles, you know, as the voice of capital, how is Mamdani doing with business in New York? And particularly, people love to talk about small business and Mamdani loves to talk about deregulating bodegas. But ultimately most employers, the big employers in New York are huge businesses, huge global businesses. And how is that going?
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Miles Miller
I think this week's announcement of Lina Khan as chair of the Economic Development Corporation. Obviously, we heard from the Partnership for New York that they have concerns with that triggering. Right. Correct. Our terminal customers shudder when they see Lena Khan do anything. Really considering at the ftc, she was very focused on the consumer and making sure the business was in line. When you look at the pied a tear tax and what is going on today with the mailers going out, the business community, you know, still is very cautious about Mamdani. But you do hear from members. I mean, he's got a good number of folks in the business community who've met with him and have liked their conversations and their experiences with him. But, you know, what was going on with EDC was of particular concern. Specifically that EDC has for decades been focused on economic growth in this city. You bring in a person like Julie Hsu who has always focused on sort of worker rights and worker injustice and labor, and to focus on economic justice was a marked change. We did an interview with her right after she took office and she was talking about. And I was shocked because in the interview, the first thing she wanted to talk about was city run grocery stores. And as I'm sitting in the governor's room at city hall, I was like, oh, that was a real thing. I was shocked. I was like, are you serious? And she's like, yeah. We were scouting locations. And that's the one thing on his economic message. I think he's been sort of very upfront about what his economic focus is going to be. And no one should be shocked by any of the things that he does. From an economic perspective, bringing in Tony Shoras is not exactly the. How do I say this? As a former de Blasio person, worked in de Blasio administration. It's not exactly innovative, but it is interesting, right? A steady hand at an agency that really needs a steady hand right now. Andrew Kimball was a powerhouse. And to have no leader for quite some time puts the business community really in disarray.
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Ben Smith
What is Mamdani's and his administration's theory of economic growth?
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Miles Miller
Julie Su should answer that at some point. I say this as a person who really likes Julie Su from my time covering her at the Labor Department. But I would love to see that realized. You know, when we talk about. When I go to them and ask them about having people on Bloomberg or talking about sort of like economic growth, what Hunts Point will look like, all of that. You know, the focus is always on small business, which is great, but big business is what moves the city. And so the more we can.
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Ben Smith
You're Warming a lot of hearts at the association.
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Miles Miller
I work, I work.
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Ben Smith
Feel free to jump in here, remember to fight with it.
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Miles Miller
But, you know.
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Akash Mehta
Yeah.
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Miles Miller
So big business would be.
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Juan Manuel Benitez
What I would say is that I think it's a little shocking that Mamdani got elected saying that he wanted to cater to the working class in New York City. And here we have a politician who after how many months, seven months in office, he's still in his messaging, his policies, he's still laser focused on that same community of voters and New Yorkers he was trying to address from the beginning. We had another mayor, Eric Adams, who he loved to say that he was the first working class mayor of New York City. Then as soon as he got elected, he started traveling lavishly to many different world locations.
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Miles Miller
He didn't start. He continued.
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Juan Manuel Benitez
He continued. He continued. He spent his nights at Zero Bond socializing with the rich and famous and lobbyists. Now we have this mayor who initially said, this is the group of New Yorkers who need some attention right now. That's going to be my focus at City Hall. But then we hear all the business community and the wealthy in New York City, well, what about us? What about our interests? What about we are the leaders of the city and we're the ones giving you economic growth. Do they really need that much attention right now when it comes to getting attention from city government? When we have a middle class and working class in New York City who can barely afford child care or many different things that would be basic in a city like New York? So I'm trying to be less, in a way, cynical. And I'm trying to be less cynical because I think we have right now a politician that is once in a lifetime. I think he's. He's a generational talent. We saw that when we interview him. And he's trying to appeal to the voter who is tired of being cynical. I think a lot of voters, they vote for a politician, and at the end of the day, they say, well, politicians, they're all the same. Right now, Mamdani, at least for now, his message is, this is what I said that I was going to do. Some things are going to take more time than others. Some positions might have to change a little bit. Because he's not an ideologue. He's more of a pragmatist. I'm going to cater to those New Yorkers who feel that they're being squeezed right now.
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Ben Smith
How do you sort of fit your. That sort of theory of how he's operating into the conversation about Socialism. And like you say, he's not an ideologue. He comes out of a genuinely kind of ideological, kind of sectarian group. But I mean, was he using them? Are they using him? What do you think of his relationship to a more ideological system?
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Juan Manuel Benitez
I love that we are in 2026 and still in this city, in this country, you hear the word socialism and people believe that we're going to go back to the Soviet Union or something like that. He talks like an average or like a mainstream social democrat in any European country. And I think as one of only two immigrants on this stage, I think right now I could say that.
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Ben Smith
Do I have to make people raise their hand?
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Juan Manuel Benitez
Now I can say that you leave the US and the world sees politics or the political spectrum in totally different terms and certain words. And I'm saying this because Mamdani himself is an immigrant. He comes from Uganda and growing up in other countries. So he has a different political culture, I think. And when it comes to political spectrum, he is measuring things in a different way. So, okay, so he's just like proposing things that at the end of the day, they are not that radical. Radical is just like getting elected and then just giving your back to the people who put you in that position.
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Ben Smith
I want to take through a couple more of the really big issues. There's been relatively little discussion of education, which is the biggest city agency. It's what the city spends its money on. Leah and I won't make you weigh in on, on the Soviet Union where you were born. But in a week when everybody's talking, it's sort of the annual week of talking about selective school admissions. You published something today about kind of looking at the broader statistics about the education system.
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Leanna Zagair
Yeah, everybody likes talking about the SHSAT test that admits the passes very few children of color. And so what I wanted to do is look at the bigger picture and actually who gets to take this exam and the reasons behind it. And what comes across is that attendance is the biggest issue that is facing the school system. And it is the one thing, thing that gets no attention that I've seen. It affects about a third of the city's children, which is 300,000 children are missing about a month or more of school every single year. And 150,000 of them or half are Hispanic children, which is like every six child in the city. Those numbers are just crazy. And not to be talking about them is also kind of unconscionable. The focus of the Mandani administration has been entirely on expanding early childhood Education, which is a nice thing to do, which affects a relatively small number of children. But at the same time, we really, really should be talking about how we get children, including a lot of the children who don't show up, are kindergarteners, are first graders. This is a question of families being responsible enough and understanding that it is important that children go to school and getting them there, because by the time you get to high school, everyone skipped class every now and then. But it's a very different story about a fourth grader or an eighth grader that needs to be there to get ready for their exams to advance to different schools. So, yeah, that was startling to look at that data and realize that we really are not talking about something that we should be talking about and something that honestly, Mayor Mohamdani, given that he has such a platform and he is so popular that he really could move needle on attendance if he really focused on messaging that school really, really matters and that it's a responsibility of the families and the children to show up. His Office of Mass Engagement could go out there and get the kids back to school.
