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The Daily|Zohran Mamdani Explains His Rise
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/podcasts/the-daily/zohran-mamdani-interview.html
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The Daily
Our interview with the New York mayoral candidate who has burst onto the national stage.
Oct. 16, 2025, 5:52 a.m. ET
Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s come-from-behind victory in this summer’s Democratic primary for New York City mayor is already the stuff of political legend. But in many ways, the most intriguing phase of his campaign has been the period since then, as he has labored, painstakingly, to win over his skeptics. How, exactly, would a 33-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America, with little management experience and a record of polarizing pronouncements, win over enough voters to prevail in the general election?
So far, the polls suggest he’s doing just that.
And so, a few days ago, “The Daily” sat down Mr. Mamdani for an extended conversation about his campaign, the forces and ideas that have animated it and his plans, if elected on Nov. 4, to deliver on his campaign promises and contend with a Republican president who has promised to treat him as an enemy from his first day in office.
Below is an edited transcript between Michael Barbaro, host of “The Daily,” and Mr. Mamdani.
Listen to the conversation with Zohran Mamdani
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You sit, according to the polls, on the cusp of a historic political victory. You would be the youngest mayor in a century. You’d be New York City’s first Muslim mayor. You’d be its first democratic socialist mayor.
I wouldn’t actually be the first democratic socialist mayor.
Who would it be?
David Dinkins was a member of D.S.A., he identified also as a democratic socialist.
Thank you for the correction.
Very welcome.
You’d be the second Democratic Socialist mayor after David Dinkins. And I’d like for this conversation to trace the arc of how you got to this moment. You grew up the son of a well-known filmmaker. Your father was a college professor who studied, among other things, apartheid, a genocide. As a young man, you become a college activist, you’re focused on progressive politics. And when you graduate from college, you start to identify not as a Democrat, but as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. And given your bio, being a Democrat feels like it would have been a pretty natural home. So just let me start by asking about what went into that decision, what you were embracing and what you were rejecting in that identification.
