“The Nation” Interviews Zohran Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary in June made the 33-year-old state legislator from Queens more than just the party’s nominee to lead the nation’s largest city. For a Democratic Party desperate to reclaim political momentum, Mamdani’s laser-like focus on affordability issues offered a clear path forward. The Ugandan-born immigrant who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor also managed to overcome many of the wrenching, personality-based pitfalls of New York politics by projecting an accessible, enthusiastic, and joyful determination to open up conversations and heal past electoral divisions—an approach that starkly contrasts with Donald Trump’s dark vision of an America at odds with the world and with itself. Mamdani still faces a tough November race, with his chief opponent in the primary, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, reentering the contest as a third-party contender alongside the scandal-plagued incumbent, Mayor Eric Adams. Perennial Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and independent Jim Walden round out the field.

On the day that Mamdani sat down with Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel and executive editor John Nichols for one of his first extended post-primary interviews, he had just secured the endorsement of 1199SEIU, the largest healthcare union in the country and a historic force in New York politics. At the same time, he’s still looking to win the support of national Democratic figures—notably heavy hitters from his home state like Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries—who suggest that the proud democratic socialist is too progressive on both domestic and foreign-policy issues.

Seated at a small table in the Little Flower Cafe, an Afghan eatery that he frequents in the Queens neighborhood of Astoria, Mamdani sipped a pink sheer chai and spoke about the inspiration he takes from past New York progressives such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia. He also discussed how he came to highlight affordability as the essential political issue of the moment, the future direction of the Democratic Party, and the legacy of “sewer socialism”—the breakthroughs achieved by socialist municipal governments in the past. Along the way, Mamdani highlighted key challenges for New York governance, such as protecting the city from the depredations of ICE and the vendettas of the Trump White House and navigating relations with the city’s billionaire class. He also spoke about the punishing media landscape and his efforts to address “a caricature of myself that is a responsibility for me to correct,” as well as his earnest hope—in a time of so much cynicism and despair—that democracy might finally deliver for working people. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
 

The Nation: In your victory speech on primary night, you quoted Franklin Delano Roosevelt, telling the crowd: “As FDR said, ‘Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people dislike democracy but because they have grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and weakness…. In desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat.’ New York, if we have made one thing clear over these past months, it is that we need not choose between the two.” How did you come to adopt that quote and to link it to your governing vision?

Mamdani: I was taken by this quote because it so eloquently speaks to the fact that for democracy to survive, it cannot be treated as simply an ideal or a value. It has to be something that has a resonance to the needs of working people’s lives. And in this moment especially, there’s a temptation to say that democracy is under attack from authoritarianism in Washington, DC, which it is. And it is also under attack from the inside, [because of] the withering of the belief in its ability to deliver on any of the needs of working people.

It’s not that we must convince people to believe in democracy as a notion or as a political aspiration; it’s that we have to convince them of its resonance in their lives. And it’s a joy to be here with you at Little Flower, because that’s the nickname of the greatest mayor in our history, Fiorello La Guardia, who took on these twin crises of anti-immigrant animus and the denial of dignity to working people, and did so with an understanding of what the fruition of democracy looked like—and even what the fulfillment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness looked like—understanding it in the language of the urban sphere: of more parks, more beauty, more light. You cannot defeat this attack on democracy unless you also prove its worth.

The Nation: FDR and La Guardia campaigned in difficult times—during the Great Depression, with fascism rising in Europe. They each captured the imagination of the people and used it to build electoral and governing coalitions. Is that something you were thinking about when you picked that quote?

Mamdani: It is part of the inspiration for this campaign.
 

The Nation: Roosevelt had a huge agenda, and he was a masterful politician. Yet he couldn’t achieve all of it. The same with La Guardia. Today, as you seek to implement an equally bold agenda, there are people who say you’re too inexperienced, that you won’t be effective. That will, undoubtedly, be a theme of the fall election, in which your leading opponent is a former governor whose father, another former governor, famously said, “You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose.” Tell us how you see governing, and how you intend to deliver on your campaign’s promises.

Mamdani: I only promise that which I intend to deliver. I will be judged at the end of my tenure as mayor—after I win this general election—by my ability to deliver on this platform. Most especially, I’ll be held to account on the central planks of this platform: commitments to freeze the rent, to make the slowest buses in the country fast and free, to deliver universal childcare in a city where it costs $25,000 a year to provide that for a child. The challenge of politics is to meet each moment. What we’ve shown in this campaign is our ability to do so from the beginning, when I was managing two people, to this point where we now have more than 52,000 people [as campaign volunteers].

