Title: City Politics: The Mayoral Race Heats Up

[MUSIC]

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. What a 24 hours in the Democratic primary for mayor? You've certainly heard about candidate and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander getting arrested by federal agents as he linked arms with an immigrant leaving a court proceeding in lower Manhattan. Maybe you've seen the video. It was also a day when Bernie Sanders endorsed fellow Democratic Socialists, Zohran Mamdani. So did Maya Wiley, by the way, Maya Wiley, who came in second to Eric Adams in the 2021 primary.

New reporting from our Liz Kim described security precautions Mamdani has felt it necessary to take recently. Andrew Cuomo held a rally in Union Square to show his union support.

There's also a new Marist Poll showing Cuomo still beating Mamdani by 10 points in a ranked-choice voting runoff, but that's closer than previous polls. That poll was conducted before Thursday night's debate and certainly before Lander's arrest. Lander continued to poll a distant third, and everyone else lower than that.

There is still a decisive number of undecided voters. That's a key. Maybe some of you are trying to figure out the New York Times unendorsement this week and whether it gives you, if you're undecided, any guidance, if you care what that editorial board thinks. With us now, as usual, on Wednesdays, WNYC and Gothamist political reporter Elizabeth Kim. Happy action-packed Wednesday, Liz.

Liz: That's right, Brian. A really action-packed couple of days in this race.

Brian: First question, was the Lander arrest a stunt as he tries to come from behind in the race, which is still possible?

Liz: As soon as it happened, I started getting texts where you had some people cynically saying that he had planned to do this. Now, at the press conference that Lander held after he was released, he said no. He scoffed at that notion. This was something actually we talked about last week, Brian, was this idea that this is a very charged moment. It wouldn't be out of character for either Brad Lander or Zohran Mamdani to decide to attend a protest or do some kind of action.

They've done that before with the mayor of Newark. When Mayor Ras Baraka was detained, they actually went across the river and attended that rally. It was a question that I had put to both those two candidates because I thought, given their politics, it was something that they were most likely to do. What was interesting at the time was that Lander told me-- He wasn't definitive, but he said, "Yes, I think I will likely attend a protest, but what I am committed to doing is to continue doing court watching."

This is a practice which he's done for now three weeks, where he goes to federal immigration court, and he escorts migrants and their families out of the courthouse. The thinking being that the presence of an elected official will discourage federal authorities from trying to arrest them. What happened yesterday we saw was that he decided to hold on to a migrant, and that altercation was what eventually led to his arrest.

Now, how does he intentionally get arrested? I don't know that you can necessarily say that what he did prompted that somehow he could have planned that that moment would have been what would trigger what you saw in the video, which was him being grabbed by federal authorities and him not letting go. I don't know. I think it's hard to say whether you can come in with that kind of premeditated plan and know exactly what's going to happen. I should point out that he also was in attendance at the No Kings protest over the weekend, which was largely peaceful.

Brian: Were other candidates at No Kings rallies?

Liz: I did not see a mention of Zohran Mamdani at that protest. His big event on Saturday was his rally with AOC that evening. We had talked about whether or not these candidates in this moment would attend a protest, and also, like what we saw with Lander, risk the possibility of getting arrested. What that can mean in this moment, whether it was premeditated or not, is it can mean national attention. For Lander, we immediately saw that it grabbed local headlines. That evening, he was on CNN, he was on MSNBC. It has become a national story because everybody is interested in not only the immigration crackdown, but in the different kinds of resistance that Democrats are engaging in in this moment.

Brian: I also want to open the phones. Any reactions to the Lander arrest in particular? Is it influencing anybody's decision-making process if you're undecided, or even if it might make you switch from another candidate to him? Is it not such kind of a one-to-one relationship as that after a particular incident? We'll also open it wide for any undecided voter like we did earlier in the week, but also this time, electioneering welcome here. You can call in and support your candidates. Attention screeners, that's okay.

If we get flooded with people all for one candidate or two candidates, we may bump some of you because this is not a poll. We're trying to keep the conversation going. Our call in earlier in the week was explicitly for people who are still undecided. Today, it will be for those of you who are plus electioneering, welcome here for your candidate as early voting continues. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, give us a call or shoot us a text. Here's a clip of Lander after his release with his version of what happened in the incident.

