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

Today, New York City Democrats are voting in an historic mayoral primary. For much of the race, the 67-year-old former governor, Andrew Cuomo, was seen as the clear frontrunner. Cuomo resigned four years ago over allegations he sexually harassed at least 11 women while in office. But polls show the race has become extremely tight.

The possible new frontrunner according to some polls is a 33-year-old Democratic Socialist State Assemblymember, Zohran Mamdani. He’s risen to the top tier of a crowded field of 11 candidates in which voters will use a ranked-choice voting system to choose five candidates in order of their preference. A coalition of progressive groups has called on voters to not rank Cuomo. Last October, Mamdani joined Democracy Now! as he launched his mayoral campaign and laid out the platform he’s now known for. Today, he joins us on the phone from the campaign trail for a few minutes before we look broadly at this historic race.

Zohran Mamdani, welcome back to Democracy Now!. You held a news conference this morning in your home district of Astoria at sunrise?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Yes, yes I did because that’s the time that many New Yorkers are getting up to go to work, so they deserve a mayor who’ll be ready just like they are.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, talk about what your message is today and how you think it is that you have eaten into something like a 40% lead that the disgraced former governor, Andrew Cuomo, had, and now some polls are putting you ahead.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Well, Amy, it’s the same message that we’ve had since we launched this campaign on October 23, eight months ago. And it was such a pleasure to do so at Democracy Now! and sharing our vision for a city that New Yorkers can actually afford. Affordability is the crisis of the five boroughs across our city, where we live in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty.

500,000 children are going to sleep hungry every night. And the rest are in a permanent state of anxiety as to whether they can continue to afford to pay their rent, to pay their childcare, to even afford the cost of groceries. And ultimately, what has powered our campaign’s rise from 1% in the polls to being just a hair’s breadth away from City Hall is this focus on an economic agenda that will deliver a New York City that working- and middle-class New Yorkers can actually afford.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how have you been able to build such a large campaign apparatus, despite the fact that most of the “establishment Democratic operatives,” the unions, and the political leaders have not backed you?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I think it’s been incredible to see how the very New Yorkers who have been left behind by the politics of our city and of today have been the ones that are powering our campaign’s rise. And I now speak to you with more than 50,000 volunteers. There was a point at the beginning of this race where there were some that doubted whether we would receive even 50,000 votes.

And yet, this campaign apparatus, of which I cannot think of a precedent in our city, is one that has now knocked on 1.5 million doors, made more than 500,000 phone calls, and ultimately, is carrying a belief in politics that should require no translation, a politics that speaks directly to working- and middle-class New Yorkers’ struggles, and one that so often is being shared directly by one New Yorker to another at a doorstep, or a subway platform, or in a park. Because too often, we’ve allowed politics to become something where we wait for New Yorkers to come to us, or we lecture them instead of listen to them. And what we have done instead is reach out to New Yorkers wherever they are across these five boroughs.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And of course, this is the Democratic primary that we’re dealing with today. And it looks like the general election in November will be a lot different as well, given the fact that even Andrew Cuomo, if he were not to prevail, is going to run as an independent, that the current mayor, Eric Adams, is also running as an independent. Do you see this as, if you prevailed today, to be a guarantee of victory, or do you have a lot more campaigning to do in the months ahead?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: We got here by never taking any day for granted. And that’s how we’re going to run the rest of this race. And we’re confident that we’ll win the primary, and then we’ll run the general in the same manner, just as hungry as New Yorkers are for a new city, a city that takes care of each and every person. And ultimately, I’ve been running against Eric Adams’s second term from the beginning of this race. And Andrew Cuomo is running for that same term. It’s the same corruption, the same donors, the same limited vision, funded by the very corporations that are benefitting from this inequality crisis in the city. And we are on the brink of defeating that second term in the primary, and we’ll do it again in the general.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about The New York Times saying they weren’t going to endorse anyone in this primary, and then went after you. They said, “We do not believe Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots. His experience is too thin. His agenda reads like a turbocharged version of Mr. de Blasio’s dismaying mayoralty. As for Mr. Cuomo, we have serious objections to his ethics and conduct. Even if he would be better for New York’s future than Mr. Mamdani.” They went after you about controlling rent, they went after you about grocery stores. Talk about what you have promised New Yorkers on all of these issues and why you think The Times is wrong. And do you actually think them going after you helps you?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I think that their opinions are those of about a dozen New Yorkers, and they certainly have the right to it. And this is an election that’ll be decided by closer to a million New Yorkers. And ultimately, I was proud that when The New York Times assembled a panel of experts, they rated our campaign [audio cuts out] and those are two of the issues at the forefront of New Yorkers’ minds in this election.

And ultimately, our platform has been one laser-focused on that economic agenda in our promises to freeze the rent for more than two million rent-stabilized tenants, to make the slowest buses in the country fast and free, and to deliver universal childcare. Because ultimately, these are the ways in which city government can make life that little bit easier for each and every New Yorker and finally own up to the tools that it already has as opposed to pretend that it is merely a spectator in a suffocating cost-of-living crisis.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And finally, in about a minute that we have left, the last few mayoral Democratic primaries have been marked by very low participation level. What’s your sense of the turnout for this election?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I can tell you just from the early voting numbers that it is very exciting to see so many more New Yorkers participate in this process. From the very beginning of this race, we’ve said we wanted to bring more people into our politics such that our elections look more like the city that we love. And we’re seeing so many New Yorkers, be they younger New Yorkers or New Yorkers who’ve lived here for decades but have never registered to vote, finally seeing themselves in our politics, in our policies.

And ultimately, we know the importance of this is because the democracy is not just under attack from an authoritarian administration in Washington, it’s also under attack from within, in a withering belief in its relevance to the struggles of everyday people. And ultimately, this race is one way in which we can show that we can actually deliver a city that New Yorkers can afford, and we can do so by building a movement the city has never seen before.

AMY GOODMAN: Zohran Mamdani, I want to thank you for being with us. We know you’re on the road on this primary day here in New York. New York mayoral candidate and New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist.