Transcript

Arielle Angel: Hello, and welcome back to On the Nose, the Jewish Currents podcast. I’m Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents. In October 2024, Zohran Mamdani launched his New York City mayoral campaign in relative obscurity. Half a year later, the state assembly member from Queens, running on a platform of housing and transit affordability, is now polling in second place, positioning him as the main challenger to Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor who resigned in disgrace after sexually harassing at least 13 women and who is now leading in the mayoral polls. Enthusiasm for Mamdani’s campaign is evident. His is the first campaign to hit its fundraising cap, raising $8 million from over 17,000 donors. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, he boasts more than 15,000 volunteer canvassers. Meanwhile, Cuomo, who began a lackluster second act in Israel advocacy following his resignation from office, is attempting to make Israel and antisemitism central issues in the campaign. In a speech at a modern Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, he blasted Mamdani as well as fellow competitors, Brad Lander and Adrienne Adams, for being insufficiently supportive of Israel. He erroneously cast Adams and Lander as DSA affiliates and accused them both of being supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel without evidence. He also zeroed in on Mamdani’s Not On Our Dime legislation, which targets charities funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

As the mayoral race enters its final months, Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart interviewed Mamdani in a conversation that first appeared in the Beinart Notebook on Substack. They discussed how Israel/Palestine is making its way into New York politics, how Mamdani would deal with President Trump, and Mamdani’s plan for subway safety. Suffice to say, Jewish Currents is a nonprofit organization and does not endorse candidates for office. We hope that our listeners in New York City will vote in the primary on June 24.

Peter Beinart: On its face, it would seem strange that Israel and Palestine would emerge as a significant issue in a New York mayoral race. But it actually does seem like it’s emerging as a significant issue, particularly between you and Andrew Cuomo. And I’m curious why you think that is and how you think it relates to the other issues that you are emphasizing in this campaign.

Zohran Mamdani: You know, I think what is at the core of our vision, of a focus on an economic agenda and a focus on working people, is a politics of consistency—a politics that believes in a universality when it comes to our commitments to values of humanity and of freedom and justice and safety. And I think that is where Andrew Cuomo feels the threat to the politics that he has practiced for so long, which is one of exception—one of picking and choosing who gets to have humanity, who gets to be recognized as worthy of any of that concern. And I think this is something that is on the minds of many New Yorkers. Whether they have family members in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, they are deeply concerned about the way in which we have had leaders in this city, for far too long, who have refused to offer that humanity to all and instead have asked who it applies to before being willing to give that same recognition.

PB: So you’re saying that you think the connecting tissue here is a notion of some hierarchy between whose lives are important that exists, both in Israel and Palestine and in New York City as well.

ZM: And I think it’s a politics where politicians—they try and work backward from polls and focus groups and their sense of a political assessment, as opposed to from humanity and morality and some sense of a principle. And we’re even seeing it right now in this debate at the national level, where there’s a question of: Should we be focusing so much on those who have been afforded no due process and are now being trapped in jails in El Salvador, or should we speak more about tariffs—without the question thereof being what is right and what is wrong, and that sometimes, leadership requires you to work backward from that and not from your sense of which way the wind is blowing. And I think it’s quite concerning. We’ve had a mayor for a number of years here in New York City who wouldn’t even condemn the killing of children

PB: In Gaza.

ZM: In Gaza, yes. And has sometimes even justified it. And what more New Yorkers believe than much of the political class would have you imagine is that it is possible to hold all of these things together. It is possible to actually live up to the words of the hostage families, who’ve told us, everyone, for everyone, this belief that our justice, our freedom, our safety are intertwined together and that we have to look at each other as holding the same worth that we see in ourselves.

PB: And I’m curious: How often, when you are traveling around New York City, do people bring up the question of Palestine/Israel? Because what I’ve heard from other politicians—and I think this is the conventional wisdom—people are focused on bread and butter concerns, local issues that are affecting their lives in more material ways—again, assuming they don’t have family there. And that is, I think, how people justify saying, “I’m going to leave this alone.” Has that been your experience?