Brad Lander: We just tried to walk out of the building, and I think you saw the video. All I tried to do was just hold Edgardo's arm and ask the ICE agents, "Do you have a warrant?" They would not show me the warrant, and I said, I'd let go of his arm as soon as they showed it to me. They did not show it to me, and you saw what happened.

Brian: Liz, do you know enough law to know if ICE did, in fact, need a warrant to detain the man after his court proceeding? We have a legal analyst coming up later in the show to talk about the Supreme Court and some other things. I'll ask her that at that time. Is it clear from your reporting on yesterday whether they did, in fact, need a warrant to detain the man? They did detain him. He is in custody, which maybe is not getting enough attention compared to Lander getting released. Lander, was he on solid ground with that legal claim?

Liz: I think a legal analyst would be able to give the fullest explanations of the conditions in which ICE needs to provide a warrant. Immediately after this happened, though, and I'm sure I'm not the only reporter, I immediately researched it and Googled it, under what situations does ICE need to provide a warrant? The answer that I was able to ascertain and has been reported was that in a public space like that, they do not need a warrant. They just need to have reason to believe that an individual who is here illegally might flee.

Brian: We will get legal analysis later in the program on that, among other things. We are awaiting Supreme Court decisions this morning. This is a decision day, and we'll see if any of the big ones that we're expecting come down. How did the other mayoral primary candidates react?

Liz: This was also very interesting. He had almost every Democrat rally behind him. I'm talking about Governor Hochul, who came down to the courthouse to demand that he be released. It was ultimately her presence and her action that did get him released. The other mayoral candidates, all of them, came out and had statements, and even going there in person to condemn the ICE arrest of Brad Lander. There was one, though, quite notable exception, and that was Mayor Adams. Adams took a very long time to come out with a statement. When his spokesperson finally did release a statement, it was rather critical of Brad Lander. You were asking me before whether this was premeditated or not.

The statement that his spokesperson released kind of suggested that they felt that this was performative politics. The statement was something to the effect that this is not about Brad Lander. Then something else that we noticed was Frank Carone, who is the mayor's longtime political advisor, and he was also, for a short period, his chief of staff, he came out on social media and mocked Lander. There was a picture of Lander getting arrested, and he posted something to the effect of this performance deserves an Academy Award.

Brian: Also yesterday, Andrew Cuomo held a rally. This was at Union Square with union members. We're going to play a short clip of Cuomo in a second, but you want to set this up for us? What kind of rally was this, and were there a lot of people?

Liz: This was actually on Monday, Brian.

Brian: Monday, sorry.

Liz: I believe this was at one of the headquarters of one of the many unions that are supporting him. He delivered this speech, which I thought was very interesting. It's a theme that he's hit on before, but I thought he really tried to drive it home in his remarks to this audience of what you would say is union working-class voters who have been the backbone of the Democratic Party. I say have been the backbone because we have seen some of those voters drift to Trump. He delivered a speech in which he's making the case that he is the best candidate to turn around the party, that the party has lost its way, and he explains why in this speech.

Andrew Cuomo: The second thing the Democratic Party forgot was that government is actually supposed to deliver for people.

Brian: That's classic Cuomo in this campaign running on his experience as opposed to who's got a more aggressive vision or a more inspiring vision.

Liz: That's right. I wish I could have played a longer clip of that. I got that from New York 1. This has always frustrated me about Cuomo's campaign is that the audio for his events are basically unusable for the press afterwards. You basically need to mic it yourself if you want good audio. I think because he is the front runner, I think it's worth reading some of his remarks out loud, and I brought some of what he said.

He talks about that there were 400,000 fewer Democrats that came out to vote in the last national election, and he says why. Because the Democratic Party lost its identity, lost its connection to who it really is. The Democratic Party lost its soul because you are the soul of the Democratic Party. He's referring to the people in that room, union members and working and middle-class New Yorkers.

Brian: You mentioned the working class. There's a battle over who's for the working class. The new Marist Poll and another recent poll show Mamdani's core to be more affluent white voters and all kinds of younger voters. Apparently, the new Marist Poll shows him taking the lead among Latinos, which would be really important. What do you make of the Cuomo and Mamdani coalitions as they seem so far?

Liz: That was my biggest takeaway from that Marist Poll. Now, we should keep in mind that polls are always about capturing a point in time. This poll captures a period between June 9th and June 12th. Like you said, that's before the final debate, that's before the cross-endorsement between Lander and Mamdani, that's before Lander's arrest. What we do know is that by that period, Mamdani is outstripping Cuomo's lead among Latino voters, which is no small feat.

