The Scene
NEW YORK – The final days of New York’s Democratic primaries could have been about anything. Subway safety; congestion pricing; the size of the NYPD; freezing payments for renters. But the candidates don’t get to choose what voters are focused on, and they don’t control what the media asks about.
Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, with hundreds of thousands of early ballots already banked, coverage of the race for mayor has been shaped by massive new spending for the super PAC backing Andrew Cuomo — and by an interview with The Bulwark in which Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who trails Cuomo, defended protesters who say they must “globalize the intifada.”
These were both impediments to what progressives are trying to pull off on Tuesday, and what they haven’t been able to do since 2017 — sweep every race with their preferred candidates. Last week, I sat down with Mamdani after a campaign stop in Manhattan, then went to Coney Island to talk to Justin Brannan, a city council member running for comptroller, with Mamdani’s support. (Bernie Sanders has also endorsed both candidates.)
The conversations raced between topics, but this is an edited version of the answers both candidates gave me, on the attacks they expected in the final stretch, and the ways they wanted New York Democrats to govern and change their party’s image to the country.
The View From Zohran Mamdani
David Weigel: The last time we talked, you were campaigning for Jamaal Bowman. He lost, and he was deluged with ads from AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel. How did you prepare for this issue coming up in your race?
Zohran Mamdani: This is a well-worn playbook. I was fully aware of all that could occur, and it made the importance of building a campaign that could withstand any of these kinds of attacks all the more important.
That’s why we focused on our fundraising to ensure that we broke the fundraising records in New York City; raised $8 million, the maximum that we could spend in a race; why we’ve built a volunteer operation, now more than 30,000 people who’ve knocked on 750,000 doors. Why we built a digital media operation that released videos that are regularly viewed more than a million times, because we knew that in the final weeks of this race, there would be others who would be seeking to tell a very different story about who we are, what we’re fighting for, to always ensure that New Yorkers actually have a choice of who to believe, as opposed to just a relentless barrage of the same mischaracterizations.
How much of an impediment is this, in the final stretch of the race, to you getting 50% of the ranked-choice vote?
I don’t see it as an impediment at all. It’s one reflection of my broader politics, which are based upon consistency, and the belief that the ideals we hold dear — of freedom and justice and safety — are ones that are only meaningful if we apply them universally.
Despite the questions, I’ve actually found that a majority of New Yorkers agree with me. Even for those that don’t, they understand that my statements, my policies, my positions, are from a shared sense of humanity. We all remember the words of Mayor Koch. He said, if you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues, vote for me. Twelve out of 12? See a psychiatrist. And I think of that often.
We so often speak about politics as if purity is the only language, that we must be in alignment on every single issue. What New Yorkers hate more than a politician they disagree with is one they can’t trust. That honesty, that consistency — it actually allows for far more conversations than you would be made to believe. There was an older Jewish woman who came up to me at the end of a Democratic Club forum in a synagogue some months ago. She whispered in my ear: “I disagree with you on one issue. I’m pretty sure you know which one it is, but I agree with you on the others, and I’ll be ranking you.” To me that showed this ability for us to build a city where we can have disagreements without being disagreeable, and we can build a city where there’s room for a wide variety of opinions, always ensuring the humanity at the core of it.
The View From Justin Brannan
When I talked with Zohran, he pointed out how Eric Adams saw one of his roles, as mayor, as being a national voice for the Democratic Party. That didn’t work out like he expected. But do you see that sort of role for you, in this job?
Justin Brannan: Yeah, you set the tone for the country. I’ve learned a lot, running for comptroller. I’ve learned a lot about what other states and cities are doing with their pension funds. Ours is massive, almost $300 billion — like, the 10th largest in the world. You have red states with their little baby pension funds who are playing serious hardball, right? They’re going to their money managers and saying: Look, if you want to manage a piece of our portfolio, you cannot invest in alternative energy, none of it. You have to get the hell out of any ESG, all that stuff.
And they’re doing it! They’re saying, Please, please, please. They’re divesting from alternative energy in favor of exclusively investing in oil and gas. And I’m saying that we need to have that same killer instinct, and go to our money managers, and tell them: Look, it’s not enough that the city is divesting from oil and gas. If you want to manage our money, you cannot be investing in oil and gas in your other portfolios. If you don’t like it, we’re gonna take our money somewhere else. We’ve never had a spine to play hardball out there, and I am of the belief that if we did, it would work, and they would, they would surrender, and it would be better for the city, better for the economy, better for the pensions, better for the planet.
Zohran’s endorsed you; Zohran supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. If you both win, do you implement that?
I’ve never supported BDS. Look, I’m probably the only candidate in the race that actually talks about the trustees as partners. If I can’t sell these ideas to the trustees of five very ideologically different pension funds with different risk appetites — some of them might be into this, some of them might not.
You have to be honest about that reality. You can’t go in there and just steamroll people. You have to build consensus for why these investments make sense, or why these divestments make sense. You can’t go in there and just say this is what we’re doing unilaterally. I come from a purple district. I’ve had to beat Republicans three times to win. I’ve had to outrun the top of the ticket, which means there are people who voted for Curtis Sliwa for mayor and then voted for me, right? These people should donate their brains to science. But I do that by building a consensus. You can’t just say my way or the highway.
So, what is the overlap between you and Zohran, if both of you win?
Number one, I appreciate when he came out to support me. I’d still have to hold him accountable. But it would be nice to have a mayor who shared those same big ideas of trying to make the city an actual palace for working people and not this playground for the rich that it feels like it’s spiraling back to. One of the things that drives me f*cking insane is that every day there’s an article about how the billionaires are leaving New York City. It’s bullsh*t!
Rich people are not fleeing the city. Working families are fleeing the city because they can’t afford to live here. And if you talk to economists, working families fleeing the city is actually more dangerous than billionaires fleeing the city, because we can always afford to lose a couple of billionaires. I still want them, because I need their money for the firehouses and the public schools. I need their tax dollars. But if we continue hemorrhaging working families, we lose the whole f*cking ballgame. Every day I hear from some family that’s gotten squeezed out.
Where does congestion pricing fit into this? You were opposed to it; the Trump administration wants to kill it.
I’m not opposed anymore. I was a classic outer-borough skeptic, out here in Coney Island and Bay Ridge. Coney’s got a bunch of trains. Bay Ridge is one train, in and out. So you can get why people were skeptical of congestion pricing. But it’s working, and it’s reducing traffic. It’s changing behavior. It’s getting people out of their cars when they really don’t need them. It’s pushing people to take public transportation. It’s f*cking great.
This was not unlike “defund the police.” After that, congestion pricing is the worst phrase I’ve ever heard. It should be called “Manhattan Fast Pass” or “Manhattan Access,” something that makes you feel like you’re paying a premium to get something. I hate congestion! I hate paying for stuff! Congestion pricing? That is just a PR failure. And the politics of it actually tell a bigger story. Why do Democrats do this to ourselves?