- [32:18]
Ben Smith
Let's see, you know, another, I mean, a core part of his politics is Israel, Palestine, you know, not part of necessarily the day job of mayor. And he is not, in fact, going to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. But I guess, Alyssa, you know, in the Jewish community, parts of it are incredibly stressed out about this mayoralty. How's that going, Alyssa?
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Alyssa Katz
Where to begin? I mean, New York City, as with Jews around the globe, is so many Jewish communities. And what's, you know, I think the statistics are about at least one third of Jews. Jewish voters in New York City voted for Mamdani. It could be more, it could be less. And you know, what you have is this intense polarization where you have major parts of the Jewish community, including significant parts of the Jewish establishment, not limited to the Orthodox Jewish establishment, although certainly including much of it, although also not all of it, because you have both Zionist and anti Zionist Orthodox Jews, but these establishment institutions, establishment rabbis who went out of their way from the very beginning to paint Mamdani as a threat. To be clear, a lot of substantial basis for that. I mean, when you have a mayor who his leadership experience, his grounding in politics was entirely based in pro Palestinian politics that were extremely hostile to Israel. And at the same time, when you actually look at what I can't speak speak to his record before he was in politics and before we could really widely see what he was saying and doing. But certainly since he's been in New York political life, Maidani has been incredibly astute at drawing an incredibly bright line. Where he is, on the one hand, extremely. He's been an activist more or less against the. The existence of Israel as it stands now, which is as his Jewish state. And I believe he said that to us in our editorial board interview. Right. We interrogated him a bit on that. And where at the same time he has, in fact, if anything, when he has been, as he ran for mayor, as he's become mayor, the more strident he has been against Israel as a Jewish state. And to be clear, not just for its existence, but specifically around Palestinians lives and experiences and the militarization in the west bank, obviously the war in Gaza, you know, this was the movement, the movement for their rights and for Palestinian liberation was the movement he had come out of. But at the same time that he has continued to. And we've just seen this week, Mamdani really intensify these efforts in a way where we don't quite know where the next chapter will go. But it will be very interesting with this, you know, his threat to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister that he is now backed down from. But he's in fact continued to escalate his using his platform as mayor. Now his official social media channels, his official desk at City hall to draw this line saying Israel cannot go on as it has. But he's specifically targeting Netanyahu, which is interesting. But at the same time as he's doing all this, he's hugging Jews and Jewish communities closer and closer and closer and saying, we care about you. We're going to protect you. He made a very significant choice in keeping Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. That was a really kind of threshold decision and one that really pissed off his base. He had a lot of people who had come out of the movement who are very angry and continue to be. As he has had the NYPD respond to protests at synagogues and as Tish has, you know, marched in the Israel Day Parade. You know, the movement folks are very pissed off at him. But, you know, he. So when you say, how is the Jewish community doing what. The balancing act that Mamdani has been trying to play is to. To try to assure Jewish community safety, which in the end is not. At the end of the day, he cannot guarantee it. Right. But he's pledged to do what he can and to work with Tish to do what he can while demanding. And again, now he gave us this indictment on video saying Benjamin Netanyahu is a War criminal. I can't arrest him, but the federal government should. And, you know, the right to protest is a bedrock of our democracy. Now that he said it in a very careful way. And, you know, he's essentially urging people to step up. And, you know, I don't. We don't know what will come of this.
- [37:32]
Ben Smith
Do you think it's working? Like, is it, like, the sort of criticize Israel, try to hug New York Jews? Like, is it. Is it calming people down? Is it working in the Jewish community?
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Alyssa Katz
It's escalating tensions significantly with Jews who are strongly committed to Israel as remaining a Jewish state and as the place of the Jewish people. He actually escalated things today as Tisha B'Av. And he escalated things by last night saying, okay, you may have an easy fast, and so on. Tisha Bab is the holiday commemorating the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Right. So I think he's really escalating tensions with that faction. But overall, he's, you know, I think he's in a very strong position, including with a lot of New York Jews.
- [38:16]
Miles Miller
Yeah, we've been. But, you know, you gotta think of the. As another Jew on the stage. I just wanna some. You know, like, you have to look at the Jews he's surrounded himself with.
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Harry Siegel
Right.
- [38:26]
Miles Miller
You think of the ones in City hall, but, like, to go to Dvorah Halberstam's house and to meet with Devorah and to, you know, make that a conscious effort is one thing, to go to the Satmars and to, you know, be with Rabbi Niederman is another thing. Right. The Satmars are very much, you know, I guess, sort of independent of the. Of the folks in Crown Heights. It's very meaningful to. It was very meaningful to Dvora to have that audience with him and to really speak about what atrocities happened to her son, but also to understand the differences in the communities and the differences in what they need, you know, to continue having a presence outside of 770 Eastern Parkway and to continue to fight for safety. And when there is an issue in the community to sort of be upfront about it. And then you have the measuring stick, which is like, well, how soon did he tweet? Or how soon did he condemn? And that continues. But to make those inroads is notable and important because from what we heard on the campaign trail, people did not believe that that was going to happen.
- [39:44]
Ben Smith
Yeah, I love the level of detail of mapping the Jewish community required to be a New York journalist or politician. Nobody needs to be told what 770 Eastern Parkway is Akash. Before I get to Harry, Alyssa said something about his base being mad at him. You've covered the New York left a lot. Can he actually alienate his base or is his base with him no matter what? Is it like Trump? He could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue.
- [40:08]
Miles Miller
It would be in the commie corridor, actually.
- [40:14]
Akash Mehta
That's a good question. The New York City DSA has,
- [40:20]
Ben Smith
for instance, aoc obviously fell out with them and paid no political cost. Like, seems like maybe it's 100 people on Twitter is sort of the outside perception. Do you think there's a base that can hold him accountable to what he had promised on, say, policing or.
- [40:33]
Miles Miller
Yeah.