ZM: I would say overwhelmingly, the focus is on whether or not New Yorkers can afford to live in this city and whether or not they feel safe as they do live in this city. And we’ve been responding to that, always with that same North Star of an economic agenda that centers working people. But I will also share that I represent Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing development in North America. And when I have sat there with my constituents, I have had to answer questions for which there are no answers, from a 75 year old woman whose elevator is not working in her building who asks me why the federal government can’t send her a single dollar for public housing of that $40 billion that was promised and somehow has billions of dollars to kill children. And I think that contradiction, at times, does come forward in New Yorkers’ sense of disillusionment with politics at large, disengagement with politics. And what we are speaking about, first and foremost, is using the tools of city government to deliver a city that is affordable and being unabashed about the fact that the foundation of that same belief in working people is a politics of humanity. And I think it is quite sad that when you say that humanity must be extended to all—and that also includes Palestinians—that it is seen by some, such as Andrew Cuomo, as a threat to the humanity of others. And I think it shouldn’t be surprising, given that we’re speaking about a disgraced former governor who is willing to weaponize any and all things in order to further serve himself. And we’ve seen that when he has used the very real crisis of antisemitism to instead become a cudgel that he can use against other candidates, though he has no actual plans to address it.

PB: So I imagine that more than one political observer has said something along the lines of: Listen, everything you’re saying may be right, but politically, this is not a wise decision. We don’t have a lot of examples of people with your politics winning elections, either nationally or in New York City. I mean, there are a couple we can think of. But the vast majority of people who hold elective office in the United States, whatever they believe, have made a decision not to talk in anywhere near the terms you’re talking. So: You do want to win, right? Because otherwise, you can’t do the things you want to do. So how do you answer those people who say this is just bad politics?

ZM: Those are the same people who said the same things when we started the race at 1%, and now, we are in poll after poll as the second-place candidate, the one that is becoming the clearest contrast to that of Andrew Cuomo’s campaign. And what we found in our journey over close to six months, as we’ve become the first campaign to maximize its fundraising—the fastest campaign in history to do so—and to raise $8 million, and to do it with the donations of more than 17,000 people and building a volunteer team the likes of which a mayoral cycle has ever seen (with more than 15,000 volunteers having knocked on more than 190,000 doors), is that people are hungry for a different politics. And the thing that New Yorkers hate more than a politician they disagree with is a politician that they can’t trust. And I’ve had people come up to me who’ve told me: Look, I disagree with you on Israel, but I agree with you on all the other issues, and I’m going to be ranking you. And I’ve appreciated that because I often think of the quote from Ed Koch, something along the lines of: If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, you should vote for me, and if you agree with me on 12 out of 12, you should see a psychiatrist. And I think that there is room to be honest with New Yorkers about what you believe—why you’re fighting for things. Because too often, we have made it seem as if any disagreement has to be one that is worthy of caricature or tension when, in fact, it’s also a reflection of what life is like, where we are working together on a common goal. We may not always agree, but at least you know where I stand, in any and all rooms, saying the same things.

PB: So talk about what you think a US foreign policy should be vis-à-vis Israel.

ZM: It should be a policy that is consistent, one with US law in thinking about the application of the Leahy Law and in line with what our stated goals have been for many, many years. And I think what’s been so disappointing and so depressing is that we have only spoken about international law, but we have paid it no mind. And so much of my advocacy has been around the application of international law. The legislation I have introduced, at the core of it, is the Geneva Convention, the Rome Statutes, a desire to say that we cannot simply live in a world where might is right. We have to live in a world where there is some adherence to the protection of humanity. And that would be my urging with US foreign policy. Instead, what we’ve seen over the last 16 months (and for many months and years before that) is not only a willingness to ignore that which is happening in front of us but, sometimes, an explicit desire to fund it at the tune of billions and billions of dollars. And that is not unique to Israel—it is also true with our government’s relationship with Egypt. And I think what so many New Yorkers and Americans want is just some consistency, just some sense that—why are we asking the same questions as Tupac Shakur asked decades ago, of how we always have money for war but never for the poor?

PB: I’m sure this is a question you’ve been asked many times: What is your view about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement?

