Mayor Mamdani Flexes His Power in the Midterms

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**Rachel Abrams** (0:26)
From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.

**Zohran Mamdani** (0:34)
Good evening, everyone. What a good evening it is.

**Rachel Abrams** (0:39)
On Tuesday, a blowout in the New York primary cemented Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a local kingmaker.

**Zohran Mamdani** (0:45)
What you all have shown this evening, whether for state assembly, state senate, or Congress, is that a year ago, it was not the end of a political movement. It was the beginning.

**Rachel Abrams** (0:59)
All of his chosen candidates won, and their victories pointed to a growing movement within the Democratic Party. Today, political reporter Nick Fandos explains whether their victories help Democrats in the midterms or put their chances of winning control of Congress at risk.
It's Thursday, June 25th. Nick Fandos, welcome to The Daily.

**Nicholas Fandos** (1:33)
So glad to be here.

**Rachel Abrams** (1:34)
Mayor Mamdani is having a very good couple of weeks, it seems.

**Nicholas Fandos** (1:38)
Yeah, an incredible couple of weeks. The Knicks are NBA championships.

**Rachel Abrams** (1:43)
Yep.

**Nicholas Fandos** (1:44)
The World Cup, his beloved sporting event, is taking place just across the river in New Jersey. And this week, the mayor made a pretty audacious political gamble in a series of important congressional races in New York City, and he won every single one of them.

**Rachel Abrams** (2:00)
So, okay, as much as I want to talk to you about the Knicks, you are here to talk about Tuesday's election results.
And I want to understand what these results in New York's primary tells us about the strength of Mayor Mamdani, of course, this rising political figure in the Democratic Party, but also what these results mean for the national political picture. So, first, let's just talk about what were the results on Tuesday night.

**Nicholas Fandos** (2:23)
So, on Tuesday night, voters across New York City went to the polls in a series of very competitive congressional primaries. Now, in New York, a very Democratic city, the primaries actually are the elections that end up deciding who is going to fill these seats. And Mayor Mamdani did something unusual in these elections.
Where his predecessors have tended to try and stay out of local politics, to kind of bitter inner party fights that could divide their coalition or zap their political capital, he decided he was going to put all of his on the line for a series of candidates from the left, many of them Democratic Socialists, who share his vision for the city and he thought could win these seats in Congress for their movement. This is a pretty extraordinary gamble just six months into his term.
If he succeeded, it would give him a foothold in Congress, where he could inject the economic populist ideas from the left, his views on Israel and other issues into the national conversation the Democrats are having right now about their identity. But if he lost, he'd be squandering a lot of his own political capital. He'd be empowering people who are trying to stand in his way. And frankly, I think he'd make even some of his allies think, this guy's not as strong as we thought. Maybe we don't need to go along with what he's talking about.

**Rachel Abrams** (3:49)
Okay. So you've just explained sort of the gamble of it. Let's talk a little bit about how he decided to take the risks that he did.

**Nicholas Fandos** (3:55)
So to answer this, I want to go back all the way to last year's mayoral campaign.

**Rachel Abrams** (3:59)
Right.

**Nicholas Fandos** (4:00)
Mamdani was a little known state lawmaker. He was a Democratic socialist. He was the kind of guy that when he got into the race for mayor, nobody thought he could win. And a year ago this week, he did in remarkable fashion. He beat Andrew Cuomo, this titan of Democratic politics.
So from the start, it's important to remember that Mamdani is an insurgent politician and he's a movement politician. By the time last fall comes around and it's clear he's going to be elected mayor in the general election, he's already looking ahead to this year's races to figure out how can I expand that movement.

**Zohran Mamdani** (4:33)
New York, we know anything's possible with a great team.