Phone A Friend: Zohran Mamdani.

Max: So Zohran Mamdani, the man who is meeting the moment. Who has captured the zeitgeist as we said, not just for New York City, but really kind of proxy for what’s happening all over the country right now. Great pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for making the time today.

Zohran Mamdani: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a real pleasure.

Max: So our program is a socioeconomic program, primarily, and we come at it from, I will say, generally, a Democratic Socialist perspective. So our audience’s ears are pretty well tuned to your messaging and to the platform, and many of the issues that you discuss, we discuss on a regular basis. So we’re going to focus today a little bit less on the what and more on the how.

But for anybody that is uninitiated and just being introduced maybe for the first time, if they were perhaps in a coma for the last 10 years, if you could just give a brief introduction and introduce your platform.

And I’ll start with a compliment—your team and your message discipline is just unparalleled right now. So you have done an amazing job bringing that message out to New Yorkers. So if you could just kind of reiterate the message here to give us the starting point, that would be great.

ZM: Absolutely. Well, first I’ll just introduce myself. My name is Zohran Mamdani. I was born in Kampala, Uganda and grew up in New York City. I moved here when I was seven years old, the city has been one that has been my home for decades; one that I’ve loved and one that I am fighting for as a state assemblymember representing parts of Astoria and Long Island City. And a little over five months ago, I started running to be the next mayor of the city.

And the campaign at its core is about a very straightforward thing: the cost of living. It’s a campaign to make the city more affordable that has a north star of a relentless focus on an economic agenda. And on that first day, we said we were going to make the city more affordable by freezing the rent, by making buses fast and free, and by delivering universal child care. And every policy that we have released since then has been following that same North Star of: what tools can city government use to make this a city that the working class doesn’t just build, doesn’t just sustain, but can also afford to continue to call their home.

Max: What did I tell you about the message discipline here? I mean, this is what you get. This is incredible stuff. Okay, so let’s get into the how. So more focused on the socioeconomic piece of how we provide our coverage here on the show. I feel like there are two forms of greatness that came out of the New York assembly. Teddy Roosevelt, it’s obvious, achieved greatness, but also a great man was produced out of the New York State Assembly, my favorite elected official of all time—because he’s just one of my favorite human beings—and that’s Tom DiNapoli. So Tom DiNapoli as a New York State Comptroller, one of the things that he does is he produces budgets and audits, and provides some clarity for different municipalities in addition to the state, and works hand in hand with the governor’s office, but also with the mayor of New York City.

So his last analysis of the New York City budget showed that Wall Street had a great year last year. So we were more flush with cash, I’ll say, than normal, than anticipated, for two reasons. One, Wall Street had a good year, but also there was some unspent dollars from the federal allocation for the immigration crisis that happened in New York City with the Venezuelan migrants.

So it’s $120 billion budget, $2.3 billion surplus, $2 billion in the rainy day fund, which is fine, but still a small percentage given the size of the city—what I want to talk about is the piece that’s at risk. Because you’re running a campaign that’s running under the umbrella of the existential crisis that is Donald Trump. And there are a number of federal dollars that are at risk, not the least of which are the passthroughs that we see with Medicaid, with SNAP, maybe with Pell Grants, but also federal funds make up about $7 billion of the New York budget as it’s currently constituted. So we have this agenda that is really resonating with New Yorkers, but then you also have this looming crisis of these headwinds from the federal government.

So day one—I do want to talk about the how and the presumption that you are going to be in this seat, god willing—how do you reconcile those two to make sure that you have the fiscal discipline to be able to carry out some of the bigger initiatives that you have?

ZM: I think first, let’s break down the central promises of the campaign and what they require. So freezing the rent is something that would apply to about 2.5 million New Yorkers in a city of 8.5 million, and that is a power of the mayor through the Rent Guidelines Board that determines whether there will be an increase. If so, then how much. It doesn’t come at a fiscal cost to the city. So that’s something that can be done, separate from these headwinds.

The commitments specifically on making buses fast and free, universal child care. You know, free buses is around $650–$700 million a year. Universal child care has been costed out, let’s say, starting at about $6 billion a year. Significant amounts of money, have to be understood also in the context, however, of a city budget that’s close to $115 billion a year, a state budget that is nearing $250 billion a year.