ZM: I’m someone who’s been supportive of it, as I’ve been supportive of nonviolent movements to create accountability when it comes to international law. And I think it’s important to just have that consistency, because ultimately, we are being told to accept that which is unacceptable. And we need to ensure that we use the different tools that are present in bringing forth a reality of equal rights. And it shouldn’t be so controversial to say, but I think it has become, because for far too long, a politics of exception has been normalized as being the only one that is acceptable when, in fact, what we want is consistency. We just want equal rights for all people.

PB: My understanding is you don’t have a position about whether, ultimately, Israel/Palestine should be one state or two states. Can you talk about how you think about what an ultimate solution would be in Palestine and Israel?

ZM: I think less important than my offering a policy prescription is the hope that, as we would want anywhere in the world, an adherence to international law and equal rights for all involved. And I think it’s important to lead with those principles because too often, we have worked backward from a completely different set of goals. And I think equality has to be the bedrock of whatever it is that the future holds. Because right now, what we have is a reality where so many people live as second-class citizens, living under occupation or administrative law, and it’s simply unacceptable. And especially so as Americans, given that our tax dollars have subsidized this to the tune of billions of dollars on an annual basis, separate from the additional tens of billions that have been sent over the last 15 or 16 months.

PB: I’m curious: In terms of your views, particularly on the questions of Israel and Palestine, if there was a formative experience—whether it was a visit or things that you read or relationships that you had. I’m just curious if there were things that particularly have influenced your views on this subject.

ZM: My parents raised me to understand that these principles have to be the core of our politics, as opposed to figuring out what is possible from politics and seeing how many of the principles you can incorporate into it. When you work backward from principle, it allows you to see the world as it should be, not just the way the world is today. I was born in Kampala, Uganda, and when I was five years old, we moved to Cape Town. My father got a job as a professor at the University of Cape Town. And that was right after the fall of apartheid in South Africa. Growing up in these contexts—growing up, also, with the words of Nelson Mandela in mind when he spoke about “We know all too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians,”—always made me understand the interconnectedness of all of this and the necessity to speak up when we see these kinds of contradictions. And that’s something, ultimately, that has been at the core of my politics: This desire to end these contradictions. Because we know that if you make an exception for Palestinian human rights, you’re not only depriving Palestinians of those human rights, you’re not only rendering your claim to universality insincere and incomplete, you’re also making it easier for yourself to draw more and more exceptions. And the easier you make it, the more you will do it. And ultimately, that is part of what has led us to this moment in this country—that the Democratic Party has shown itself, time and time again, too willing to pick and choose when it wants to uphold the ideals that it supposedly is built upon. And what people want is the same as we were talking about with US foreign policy: Let us finally do that which we say we believe in. Let us finally follow the laws that we say we respect. Let us finally actually practice what we preach about equality. And that means ending this contradiction of inequality when it comes to the rights of Palestinians. And it also means, broadly, across the board, finally turning the page on a domestic politics that has betrayed working-class Americans time and time again.

PB: My father was also a professor at University of Cape Town, so that’s particularly meaningful to me. We talked about US military aid to Israel. Do you have a position on whether the US should give any military aid to Israel?

ZM: My position has been one that we should not be subsidizing the violation of international law; and what I have been immensely concerned about is, through both a Democratic administration and now intensifying in a Republican administration, we have seen the continued flouting of it and the continued willingness to send billions and billions of dollars to fund that very explicit flouting of it. And I mean, even in our own city and in our own country, we are seeing how this willingness to fund these horrific acts is in tandem with a willingness to allow for the ripping apart of the First Amendment, where we are seeing New Yorkers with permanent legal status being disappeared from the lobbies of their apartment buildings or from citizenship interviews for the crime of either being Palestinian or having spoken up for Palestinian human rights—and that is terrifying. We should not disentangle those two things, because that repression is one that, while it may have begun with a focus outside of this country, it very much is transforming life within this country as well.

PB: Obviously, now Trump is threatening Harvard’s tax exemption. What would be your position about whether Columbia University should maintain its tax exemption, or, for that matter, NYU or other New York universities?