I remember earlier on during the race coming across a Latino woman, and I had asked her who she was voting for. She gave a response that I think is very typical, particularly of older generations, was that she was struggling to remember who the candidate was, but she could remember that he had a very famous father. That just speaks to the brand that Cuomo and the Cuomo dynasty have in New York City. It was something that people who study Latino voters had told me would have great weight.

At the same time, what we saw happen and we talked about this, Brian, was Mamdani made a concerted effort to go after Latino voters, and he did it by speaking Spanish. He is not a fluent Spanish speaker, but he came out with a video that really wowed a lot of native Spanish speakers for how good he sounded. It wasn't just a one-time thing. He continued to do it.

Most recently, I saw an interview that he did on a Spanish-language news program, which he said entirely in Spanish, and it was about how, as mayor, he would protect immigrants from ICE. I remember I immediately sent it to one of my Latino political experts, and they were like, "Wow, this is impressive. I think it's going to matter." What we see in this Marist Poll is it did matter.

Brian: Let's take a couple of callers who are for Lander. I'm just saying transparently what we're going to take here, because again, this is not a poll. We want to get different points of view on. A lot of people are calling in with support for Lander after the incident yesterday. I'm going to take two of those. Then we're going to take a Mamdani caller. Then we're going to take a Cuomo caller. Eric in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, you're on WNYC. Hello, Eric.

Eric: Hey, good morning, Brian. I went to vote early yesterday, and I put Lander as my first choice and Mamdani as my second choice. I didn't even realize Lander had been arrested until I got back home and looked at the news, and was amazed. It just made me feel glad that I put him as my first choice. I think the other opposition politicians who are claiming that it's a stunt or an act are just way off. I don't think that's the case at all. I saw the video, and I just think that's political posturing.

Brian: Eric, thank you very much. One more on this. Raphael in Murray Hill, you're on WNYC. Hi, Raphael.

Raphael: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to comment on the idea that what Lander was doing was just a stunt, because I think that in this political moment, doing things that capture attention is actually really, really, really important. We've seen it with the Trump administration, their efforts to flood the zone and just capture all the attention has really allowed them, I think, to push through their agenda. I think politicians need to realize that capturing attention is a really viable way to actually get done what they want to get done. Seeing Lander doing this made me want to put him at number one.

Brian: Even if he did set out to be arrested and draw attention both to himself and to the issue, if he did it in that way, that's still okay with you because you think that's good for democracy, if I'm not mischaracterizing you?

Raphael: Unfortunately, I think whether or not that he set out to do the stunt, and personally, I don't believe that that was the case. I think that he was actually trying to help this person through whatever they were going through. I think that having people look at what you're doing and capturing attention is necessary in this political moment. Just on another point, Zohran's campaign has been very good about that, putting out a lot of videos that aren't really conventional by a lot of political standards. They have captured a lot of attention, and I think that, clearly, it's been working for them. In the beginning of this mayoral race, Cuomo was a shoo-in, and they've really come back using this unconventional attention-capturing strategy.

Brian: Raphael, thanks for your call. Really appreciate it. On to Chris in Crown Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Chris.

Chris: Hi, Brian. I just wanted to say I was at the No Kings protest. At the start of the protest, not only did Zohran give a speech, but also Brad Lander, they endorsed each other. Cynthia Nixon was there, and she also made an anti-Cuomo sentiment, which was really well received by the crowd. I don't know if they marched with us when we all moved, but they were there at the beginning.

Brian: To the question that was raised before about whether anybody other than Lander, among the primary candidates, attended the No Kings rally, right? That's the point you're making.

Chris: Yes, exactly.

Brian: So did Mamdani at least show up there. Klasima in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hello, Klasima.

Klasima: Hi. I initially was going to vote for Lander, but when he cross-endorsed Mamdani, I changed my mind because that's just too political a stunt. I changed my mind. I'm going to vote for Cuomo. I already did vote for Cuomo, actually. Mamdani and Lander didn't show up on my rank voting at all. I think I really believe that was a political stunt for Lander. I really do because the timing is just too coincidental.

We need somebody in the city of New York who's proven themselves to get things done, and Cuomo is the person. He put money into the city of Buffalo, turned it around. He was instrumental in LaGuardia and the Tappan Zee Bridge. There's just so many things that he's actually gotten done, stopped the fracking. I don't think the city of New York can really afford Mamdani. He's a lot of hot air, and I want somebody who can get things done. That's my opinion.

