Title: City Politics: Democrats Differ on Mamdani

[MUSIC]

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, as usual on Wednesdays, our weekly visit from WNYC and Gothamist political reporter Elizabeth Kim, as she covers the New York City mayoral race. Among our topics today, the changing face of the crime and public safety issue in this campaign, with Andrew Cuomo proposing new ways to retain police officers, Eric Adams having some good crime stats to boast about, and Zohran Mamdani getting the endorsement of a police officers' association. We'll play clips of each.

Also, Democrats who aren't endorsing their party's nominee, but not endorsing anyone else either, what it means for the race and for the party nationally. Here's an example of that, then we'll bring in Liz. If you heard Monday's show, we had Bronx Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres, who endorsed Cuomo in the primary, but in this general election rematch, he's holding back. Here's a minute of our exchange on that, beginning with my question. Why not keep supporting Cuomo if you think he's better than Mamdani and Mamdani is as objectionable as you used to say?

Congressman Ritchie Torres: Look, I have profound differences of opinion with the Democratic nominee, but unlike Republicans, we as Democrats accept the result of the election, and he won, and he won decisively. Now my focus has shifted from campaigning to governing.

Brian: Why not go all the way and simply endorse your party's nominee?

Congressman Ritchie Torres: I have differences of opinion, and it's worth noting that the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, did not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president because of ideological differences. There's nothing unprecedented about that. We have differences of opinion, but I'm going to be with them, we'll have a dialogue, and we'll take it from there.

Brian: We went on to discuss that Mamdani did endorse Kamala Harris, even though the DSA didn't. Congressman Ritchie Torres on Monday's show. Here's that program note right away. I mentioned it in the break, but Assemblyman Mamdani will be here tomorrow for his candidate interview in our current round, right at ten o'clock tomorrow. WNYC's Elizabeth Kim is here right now. Happy Wednesday, Liz.

Liz: Happy Wednesday, Brian.

Brian: You heard Ritchie Torres there. He's just one example of a leading New York Democrat not endorsing any of the candidates, Governor Hochul, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, in the same limbo. How do you understand the line they're walking?

Liz: I think his answer to you shows that he's seeing where this race is headed. He's not willing to endorse Andrew Cuomo because he sees that Mamdani appears to be the overwhelming favorite in the race. The response he gave that there are differences in the party, that's not wrong. There are traditional fissures and fault lines in the party. There are real ideological differences between Mamdani and other Democrats like himself. There are also concerns that Mamdani's position could alienate certain members of his base and also donors.

I think what is different here, and why we are talking about this, is Mamdani isn't just an assembly member anymore. He is the Democratic nominee for mayor in the largest city in America. This distance between Mamdani and other Democrats is very glaring in this moment, especially because the party is having conversations about how they need to rebuild themselves under the second Trump presidency.

Brian: I see you have a clip of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren campaigning with Mamdani. Want to set this up? Did she come to the city?

Liz: She did. This was an event between Mamdani and Senator Warren on universal child care. Now, universal child care is something that Mamdani has pledged to implement if he is elected. He would provide free child care for children age six weeks to five. We know that the cost of child care in New York City is--

Brian: Six months, right? Six months?

Liz: No, age six.

Brian: Go ahead. Oh, six weeks.

Liz: Six weeks. For basically infants.

Brian: Sorry about that. Thank you.

Liz: The cost of child care is a major driver of the city's affordability crisis. It's understandable that a policy like this would have enormous appeal to someone like Warren. She's a progressive with a national profile. I do want to mention, though, Brian, that Mayor Adams himself has invested in a pilot program. It's very small, $10 million, and it will cover hundreds of children, they've told me, but this would be starting in September, children under two.

At this event, Mamdani and Warren, they spoke to members of DC 37, that's the city's largest municipal union. They basically heard stories from parents on how difficult it is for them to, A, find child care and also pay for it. Then afterwards, they took questions. Warren was repeatedly asked by reporters, what does she think of top Democrats in New York, like Senator Schumer, like Congressman Jeffries, not endorsing Mamdani, and this is what she said.