ZM: I have introduced legislation at the state level that would repeal the property tax exemption for institutions of higher education that receive more than $100 million annually in that exemption and redirect it to the City University of New York. And the reason for that—it’s long standing, predates that of the Trump administration’s focus on these institutions—is that the New York State Constitution initially created an exemption for institutions of higher education to provide them with assistance for the fulfillment of their mission. And yet, what we’ve seen is Columbia has become the largest landlord in New York City, with NYU in the top 10, not far behind. And this exemption has now, instead, become something that is used by these institutions to provide them with a market advantage when they’re bidding against other real estate titans for properties across the city, where they know they can afford to overpay for a property because they will never have to pay property tax. And I think, in this moment, where we are fighting the repression that is coming from Washington DC and Donald Trump’s administration, we also have to remember that there is repression that is being echoed by institutions outside of DC; and I think often about how Mahmoud Khalil, the night before he was detained in his apartment building lobby and disappeared to an ICE facility in Louisiana, had written to Columbia and asked them for their help because of his fear of being disappeared, and they did not respond. And we’ve seen that with another Columbia University student who has now been detained. It is important that we understand the culpability of institutions as well, in this moment. And Columbia offers a stark contrast to that of Harvard in how to respond to this repression and has, instead, taken an approach where it has almost invited this kind of policy agenda from the Trump administration, as opposed to fighting it. And it is important that the mayor of New York City stands up for students and makes it clear that we must be fighting back against the Trump agenda and upholding the rule of law and our ideals in New York City.

PB: I’m curious to ask a little bit about your family background and how it informs your political views. Obviously, New York is a city of immigrants, and many people who run for office have immigrant backgrounds, but you have one which I think is atypical. Your family are from Uganda, and then, before that, originally from South Asia. And I’m curious about how that family and ancestral experience shapes the political views that you bring to this race.

ZM: I’m very lucky to be the son of two people that I not only love as my parents but are also inspirations for so much of the work that I have done, and the work that I hope to do. And my mother’s family, as you say, Peter, is from Punjab in India. And my father’s family left Gujarat for East Africa about 200 years ago. And I was born in Kampala, Uganda, in East Africa. And my father’s family, like many others, was expelled from Uganda in 1972. They were expelled on the basis of being Indian Ugandans, and they became refugees in London. And I was partially raised by my grandparents, my father’s parents, Yusuf and Kolsum. And I was told stories about their life during the expulsion. And one that has stayed with me for many years is that after the expulsion, after they were given 90 days to pack up everything they had built over generations and get on a bus, to get on a plane to a place they had never lived, they landed in London. They lived in these camps, and they would go on Sundays to Gatwick Airport, and they would watch the plane take off to go back to Uganda, wishing nothing more than that they could be on that plane.

ZM: And I was told these stories, also, with a sense of who my grandfather had been before the expulsion. He was this heart of the community, a pillar of the mosque, a poet, a small businessman. And in some ways, he became a shadow after that expulsion, a shadow of who he had been. And it reminded me, and it has taught me, how much is taken from people in those moments of expulsion, in those moments of eviction, in those moments of displacement. And it has taught me, as someone that has grown up in the shadow of that expulsion, in that sense of forever being slightly uneasy at the prospect of being able to truly believe you can be in one place for the rest of your life—that no matter what you think about politics, politics thinks a lot about you. And it is your choice as to whether or not you engage with it. But ultimately, it is engaging with you each and every day, and it is not something that is optional for many of us. My parents raised me with that sense—that to be political is not a choice. It is a recognition of our lives. And so much of the way that I was raised was a mixing together of the personal and the political, in that some of my fondest memories of what I thought were play dates were actually protests against the Iraq War. And I think that is a core part of who I am as a New Yorker, of someone who has grown up with a sense of what the histories are that New Yorkers carry with them, and as someone who is, as I speak to all of you (just a few subway stops away from where I got my citizenship), in deep recognition of the humanity of immigrants and the necessity of us in New York City showcasing an alternative to Trump, as opposed to an answer to how we got Trump, which is what we’ve become over many, many years here.

PB: What do you think the Democratic Party has done wrong since Trump’s return to power? And what would you like to see its national leaders do differently?