This is not to say that campaigning and governing are the same challenge, but it is to say that they both present you with an ever-developing landscape—one in which you can only succeed if you hire a team of the best, the brightest, and also the hungriest. What we did in this campaign was showcase our ability to do that, and what we’ll do in governing is the same: hire on the basis of expertise, and trust our convictions, our commitments, to also hire those who are not characterized by the speed with which they say yes to an idea I come up with, but rather by the track record they can show in fulfilling a mandate such as this.
 

The Nation: Might your administration include City Comptroller Brad Lander, one of your closest primary rivals, as deputy mayor or in some other key position?

Mamdani: I have yet to make any personnel commitments. But I would say that it has been a joy to run alongside Brad and to work alongside him, and to see his leadership as both a colleague for years prior but also amidst this race, in showcasing what a new kind of politics can be. I know that many others felt the same. At a moment when the language of politics is so dour and so dark, it’s important to understand that the tonic to the darkness is not imitating it, but rather to marshal the same lightness and joy that also characterizes our lives.
 

The Nation: In your victory speech, you seemed to be trying not merely to claim an election win but to give people a deeper sense of your governing philosophy and focus. It didn’t sound like you wrote it that night.

Mamdani: No, the foundation of the speech was written before that evening. But we wrote the conclusion on election night. There was a sense of “Things look good—but it’s too early.” And then once I got the phone call from Andrew Cuomo, we realized that this was actually a victory speech. It was not too early to declare. And so we had to bring that clarity to what we had written.

The Nation: You promised to “govern our city as a model for the Democratic Party, where we fight for working people with no apology.” That spoke to the circumstances of the Democratic Party, not just in New York City but nationally. Today there’s this debate over how the party should reconnect with working-class voters. If you’re elected mayor, your success or failure is primarily going to be measured by what you do for people in New York. But do you also see the potential for a model of a new politics in America?

Mamdani: It has often felt as if we in the Democratic Party are embarrassed by some of our convictions—that at the first sign of resistance, we may back away. And what I have found as a New Yorker is that the thing New Yorkers hate more than a politician they disagree with is one that they can’t trust. And so I have run a campaign that is unabashed about its commitments, its principles, its values—while always ensuring that that lack of apology never translates into a condescension, but rather a sincerity. It allows for an honest debate with New Yorkers, where even when I go and speak to hundreds of CEOs, we have a conversation all in the knowledge that my fiscal policy, as I state it in that room, is the same as I state it on the street: a desire to match the top corporate tax rate of New York to that of the top corporate tax rate of New Jersey, a desire to increase personal income taxes on the top 1 percent of New Yorkers by 2 percent. It’s an honest desire, and it is also one that doesn’t preclude me from sharing it with those who may be taxed by it.

There is a temptation, when you see how successful Republicans have been with their style of politics, to believe that we have to mimic it in order to compete with them. In fact, it is a challenge for us to showcase our alternate vision. It’s not just a vision with regard to commitments, it’s not just a vision with regard to ideals, but it comes across even with regard to the manner in which we share our politics with others. And I think sincerity is at the heart of that.

The Nation: There’s been a pressure—a good bit before the primary, more since—to get you to back off from things you’ve said on issues like the Israel-Palestine conflict and taxing the rich. You’ve responded by meeting with critics, explaining that these are the things you believe in and engaging in discussions of where you are coming from. That’s different from how many candidates operate.

Mamdani: If I’ve made policy commitments, I’ve made them because I intend to keep them. I want to be honest about them. That doesn’t stop me from continuing to learn how to be a leader for this entire city. But that learning is not something that can come at the expense of the core of what this campaign is, which is a commitment to the very same policies we began with on October 23, the very same values we ran with for eight months prior to the primary. That marriage of consistency and growth is what I hope to show as the leader of this city.
 

The Nation: If you are elected mayor, you will have to deal with political leaders in Albany and Washington. You’ve said that you want to use your power “to reject Donald Trump’s fascism.” How do you Trump-proof New York City? And how do you do that when the administration is directly attacking you? Just this morning, the White House spokesperson denounced you as “Zamdami.”

Mamdani: I hope they find that guy. [Laughs.]
 

The Nation: So how do you Trump-proof the city?

Mamdani: There are a number of ways: You raise revenue, such that you not only are able to protect the city against the worst of the federal cuts that are to come, but also that you are able to pursue an affirmative agenda at the same time. It is not enough to fight Trump’s vision in purely a defensive posture. We must also have our own vision that we are fighting for—and that we deliver on.