- [40:33]
Akash Mehta
I mean, so the New York City DSA objected to his plan to hire 500 more cops and unclear if it was in response to that criticism, but he did sort of zero that out. I think it's still sort of. And this is, you know, we're circling around this. To me, it's. I don't know what it means to be a socialist governing New York City. And seven months in, I still don't really know what that means, and I don't know to what extent. You know, four years in, we're going to be thinking of this as a significantly different mayoralty than the type that de Blasio had or as the same kind of mayoralty with way better and more compelling communications and politics for a lot of people. And I think, actually, EDC is a really interesting place where we'll maybe start to answer some of those questions, where some of what that isn't an agency corporation does is give private schools tax breaks for their renovations and do a lot of corporate tax breaks. That there's a lot of debate about whether or not it, in fact, creates jobs. You could imagine, because it's unencumbered by the city bureaucracy. It doing lots of really interesting new projects that sort of are instantiations of his sort of socialist vision of a muscular government doing new things. The thing I really say, like what.
- [42:17]
Ben Smith
Yeah.
- [42:17]
Akash Mehta
Want this agency to do is create a public option for funeral caskets. Because anyone who's ever had to deal with a funeral home is, you know, like, every part of that. That. That. Now, I'm really going off in a tangent.
- [42:37]
Ben Smith
No, this is great. But I don't know if anybody. Is anybody from the administration here. Please take notes.
- [42:43]
Akash Mehta
No, I mean, my grandfather died earlier this year, and I was just on the phone with a bunch of funeral home companies and they. They're required to maintain an itemized price list. But they're not required to give it to you until long into these negotiations. They're not required to post them online. They really should be. Sam Levine and Lina Khan tried to do this actually at the federal level, and maybe they'll do it at the city level. But then the individual things that they'll try to sell you on and upsell you on a cardboard box should not cost $600. And so anyway, I am curious to see if EDC, If that agency is sort of re envisioned in a way that wouldn't have happened under, say, de Blasio.
- [43:32]
Ben Max
I mean, I think the grocery stores is like one of the most perfect examples of a little bit more of the actual socialism coming in here. Because I totally agree with what Juan Manuel was saying before. And I've said for a long time, if you, if you didn't know Zoramdani came out of the New York City dsa, you'd be like, oh, he's like Bill de Blasio. The platform was similar. It wasn't, you know, this was not some massive sort of radical movement. And I think the grocery stores are one of these areas that could really, I think actually sabotage the whole thing. I think there's like boondoggle potential there that could really be a problem for him. But not getting into all of this,
- [44:15]
Miles Miller
what specifically I'm interested in that, oh,
- [44:18]
Ben Max
just the cost of building these places out could become just ongoing scandal and fodder for like, you can't manage a capital project. Then there's the question of whether the prices are going to hurt the local bodega. You know, I mean, it's just like, it just seems like endless possibilities of bad headlines and stories for him for. I'm not sure what the best case scenario really is, is that, you know, is this an eight year project where they wind up with five in each borough? Well, then that's a. Then that's something extremely different. You know, it's like, what is this going to become?
- [44:53]
Alyssa Katz
I just want to weigh in on a bit of a tangent, but an important one when you say headlines and stories, because we are all here because the New York Times abdicated a very important part of its local civic role. And we all, in different ways are part of the media ecosystem. But Mamdani is testing the proposition and I think he is prevailing, that he can govern regardless of what is happening in the media and that he controls his communication platforms. I mean, other mayors have tried, Adams tried, de Blasio tried. Mamdani may be the first, who can actually get away with that? I don't know if others agree with that.
- [45:28]
Miles Miller
He was hurt certainly during the big snowstorms, with the amount of snow deaths. And, you know, the hardest thing for a new press team was a spokesperson saying, people die all the time. And sort of luckily for that team, that story sort of went away. But that was not good. Very not good. And as much as you use new media to get the message out, the headlines will stay. And Legionnaires is another one. It's like on these two big health issues, it's where, like, there's something, but
- [46:07]
Alyssa Katz
they're not part of his platform. I think there's a distinction and it's, it's. And there could be a narrative that we end up seeing that. And this is something that Julie Menon, a city council speaker, was already kind of holding him to, is saying, you know, you're forgetting about the basics here as you're chasing the grocery stores and the childcare and everything. So that could be.
- [46:25]
Miles Miller
Do you have a question about Julie Menon later?
- [46:28]
Ben Smith
No, but would you like to talk about Julie Menon?
- [46:31]
Miles Miller
She wrote that.
- [46:32]
Ben Smith
Just gonna open that up.
- [46:33]
Miles Miller
She wrote that.
- [46:34]
Ben Smith
Sounds like you think so.
- [46:35]
Miles Miller
She wrote that op ed. And it had a really unfortunate headline like the mayor's opinions, like, you know, bungled Legionnaires. You're like, ooh, that's my God.
- [46:46]
Nicole Jolinas
And on the issue of the cold weather deaths, that was an example of the mayor showing he will quickly be very flexible and give up what appeared to be an important principle to him when it looks like that's going to be bad for him and bad for the city. So one of his issues last year he said multiple times and answered multiple questions is, we are not going to do involuntary commitments. It will only be a last resort. And he never defined what last resort means. It already, by definition, is a last resort. And once we went into this cold freeze in January, February, despite the fact that there's actually still no evidence that this year saw more cold freeze deaths than previous years, Department of Vital Statistics puts it out every year. Unfortunately, people do die every year from these type of deaths. And we had a particularly cold winter this year. He's actually the one who brought up the. The fact that people were dying. This was what got the press attention on this in the first place. And as soon as he saw not using involuntary commitment is going to be a problem here, he reversed himself. And not only reversed himself, but started to say every day how many people that they were committing on an involuntary basis every day. So a Particularly striking example of how him being flexible in whether it's a cynical or a not cynical way actually ends up being good for the governance of New York City. And the flip flopping from a bad position is good. Another example of that was the rental rip off hearings. So he held these five hearings, one in each borough so that tenants who are not the people who show up every year to protest against the rent regulated rent increase market rate tenants, other people not used to the this process could come and basically complain about their landlords. And the first iteration left out NYCHA tenants you couldn't go if your landlord was NYCHA immediately became a place where he got tremendous criticism. And you had people funding these trucks outside the rental rip off hearings. You're silencing nycha. You had people wearing coordinated T shirts in the hearing saying, let us talk, let us talk. Many mayors would have maintain this fight on principle. Mamdani immediately said, you know what, we're going to set up a table for nycha. We're going to listen to NYCHA and solve the problem immediately. Where you had a couple hecklers stand up at the Bronx hearing that he attended and say, you're ignoring nycha. You're not listening to nycha. And he just shut down the heckling by saying in a very calm, friendly manner, I hear you. That's why we have the NYCHA table. It's a very efficient and seemingly obvious way of neutralizing problems and criticism. But many elected officials with years and years in office never learn this lesson.