Senator Warren: I think the Republicans are right to tie this race to the national race. I just want to be clear: if you're for the billionaires, if you think New York City doesn't work well enough for billionaires, if you think America doesn't work well enough for billionaires, then shoot, go with Andrew Cuomo, go with the Republicans. If you actually think we are an America that needs to work harder to make this country affordable for working families, then this is the fight to be in. Democrats are the ones who every day don't just talk the talk, but walk the walk to make our country more affordable for working people, and I'm here with the guy who's walking the walk right now.

Brian: Elizabeth Warren in New York with Mamdani. Is there any news in Warren endorsing Mamdani? She's not a New Yorker, and she's from the progressive wing of the party, obviously, where her endorsement would more or less be assumed, unlike Ritchie Torres, but like Senator Bernie Sanders, who was also endorsed. What's the perceived value to Mamdani of an Elizabeth Warren appearance like that?

Liz: It is another high-profile Democrat, similar to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, arguing that the party needs to come to grips with why Mamdani won. Again, this is the conversation that the party is having, and it's bringing national attention to it. You hear Warren, she's drawing the battle lines very clearly. She's asking the Democrats-- I should say that she never mentions Schumer or Jeffries, even though those two names were brought up to her in the questions, but she never mentions them. She's clearly saying to them, "Do we want to be the party of billionaires or do we want to be the party of working class Americans?"

She's making the argument that Trump won these disaffected Democrats because he was able to point to the increasing costs of living because of inflation. She's also making the argument now that under Trump, this is when Democrats have an opportunity to seize this issue back because there's evidence that tariffs is making life more expensive for a lot of Americans. They've also been pointing to cuts to the social safety net in the form of reduced funding to Medicaid and food assistance programs. She is someone who says this is the fight that Democrats need to rally around if we want to be successful in seizing back the House.

Brian: On the New York Democrats not endorsing anyone, maybe the situation is different politically for each of them, but runs along the same lines, like Ritchie Torres wants to be reelected in his congressional district next year. He sees how well Mamdani turned out voters in the primary. He doesn't want to get primaried by a DSA candidate, which they're saying they might primary him, but his district is also politically mixed. He's focused on his congressional district and that tension there.

Hochul wants to be reelected governor next year. That's a statewide race, but she, too, would need to beat a more progressive candidate in the primary. Her lieutenant governor, Delgado, has basically already announced from the left, but also be viable in the general statewide. Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer lead the Democrats nationally in the House and Senate respectively. They want to help take control of Congress next year.

They're seeing on that level this tension between the fact that the Mamdani style base is growing, but candidates like him are also toxic to many people in important swing districts. That's all, one way to look at these Democratic leaders' neutrality, and they have to figure out, just from a politically strategic standpoint, which is the bigger risk, right? Endorsing or not endorsing. Would you add anything to that or disagree with it in any way?

Liz: No, I agree. It is very challenging for Democrats to decide. They have to take account their own districts. Like you said, does the strategy that Mamdani used, you can argue it doesn't win in other parts of America, and this is the calculus that they're trying to think of right now. Maybe they don't. Maybe they do adopt different strategies. I saw a headline, I think it was in the Times the other day, saying that the party is trying to recruit more military veterans to run for elected office. That certainly is one old strategy that the Democrats have used.

Brian: Hello, Mikie Sherrill, but go ahead.

Liz: Yes. I think, though, in New York, the most interesting elected official to watch is Kathy Hochul with respect to how she positions herself with Mamdani. That's because you look at her race in 2022 against Lee Zeldin, she won with a much narrower margin than people expected. There was a lot of hand-wringing over what she didn't do right. One group that came out for her and did a lot of last-minute on-the-ground campaigning were progressives. The Working Families Party spent $0.5 million to get out the vote for her in those final weeks.

If you look in this race, and if you expect her to face someone like Congressman Elise Stefanik, who is an ally to Trump, it might be to her benefit to sew up support from the left and appeal to Mamdani's voters. It was very interesting that she recently defended Mamdani against Stefanik, who was going after his positions on policing in the wake of last week's mass shooting. She put out a tweet saying something like going after an unelected official who said something back in 2020. Then she went on CNN and basically said the same thing. She called Stefanik pathetic.

I think that signaling could say something about what she decides to do in the mayoral race. We've also seen a different Kathy Hochul following her turnaround on congestion pricing. It's a little bit of, I think, a reinvention. Then you also have to consider--

Brian: Turn around to embrace it.