Max: Right.

ZM: To your point, a significant amount of funding—yes, the $7 billion or so you said at the city level, a much larger portion at the state level—is dependent upon federal dollars.

Now, I think one thing I would say that too often Democrats do not do is that we have to contest these cuts, as opposed to accept them as the premise. And what I mean by that is that so much of these cuts are built upon this artificial consensus around notions of fraud and waste, when really they are things that can be fought for. And what I mean by that is that they are fertile ground for us to stand up and say, these are cuts that have nothing to do with fraud. They have nothing to do with waste. What they have to do with is a billionaire backed assault on working class people.

And the reason that I think contesting that narrative is so critical and important is that power is not something that just lives in a technicality. That if you have Congress, if you have the Senate, if you have the presidency, then it means everything is possible. It’s also built on this notion of, this is the mandate of people. And Trump cares about one thing more than many others, and that’s ratings, that’s popularity.

And we have yet to fully define these cuts for what they are. When they take away New Yorkers’ and Americans’ healthcare, when they take away their right to clean water, when they take away their ability to get on a plane and know that it’s actually going to land. And so I think when you use what’s been described as the second largest bully pulpit in America to protect New Yorkers, you also have the opportunity to push back on these cuts in a manner that we are not yet seeing, whether from our current mayor, or from our disgraced former governor or, frankly, from many leaders across the Democratic Party in this moment.

Now on the fiscal side of it, what we are proposing is to bring New York in line with neighboring states, specifically when it comes to corporate taxes. So we have at least 10 states in our region that have a higher corporate tax rate than New York. Our corporate tax rate here in the state is 7.25%. That is a legacy of Governor Pataki, a Republican who cut these rates in the ‘90s, and something we haven’t really ever recovered from. And we look just across the river and you see New Jersey, which at one point had an 11.5% corporate tax rate. That difference of 4.25% is a difference that could pay for the bulk of this agenda.

And in a moment where we’re seeing these cuts, we know we not only have to prepare for them, it not only increases the urgency of raising revenue from across the state, it’s also critical for us to chart an alternative vision; because I think for far too long, being on the defensive to a Trump administration, to a right wing movement that is headed by our president, it is not an approach to politics that enough New Yorkers see themselves in. They also need to see the issues that they’re living with on a day to day basis being addressed. And I think we have the ability to do both of those things, through the scale of revenue that we can raise, through the better utilization of existing revenue and the better enforcement of existing taxes.

And that last portion, there are studies that have come out from the IBO that have said that if we were to hire more auditors, we could collect $160 million more every year from the existing business tax. So doing these things all in tandem, better use of existing resources, better enforcement of existing taxes, raising revenue on the most profitable corporations. They prepare us for whatever cuts will come down the pike, and ensure that we also have revenue to start to expand our sense of what’s possible in the city, and doing it all at the same time.

Max: Are you concerned at all about this, again, artificial recession that the administration is plunging us into? You know, we spend a lot of time, of course, attacking the capitalist structure and where Wall Street fits in on that. But when you look at the actual revenue base and the tax income that comes from New York, specifically, a lot of that does actually come out of FiDi. So the bonuses last year were historic. They had a great year, right?

ZM: They were historic.

Max: Yeah, they were for them. So those were historic, but then coming into this year, obviously they’re going to be suppressed compared to where they were in the past. That has real life budget consequences for New York City. And you, yes, you have the rainy day fund, but are you concerned at all about the out years? Because right now, the comptroller said, in a best case scenario—and actually used the words barring a recession—we’re still looking at a structural deficit in New York City, all things being equal of a couple billion dollars in ‘26, upwards of $10 billion if we look in the out years. Most audits and reports look at that and use the all things being equal analysis to project structural deficits in the future, and they’re usually overcome in some way or another. I mean, New York City, “always does find a way,” but this actually is a pending crisis that is being artificially delivered to us. Are you concerned about that next year?