Brian: Do I understand you correctly that you like Cuomo and you like Lander? The reason you moved away from Lander was because Lander cross-endorsed with Mamdani, and Mamdani is so unacceptable to you?

Klasima: Yes. One of the big issue is that I'm a retired municipal worker in the city of New York, and we've been fighting four years to save our insurance. Mamdani, he's only vocalized he'd support us, but when it comes down to it, he's not really. We asked him to commit. He did not commit. He wouldn't work with us, and Cuomo did. That's important to me. He makes me nervous.

Brian: Klasima, thank you very much. Let me take one more Mamdani supporter right now, because the one who we went to originally, all she wanted to say was that he attended the No Kings rally. Paul in Sunset Park, I think, is going to get a little more substantive, like our callers on the other candidates. Paul, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Paul: Hi, Brian. It's good to be back and to love your program. A couple of things. When I first heard that Lander was arrested, the cynical side of me said, "Oh, boy, this is last-minute stuff," but I watched different of the videos this morning on various news channels, and I also go back to what I know about Lander. I don't think that stunt is the main thing. I think the main thing here with him is that he has consistently been there quietly with no publicity, except maybe with this campaign, standing up for immigrants and trying to keep them from being arrested.

Brian: Let me move you along. I hear all of that. Did you tell our screener you're a Mamdani voter, number one?

Paul: Yes, I am. After a long time of decision making, that's where I came down. I'm not moving from there. My respect for Brad Lander went up, nevertheless. One quick thing about Cuomo. Oh my God, I've lived in the city a long time. How dare that man come back in? He's disgraced for good reasons. I get that he knows how to build things, but Abraham Lincoln didn't have very much experience either. I think the Bob Herbert book, some years ago, pointed out the transcontinental railroad and other infrastructure that Lincoln did in addition to, of course, the Civil War. I just don't buy that no experience. Sometimes, the freshness and the vision that somebody has.

Brian: Thank you, Paul. Thank you. Here to that point, we played Cuomo at his rally on Monday. Here's Mamdani at his.

Zohran Mamdani: They know that this election isn't just about the future of our city. It's about the future of our democracy, whether billionaires and massive corporations can simply buy our elections. Trust me, they will try. Over the next 10 days, you will not be able to turn on your TV, check your mail, or watch a video on YouTube without seeing an attack on our movement. There will be lies to stoke fear and suspicion, even hate.

Brian: Liz Kim is still with us, being very patient as we did a set of calls there. Our political reporter, Elizabeth Kim, who usually joins us on Wednesday to talk politics, New York City politics. There is so much right now. Liz, a couple of couple of things. Bernie Sanders endorsed Mamdani yesterday. Why did he wait till now, if you have any sense? It would seem they are natural allies. They both call themselves democratic socialists. AOC had already endorsed Mamdani. AOC and Sanders were on a national tour recently to rally against the Trump agenda. Was this calculated, too, to make an impact at this point?

Liz: There's two theories. One is that, yes, sometimes it is believed that a late endorsement has the most impact. The second reason, and I think this has been something that has a lot of credence with AOC in how, when, and who she decides to endorse, is to endorse someone, it's no small thing. You're basically putting your political capital behind someone. In a local race where you might not be that familiar with all the candidates, you want information.

You want information about who they are. You want to see how they're performing in the race. How much money have they raised? How many volunteers do they have? I don't think that it is so unusual for a national figure, whether it be AOC or Bernie Sanders, to want to see more before stepping into the race and picking someone.

Brian: On the Marist Poll, here's a little text from the New York Times article on it. It says, "Cuomo has maintained his lead largely on the support among three groups: Black voters, women, and voters over 45, who are among the most reliable blocs in a Democratic primary. Over the same period, Mr. Mamdani rose from being the first choice of 18% of likely voters to 27%. He does best among likely voters who are 'very liberal.'" That would be self-described.

"Very liberal and under 45, but also roughly doubled his support among Latino New Yorkers, narrowly surpassing Mr. Cuomo with that group." That's from the New York Times article today on the Marist Poll. We mentioned Mamdani and Latino voters earlier. Are you surprised, given why Cuomo resigned, that the Times description of the poll identifies him as having women as a group among his strongest supporters?