- [49:52]
Ben Smith
We want to get to both some of the statewide and federal races and to your questions in a minute. But Harry, I want to call on you as the House historian here before we get off Mamdani, where do you place him in the sort of, you know, I guess the sort of last, you know, in the post war New York mayors like, you know, how do you sort of situate him historically?
- [50:16]
Harry Siegel
So listen to everyone here. I'm going to answer a slightly different question.
- [50:19]
Ben Smith
That's fine.
- [50:22]
Harry Siegel
Look, here's how Mamdani is significantly like Bill de Blasio and unlike every other mayor, he ran for office on stuff he cannot do. We just saw this with the arrest Netanyahu thing, which he knew was practically nonsense when he was at 2%, when he was a frontrunner, when he was the nominee. And now his mayor has been sort of forced to concede that and is still succeeding in that as a moral message. It was a smart thing for him to bring up, but you know, he's playing dumb about that part. He ran on tax the rich, not he's going to tax the rich. Albany needs to tax the rich, same as Bill de Blasio. It's a really interesting thing to do, and it is a theory of the case. And the theory is we're going to build so much political momentum and this wave is going to rise. The things that aren't possible are going to become possible. And my election is the proof of that, which is an extension of the same ridiculous flywheel and having great success in opponents timing, running in Trump's second term when regular Democrats are just absolutely sick of all the other options they have, recognizing this exhaustion with austerity. So he runs on stuff he cannot deliver sensibly. And his theory is, bring me in, I'll show that I'm decent, I'm trying, I'll be able to deliver it. Now, how is he not like de Blasio? First off, his timing is much better. The wave is still rising. He's doing something to help that. But a lot of it is, you know, he's actually keeping up with rather than doing that, number one. Number two, de Blasio got pre K, did not get his cup of coffee a week thing, tax hike that de Blasio talked about and sort of gave up. And he's like, I have a thing, I'm going to pocket it. I'll implement that one thing. And that's it. So you have an energetic mayor who knows that his mass engagement office is very important, that he needs to keep churning. He needs to show that momentum is still rising, which brings us right into the congressional races. And he's aware that messaging is the first thing. And if he does that and he shows goodwill that he's interested, he's gonna dance with them that brung him. That's who he's interested in first and foremost, that he has space to keep generating momentum. And that, that and messengering, as he said to us, you know, back when he was at 2%, what's most important in a messenger is what's going to allow this to continue. And so far, that theory of the case is really playing out.
- [52:42]
Juan Manuel Benitez
I'm going to disagree with, with Harry.
- [52:44]
Ben Smith
Thank you.
- [52:45]
Juan Manuel Benitez
Because I do believe.
- [52:46]
Ben Smith
I was just thinking what like I'm so that this. It's amazing. These politicians came in and talked to such a kind of cantankerous group.
- [52:53]
Juan Manuel Benitez
He ran on things that he can fully deliver, but he is really good at setting an objective and settling for something that goes midway. So he promised New Yorkers he was going to freeze Rents, Right. And people thought that he was going to freeze every single rent. But then six months, seven months in, the rent Guidelines Board has frozen the rent for rent, stabilized buildings. That's more than a million apartments in the city. That's something that many New Yorkers are going to feel and they are going to see. It's something concrete. He ran on free and fast buses. They're not free. But now the, the fare fares program, the discounted fares program is now wider and now there are some routes where the buses are going to be faster. He ran on taxing the rich. And today we saw the first mailing going out to Pied a Terre owners, telling them what to do to see how much they're going to have to pay. Those are concrete things that New Yorkers who are right now excited about. The new mayor and new charismatic, energetic mayor, who sounds principled, who sounds totally
- [54:13]
Harry Siegel
disagree, that you're disagreeing with me. This is his theory of the case. Well, it's, it's as long as people sense goodwill and that are moving toward this and that the city is getting a little more affordable and breathable, no one cares that much about the fine print, which really was and continues to be things he cannot deliver on. As you were actually just running through, as Nicole was mentioning with the Office of Community Safety, which is, you know, nonsense at this point, but again, it's six months.
- [54:43]
Ben Max
It's six and a half months in. We have to look at this as at least a three and a half year project that he's undertaking until he has to run for reelection.
- [54:53]
Nicole Jolinas
So he got the one promise that matters to his reelection. He was very systemic last year in the three concentric circles of voters that he needed. So the DSA base, it's a place to start with. No candidate had competently exploited this base and nobody with this charisma had looked at these voters as a valuable resource. But he couldn't win office just with the DSA base. So then he needed the de Blasio progressive voters. He worked on making them comfortable. But the third group of people that he needed were people who were thinking about voting for Andrew Cuomo. He made them comfortable with two things. Promising to keep Jessica Tisch as police commissioner, which he did during the general election, not during the primary, because he needed those Cuomo voters for, for the general, but also the rent freeze, because you've got 900,000 households, many of whom actually, most of whom are not ideological DSA people. They're not sitting at home reading socialist tracts, but they see I can save a couple hundred bucks a month. And I'm gonna vote for the guy who's promising that. And it's bad policy over the long term, but that delivers him that third block of votes that was critical to his winning. But the bad news or the challenging news for him is he needs to do that again. Once you've done a rent freeze once, you can never raise the rent. It's like the subway fare from 1904 to the 1950s. He's put himself in a trap, really.
- [56:33]
Juan Manuel Benitez
He's trying to do everything he promised or close to the things he promised year one. Because then New York City mayors are gonna encounter many different big crises and everything is over for them. They need to get everything year one when they have political capital. And let me say one thing about Jessica Tisch, because we've talked about her a lot. Yes to everything we've said hear about Jessica Tisch. But she also has a job right now because she is damn good at what she does. She was really good as a commissioner of the Sanitation Department, and she had roots in the NYPD many years back. So she is a good person to have in your team too. She's effective. So I think sometimes we tend to see like it might be a political play, obviously, but at the same time, she deserves to be there.