Liz: Yes, and also her staunch defense of it in the face of Trump trying to stop it. The other thing that ties her and Mamdani together is this issue of affordability. I thought it was very interesting that as Mamdani tries to return to this message of affordability this week with that press conference with Warren, he elected to begin with childcare. That is something that is very important to Kathy Hochul, and that is a common goal between them.

Brian: We'll get to your reporting on how the office building mass shooting, despite criticisms of people like Elise Stefanik and also Cuomo and Adams, actually cuts both ways for Mamdani. It cuts against him, but it also cuts for him. We'll get to that. On childcare and the emphasis on childcare, and I see your latest story is called, "As Cuomo attacks Mamdani on policing, the Democratic nominee talks about childcare."

I asked Cuomo on the show last week, when he was here for his interview in our latest round of candidate interviews, if he has anything to compete with Mamdani and Mamdani's proposal for universal childcare beginning at age six weeks. Here's a bit of that exchange. How about childcare? Do you have anything to compete with Mr. Mamdani on that?

Cuomo: Childcare is going to be a question of a government-provided subsidy one way or the other. I started 3-K on the state side, and I think that was a great advancement. I think we have to continue that and expand that, but that is just a government-subsidized program. The market is not going to do that for you.

Brian: There were a lot of words there, but the bottom line was that Cuomo was sticking to 3-K, that is, prekindergarten for three-year-olds, as his youngest child proposal. I looked at his campaign website to confirm it, and that's right. Mamdani proposing starting at six weeks, as you corrected me on earlier, and there certainly are questions about if he could find the funding, but there's that difference. Cuomo is talking about three-year-olds. Mamdani is talking about at least aspirationally six-week-olds, and that's a clear difference.

Liz: It's a clear difference. What Mamdani is saying is this is something he's running on. This is something he's running to make happen if he is elected. It would be very expensive. I think I saw some of the estimates. The estimates are in the billions. Then that, again, becomes the question of how do you pay for it, which I think is why Cuomo answered the question the way he did. He said this is about providing a government subsidy. The question, I think, for him is, is he committed to getting and securing that government subsidy if he, too, is elected, if he becomes mayor?

Brian: Where can this go for any of these New York Democrats between now and Election Day? You heard Congressman Torres say, for example, that he and Mamdani have spoken since the primary. Do you see that potentially leading to any kind of public event where maybe Mamdani takes a new position on something, and Torres says, "Now I can endorse him," or Torres says he's satisfied that the Mamdani of 2025 is not the Mamdani of his 2020 tweets before he was elected to anything? Or Hochul, same question, Jeffrey Schumer, anything like that?

Liz: This has been something that has puzzled me a little bit, Brian, I will admit, because on the night of the primary, almost immediately after the results became clear and Cuomo conceded, there was talk among reporters about what will the establishment Democrats do. I had reached out to some longtime political observers, and a lot of the consensus was that they will eventually come around. Then we saw the more detailed results that showed that Mamdani had a very commanding victory in the primary, that he won different swaths of New York City and different swaths of New Yorkers.

I think it is a little bit puzzling that it hasn't happened yet and that there are these Democrats that are still keeping him at arm's length, but there still is, at the same time, talk of, "I'm planning to meet with him." I asked Mamdani's campaign about when they were planning to next meet with Congressman Jeffries. If our listeners remember, he did meet with Jeffries right before he left for Uganda, and both sides came out with a statement saying that it was a productive meeting, that they had a lot of good discussions about affordability, but that they were going to have a second meeting and they were going to invite other stakeholders to that meeting.

That meeting, according to Mamdani's campaign, is not on the books yet. I also reached out to Jeffries' office, and they confirmed the same. I also asked about, is there a meeting set up with Senator Schumer? That was when Schumer congratulated Mamdani. He, too, like Ritchie Torres, said, "I'm going to meet with him." I've been told by the campaign that that meeting will happen sometime before the end of the summer. You can see this is now becoming a more and more protracted timeline on if they get around Mamdani. If it happens, it seems like it's not any time soon.

Brian: Do you think it matters at all to the outcome of the mayoral election if people like Schumer, Jeffries, and Torres stay quiet, Hochul too, not endorse Mamdani, but not endorse anyone? Maybe this is just inside politics, palace intrigue, and it's interesting to people like you and me who follow the race closely, but it's irrelevant to voters. I don't know. Is there any indication from any reporting on that?