Liz: I'm not surprised by Black voters, and also older voters. Now, with women, and women could be a cross-section of Black voters and also older voters, too, that's an interesting category. There has been talk, particularly when the teachers' union were doing their interviews, was that they saw that the response of their union members, and not all teachers, but there are a lot of women teachers, was that they were split between two candidates, Cuomo and Mamdani.

I talked to a source who felt that a lot of younger women voters, they were more disgusted by the sexual misconduct scandals, whereas the older women were able to look past that. There's a question whether there is a generational gap in the way they view these scandals and how it has tarnished Cuomo. That will definitely be something that's very interesting to see when we look at the final results.

I would also say that in recent days, I get a lot of people who are asking me, "Can Mamdani win?" I think the question should be flipped, because it should be, "Can Cuomo lose?" Because this is still his race to lose. If you look at this poll, that is still what it suggests, because at the end, Cuomo does win. Now, it's taking him longer, according to the way ranked-choice is counted, you have to go through these rounds. The initial Marist Poll said that he would win in five rounds. Now it's saying that it would take him seven rounds. There is momentum. It is tightening. These numbers still suggest that it is Cuomo's race to lose.

Brian: I've made this point before as a matter of strategy for people who are Lander supporters. I'm going to make it again, just because this really matters to the outcome. We had a caller who was Mamdani-Lander, and we had a caller who was Cuomo-Lander. We had a Cuomo-Mamdani even the other day. People's rankings are all over the map. Listeners, if you like Brad Lander, and if he's actually going to come in third, he may surge and win. If you like Lander the best, rank him first.

If he comes in third, whether you rank Cuomo or Mamdani higher behind him, or rank one and not the other at all, but who does better on your ranking between Cuomo and Mamdani? If you are a Brad Lander number one voter, you might make the difference in this ranked-choice primary because of the way that ranked-choice voting works. When they go through the rounds and eliminate the person who came in last, then the person who came in second to last, and up the chain, if Lander does still come in third at the end of the day, his votes are then going to get distributed to the next highest candidate on your ranking who is still in the race.

If you're ranking Lander, it's really important whether you rank Cuomo or Mamdani better below him or at all below him. Liz, you agree with that, right? It's just a point of detail that I think could be crucial to the outcome. It's obviously not to take anybody's side. It's just so people understand what's at stake. If you're casually putting a bunch of candidates below your number one, who you put below Brad Lander might matter that much.

Liz: Excellent point, Brian. Excellent point. The Lander voters could determine this based on what we've seen in the polls. Now, in this particular Marist Poll, and this was something that I immediately went to look at, because when Lander gets eliminated in the sixth round, the question is, where do his votes go? What I saw, what it says, is that five points go to Cuomo, eight to Mamdani. Now, for Mamdani, what he needs to get is he needs to get as many of those Lander supporters as he can, which explains partly why they did the cross-endorsement.

Like I said, this poll does not take into account the impact of the cross-endorsement. Now, that's not to say that every voter will look at that cross-endorsement and say, "Sure, I love Brad. I'm going to do what Brad says and rank Zohran Mamdani second." That might not happen. We had a caller just now who said that they were turned off enough by that that they weren't even going to rank Lander. That is because Mamdani, like Cuomo, is polarizing among some voters.

Brian: We're going to continue in a minute. I'm going to tell you who I think the biggest loser from the presumably positive publicity that Lander is getting after his arrest yesterday, who the biggest loser might actually be. If we have time, we're going to play a few clips of advertising from some of them. If not, we'll do it tomorrow. We are going to continue to talk about this race every day through primary day and obviously the morning after. Stay with us, me and our political reporter, Elizabeth Kim, on WNYC.

[MUSIC]

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue for another few minutes with our political reporter, Elizabeth Kim, who's generally with us on Wednesdays. Liz, if the Lander arrest actually benefits him, then it seems to me that perhaps the biggest loser is Adrienne Adams, because it's Lander and Adams who were both trying to come from behind very hard in the debate on Thursday night.

I thought they both made impressions in the debate, which is not to say that Cuomo and Mamdani, as leaders, didn't also make impressions in the debate. Those were the two who still have an outside shot, who are coming from behind. Adams has always been behind Lander, definitely fourth to Lander's third. With all this attention on Lander, the third-place candidate so far, I feel like it really hurts Adrienne Adams.