- [57:31]
Ben Smith
Yeah, there's obviously this kind of pragmatism to Mamdani, and there's no Democratic Republican way to pick up the garbage. One of the things that struck me in our conversations was as, even as this year, as Mamdani was making a lot of very pragmatic choices, we talked to his chosen candidates for Congress who were both very new to politics. And I think particularly Claire Valdez and Darieliza Avila, Chevalier and Lander is somewhat sort of a different category. And also I would say, like, not that particularly pragmatic. I think, you know, Claire Valdez told us that she didn't really believe in housing being constructed by anybody other than the government. And Terry, Eliza said that she didn't believe in borders or prisons, just sort of full stop bordering. Sorry. And I guess I'm curious if you think that. That. I'm curious for those who haven't talked yet, like, is. Is that. And, you know, if you're a member of Congress, it's obviously a different. You have a different job. Do you think that the kind of left is continuing to rise, that we're going to see more really potentially successful socialist challenges against everybody to, I don't know, Yvette Clarke, to Hakeem Jeffries, or is there a. Or is there kind of a moderation following there? I don't know if anybody's.
- [58:44]
Miles Miller
I mean, challenge Yvette Clark if you want. I don't think you'll be successful. I think, you know, stepping in to the Hakeem Jeffries challenge by Gee was very smart. But, like, there are, like. I mean, challenging Yvette Clarke is kind of crazy, like Una Clark, like, the Clark, you know, that kind of thing. But, like, talk about Claire Valdez. It was very clear, and you saw it in the transcript from our interview that what's a nice way to say this? I don't have to deal with this person if they win. But it wasn't clear that she knew what she was going to do if she got to Congress. Right. Like, it just was like, who would you find coalition with? What are some things you take on? Who are some members of Congress? You know? And that was. It was not a. That was. It was brutal. And. Yeah, well, she's.
- [59:39]
Ben Max
She's a perfect example of sort of like the DSA movement. Candidate Mamdani was. Not that he was tied to the movement of the movement, but also his own star. AOC is her own star. Then there's candidates for federal or state office who are kind of just like movement candidates who are not necessarily as sort of distinct on their own and would probably have no chance of winning or no chance of making, like, a big amount of noise if they didn't have that movement. And now the stars of the movement behind them, you know, and. And so I think there's interesting distinctions there. There was a big difference between Avila Chevalier coming in and talking with us. She may have said a bunch of things that people find objectionable or whatever it is, but she was ready to go. And Claire Valdez was much more unsure of what she seemed to believe in or want.
- [60:29]
Miles Miller
That was a great race. I mean, Reynoso is like, you know, he's a friend, you know, but it was. It was so interesting, actually. I took you to task for saying he was a friend. Oh, damn.
- [60:42]
Nicole Jolinas
Oh, man.
- [60:43]
Miles Miller
But it just was, like, it was such an interesting race because here's this guy who's devoted so much time to this neighborhood, this community, and could not break through. Like, truly couldn't break through. And I just wonder, like, the interview was so fun, but, like, he just couldn't break through.
- [61:01]
Harry Siegel
Voters don't care about any of this stuff. They don't care about what people like us think. They don't care about editorial boards right now. They want to throw these bums out. They're sick of it. And candidates with very different approaches and very different settings made that clear. And so in that moment, it's still our job to vet these people and make sure voters have that, that information. What are you going to do if you get to Congress? You know, are you thinking about who you're going to align yourself with? Do you want people who think that the very concept of borders or jails is morally obscene and voters said that's fine, don't be that guy and that's it. And so someone like Reynoso, who's a natural, who's talented, who's come up through part of this movement but is tied to the establishment, it's like we just, we don't care. And you just saw that in race after race after race. And our job is to take people through these motions and then they decide.
- [61:56]
Ben Smith
And yet, Sorry, well, I'm going to go to you next. But. So hold that thought. But. And yet Kathy Hochul, a pure creature of the establishment, is sailing to re election right now through a pact with Mamdani, through the usual kind of Republican ineptitude. And I guess say what you were going to say but then tell us what is term two? Kathy Hochul, once she's gotten through this and no longer needs Mamdani, what's that going to be like?
- [62:25]
Akash Mehta
Just on the point before, my question is, I mean there is a question about what is DSA going to do and are they going to continue to field candidates? They will. I'm curious what the Democratic Party establishment does in response and whether they try harder because they're just not trying very hard. And the best thing I read on the election was an analysis by the researcher Michael Kanukin who looked at Eric Delon's seat. This is an assembly member, represents Bushwick and Cypress Hills. And the DSA ran a candidate against him in. He's a 12 year incumbent. The DSA ran a candidate against him four years ago and came within 200 votes of beating him. Eric Jelan scraped by with 2,500 votes in a 130,000 person district.
- [63:18]
Nicole Jolinas
Yeah.
- [63:19]
Akash Mehta
Four years later the DSA candidate won and Celestian Christian Tate and Eric Jalon posted those same 2,500 votes. He had four years, he had a warning shot. He knew that they were on his heels and he and the party and all of the, he got all the union support in the race, 11.99, 32 BJ, etc. They could not marshal a single more Vote and Andrew Cuomo did not run very hard. They did spend $400,000 against the DSA candidate in this race through a super pac. And in general, in this race, the DSA overcame a literally unprecedented level of super PAC spending. But Errol Lewis has also written about this. The Democratic Party establishment has just lost the ability, which it once really did have, to organize voters and to show people that it's delivering for them.
- [64:25]
Ben Smith
Except for Kathy Hochul.
- [64:28]
Ben Max
Well, no, because in 2022, she only won by six points because a lot of Democrats stayed home. And that is, I think her bet with Mamdani is that, please get some percentage of your voters out for me. Because in New York City in 2022, she struggled very, very deeply with turnout. It wasn't a big Republican wave that helped Lee Zeldin. It was similar to what happened for Kamala Harris. It was Democrats and people who had voted Democrat were not enthusiastic and stayed home. And so that's her problem. She needs voters to come out. And so she has no New York City base. She's from Western New York. Obviously, I think she'll win.
- [65:10]
Ben Smith
But any theory what she's going to do once she wins? It is amazing how little we talk about the governor of New York always in New York City.
- [65:19]
Juan Manuel Benitez
You don't have a Republican Party in the state that can feel a candidate that can be credible all over the state.
- [65:26]
Ben Smith
So let's move on to that, because I think that's a really interesting question. To me, one of the most entertaining conversations we had was with John Katsimatidis, the chairman of the New York Republican Party, who, when we asked him about how they were going to reach out to immigrant voters who had voted for Trump and presumably would be willing to vote for Republicans, said that actually they only they were illegal and didn't exist, which he knew because he. From the vibes. And it was just. And I guess I'm, you know, maybe I'll. Nicole, go to sleep. Maybe you and Leanna. What is wrong with the right, with the conservative organ? I mean, talk about parties that cannot bring people out. Like, the Democratic Party obviously has its problems, but the Republican Party in this state just seems like in a state of total collapse.