Liz: The reason why people are looking at this is because some strategists believe that there is a risk to Democrats who don't endorse Mamdani. That risk is that they can be challenged from the left.

Brian: That's the risk to them.

Liz: That is the risk to the Democrats. Yes, it is to those who don't endorse him. We've seen some signs of that because Senator Jessica Ramos, who endorsed Cuomo, she is a Democrat, she is being challenged by Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas. She is an ally of Mamdani, and like him, she's also a Democratic socialist. That is the first sign of that. Then there's been a lot of chatter about what other more moderate Democrats might be primary.

Brian: That's the risk to them. What about the relevance of this reluctance to the mayoral race, if you have anything on that?

Liz: Given how Mamdani won the primary, which was, I think, it was a surprise. It was an upset victory. It was also an upset in the sense of how he won with strength across the city. Unless something changes that, unless a new issue reshapes this race entirely, he's in the driver's seat right now. I don't know that the people who supported him will somehow suddenly be turned off because, oh, because Congressman Jeffries has not endorsed him or Senator Schumer has not come around to supporting him. I don't know that that matters.

Brian: That's my impulse to think Mamdani has supporters, Mamdani has his detractors, but all these people, whoever's undecided, I don't know if they care so much what Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries or Kathy Hochul or Ritchie Torres think. Listeners, my guest, if you're just joining us, is our Elizabeth Kim, as usual, on Wednesdays, on the mayoral race. Your comments or questions about the mayoral race welcome here, as we have a ways to go yet with Liz. I'm sure some of you supporting one candidate or another will call in.

We'd also love to hear from anyone who's still making up your mind. It's only August after all. Look how the polling in the primary changed so much near the end to reflect Mamdani's surge, and of course, he won. Ambivalence welcome here in addition to opinions and questions. 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692. Liz, we'll get into your story on the evolving issue of policing and public safety in this race. One more thing on who's willing to endorse who, you know that idea that's been floated of the non-Mamdani candidates coalescing around whoever leads among them in order to not to split the vote so Mamdani loses.

Cuomo and independent candidate Jim Walden are the ones who have mostly been in the news for embracing versions of that. Some of you know, former governor David Paterson held a press conference to promote the idea. I may have misunderstood Cuomo's relationship to that. If I did, maybe many of the listeners did, too. When Cuomo was on the show last week for this round of candidate interviews, I asked him if he, as a Democrat, would really support Republican Curtis Sliwa over Mamdani if Sliwa gets ahead of Cuomo in the polls. Here's the end of that exchange where Cuomo gives a definitive answer. This begins with my question. Are you saying or are you not saying that you'd rather have Curtis Sliwa than Zohran Mamdani?

Cuomo: No, I don't consider Curtis Sliwa a viable alternative, period.

Brian: Andrew Cuomo here last week. Liz, I don't know if that's clear to the general public. Cuomo would only prefer Eric Adams to Mamdani or maybe Jim Walden, who's not a factor, but not Curtis Sliwa to Mamdani. I thought that was interesting.

Liz: I actually have trouble even believing that he could wrap his arms around Adams, given how ugly some of the attacks have been between the two of them. With respect to Sliwa, Cuomo's running as an independent, but he's not interested in leaving or breaking away from the Democratic Party. In fact, when he was running in the primary, he made the argument that if he could win the mayoralty, he would help remake the Democratic Party. I think that's the calculus for him there. He is willing to perhaps back another rival Democrat, but not a Republican.

Brian: It's an interesting position for Cuomo to be in. Listeners, if you want to go back to last Monday's show, which, of course, you can find online and listen to that full exchange. I didn't pull it for today because it's too long. He attacks Adams so hard for being beholden to Trump. That deal around dropping the criminal charges and everything. He's basically saying Eric Adams is beholden to Trump, and Trump is an existential threat to the city, but he's still willing to endorse Adams if he were to take the lead in the polls over Mamdani, and taking the position that Mamdani is a bigger threat than Donald Trump via beholden Eric Adams. That's a tough position for Cuomo to be in if he wants to continue to be a Democrat.

