Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Okay, so you may have heard. New York City gets a new mayor this week, 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Zoran Mamdani.
Chapter 2: Who is Zohran Mamdani and what are his campaign promises?
Mamdani's election was one of the biggest wins for the left in 2025. But since then, he's been quietly going about a new task, trying to make sure his sweeping campaign promises can actually happen.
An agenda that will freeze the rents for more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants, make buses fast and free, and deliver universal childcare across our city. I'm a little skeptical about how he's going to get everything done. I think that's what a lot of people are.
Promise so many things. Free buses, you know, housing and all of that. Promises, promises.
Can this new kind of politics succeed? Or is this Vamdani's high point the days before he gets into office? On this episode of Today Explained from Vox, we sit down with New York City's mayor-elect and ask him directly, is he for real?
Chapter 3: What challenges does Mamdani face in fulfilling his agenda?
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But first, our producer, Peter Balanon-Rosen, is here to tell us about a pretty unique event he went to that the mayor-elect recently held. Peter, hit me.
So it was this marathon listening session where over the course of 12 hours, Mamdani sat face-to-face with over 140 New Yorkers, three minutes at a time, at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Now, this choice of venue, it's pretty notable because this is a museum dedicated to movies, TV, Hollywood, the moving image. It's a place built to pay respects to spectacle.
So I was curious going in, is this Mamdani event just spectacle too? Or could it be something more? Inside, we had volunteers checking people in. There were guys giving out chai tea who chug caffeine to be there real early.
Red bull tea, everything. I'm good to go for three days.
Most of the people I ran into, they were Mamdani super fans. There'd been this Instagram post telling people they could sign up for this event, and within 10 minutes, every single spot was full. And for the people here, one-on-one with the next mayor, it was pretty exciting stuff.
Oh, it's surreal, honestly. I'd followed his campaign so closely. I shouted out my wife and my kids, and he wrote down all their names. This is a 12-hour event. I hope he has bathroom breaks.
I grabbed Samina Qadir after she left her three-minute sit-down with Mamdani, and she said they spoke in Urdu, her native language.
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Chapter 4: How did Mamdani engage with New Yorkers before taking office?
You have to transform people's lives in a way that they can actually touch and feel and hold onto so that they're not just grasping at the memories of what the struggle was like.
I feel like the first clues of how you all planned to do that came in the transition. You all had some kind of unique moments, putting out these explanatory videos about semi-mundane kind of process things, baseball cards for staff appointments. We were at the event that you all held last week at the Museum of Moving Image. Why do that stuff? What is the goal of those type of events?
I think there's a temptation when you win, we've seen it in the past to say, now, trust me, you can go home. The point of me winning is that you don't have to worry about politics anymore.
Chapter 5: What is the significance of the event at the Museum of the Moving Image?
The point of me winning is we keep fighting for the same agenda together. And that means you bring people along with you and you also demystify what it is that you're doing. I mean, This transition period is probably the most opaque period, typically, because it's between a campaign and governance and most New Yorkers are never brought into it. Yeah, it's usually insiders only.
Yeah, and I think that's both in the way that it's funded and it's the way that it's also spoken about. And we wanted New Yorkers to be at the heart of that because most people didn't even know that there's no public funding for transitions. And I've had so many people ask me, what do you mean you have to pay for office space? What do you mean you have to pay for payroll, healthcare?
inauguration. These are often things that are not brought up because you fundraise in the manner of previous administrations whose average donations were north of $1,000 per person. And ours, I think, more than 95% of our donations are below $250. And I think that's just, that is one aspect of how you bring people into this.
Sounds like the demystifying efforts are connected to what, you know, has been described as inside out strategy that to the goal of delivering, you feel as if you have to keep the public engaged, you have to keep that public pressure going.
You do. And I think there's often a description as if the campaign ends and governance begins with the implication that you leave people behind. And in many ways, you have to keep going in the same kind of manner.
I mean, how does that get harder once you're in office? Do your point about the way the campaigns and transitions kind of create a sense of unity? You know, once the inauguration happens, you know, everything becomes Mayor Mamdani's problem. How do you make sure how do you reverse the trend of public disengaging at that moment?
I think you have to do the work to create actual opportunities for engagement as opposed to vague invitations. For 12 hours, I sat at the Museum of the Moving Image and I listened to New Yorkers. More than 140 New Yorkers came to share their stories with me. And the point of that is not just to say I listened, it's to actually take what they're saying and then act upon it.
And some of the concerns were large. They were the concerns of undocumented New Yorkers sharing with me stories The immense fear that they live with on a day-to-day basis. And I think this idea that, in fact, governing could be informed by the people you're governing for, as opposed to treating New Yorkers as if they're just subjects.
And also the understanding that in order for people to act upon something, they have to know about something. We even take that approach to rights. In this moment when so many New Yorkers are fearful of ICE agents and the potential of immigration enforcement as we've seen it take place across the city, we thought it was important to remind every New Yorker of their own rights.
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Chapter 6: How does Mamdani plan to address public concerns in his administration?
It's not like a reality check. It's the reason why I did this. It's the reason why it was possible to weather difficult moments because it's all in service of a city that I love. There are some days where it's hard to believe that my job is traveling around New York City and meeting New Yorkers and listening to their concerns and having the opportunity to act upon them.
And I also think the greatest thing you can do is the power of example of what you can do, what you can succeed, what you can deliver. Because what we're talking about right now the growing sense amongst New Yorkers that politics is irrelevant to their day-to-day struggles, the inability for our political system to deliver on crises large and small, these are not uniquely New York issues.
These are issues that people feel outside of the city, outside of this country, and We have an opportunity to show that by serving New Yorkers, we can also showcase a politics that can serve working people wherever they may be.
Coming up, I asked Sauram Amdani about what success or failure looks like in his new administration. We're back. It's Today Explained. I'm Ested Herndon, here with Mayor-elect Zohra Mamdani. I want to look ahead. You know, how would you define the priorities for your agenda? What would you define as success or failure for the Mamdani administration?
It comes back to affordability. The priorities have to be the fulfillment.
Are those the three parts? Are we talking about buses, child care? What am I missing? Hit them. Come on. Buses, child care, rent freeze. Boom. But what about things like the publicly subsidized grocery stores? Is that priority too? That is a priority as well. So it's all of the above when we think about the campaign promises.
I would say that. The first order of priorities, like ranking best friends, the first order of priority are the three that we built the campaign around. There are obviously other commitments we made in addition to that. Five city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough.
The fulfillment of these things are not just critically important because you're fulfilling what animated so many to engage with the campaign, to support the campaign. but also because of the impact it can have on a New Yorker's life.
There's a lot of politics where it feels like it's a contest around narrative, that when you win something, it's just for the story that you can tell of what you won, but so many working people can't feel that victory in their lives. The point of a rent freeze is you feel it every first of the month.
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