ZM: I’ve been quite inspired by my congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders’s Fight the Oligarchy rallies across the country, in showing that it’s not just right to fight back against this billionaire-backed assault on working-class people—it’s popular, and people are hungry for that fight. They’re hungry for a vision. They’re hungry for a politics that is fighting for something as opposed to just one that tells you to celebrate the crumbs that you have, and to fight against that which is being proposed. And I think that’s critical in all of our politics. And I would also say that I really appreciated seeing the senator from Maryland go to El Salvador and show that power is not something that is just at the ballot box. It’s not just the midterms where we can fight back against the Trump agenda. We can do it every day, and we can show it by our willingness to actually stand up and sometimes go to the heart of the battle, and tell the truth, and give the humanity to those that we are being told to hate, those that we are being told to caricature. And I think that it would serve the Democratic Party much more if we had more leaders within the party who were willing to use their platforms to offer that recognition, to fight back against that premise, because so much of why the Trump agenda has been successful is that it is often fighting in a void with no countervision for what life should be like. And the more that we recede into the background, the more that the right-wing vision for this country fills in the space. And I think it’s critically important for us to be unabashed about our vision. And that’s something that we’ve sought to do in our campaign, is to say from the very beginning: This is a progressive campaign. This is a campaign fighting for working people. This is a campaign of no exception. It’s a campaign of consistency. And it’s why, when the New York Post does its almost daily hit on our campaign, we just repost it, because they’re just telling the truth. Yes, we want to raise corporate taxes to pay for free buses, and affordable housing, and childcare. Yes, we believe that working people should be able to afford life in this city. And that means raising income taxes on the One Percent by 2%. These are things that we shouldn’t be afraid of saying. And that’s what’s so exciting about the race so far, is we’re seeing so many more New Yorkers that are interested in this kind of a politics than we were told would ever be.

PB: If you were to become mayor and you practice this politics of resistance, I think there are many of us who find that vision inspiring. But it is also the case that there would be a vast power disparity between your powers as mayor of New York City and the powers of the president of the United States, even as we’re seeing with Harvard. I mean, I appreciate the fact that they didn’t knuckle under, but now, the pressure is growing even greater on them. So I’m just curious if you were—you don’t want New York City to suffer because Donald Trump decides to make you his primary foil. And so: How would you just strategically deal with this authoritarian, racist federal government, given that you might become in New York City, therefore, target number one?

ZM: I would say that we already are target number one. We are firmly within the crosshairs of this federal administration’s agenda, their vision, their day-to-day interests. We’re seeing that in the fact that this federal administration has taken $80 million out of the city’s coffers. It has swept New Yorkers off the streets, it has sought to go after elected officials across the state (including our Attorney General, Tish James), and it has looked to use every lever that it has to make us buckle. And this is all while we have a leader in Eric Adams, who has told us that collaboration will protect us, and yet, we’ve seen the results of it: It is nothing. He is subservient, and yet, we still continue to get rolled as a city. And we have a disgraced former governor who is offering cowardice instead. He has called Trump a Queens boy that he’s worked with before. And Trump has said that he’s worked well with Cuomo. And the two of them see themselves in each other.

ZM: And what we need to show is there’s more than cowardice and collaboration. We could offer courage, and conviction, and clarity. Because I think, often, Peter, about the example of Sackets Harbor, a town in New York that has a population of about 1,300 people. And ICE arrested a woman and her three children, and a thousand of those 1,300 people came out to protest. And a few weeks later, ICE released that mother and her three children—not because they said they had any new information but because of the impact of public pressure. And I think that’s also what this bully pulpit could be in the city of New York: Someone who fights the Trump agenda and shows us what we could win. Because, frankly, our responsibility to fight is because of the fact that we could win. And one other thing I would just add, Peter, is that if the Trump administration wants to deliver on the promise that it ran on—of cheaper groceries—then I would be happy to speak about the fact that our campaign is the only one with a plan to reduce the cost of groceries through a network of municipal-owned grocery stores that will guarantee cheaper prices for bread and milk and eggs. But if the Trump administration wants to follow through on its other campaign promise—to create the single largest mass deportation force in American history—then they should be prepared for my administration to fight them at every turn.