Liz: He's also not recognizing that Sliwa, he ran in 2021 and he got, I think, a little under a third of the vote and that if the vote was to be split among all of these non-Mamdani or people to the to the right of Mamdani, it's a narrow path, of course, but he does have a path.

Brian: He does have a path.

Liz: Yes. It's a little bit of a disrespect to just swat him away and say, "I don't think he's a realistic candidate."

Brian: That's right. We've talked about this before. Listeners, maybe you've heard me say this before or write it in our newsletter, but think about it. If the three Democrats in the race, Eric Adams, Andrew Cuomo, and Mamdani, split a very big tent Democratic vote three ways, Curtis Sliwa, who, like you say, he had 27%, 28% in 2021, Donald Trump got 30% of the vote in the city last year. Yes, there is a path for Curtis Sliwa if Democrats are that divided.

All right. When we continue in a minute, Liz, we'll talk about her story on the evolving role of policing and public safety in the campaign, perhaps altered in an unexpected way by the mass shooting at the Midtown office building last week, and more with clips from Mamdani, Adams, and Cuomo. Stay with us. 212-433-WNYC, call or text if you want to participate.

[MUSIC]

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with our political reporter, Liz Kim, on the mayoral race. Liz is coming on with us every Wednesday for the duration of the campaign, plus other appearances as the news warrants. Liz, your latest story on Gothamist is called, as we mentioned earlier, "As Cuomo attacks Mamdani on police policy, Democratic nominee talks universal child care." How is Cuomo attacking Mamdani now on police policy? Set up this Cuomo clip that you brought.

Liz: Sure. As Mamdani was having that event with Warren, Cuomo was setting up his own press conference just in Midtown Manhattan. Both of them were in Manhattan. Mamdani was downtown. Cuomo's press conference, someone pointed out, was the first one he had actually done since losing the primary. He is set up on a stage. It's a very familiar backdrop that we've seen many times when he was governor.

He's on a podium sitting down, and he has a PowerPoint presentation. He's unveiled a new logo and slogan. His new slogan is "Build a New NYC." What's interesting is the messaging that he delivered was on public safety, which is, I think, actually a rather familiar campaign priority for him that dates back to when he first launched his bid for mayor.

Cuomo: Strengthen the key emergency response team. The SRG team, Strategic Response Group, is the group that responded to the shooting on Park Avenue. They are a key response group. The assemblyman says they should be disbanded. I think they should be increased. They are key to counterterrorism, key to mass protests, and it's only going to get worse, not better. I think it would be a tremendous mistake to disband them.

Brian: Liz, what's the issue with the Strategic Response Group? What does it do, and why does Mamdani want to disband it?

Liz: It's important to put this in context. The reason why the candidates are talking about this now is because of last Monday's mass shooting in Midtown. This is very much the first real high-profile public safety crisis for the candidates. For someone like Cuomo, for someone like Adams, and also Sliwa, they're trying to use this moment to point out the differences between themselves and a left-leaning candidate like Mamdani on public safety. They're zeroing in on this unit called the Strategic Response Group, which responded on that day, on Monday. They were one of the teams that were deployed and went inside the building to look for the shooter.

Now, this is actually a specialized unit that came under increased scrutiny during the 2020 George Floyd protests. They were using tactics like kettling. It's a tactic where officers encircle protesters and then come charging at them with batons, and this was captured on video. It resulted in civil lawsuits that forced the city to make these historic payouts. These were in the millions of dollars. There was also a federal settlement in which the city agreed that they would no longer use these tactics, like kettling, and that they would really rewrite the policy on how they police protesters.

What's interesting about this moment, though, is that-- Cuomo is actually saying, and Adams as well, pointing this is a unit that was very useful, that was crucial during this emergency. It speaks to this debate now, because whenever there is police misconduct, the question then becomes, what does the city do? There are some, like Adams and also Cuomo, that believe you can come up with new policies and new training. Then there are others like Mamdani that want to do something very different. They want to rehaul the department.

Mamdani has said, and he said it after the shooting as well, that he wants to eliminate the SRG. He feels that some of the civil rights violations that were committed by the group is just too far and beyond the pale. He commended the group for what they did at the shooting. He said that was an appropriate response, and that is an appropriate way to use a group like that, but he wants to totally re-envision how the city does policing.