- [66:15]
Nicole Jolinas
Yes. Leanna, tell us,
- [66:18]
Ben Smith
are there any signs of life?
- [66:21]
Leanna Zagair
I don't think so. Have you seen it?
- [66:25]
Nicole Jolinas
We have more Republicans in the City Council over the past seven years. I mean, they've gone from three to six. So there is some evidence that.
- [66:36]
Leanna Zagair
And a lot of that was over education.
- [66:38]
Nicole Jolinas
And crime.
- [66:39]
Leanna Zagair
And crime. So those two in Southern Brooklyn in particular.
- [66:44]
Ben Max
There's also a relationship between Trump being in office. Again, you know, like there's a bigger context here. Right. Bill de Blasio bumbling through a second term on the way out, sort of ham handedly trying to get rid of the shsat. You know, I mean, it's like a lot of, it's a lot of response politics.
- [67:03]
Miles Miller
Right. It's like Mike Lawler should have run. I just like, I think about that all the time. Like, I think he would have been a really interesting strong candidate. He's, he, like he's doing it from the sidelines with his race and trying to tie his race to.
- [67:15]
Ben Max
He knew he wasn't going to win in a Trump meeting.
- [67:17]
Miles Miller
Yeah, but he's, he's got that fight in him, though. Like who else? Like Bruce Blakeman's not bringing the fight.
- [67:26]
Ben Smith
And I guess if folks have questions, please, one more quick, two quick federal questions and I'll go to you, Bob, and then to you. Is AOC going to run for president? Anybody here have.
- [67:40]
Juan Manuel Benitez
She should.
- [67:42]
Ben Smith
What do he thinks?
- [67:43]
Juan Manuel Benitez
She's a great communicator, She's a great messenger, she has a lot of energy. And I think if there's something that the Democratic Party needs in Washington D.C. right now to energize the base is to feel candidates who are younger, who know how to communicate in the new environment and in the new media and information environment. And she is one of the best people to do that. Is she going to win? That's another thing. Right. But I think she would be a formidable candidate.
- [68:14]
Ben Max
And she has to give up her seat in the House to run for president or Senate. She could probably walk into Chuck Schumer's Senate seat, whether it's against him or.
- [68:23]
Ben Smith
That's my other question. Is he gonna run for reelection? Who knows? Okay, Bob. I don't know. Do we have a mic? Oh, sorry. You know, actually you go first and then give him the mic. Sorry. She's got the mic.
- [68:33]
Leanna Zagair
All right.
- [68:34]
Alyssa Katz
Thank you.
- [68:35]
Akash Mehta
Katherine Vaughn from Abundance New York. Thank you for being here. One thing I wanted to touch on was kind of, I think Mamdani has tried to make public sector excellence and efficiency part of his brand. From the pothole politics that we saw over the past six months to the pit crew announcement around in House tech teams. But some of the bigger fish there, like the New York Focus, recently reported on Mamdani planning not to opt into New York. Helps to speed up civil service hiring. He's kind of not going for that. And so curious to hear your thoughts on, you know, is it all sizzle and no steak? Do you think that Mamdani is really pursuing kind of government efficiency to the
- [69:12]
Ben Smith
max that he could New York Focus.
- [69:16]
Akash Mehta
Yeah. To me, this is like at the core of also that same question of what would it mean to have a socialist mayor of the city? The pothole politics thing. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think like, yeah, he's filled more potholes than mayors have for the past three years or five years or something, but it's really just the average for the past 15 or 16 years.
- [69:41]
Ben Smith
But better tiktoks about potholes.
- [69:44]
Akash Mehta
Yeah. Yes, exactly. So it is funny that that has become the synecdoche for when I'm not. Yeah, for me, the biggest question. Yeah, absolutely. Civil service rules. But for me, the very biggest sort of barometer here is the relationship between the city staff and contractors, where the city spends more money right now on contractors than it does on salaries. And core to a sort of socialist vision of governing a city is bringing those in house. And also the abundance movement and the sort of like civic tech movement. And it's sort of a point of agreement in at least a lot of sectors. And you know, there have been a couple of contracts, including the McKinsey one, which is interesting with that he's cut, but broadly he has not broadly. And maybe it's just too much to. Or maybe it's too early to see whether he will.
- [70:44]
Ben Smith
But, you know, if he is bringing this stuff in house and so focused on sort of civic excellence, does this at some point bring him into conflict with public sector unions?
- [70:52]
Akash Mehta
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, those unions are why he, for instance, is not opting into the rules to essentially to get rid of the civil service examination process.
- [71:04]
Ben Max
But bringing more in house is good for the unions. So I think that's the positive. I think the risk with the unions is what, like, what's he going to insist on in the next round of contract negotiations? Like, is he actually going to dig in and ask for any reforms which Eric Adams did none of, in exchange for salary increases and other things?
- [71:26]
Nicole Jolinas
Well, Miles brought up Speaker Menon before it was striking in this year's budget and actually after the budget that it's Speaker Menon who has positioned herself as the fiscal moderate, but she wanted more spending on traditional Democratic, Democratic constituency. So we have this new $325 million payout to the teachers aides that Menon and the council just voted on outside the budget. And you have Mamdani saying, we're Going to try to see if there's a way for us not to do this. And the same thing with the housing vouchers, which is the traditional democratic, nonprofit constituency. It was the city council who added this new spending in resistance to the mayor. So it's kind of a weird situation where we already spend so much money that we can't afford socialism. And Mamdani actually seems to realize that he is trying to carve out a little tiny space in the budget for his priorities. And that's already very difficult for him to do because the union money, the nonprofit contracts, I mean, this is all just inertia.
- [72:34]
Ben Smith
And Manda, what are you in the education space is there through early childhood. There's sort of a tussle over the public sector union's role, I think as well.
- [72:45]
Leanna Zagair
Yes. In terms of the workforce and bringing pay equity. And unions are very much involved in that.
- [73:02]
Ben Max
Bob Manuel was talking about the working class basis of the rhetoric. But the dsa, now the DSA nationally
- [73:12]
Ben Smith
is far more rigid and authoritarian than the New York City dsa.
- [73:18]
Ben Max
But this is, you know, I went to Brooklyn College. I remember my socialism and the Leninist,
- [73:24]
Ben Smith
you know, vanguard of the proletariat.