PB: One of the things that I think was very dispiriting for a lot of progressives about the last election was the fact that Donald Trump saw gains among working-class people, among people of color, and particularly in certain communities. I think many progressives still believe that the Trump movement has a white Christian, nationalist, supremacist element, and yet, one had to admit that actually, its population base was actually growing more multiracial, more multireligious, more multicultural, and to some degree, more working class. So I’m curious what your analysis is of that, of what happened, and then how you would speak to people who—I know you did a video about this—what you say to people who voted for Donald Trump.

ZM: I think too often, as politicians, we’re looking for what we should say as opposed to what we should listen to; what we should lecture versus actually engaging in a conversation. And after the presidential election, we saw that New York State had the largest swing toward Trump of any state in the country, 11.5 points. And, as you said, that swing took place far from the caricature we’d been told of Trump voters—instead, in the hearts of immigrant New York City. And so, when I went and spoke to New Yorkers, I went to Fordham Road in the Bronx, I went to Hillside Avenue in Queens, and I spoke to New Yorkers, some of whom, many of whom, were immigrants themselves. And what I heard time and time again was that they could not afford the life that they were living. They could not afford the prices that they were being forced to pay. And they remembered having more money in their pocket four years ago. And while they couldn’t find the money for their groceries, for their rent, for their childcare, for their Con Edison bill, they saw a federal government affording multiple wars at the same time to the tune of billions of dollars. And as insincere and ridiculous and horrific as we know Donald Trump to be, I heard from many of these Democrats and New Yorkers that they voted for him because what they saw from his campaign was a message of change, a message of affordability, and a message of ending these forever wars. Republicans do not need to believe that which they are saying, but their willingness to say anything means that if we do not offer an alternative vision, then they will offer a vision for each American, whatever it is that they are looking for and hoping for. And what they did in that presidential election was exploit the despair of so many Americans and so many New Yorkers, and do so while offering them a message of change—when, in fact, it was simply going to heighten that same level of despair. It’s up to us now to both recognize the despair and offer an alternative to it. Because for far too long, we’ve told people that you should be happy with the little that you have; you should look at the stats about the economy, how well we are doing. Even if you are struggling, you should recognize that, in fact, we are in a better place than we were. And when, in fact, for people in their own lives, they feel that it is even harder for them to find that little bit to afford their day-to-day lives.

PB: I’m curious what your agenda would be about segregation in New York City’s public schools.

ZM: I think it’s a stain on our city that we have the most segregated school system in America. And we know that segregation exists alongside the fact that we are now in our ninth consecutive year of one in eight New York City school children being homeless. And this is something that we have to take on as a responsibility, as something that we finally start to disentangle, from the very first day of my next administration. Under De Blasio’s administration, he commissioned the School Diversity Advisory Group, which put forward a number of recommendations, especially when it came to elementary schools, to middle schools, about how we could further integrate our school system. And those are recommendations that I am very interested in finally following up on. Because without it, we are going to continue to see a system of inequity that we paper over with enough stories of success and enough well-funded PTAs, while so many children across New York City are unable to actually live a life that they should be given by the city.

ZM: And there are also glimpses of hope that we’ve seen within our DOE. For me, one thing especially is a program called Every Child and Family Is Known. It’s a pilot program that’s been running in a few schools in the Bronx which has connected New York City children living in shelters that are going to public school with a staff member of that public school, where they meet once every day in person, and that staff member meets with the family of that child once every week in person. And that attention, that care, it has increased senses of belonging, it has increased levels of attendance, it has increased wellness for these children. And I think we have to understand that this is a funding issue. It’s also a prioritization issue, where if we’re not showing these kids that they matter to this city, then that’s how they will have to live their lives. And we need to show them that they are of the most immense concern and priority to us. And that can also come in these kinds of pilot programs being scaled up across the city.

PB: Some people are not from New York and may not be familiar with this, but the election will take place with something called ranked-choice voting. And I’m curious how that affects the way you run the campaign and how it affects your strategy for victory.