Brian: When Mamdani is here tomorrow in our current round of candidate interviews, I will ask him about this directly, if he can somehow keep the good of that group in other units if he disbands the group. Here's Mayor Adams also distinguishing himself from Mamdani on the existence of the strategic response group, which he calls by their initials, the SRG.

Mayor Adams: Idealism collides with realism when you are saving the lives of people. Thank God SRG was there to go inside that building and do a floor-by-floor search. Specialized, well-trained law enforcement officers know how to do their specialty, and that's with officers who respond to domestic violence incidents. I keep reminding people, Officer Mora and Rivera were going to a domestic violence call when they were assassinated. I saw the tape.

Brian: That's quite a broad portfolio for this group, if nothing else, for the SRG. Mass protests, active shooter incidents, like at the office building, and domestic violence response that the mayor cited there, which requires perhaps a different, more one-on-one relational communication skills approach.

Liz: The mayor was mixing that up, actually. The SRG does not respond to domestic violence calls. He was bringing that issue up, though, as an example, that Mamdani has said he wants more of a specialized response to things like domestic violence, to things like mental health calls. What Adams has always argued is that when you show up for something like a domestic violence call, which was what happened in-- He's referring to that incident in Harlem in 2022, in which two police officers reported to a call involving domestic violence, and it turned out that the person had-- I believe it was someone who had a history of mental illness, and they wound up being killed in the apartment.

The mayor argues that with protests, with these kinds of mental health calls, you never know what happens. That's why he believes that you need officers on the scene and that it is not sufficient to just have a social worker or a mental health worker responding to these kinds of incidents. I think it's been a longstanding question is how does the city respond to these incidents, in which there is always the risk that something could go horribly wrong and violent? The mayor makes the argument that by having officers there, that they ultimately can protect the civilians in the room.

Brian: Here's Mamdani on that issue, retaining police officers, because that's a problem right now. Police officers are leaving the force, and there aren't enough recruits to replace them, even to keep the current numbers. He links it to what you were just describing.

Mamdani: 200 officers are leaving the department every month. A leading cause of their departure is forced overtime and the fact that every year we ask them to take on additional responsibilities. We are making it more and more difficult for them to respond to the very responsibilities that drew them to the job in the first place. I think about the seven major categories of crime as listed in CompStat. That is not the full extent of what we ask officers to do. The NYPD receives 200,000 mental health calls every year. How can they be expected to respond to that and to this?

Brian: We heard Cuomo, Adams, and Mamdani on this issue. By the way, in fairness to Eric Adams, these good crime stats keep coming out. Shootings so far down, murders so far down. There are other categories of crime that are still troublingly high. Felony assaults is the one that keeps getting mentioned. He can run on a certain record of success on the crime metrics that people pay most attention to, right?

Liz: Exactly, Brian. You could argue that until last Monday's mass shooting, and that is a very different kind of event. It's a much more rare event. You could argue that until that happened, the mayor had succeeded in basically taking this issue of crime and public safety off the table. That was, in a way, what contributed to Mamdani's success in the primary, because Cuomo, who entered the race talking about this unease, this feeling of insecurity and disorder in New York City, that never really was compelling to voters. They were more focused on this issue of affordability. Perhaps it's a credit to the mayor, because under his administration, crime has continued to fall. I will point out, though, that that is a national trend.

Brian: Interesting text, "How was the Strategic Response Group critical in the Midtown shooting? Everything was over by the time they arrived," which is, I think, fair. Maybe irrelevant one way or another, whether you want to argue for the Strategic Response Group or against it, or maybe not, because it was over, because the shooter killed himself. Interesting point there about the relevance of that issue to the office building shooting at all.

Here's maybe the surprise twist in the policing issue since the mass shooting at the office building. The other candidates are saying it shows how Mamdani would be too weak on policing, but the association that represents the slain officer, the Bangladeshi American Police Association of the NYPD, is endorsing Mamdani, and the family of the officer, whose name is Didarul Islam, has invited Mamdani into their home. You have a clip of a statement from the family. Want to set this up?