ZM: Absolutely, I’m extremely concerned. Because Trump’s decisions with regards to the economy, with regards to tariff policy, are decisions that have been stealing an immense amount of wealth from Americans across the country and from New Yorkers specifically. I was speaking to someone just today who told me that their mother is a public sector worker who lost $40,000 because of these economic policies. That’s an immense amount of money for a working class person to lose. And to characterize that theft as simply being pain that we must endure, it showcases a complete disconnect from economic realities that most Americans are having to live through.

And I think what’s so infuriating is that you and I understood the insincerity of Donald Trump and the ridiculous nature of the contradictions of what he speaks about and what he delivers, and the fact that he is a horrific president and has been of this country, and yet, for many Americans and for many New Yorkers, they were given a message of lowering costs. They were given a message of more money in their pocket. They were given a message of affordability. And those are the same New Yorkers and the same Americans who are finding that in fact, they have even less money in their pocket now than they did before the presidential election.

Max: Some of the, I guess, budgetary fixes that you’re aspirationally hoping for, there’s never just one solution—although I have a couple of ideas for you, but I’ll save them for the end. It’s never just a one shot or a bunch of fixes. It’s about working with the state, making sure that we’re collecting the funds that are due us, just basically making good on the promises of tax collections. It’s about maybe raising the corporate tax rate, which you’re right, has been suppressed for many, many years.

There’s all these avenues which implies that—as you know, your budget is so big and the job is so big. I don’t think anybody takes that for granted, that the mayor of Gotham is a notable figure for the reasons that makes sense—but it’s coordination with city council, it’s coordination with the borough presidents. It’s coordination with Albany. It’s coordination with the NYPD and the FDNY, massive organizations and agencies, social services. But then also the federal government, and working with our congresspeople in conjunction. There’s so many constituencies that you have to solve for.

My question for you actually, is, how do you prepare personally to move from legislator—who’s usually in the mix on making those deals and helping move processes along—to being the executive? How are you wrapping your head around that, thinking about building a team and then thinking about the push and pull of these different constituencies?

ZM: One clear way you do that is you ensure that you don’t just set your campaign up that it can win on election day, but also that it can govern on the first day of the administration. That is a coalition that has to be able to endure beyond the polling place. And that has been our view of, how do we make sure that we don’t just lead with an urgent and necessary and ambitious agenda, but that we build the team that can deliver it, because an idea is only as good as its implementation.

And so much of the reason that there is an erasure of trust from the public into city government or local politics is because of the fact that for far too long, rhetoric has only stayed as such. It hasn’t had the impact on reality that it has promised. And it’s our job to change that. And one thing that I’ve been doing is ensuring that over the course of this campaign, I’m spending a significant amount of time having meetings with commissioners, with deputy mayors, with leaders from previous administrations to understand that which worked and how it was accomplished.

Because as much as there are new things we need to bring into city government, there is also this impulse that we have to get rid of in politics, which states that anything that anyone else ever did must be consigned to the dustbin of history, and everything that I will do must be new, must be my name must be, you know. And what that does is it comes at the expense of the public, because we need to look beyond ourselves.

And I know, when I look at Michael Bloomberg’s administration, I have many a criticism around policies that were that were a core part of that administration, especially as a legislator who represents Steinway Street in Astoria, which was the site of illegal surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers, purely on the basis of our faith by a unit set up under Michael Bloomberg’s NYPD. And yet, I also have to be able to hold the truth that alongside those things that are very much worthy of critique, there’s also an imagination that came to the streetscape of our city. And if we’re serious about ensuring that we have as many New Yorkers as possible using public transit and understanding cycling as part of that, then that is an administration that also must be looked at as a model when it came to those specific policies. And so on and so forth with each and every administration.

Because it cannot be that we continue this practice of understanding a mayor as a monarch, where I am leading the city in every single function, and is my opinion that governs all. When in fact, a mayor at its core is a delegator, a liaison, a messenger, and someone who builds a team of the best and brightest and empowers them to actually lead their agencies such that they fulfill that common mandate that New Yorkers have delivered, on election day. And that is something that I am very much focused on.