Liz: That's right, Brian. It does really feel as if the speaker has receded a little bit in the race. I think even with her debate performance, which I think some people would just say it was good, but it was not standout, many people would say that Brad Lander won that debate. He has gone on to have these headline-grabbing moments, and he's surged on that. Whether it matters to readers or voters or not, he got Ezra Klein's endorsement today. Little by little, he is--

Brian: New York Times columnist-

Liz: That's right.

Brian: -and podcast host.

Liz: Right. He does have momentum right now. There's no doubt about it.

Brian: Tell me about your new article on Mamdani apparently ramping up his security detail recently.

Liz: Sure. This came out of a question I had because I had noticed that several weeks ago, Mamdani's campaign stopped publicizing the location of his events and press conferences. Now, the way this works is every morning, all the campaigns will send reporters emails about where their candidate will be and what they're doing. Mamdani's campaign would say he's going to hold a press conference for X, Y, Z, and then it would say, to get the location, you had to fill out a form. Then they would send you the location. It's kind of unusual. It is unusual.

I had just asked them, "Why are you doing it this way?" That's when I learned that they were worried about security. We had a deeper conversation about it, and they told me that they had, in fact, hired personal security for Mamdani. The reason is because he has been getting death threats. I later interviewed Mamdani about this. Now, for him as a Muslim and Asian elected official, it's not unusual. He was telling me threats are not new to him, criticisms are not new to him, but he felt that the threats had reached what he said was a new level of specificity, and at the urging of his family and friends, he decided to get personal security.

I then did a little bit of historical research, and it turns out that it's rather uncommon, even in a high-profile race like the race for mayor in New York City, it's rare to see a candidate do that. It is an expense that comes out of the campaign, typically, and not many candidates have done it. I look back in 2021. One of the leading contenders then, Andrew Yang, did have some expenses on security.

I reached out to their former campaign staffers, and they told me that was mostly about events and crowd control. It's rather rare to see this. The one instance I was able to find was Al Sharpton. Reverend Al Sharpton was stabbed in 1991. He went on to run for mayor in 1997. He told me it was such a charged climate with Giuliani in that race that he decided to get security.

Brian: Did Sharpton endorse in this race, by the way? I saw some news coverage that Cuomo appeared with him at a National Action Network, Sharpton's organization, event. Is Al Sharpton endorsing Andrew Cuomo?

Liz: No, he is not. I spoke to him again this week about it, and he told me again, no, he has decided not to weigh in on the race. What he is doing, which is why you saw Cuomo speaking at the National Action Network, is he is inviting the candidates to come and speak there. We saw Cuomo there last Saturday, and we are going to see Zohran Mamdani, Brad Lander, and Adrienne Adams make an appearance this coming weekend.

Brian: Last thing for today, Liz. We're not going to have time for these ads because we have other big things to do in the show. There's at least one major Supreme Court decision out this morning. We're going to have a legal analyst on that. We're also going to talk about what's going on in Iran and Israel that's obviously so intense, and what is the US endgame now with Trump's doing things like calling for an unconditional surrender and telling everybody who lives in Tehran, which by the way is a bigger city than New York in terms of population, to evacuate. We're going to do that next in a minute. We'll play these ads later in the week.

Liz, does it matter between Cuomo and Mamdani who wins the Democratic primary? Because from what I read, Cuomo's got another ballot line that he will or probably will run on in November if he loses the Democratic primary. The Working Families Party has its line on which they will probably put up Mamdani anyway or Brad Lander. Is everybody going to be on the ballot? Are we going to have these same conversations with the same players again in November, plus Eric Adams?

Liz: We might, Brian. Mamdani has been asked about this. I've asked him about this, that, in a sense, isn't he already a lock given how well he's performed? If he does indeed, as the polls suggest, come in second place in the primary, wouldn't the Working Families Party naturally just put him on the line? Then, like you said, we'll do this again. They're not looking at it this way. They want to win this primary. He wants to be the standard bearer for the Democratic Party in this race.

He's given no indications about even talking about what happens in November. I think there is a lot at stake here. The amount of canvassing that his something like 36,000 volunteers have done. He's all in in terms of winning this primary. What I would say, though, is if, let's say, he doesn't win, what he will have coming out of the primary is he will have more time. Perhaps time is what a candidate like him needs, given that he doesn't have the same kind of name recognition as Cuomo, and that can be damaging for Cuomo.

Brian: WNYC's Elizabeth Kim. Thanks, as always.

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.