AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman with Juan González.

To talk more about the New York mayoral race, we’re joined by John Tarleton, Editor-in-Chief of The Indypendent, which is closely following New York City’s mayor election. They had Zohran Mamdani on the cover of their January issue. John’s recently piece is headlined, “Zohran Mamdani’s Path to Victory.” Earlier this month, Mamdani and Brad Lander, the other leading progressive candidate in the race, announced they would cross-endorse each other using ranked-choice voting.

BRAD LANDER: We both know what we need to do to save our city from Andrew Cuomo. You want to tell them?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You go first.

BRAD LANDER: Nah, you go first.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Let’s do it together.

BOTH: We’re cross-endorsing.

BRAD LANDER: In New York City, we have ranked-choice voting. And that means you can rank up to five candidates for mayor.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Brad and I are officially telling our supporters, if I’m your number one, rank Brad number two.

BRAD LANDER: Rank me number one, rank Zohran number two. Let’s send Andrew Cuomo…

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Back to the suburbs.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, this may be extremely strange for people who don’t have ranked-choice voting to have two adversaries endorsing each other. For more, we’re joined by John Tarleton to lay it all out. Again, the Editor-in-Chief of The Indypendent. You just heard – before we talk about ranked-choice voting and the significance of these two co-endorsing each other, what that means, Zohran Mamdani. It sort of reminds you years ago of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who the mainstream media hardly covered when she was running against Joe Crowley, longtime Democratic congressmember in the leadership of the House of Representatives, and she beat him. The Indypendent, your newspaper, had her on the cover before she even won. Do you see a replay here?

JOHN TARLETON: I do see a lot of similarities. You have a politician from an older generation, like Andrew Cuomo, that I think has really underestimated Zohran Mamdani and his campaign. Cuomo is comfortable with a very sort of stale, maybe outdated form of politicking. There’s been almost no grassroots ground game from the Cuomo campaign. They thought they were going to win easily, so why go around knocking on doors? Meanwhile, Mamdani’s campaign has now knocked on more than 1.5 million doors and had countless conversations with ordinary voters. And also, Zohran Mamdani’s platform is really, I think, speaking to a lot of people who feel like government doesn’t do nearly enough to make their lives easer. And that was something that AOC was doing seven years ago as well.

I think one difference is, AOC was running in one congressional district that tended to have very low voter turnout. She won that primary with 16,000 votes, and Crowley got about 12,000. In this race, we’re going to have roughly 900,000 to a million votes cast, so Zohran, ultimately, after all the ranked-choice voting sorts out, will need probably 450,000 or more votes to win. And he certainly has a very decent chance of doing that. So, he’s operating on – this is the biggest left sort of electoral undertaking since the Bernie presidential campaigns.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And John, just wanted to ask you briefly about the role of the real estate industry, the landlords of New York. They’re investing heavily in Andrew Cuomo, and Michael Bloomberg has tossed in money, several million dollars, for Cuomo. What’s your sense of why the landlords are so upset about the possibility of a Mamdani victory?

JOHN TARLETON: Yeah, the New York Apartment Association recently made a $2.5-million contribution to Cuomo’s super PAC, which has received more than $20 million total from billionaires and major corporations. The reason the real estate industry is concerned about Zohran Mamdani, for starters, he’s made freezing the rent a central part of his platform. Here in New York, we sort of have a patchwork of rent laws going back to the – that have their origins in World War II but continue to this day that provide what’s called rent stabilization for about 950,000 apartment units, which covers about 2.4 million New Yorkers.

And under the laws here, the mayor appoints all nine members of something called the Rent Guidelines Board. And that rent guidelines board each year decides how much landlords, the maximum they can increase the rent on their tenants. Under Eric Adams, over the last three years, that Rent Guidelines Board has cumulatively increased the rent by about 9%. Under Adams’s predecessor, Bill de Blasio, in three out of the eight years de Blasio was mayor, he froze the rent. And Zohran Mamdani has said he will appoint a Rent Guidelines Board, all nine members he will be appointing, that will enact a permanent rent freeze for as long as he’s mayor. So, that’s certainly one reason the real-estate industry is concerned about Zohran.

AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, we’re going to speak to Ro Khanna, the congressmember from Silicon Valley who refuses to take super PAC money. But if you can finally talk about that issue we started at the beginning just for 30 seconds before we go to Congressmember Khanna, and that is the issue of ranked-choice voting. Even for New Yorkers, it’s almost new, one previous election, what it means that Brad Lander and Zohran Mamdani have co-endorsed each other.

JOHN TARLETON: Yeah, so if the polls are anywhere near accurate, the results that come in tonight, Cuomo may be slightly ahead, both candidates in the mid-30-percents. And the election will be decided when the ranked-choice votes are tabulated next Tuesday. And Lander seems destined to finish in third place, and he’s strongly cross-endorsed with Zohran Mamdani. And the polling projections that came out yesterday from Emerson, a leading independent pollster, which showed Zohran winning the election, it showed him winning it at the final stage of ranked-choice, when Brad Lander’s votes would be reallocated. So, that cross-endorsement could be decisive.

AMY GOODMAN: To hear our extended interview with John Tarleton, you can go to democracynow.org. John Tarleton is the Editor-in-Chief of The Indypendent. We thank you so much for being with us. Next up, what’s the role of Congress in starting U.S. wars? We’ll speak with Congressmember Ro Khanna. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Pavan Guru,” by Sonny Singh in our Democracy Now! studio.