Max: It’s refreshing to hear you say that, because I think we do need to cherry pick the best and the brightest in order to run the heartbeat of this country—and the most significant place in terms of space, ideals and the financial center of the country—with the best ideas possible. So that is refreshing. One thing I don’t understand, though. I get the idea of making buses free. How do you make them fast? Help me do the math.

ZM: I’m so excited that you asked this. So we have buses right now in New York City whose average speed is around 8 miles an hour, and in parts of the central business district of Manhattan, we’re looking at 5.8 miles an hour. And a lot of that speed, or the lack thereof, comes from the congestion on our streets. And so the implementation of congestion pricing has sped up buses.

It also comes from the mayor’s flouting of the legal mandate to build a certain set of bus lanes every year, a certain number of miles. Because what we’ve seen is that when you build those bus lanes, you can see increases of speed, 10–20%, sometimes 30%, and that is something that so many New Yorkers are being denied.

I mean, this is a city, again, of 8.5 million people. More than a million ride the bus every single day, and we’ve had this mayor blow up the idea of a bus lane on one of the busiest segments in New York City of Fordham Road, just because he was getting phone calls from the wealthiest businesses and institutions in that neighborhood, including the Bronx Botanical Garden. And ultimately, you need a mayor who will stay the course for working class people when it comes to improving their lives, a mayor who will fulfill the legal mandate and not look at the law as a mere suggestion, and someone who understands the tools that we have.

It’s not just bus lanes. It’s also signal prioritization, where you have a separate set of traffic lights for the bus that can hold a green light for a little bit longer to get those New Yorkers across the street. It’s also a mayor who understands that there has to be the big, large scale, imaginative thinking that is paired with the policies. And I say that as somebody who launched a campaign called Fix the MTA, where one of our core demands was around free bus transit. We want a first of its kind, fare free bus pilot.

Alongside that pilot, which made one bus route free in each borough, we also won the authorization for the MTA to ticket cars that were seen by consecutive buses idling in front of them and preventing their passage. That authorization, that ticketing program—previously known as ABLE, now known as ACE—also has had a tangible impact on increasing bus speeds.

So it’s that very detail oriented policy mixed with a reimagination of the streetscape. And when you make the bus free, you reduce what’s called dwell time at a bus stop, because in New York City, you can only board on a local bus in the front of the bus. Now that’s because of fears around fare evasion. Now if the bus was free, you could board from the back, you could board from the front. You would not have any of our lovely uncles and aunties searching in their pockets or their bags for that MetroCard, for the exact amount of change. And instead, it’s just on and off. And that has an immense impact altogether, on the speeds of these buses.

Max: We don’t have a lot of time left, so let’s talk about where you are in this political moment—identified as a Democratic Socialist. Because there was a time not too long ago when there was a Democratic Socialist who actually won a primary in Buffalo. India Walton won the primary in Buffalo, and then the Democratic establishment in New York State actually lined up against her to ensure that the other Democratic candidate who ran as an independent was actually victorious, ultimately.

I feel like there’s something changing. I feel like maybe AOC has broken through, that the Bernie renaissance has re-energized once again, and that a socialist candidate isn’t the dirty word that it used to be. What kind of response are you getting from the street, but then also from inside the corridors in the Democratic establishment? Do you feel like there’s a greater acceptance now that we’ve seen the failures of the establishment policies in the past?

ZM: I think that there is an immense resonance of this politics that we’re espousing, a politics that puts working people first, that requires no translation, one that’s direct to people’s lives. And that’s a resonance that we’ve seen in New Yorkers signing up to volunteer: more than 12,000 so far; in New Yorkers who donated to our campaign, such that we don’t actually want to fundraise anymore, we’ve hit our cap of $8 million. But it’s also a resonance that we’re seeing in polls as we’re placing in second poll after poll after poll in these last few weeks.

And I think when I have conversations with fellow colleagues at the state and city level, there is a sense that something is changing in our city. There is a sense that this campaign is connecting to a moment where people are eager to have someone that’s fighting for them and not someone that’s telling them their only options are collaboration or cowardice. But instead, we have to choose the option of courage, of conviction, of commitment, of clarity.