And New York City [can also push back against Trump’s White House] by enforcing and strengthening our city’s existing sanctuary-city policies. This is a contest, also, of values that concern the fabric of our city and our country. And when I was saying that too often it feels as if we Democrats are embarrassed, just think about these policies, which have been spoken of by Eric Adams as if they are an attack on what makes us New Yorkers, when in fact they’ve been in existence for decades and have been defended prior to him by Republicans and Democrats alike. We know that these are the very policies that can prevent so much of the horrors that we are seeing in our own city.

Finally, we can fight by instilling hope in New Yorkers who are living through despair in this moment—be it a despair over how expensive the city that they call home has become, or despair watching in anguish as their tax dollars are used to kill civilians in Gaza, as was recently reported by NBC News, where the Israeli military killed 10 children waiting in line for a health clinic, one of whom was a 1-year-old child who had just spoken his first words. It is incumbent upon us, as Democrats, to fight back against that, and to also lift New Yorkers out of that despair with an affirmative vision.

I am running to be the mayor of this city, and my focus will be on the welfare of New Yorkers across these five boroughs. I will lead with a vision of protecting these New Yorkers and ensuring that we do more than simply survive in this city—that there is also a language and a reality of aspiration in our city once again.
 

The Nation: The president recently questioned your citizenship and threatened to arrest you. Were you surprised by that? Do you have any capacity to be surprised by Donald Trump?

Mamdani: Very little. He has spoken about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, what I believe in, my naturalization status. I think much of it is to distract from who I fight for, because for all of the many differences between Donald Trump and me, we both ran campaigns on the cost of living, campaigns that spoke about the need for cheaper groceries. While he’s betrayed those same commitments—most obviously through this recent legislation that will throw millions of Americans off their healthcare, steal food from the hungry, continue in his now well-known tradition of wealth transfers of trillions of dollars from the working class to the 1 percent—we will actually deliver on those commitments. And our delivery on them will throw his betrayal into stark relief. That is a threat to his politics, and it motivates so much of this language and this focus that he has.

The Nation: Instead of referring to you as a democratic socialist, Trump has claimed that you are a communist. So let’s talk about what you are—a democratic socialist. How do you define the term?

Mamdani: I think of it often in the terms that Dr. King shared decades ago: “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism. But there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.”

In a moment when income inequality is declining nationwide, it is increasing in New York City. And within the context of city government, I understand [democratic socialism as a way to honor] the responsibility to ensure that every New Yorker lives a dignified life. I often speak of Fiorello La Guardia—a Republican who once ran on the Socialist Party line and worked closely with the left—because he delivered that dignity through so much of what he did as the mayor of this city. This was a mayor who created the Parks Department, a mayor who built housing for 20,000 New Yorkers at a scale and pace which is considered unfeasible today, a mayor who understood what it meant to fight for working-class New Yorkers.

I am well aware of the immense responsibility that comes with this position, and I am also excited by the opportunity that it represents to deliver for those same New Yorkers for whom politics has seemed less and less relevant to the struggles of their lives.
 

The Nation: When you talk about democratic socialism, you put it in an American context, which a lot of our media never even imagines. But there is a long democratic socialist tradition in this country, and one of the best examples of it is the “sewer socialists” of Milwaukee. One of the interesting things about the sewer socialists was that they championed small business. They fought to protect small businesses, often against chain stores and big business. You’ve done something similar.

Mamdani: Yeah! And the extreme concentration of wealth and power hurts small businesses as well.

The example of sewer socialism is one that I think of often. What we have seen in recent years is that the language that should be identified with the left has become associated with the right: language of efficiency, of waste, of quality of life. To fight for working people must also mean to fight for their quality of life. Sewer socialism, to me, represents a belief that the worth of an ideology can only be judged by its delivery. That means improving the services and social goods that working people experience each and every day: the sewers, the clean drinking water, the parks. You win someone’s trust through an outcome, and that is what I am working backward from: an outcome of an affordable city and a desire to show that government can in fact live up to its responsibilities to working residents.
 

The Nation: So you’re not the candidate of the billionaires?

Mamdani: No. [Laughs.]
 

The Nation: Yet you met recently with leaders of the business community—some of whom are billionaires. As mayor, how are you going to navigate relations with the business community?

Mamdani: First, by showing that I see them as a part of this city, and that my vision for the city includes even the same corporations that I’m looking to increase taxes on. I know no matter what our disagreements are, there’s a shared interest in the success of this city.

