Zohran Mamdani is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, and the billionaires who opposed him in the first round of the primary are panicking. The progressive Democrat who cross-endorsed him, New York City Comptroller and former NYC mayoral candidate Brad Lander, joins Mehdi on the show to talk about the race and the fallout from it.
“People loved seeing us out there together,” Lander tells Mehdi, “To add this dimension of trying to be able to have, you know, Jewish New Yorkers and Muslim New Yorkers be able to hear each other a little better, added something pretty special too.”
The billionaires who backed former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s candidacy are now scrambling: Do they stick with Cuomo? Switch to current Mayor Eric Adams? Or support both? Regardless of who they pick, however, Lander’s opinion is unchanged: “I just feel like anyone that would spend millions of dollars on them should be embarrassed.”
Cuomo’s backers spent a lot of money trying to dissuade New Yorkers from voting for Mamdani and Lander; meanwhile, Cuomo himself resorted to cheap and cynical rhetoric to do the same.
“Andrew Cuomo went into a synagogue in this race and called me and Zohran, and the Black speaker of the City Council, antisemitic,” says Lander, who is Jewish. “They are happy to use us as pawns for their own political purposes.”
Mehdi also talks to the comptroller about ICE and Lander’s own recent arrest by DHS, that viral joint interview with Stephen Colbert, rising antisemitism, why Lander was attacked for tweeting in solidarity with Iranian New Yorkers, and whether we can expect to see him as deputy mayor in a future Mamdani administration.
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