And it is in many ways tied to Bernie and tied to AOC. And I think, especially Bernie’s 2016 run was the run that gave me the language of calling myself a Democratic Socialist. And he had stopped running by the time he got to New York, but even still, in the 2016 primary, Bernie won 42% of the vote on Staten Island. Which is often described as having Democrats who are just actually waiting to vote Republican.

And what he showed us then—coupled with a message discipline that has been the inspiration for our campaign of always returning back to the question of income inequality—is that people are willing to vote for someone no matter where they stand, no matter how they describe themselves, as long as they feel like that person is fighting for them and doing so sincerely, consistently and directly. And that’s what I’ve heard from people who, some of whom have even used the word socialist as a pejorative, and still want to vote for this campaign. Because ultimately, at the core of it is the deep desire for a more affordable New York City.

Max: Okay. With a couple of minutes left, I want you to take us through one of the things that I think is underrated, and one of the most exciting aspects of the campaign, and that is your idea about building grocery co-ops in food deserts throughout the city. Can you just talk about that for a little bit? Because I think it’s such a hidden gem of this campaign, and I love it so much.

ZM: Thank you habibi, thank you. I really appreciate that. You know this is an idea born out of the fact that whether you’re speaking to a New Yorker making $40,000 a year, or a New Yorker making $150,000 a year, you hear about sticker shock when people go to the grocery store and they pick up the same items they used to pick up years ago, which now are costing so much more than they ever remember. And ultimately, what we’re seeing is people being priced out of produce, and a lot of that also has to do with the price gouging that has become endemic; especially over the course of COVID where we’ve seen national chains publicly boast about using supply chain costs as a smoke screen to increase the cost of goods even more so than would be justifiable.

And this is all happening in tandem with a reality that is disproportionately impacting Black and Brown New Yorkers across the five boroughs, of food deserts. I represent the largest public housing development in North America, Queensbridge Houses. I go and knock on doors of my constituents and I speak to them, and I am asked this question that I cannot answer, which is, why is it in a five block radius I can find six fast food restaurants, but the only place I can go shopping for groceries has produce that is out of date or that I cannot actually afford? And that speaks to this question of a food desert where we have far too few options for so many New Yorkers.

And so what we’ve proposed is a pilot program of city owned grocery stores, one in each borough, that would build off of the success of the same model in Kansas, a feasibility study that was then done in Chicago about the possibility of it being in an urban setting, and deliver guaranteed cheaper prices for the staples of day to day life, like bread and milk and eggs, and do so while employing a unionized workforce that is actually situated within the community, and oftentimes even highlighting local goods from that community.

And the cost of this is $60 million, which is less than half of the amount of money the city is already set to spend subsidizing corporate supermarket chains under a program called City Fresh, where we’re looking at $140 million in subsidies to supermarkets that do not guarantee cheaper costs, are not required to have a unionized workforce, are not required to accept SNAP or WIC, and are not required in many ways to actually produce any tangible results.

Max: That’s bonkers. It really is.

ZM: Yeah.

Max: We have to wrap up here. I hope though that we can do this again—

ZM: I would love to.

Max: —before the primary. There’s so many more things I want to ask you about, and as the campaign goes on, there’s going to be more things that unravel. Here’s my one shot idea for you though—

ZM: Hit it.

Max: —for budget reconciliation down the road. I’m coming at you from a Long Island perspective. I was in the city for many, many years. Now I’m out in the suburbs. I’m not mad about congestion pricing, I get it.

My one shot though, maybe contemplate, it’s just a thought. A one shot sale of Staten Island to New Jersey, and then I could talk to a few people out here in Nassau County, maybe we make a deal for, you know, not all of Queens, but maybe a little part of it.

ZM: [Laughing] Look, people like to rag on Staten Island, but as a guy who’s fighting for fare free public transit, the inspiration is the ferry. That’s Staten Island’s gift to New York City. But look, we want you to come back. We want you to come back from Strong Island.

This has really been a real pleasure, and truly, really excited to come back on the show, and it is very exciting to be building this campaign with each and every person across this country.

Max: I appreciate you, and I appreciate the time.

ZM: Thank you, my friend. All the best.