There are points of disagreement, no doubt. But also, I enter into those rooms [for meetings with business leaders] having been preceded by a caricature of myself that it is a responsibility for me to correct. I do not blame many New Yorkers for having that caricature, for they were subject to more than $30 million in television commercials, mailers, and radio hits with those very examples of smear and slander. I, too, would have questions if that was the only way I understood someone. I also go into those meetings making clear that, though we may—and likely, for many, will—leave with the same disagreements about fiscal policy and the tools we must use to deliver that affordability, agreement on those issues is not the basis by which I will determine who I’m willing to speak to about other issues. There are many conversations I’ve had that begin and end with disagreement about that fiscal policy, but also include shared areas of interest with regard to our parks or our streetscape, or thoughts of what this city could be. That is why I speak so often of partnership. Politics, to me, must be an act of making the principle into the possible. And you do so by extending your hand to all who are interested, not all who agree on every single idea that you have.
 

The Nation: Do you think you’re opening up imaginations that have been shut down? There are people living here in New York who are surprised when they learn that city universities were once free. So there’s a tradition that has been lost in the past 40 or 50 years that you may be retrieving.

Mamdani: I leave it to you to make the judgment. I will say that we have been very inspired by the tradition, in this city especially, of the campaigns that came before us. One of the many reasons that I was so excited by the idea of walking the length of Manhattan when it was proposed by a team member of ours was that it reminded me of the video I had seen a few weeks earlier of David Dinkins walking through the streets of Harlem. It reminded me of the photo I had seen of John Lindsay being lifted into the air by a crowd, and of an understanding among New Yorkers of the necessity of politics to take place in public. Much of our sense of politics is grounded solely in the now—when in fact we have to continue to connect to that which has existed before, because even in the mere act of knowing our own history, we are reminded of our own possibilities.

While it’s tempting to think of the passage of time as innately meaning the arrival of progress, we know that in many ways we have had a fairer New York City in the past. That does not mean that we should engage purely in nostalgia, but that we are reminded of what we can accomplish and that, in doing so, we are honoring what this city has been.
 

The Nation: Your campaign has focused on the fact that the city has become harder and harder to afford—perhaps more so than at any time in its history. How did you come to that as the focal-point issue for your campaign?

Mamdani: If you speak to enough New Yorkers, you’ll come to this conclusion. It’s the difference in whether or not people can keep living in the city. People feel it in rent; people feel it in the job market; people feel it in groceries; they feel it in their MetroCard. One in five New Yorkers cannot afford a $2.90 subway fare in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. And it’s offensive that we have allowed this to continue and that we consider ourselves witnesses or bystanders to it, as opposed to those with the choice of exacerbating it or bringing it to an end. We’ve seen exacerbation under Adams, and now it’s time for a city government that actually uses the tools at its disposal to deliver a different kind of city.
 

The Nation: Since the primary, you’ve met with a lot of people who did not back you. There are still some Democratic Party leaders who remain resistant to your candidacy, and you’ve been meeting with them. You’ve also put a lot of effort into meetings and direct campaigning that seeks to expand your coalition: seeking to win over older Black voters, union members, and others who were with Cuomo in the primary. You’ve gone to the neighborhoods, to Little Haiti and elsewhere, talked with people—and won endorsements. You’ve met with and won over unions that backed Cuomo in the primary. Isn’t this what mayors need to do: to say to people who didn’t back you, “Let’s find our places to work together. Let’s find our common ground”?

Mamdani: You have a choice of what you want to do with your hand. Do you want to pat yourself on the back, or do you want to extend it to someone else? Your decision has to come from the question of “What is your goal?” My goal is to be the mayor of this entire city. It is not to settle scores and look to the past; it’s to look to the future. Looking to the future means continuing to welcome people into a coalition, and not asking them why or when they joined, but knowing that they have just as much of a place in this fight for an affordable city as those who helped come up with the idea of the campaign in the first place. It’s that same ethos that we practice as New Yorkers when we look to defend those who have been here for generations and those who got here the same day. It’s the way that this city has raised me.
 

The Nation: There’s a huge media story to this campaign. Some of New York City’s legacy media has not exactly rolled out the red carpet. The New York Times editorialized that “We do not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots.” At the same time, you’ve created your own media. How do you think about media and communications in New York City?

Mamdani: Oftentimes, the left is forced into a choice between the conventional and the creative, forced in part by financial realities when running a campaign. Thanks to the matching-funds system [which allows qualified candidates in New York mayoral races to get public funding], we were able to build a campaign that could do both. And we sought to do both throughout the entirety of the campaign, whether it meant our advertising strategy, our field strategy, but also as it pertained to our comms strategy. We wanted to engage and respect the longstanding institutions—newspapers and radio and television stations—and sought out opportunities to speak to them at every occasion, [while] knowing full well that more than 50 percent of Americans get their news from social media. So we wanted to both speak to those who tell the stories of this city each and every day and to tell our own story at the same time.
 