ZM: So I have said from the beginning of this race that I would only critique disgraced New York executives, whether past or present. And so, my critiques have been reserved for Mayor Adams or Governor Cuomo. And ultimately, that is how I’m going to continue the race because I believe that we can win this race, that we will win this race, and we have to run the race in a manner that increases the odds of everyone to turn the page on this failed mayoralty and this failed chapter of leadership. I’ve also committed that I would be making a cross-endorsement well before Election Day—because, if you’re not familiar, ranked choice voting gives every New Yorker that is registered as a Democrat the ability to rank five different options on their ballot. This is the second time around where we have this at a mayoral level. And I’ve met too many New Yorkers who are very excited about our campaign, especially a lot of uncles and aunties that I meet across New York City, and they say: I’m voting for you and just you. And I always tell them: No, you need to vote for five candidate, and none of them should be Andrew Cuomo. Fill out your full five options. Do not rank Andrew Cuomo. And I will be saying who your number two should be as we get closer to Election Day.

PB: So I guess the last question I would ask is that one of the issues that, obviously, the right in America, including in New York, has used for a long time is the issue of crime. How much of a problem do you think crime is in New York City? And how would you respond to people who say that a progressive like you, who doesn’t want as many police, won’t keep the city safe?

ZM: I would tell them to look at our public safety platform, where we have shown that we are not only serious about safety; we are finally going to aggressively pursue evidence-based approaches that have been proven successful in cities across the country at preventing violence and crime before they occur. We’ve said it clearly: The police have a critical role to play in public safety. But our reliance on them to deal with every failure of the social safety net has prevented them from doing their actual jobs, which is partially why we have such low clearance rates in our major categories of crime. And what we have put forward is a proposal to create a new department in city government, the Department of Community Safety, the DCS, that would address mental health crises, homelessness, gun violence, hate violence, and victim services in a manner that we have not seen in our city, where, for far too long, it has been a patchwork of services that have not scaled up the pilots that are successful and have refused to incorporate that which we have seen be successful elsewhere.

ZM: And I’ll give you an example: Every New Yorker deserves to be safe, and when you ask New Yorkers where do they feel the lack of that safety the most, they often speak about an anxiety when they use public transit, specifically when they’re in our subway stations. And what is at a cornerstone of our DCS proposal is to place dedicated outreach teams that would respond to mental health crises and homeless New Yorkers in the 100 most populated subway stations across our city that have the highest levels of mental health crises and homelessness, and to actually connect those New Yorkers with the services they need.

AM: And I’ll tell you, Peter, as someone who grew up in this city from the age of seven—I first grew up in Morningside Heights—I would take the 1 train down to 96th, I would transfer to the 2, I would take it to 42nd Street, I would walk up the stairs and then down. And in Times Square, I would always look to my right, and there was a record store. It sold CDs; it sold headphones. And if you go there today, it is vacant. It is a vacant commercial unit, like many vacant commercial units across the most bustling subway stations in our city. And as part of our plan, we would transform these units into sites of medical service and connections to long term care, while also investing in transit ambassadors across our system, so that New Yorkers and tourists have someone they can ask about delays or what routes are working at this time—someone that they can actually look to. Because for too long, we’ve told New Yorkers they’ll either be on the platform alone or we’re going to task the police with yet another responsibility. All of this in tandem with addressing hate, violence, with a level of seriousness we are not seeing from candidates like former Governor Andrew Cuomo—where, unlike his weaponization of antisemitism purely for personal benefit, we are the campaign that says we’re going to increase funding for programs that will address and prevent antisemitism by 800%, the largest funding commitment of any campaign.

ZM: And what I would just say in general, as we end this conversation, which has been such a pleasure (and I would love to return), is that Andrew Cuomo and his supporters, who were the same supporters of Eric Adams four years ago and, up until very recently, are going to say many things about myself and my fellow candidates. And that is ultimately who Andrew Cuomo is: He’s cynical, he’s divisive. He weaponizes real pain and fear to ultimately accomplish his goal, which is power. Mine, at its core, is a different kind of politics. It’s a politics that requires no translation. It’s a politics that doesn’t ask New Yorkers for purity or agreement with every single issue, but it asks for an agreement on one thing: to fight for a city where every New Yorker can finally afford that which they call their home, and to recognize the humanity of everyone that calls themselves a New Yorker.

PB: Zohran, thank you very, very much for doing this. I really, really appreciate it.

ZM: It’s been such a pleasure. Thank you so much, Peter.

PB: Thank you.

AA: This has been another episode of On the Nose. If you liked it, share it with a friend and subscribe to Jewish Currents at jewishcurrents.org.