- [73:26]
Ben Max
This is a vanguard without a proletariat. This is, you know, you have essentially the affordability argument appealing to Gen Xers
- [73:37]
Ben Smith
who can't afford to live in this city.
- [73:39]
Ben Max
And that's real. I'm not, you know, I'm not dismissing it, but with the exception of the espionage race, where you had the complication that a lot of Harlem had not forgiven him for going up against Charlie Rangel years earlier, you know, this is not a minority based movement. And even if their candidates, you know, have tended to be from communities of color.
- [74:11]
Ben Smith
So it's very complicated, you know, it's
- [74:14]
Ben Max
a very complicated analysis.
- [74:16]
Juan Manuel Benitez
I think. More than Gen Xers. Yes.
- [74:19]
Ben Smith
Seriously, Millennials.
- [74:20]
Juan Manuel Benitez
It's more millennials than gender. And Gen Zers, who.
- [74:24]
Ben Smith
I was born in the Truman administration,
- [74:25]
Ben Max
so they're all right.
- [74:26]
Juan Manuel Benitez
And I'm not Gen X.
- [74:27]
Ben Smith
You're an old millennial, Bob.
- [74:30]
Juan Manuel Benitez
And what we see is that we have all these new young New Yorkers who are moving to the city or who grew up in the city, who did everything right of what they were told to do. They went to school, they got a degree, and now they're trying to get a job and they realize that they cannot afford the city. So I think that's, that's a constituency that he was looking for or part of his base. I think we talk a lot about the dsa. In reality, the DSA is a great movement that can help you knock on many, many doors. Something that is needed if you want to do this kind of retail politics and door to door politics that has been so effective. I think with all these candidates. When it comes to Espad and all these other candidates, I think there's an anti establishment feeling among a wide sector of Democratic Party. They don't care about their positions that much. These new younger candidates, Democrats, they just want the other guys out and they think that the House Democrats are not doing anything to counter Donald Trump. And then one more thing, because we've spoken about this, but I think the Palestinian issue is a generational issue. It's a defining political issue of this generation. I think we live in a bubble, obviously here in New York City and in the US but the moment you leave the New York City and the US bubble, you realize that most of the world agrees with Mamdani when it comes to his positions on Israel, on Benjamin Netanyahu. And obviously he knew he couldn't arrest Netanyahu. However, he's going to make his life miserable if he decides to come to the UN General assembly in September. And those images all around the world of the Prime Minister of Israel coming to the UN and being not welcome in New York City and having all these protests that he's already alluding to. I think it's going to be great messaging also for, for the mayor.
- [76:35]
Ben Max
I also think it's. And this is not an original thought, right? Plenty of people have pointed this out, like it's almost better to think of Mamdani and the movement as a populist movement, not a socialist movement. Right. There's 13,000 members of the New York City DSA by their numbers. I don't know if I still, I'm not sure I believe this, but they had over 100,000 people volunteer on the campaign. So it's not, you know, it's like, it's different. It's anti establishment, it's youth. It's lots of, I think, old school sort of socialists and liberals who are just sick of the Andrew Cuomo types and wanted to build de Blasio, who's just better at being Bill de Blasio. What Bill de Blasio promised, like not corrupt, enjoy being mayor and run the government a little better, cooler, you know, good looking.
- [77:22]
Miles Miller
I wonder, like, what's the reason why. I think you saw the fight on the COVID of the New York Post, right, with Donovan Richards and saying ties to white supremacy and stuff. And he gave me a call the other day. I was picking up my son. I'm like, I can't have this discussion right now. But it does raise a good point in how does the DSA start to look more like the communities that the candidates they're going to be running against look like for a good part of, of the last 10 to 15 years, the working Families Party sort of filled that role. And you saw that fight with, between Claire Valdez and Antonio Reynoso. You know, that is the question that sort of needs answering is like, I think Bob raises a good point about like, you know, think of sort of the groups in these neighborhoods where they're running, like, how do you get more black support? How do you get more Hispanic support? And sure, there are black and Hispanic people who have voted for these candidates. But I think we all understand what I'm getting at, which.
- [78:25]
Ben Max
But you're also getting at one of the biggest stories of New York politics, which is like labor unions don't move votes anymore.
- [78:32]
Miles Miller
No.
- [78:33]
Ben Max
Like does that do any. There's a bunch of attention like UAW Region 9. Maybe they are just picking the right horses. I don't know. I mean, I'm interested in like, but like, yeah, is there any evidence that the unions are moving votes?
- [78:47]
Nicole Jolinas
They don't move votes, but they can make life miserable for a mayor who 100%. I mean, this is the story of John Lindsay. He wanted the police to work at night and they didn't want to, you know, he wanted efficiencies to waste collection and they resisted that. And I think Mamdani's smart enough, just as every mayor since Lindsay has been smart enough not to go near them, which is a big part of our fiscal problem.
- [79:12]
Alyssa Katz
And just to take Your example of UAW Region 9, that is, I mean a movement that is not for the mainstream Democrats. That is a movement that is front and center in the Mamdani moment and particularly on pro Palestinian advocacy, on the anti AIPAC campaigns that took out Espayat, that defeated Reynoso. Mrs. You know, Valdez and Chevalier both worked for were members of uaw.
- [79:35]
Ben Smith
Not as autoworkers.
- [79:36]
Alyssa Katz
Not as autoworkers. I mean they're organizing academics, you know, Columbia University, libraries, museums, like all the, you just have. And they've been very intentionally, as a, as an international like going into these
- [79:48]
Ben Max
left politics and very sort of anti rich like tax the rich, you know, very sort of like the corporatists are bad, you know.
- [79:56]
Ben Smith
I think we have time for one more question.
- [80:01]
Alyssa Katz
Sorry, Ben.
- [80:02]
Miles Miller
Good to see You, Mike Tobin.
- [80:03]
Akash Mehta
Hi. But doesn't that present the. It's not as much socialism as it is an anti colonial and anti colonialism. Whether the colonialism is the ultra rich in New York City or the struggle in Palestine or gentrification or affordability. It's really more of an anti colonial movement than it is socialism. But the DSA happens to be the vehicle for it.
- [80:28]
Alyssa Katz
I will repeat the question because you didn't have the MIC when you were asking the question was is this fundamentally an anti colonialist movement? Whether that's in Palestine, whether that's in New York, whether it's around tax the rich. Absolutely. And I think the answer is Yes. I 100% agree with you. I think that is the common denominator here. And I think there's a lot to contemplate about like what that means about New York City, about people's perceptions of New York City, why Mamdani won. I think that is absolutely the right analysis.