The Nation: Was it frustrating when, for instance, The New York Times editorialized so aggressively against you in the primary?

Mamdani: I took that editorial as the opinions of about a dozen New Yorkers—ones that they have a right to, and that I disagreed with, and ones that will not be a reason that I do not engage with them in the future. That’s how I’ll approach much of this, in telling the story of this campaign and in continuing to do so—and in ensuring that my disagreement with any piece of analysis will never extend into what too many politicians do today, which is seeking to clamp down on both the access they extend to the media and the media’s ability to continue to do their jobs.
 

The Nation: Will your focus on producing social media—which has gotten a lot of national notice—continue if you are elected mayor?

Mamdani: Yes. There is much of this campaign that will, and must, continue into governing, and the way in which we communicate is one of those things. It is a critical part of ensuring that New Yorkers see themselves in their own democracy: that they actually hear from those whom they have elected through a medium that they actually use.
 

The Nation: You could become mayor at a time when the president is openly attacking you and when politicians in Albany are saying there’s no money for you. As you struggle to deliver on the things you want to deliver on, is it important that you keep lines of communication open so that people can see how the process works—and what you are trying to accomplish?

Mamdani: The caricature of me will only grow, which means that our ability to reach New Yorkers must grow in the same manner. I take inspiration from many leaders who have sought to speak to their constituents directly, be it the examples I’ve seen of Senator [Bernie] Sanders and Congresswoman [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez through the use of digital media at a national scale, or [President] Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico.

The use of digital tends to be described as if it is an optional part of our politics today. It is a necessity. [Mamdani campaign communications director Andrew Epstein’s] idea was to place our donation link under Andrew Cuomo’s relaunch video, and that raised more than $100,000. That is not an optional part of a campaign or of our politics. It is just as important and as necessary as so much of what we consider to be the building blocks of how we run a campaign and how we govern the city.
 

The Nation: You just mentioned Claudia Sheinbaum. The mayor of New York is a global figure. If you’re elected, how will you address national and international issues? How will you build those relationships?

Mamdani: You have to keep your focus on the city. This city is its own gateway to the world. Almost 40 percent of the people who live in this city were born outside this country, myself included. I will be the first immigrant mayor of this city in generations, and I take that both as an honor and as a responsibility. Yet my focus is on the five boroughs, and if there are lessons and models for what we achieve here elsewhere, so be it.

The Nation: You’ve acknowledged that people may have serious differences with you on particular issues, Middle East issues—Gaza, for instance. But you’ve made a point of talking about a commitment to make sure that everyone who lives in the city is safe.

Mamdani: Yes. This is a city that each and every New Yorker belongs to. They belong to it not on the basis of their political beliefs, or their religion, or their race, but because of the fact that they are a New Yorker. And I will be each of those New Yorkers’ mayor. Even amid a disagreement, there will always be an understanding of a shared sense of humanity and that shared sense of belonging.
 

The Nation: Do you ever get mad?

Mamdani: I do. I do get mad! You know, I was quite mad when I met [Trump border czar] Tom Homan in Albany. I am mad when I see the horrific consequences of this right-wing federal administration. It’s an anger that I know many feel, and yet it is not one that we can let corrode our spirit and our soul.
 

The Nation: Do you have a favorite film that captures the New York City ethos?

Mamdani: I’ve often said [Spike Lee’s] Do the Right Thing.
 

The Nation: You seem like a guy who reads a lot.

Mamdani: [Laughs.]
 

The Nation: As a candidate, do you still read books?

Mamdani: Not much.
 

The Nation: Do you listen to music?

Mamdani: I listen to music because it’s something that I can do as I do something else. I listen to music as I get ready in the morning; I listen to music as I take the train, as I’m walking. Some mornings I listen to a song called “O Sanam” by Lucky Ali; some mornings I listen to soca music to wake myself up and get ready for the day. And I don’t know that I could do this without that music. It either gives you that which you hoped you had already awakened with—the energy, the hope, the belief—or it takes you out of that which is consuming you.
 

The Nation: Do you have a book that shaped you?

Mamdani: You know, I read American War by Omar El Akkad many years ago, and there was a phrase within it: “What was safety, anyway, but the sound of a bomb falling on someone else’s home?” And it has stayed with me for a long time and informed the way in which I not only see the world, but the world that I’m also trying to win.
 

The Nation: Do you think much these days about not just making this a great city for working people to live in, but maybe even about how a mayor might make the world better?

Mamdani: I try to keep my sights squarely focused. You know the New Yorker cartoon of a View of the World from 9th Avenue? That’s how I try and wake up every morning.

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