Liz: Sure, Brian. Last night was the first time that the family of Officer Islam spoke to the public. They essentially broke their silence on this issue, and it's a very difficult time. Prior to that, setting up that event with some reporters, a family member had told me that they have no desire at all to wade into politics, policy, gun control, but they did want to say something. I thought, in listening to them, that in their own kind of quiet and very dignified way, even though you can tell that the family was going through so much pain, that they did have something rather important to say about how this tragedy has wound up bringing the city together. This was the statement that was read by Officer Islam's brother-in-law.

Officer Islam's Brother-in-law: In this difficult time, we saw something powerful. People from all walks of life, from all parts of city coming together to support one another. The sense of unity gives us hope. It shows the kind of city we all want to live in, where kindness rises above differences, and where we stand by each other, not just in the difficult moments, but every day. Thank you for standing with us, and please keep the Didarul Islam and our family in your thoughts and prayers.

Brian: That was kind of a universal statement. It sounded like thanking everybody. Does it relate to the fact that here is at least one association of actual police officers, the Bangladeshi American Police Association of the NYPD, to which Officer Islam belonged, endorsing Mamdani?

Liz: I think you cannot escape the optics of that, although the family themselves have been very clear, they don't want to politicize this tragedy at all. Mamdani has similarly said he does not want to politicize the tragedy, but you cannot escape the fact that he visited the family. By all accounts, he was warmly received by the family. He was also invited by the family to sit with them during the funeral. It was a Muslim funeral at a mosque, and as is the tradition with Muslims, you sit on the floor.

You had this very stark image where you saw elected officials like Governor Kathy Hochul, Mayor Adams sitting in chairs to one side, and then you saw Zohran Mamdani sitting on the floor with Islam's family. It's interesting because this was also a moment in which some of Mamdani's critics tried to really use this issue to criticize him, to attack him over his more left-leaning criticisms of the NYPD, his 2020 embrace of the defund movement, he has called the police department racist.

What happened was because of this relationship that he developed with the slain officer's family, in a way, it kind of blunted some of those attacks, because if you're saying the age-old argument is that progressives who criticize the police, they wind up demoralizing the police. It became very hard to say that in this moment because you saw the way that the family embraced Mamdani and welcomed him.

Brian: We're over time, and David Furst, who's doing the news today, stand by. We're going to be a little later than we were going to be. I want to take two contrasting calls to end the segment on the lessons from Buffalo, where also a DSA endorsed candidate, that was India Walton, in that case, won the Democratic primary, and then the incumbent Democratic mayor ran as an independent and defeated her. Two different callers have two different lessons for New York City from that. Richard in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Richard, I'm going to have to limit you to 30 seconds, so go right to the point.

Richard: Okay, Brian. Thanks. The point was, I brought up that Buffalo situation a little while ago. Also, I observed that Senator Warren came in third in the Democratic primary last year-

Brian: For president.

Richard: -in Massachusetts. Democratic socialists don't win. I believe in socialism, I really do, but I don't have any hope of seeing it, and so I can understand why Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Kathy Hochul and Senator [crosstalk]--

Brian: Don't want Momdani to be the face of the party, used that way-

Richard: Exactly.

Brian: -by the Republicans. That's one way to look at it. George in Manhattan has another way. George, hi. You get 30 seconds.

George: As you summarize it very well, when India Walton won the Democratic socialist, what happened is they smeared her, they meaning the Democratic establishment in Buffalo, smeared her so badly, in spite of the fact that Byron Brown, the incumbent mayor, had ran the city finances into the ground. They showered Byron Brown with millions and millions of dollars, had all the wealth of people in Buffalo come out. He ran as a write-in candidate, and he won as a write-in candidate against India Walton, the Democratic socialist. My concern is whether the Jeffries, Schumer of the world will do a similar thing behind the scenes because of their silence, do these other shenanigans behind the scenes?

Brian: Interesting. George, thank you very much. Interesting contrast there. Did India Walton lose in Buffalo, and might Mamdani lose here because Democratic socialist policies don't sell, or because the Democratic party establishment smears them, and that scares away voters who might otherwise vote for them? We will leave that as an unanswered question that ends this segment. Maybe we'll ask Zohran Mamdani himself what he thinks about that when he appears tomorrow at the beginning of the show for his candidate interview in our current round of candidate interviews. For today, as every Wednesday during the campaign, we thank our political reporter, Elizabeth Kim. Liz, thanks a lot.

Liz: Thanks, Brian.

 

Copyright © 2025 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.