- [80:56]
Ben Smith
Now we have time for one more question because that was such a short answer which just.
- [80:59]
Ben Max
You're right Mike.
- [81:00]
Ben Smith
Actually it's called third worldism. It's a whole new movement from the 70s.
- [81:04]
Akash Mehta
No, I'm joking.
- [81:05]
Ben Smith
So you know I work at DCAS
- [81:08]
Nicole Jolinas
as a city worker.
- [81:10]
Miles Miller
Yeah.
- [81:10]
Ben Smith
I'm a lonely technocrat in a populist world man. What do I do? They're coming for me. No, my question is if you are
- [81:18]
Akash Mehta
like an abundance minded, not necessarily moderate
- [81:21]
Miles Miller
but there's definitely an overlap.
- [81:23]
Ben Smith
How do you to use Gen Z lingo bring the sauce to the kids like do do establishing Democrats just need more vertical form videos is added. Is it a TikTok so they just
- [81:33]
Akash Mehta
have temple run on their foreheads while
- [81:35]
Ben Smith
they do speeches to get the visual stimuli going? Or is it rather that we need an entire new faction of Democrat that's also running against the establishment and really it's like a kind of like a
- [81:46]
Akash Mehta
three way triangulation thing going where it's
- [81:49]
Ben Smith
like I don't necessarily want to overthrow capitalism but I also don't want Sleepy Joe. He's a real nice guy but you know he's not exactly the picture of dynamism and from there be able to make. Where are the liberals going to get their shock troops? Where's the liberals at? Where are the liberals going to get their shock troops? Other than him you have. Sorry, did you have an answer? Akash? Just a wacko. I was thinking does anybody see? Because I think, I mean it's totally like abundance has sort of captured the intelligentsia but does not seem to be able to produce 10,000 people to knock on doors. And does that seem likely to change? Does anyone see it?
- [82:23]
Ben Max
You have to have a vision. This was Andrew Cuomo's problem. Like, what's your vision? We're in a time where you have to promise people something interesting, good, exciting. So, I don't know. I'm not gonna write a prescription for the abundance movement, but you gotta show it better. Like, what's the next wave of the New York City subway system run on that? You know something?
- [82:49]
Ben Smith
Ezra Klein for mayor.
- [82:50]
Ben Max
Well, but it's not about the process and, you know, it's about, like, the outcomes. Right. That's what Mamdani understood. It's like, what are you promising people you're actually going to do for them?
- [83:00]
Juan Manuel Benitez
I think we have another question in the back.
- [83:01]
Ben Smith
Last question.
- [83:02]
Juan Manuel Benitez
Zach, you wanted to ask him.
- [83:04]
Zach Jaworski
Hi, how's it going? My name is Zach Jaworski. I think one of the really fascinating things about this administration, obviously you guys have talked all night about the changes in the city itself and the vibes, but I think one thing, especially all of you being journalism adjacent, at least that's been really fascinating, is the transformation of the press and how they're covering. Mehrmdani, you're seeing the gentleman up here mention vertical form videos. I never thought in a million years I'd see Marcia Kramer do an Instagram reel. But you're seeing people adapt to it. How do you think that has changed under this administration? And where do you think journalism goes forward when it's all about getting views on social media now as opposed to holding power to account?
- [83:38]
Ben Smith
Yeah, maybe I'll take that one. The. I mean, the. I mean, I think the thing Mamdani, I think, is sophisticated about, actually, is that he, like, thinks the press has, like, understands that the press has a role, if a diminished one. I think there's an impulse for particularly successful new politicians to think the media has no role for the first six months of their honeymoon and then realize that it does. The New York media, obviously, is still very relevant. Yeah. But I think in a way what you're getting at, though, is I think that, like, the. And maybe to your question as well, like, I think it's. There's always a moment with each point, particularly these new digital technologies we've lived through that people think like, oh, only one side, only one slice of the ecosystem can figure this out. There was a sense that the Internet was, for liberals, Facebook was of the left, and Obama went and visited there, and there was just this conventional wisdom when I was coming up as a reporter that only Democrats were on the Internet, it was because Democrats were younger and younger people were on the Internet. And then it turned out that Trump and Republicans could also be on the Internet. And I think there was this sense for five minutes that, like, only socialists can do vertical video. And I think this is obviously not true. And the sort of technocrat who is crushing it at this, your guy is Dan Lurie in San Francisco. He's the most popular elected executive in the country and just does these sort of like very kind of like dorky, moderate videos about how he's like, cleaned up a section of a street and there's a restaurant opening. And I think you're just going to see sort of mass adoption of these new forms in a way that like, that isn't going to be like only the left, only the right, only the mainstream, only the fringe can do it, I think. And Mamdani is so adept at them and is a little ahead. But I think that's not. That's not an enduring advantage is my own.
- [85:16]
Juan Manuel Benitez
But if you can tell us a little bit, because you've been covering Mamdani doing vertical video for the last six to eight months or more, and you've been in those press conferences. So do you see as a young journalist coming in that the whole thing is changing?
- [85:33]
Zach Jaworski
I think that in the last six months, there's definitely been a significant shift towards vertical videos. I mean, like I was mentioning, you're seeing mainstream outlets doing it now where that wasn't necessarily the case pre Madani. And I think that that is sort of endemic of having a mayor that is a national figure for a not bad reason, like the last one, I suppose, where Eric Adams was making national news because he was being indicted by the federal government. Mom, Donnie's making national news because. Because candidates he's endorsing are going on to win primaries in contested districts. And he's sort of viewed as a national leader of this new leftist movement. I think that part of what the media is seeing and what people who are going into it are seeing is that there's sort of an immense potential to get engagement online from somebody like this. And I think that people and news outlets are trying to use that engagement to go towards their print or their broadcast, if that's necessarily working. I'm not entirely sure. But I do think there's been a significant shift towards.
- [86:25]
Ben Smith
That's probably what's so special about him. I think what Trump said when they went to meet him was like, you know, he was just like, you see all these cameras? Like, this is amazing. Like, I have heads of state in here and they don't have so many cameras. Like, that was the sort of core of the goodwill of that meeting was Trump was just so impressed with how many cameras had come. And I do think, I mean, ultimately one of you wrote this, but just Mamdani's capacity to focus attention is so, so extraordinary. Thank you all for doing this. Thank you.
- [86:51]
Nicole Jolinas
Thank you,
- [86:55]
Ben Max
Sam.
- [87:21]
Leanna Zagair
It.