AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Sunday he’s dropping out of the mayoral race. This comes after President Trump and New York business leaders pressured Adams and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa to drop out in order to narrow the race and help disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo beat the Democratic candidate, Zohran Mamdani. The Democratic Socialist assemblymember shocked the political establishment when he trounced Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary in June. Cuomo is now running as an independent.

Last September, Adams was indicted on federal bribery charges in a scheme spanning nearly a decade. Prosecutors allege Adams engaged in a long-running conspiracy in which he solicited and knowingly accepted illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors and corporations. In exchange, Adams allegedly helped Turkey’s government open a new 36-story consular building near the United Nations here in New York without a fire inspection. Trump’s Justice Department dismissed the charges earlier this year in what was seen as a quid pro quo in exchange for Adams implementing Trump’s crackdown on immigrants. President Trump reportedly considered offering Adams a position in his administration, possibly ambassador to Saudi Arabia, if he dropped out.

If elected, Zohran Mamdani would become New York City’s first Muslim mayor. He was born in Kampala, Uganda, moved with his family to New York at the age of 7, is the son of the renowned academic and author Mahmood Mamdani and Indian American filmmaker Mira Nair.

On Sunday, Democracy Now!’s Nermeen Shaikh and I sat down with Zohran Mamdani in our studio an hour after Eric Adams announced his withdrawal from the mayoral race, as polls show Cuomo is well behind Mamdani.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, today, we’re joined by the man President Trump does not want to become mayor of New York — that’s right, Zohran Mamdani. He’s in our studio to talk about this breaking news and more.

Zohran Mamdani, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Respond. The significance of Adams dropping out of the race? Does this surprise you?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, it is something that has been rumored for quite some time, that this would be the month, this would be the week, this would be the day. And today, we’ve finally seen it. Yet it is also an encapsulation of so much of what has characterized Eric Adams’s mayoralty, is decisions at the behest of Donald Trump and his billionaire donors and at the expense of working-class New Yorkers. And what we see in this moment is very much what we saw the day we started this campaign on October 23rd: a necessity to finally stand up to the days of big money and small ideas being what characterizes City Hall, and instead delivering for the very working-class New Yorkers that are being priced out of that same city.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to what Eric Adams had to say. In a nine-minute video message announcing his decision to drop out, New York Mayor Eric Adams did not mention you, Zohran, or Andrew Cuomo by name, but he said this, which has been viewed as criticism of your campaign.

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS: Major change is welcome and necessary, but beware of those who claim the answer to destroy the very system we built together over generations. That is not change. That is chaos. Instead, I urge New Yorkers to choose leaders not by what they promise, but by what they have delivered.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Zohran, your response?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Well, you know, I am not surprised to hear any of these critiques or points from Eric Adams, because it is Eric Adams’s mayoralty that has delivered us with a city where one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty. And in that same video, he diagnoses what the issues are that New Yorkers face. He speaks about the necessity of lowering costs, of improving quality of life, of keeping New Yorkers safe.

And I don’t contest the diagnosis. I contest his delivery, however. This is a mayor who raised the rent by 12% on more than 2 million New Yorkers, a mayor who priced New Yorkers further out of child care, a mayor who has, time and time again, exacerbated a cost-of-living crisis, whether by raising the water bill or supporting Con Edison when they wanted to raise gas and electric. And so, I wouldn’t take advice on addressing that same crisis from the man who’s been inflaming it time and time again.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, could you say, Zohran, what do you think the impact of his dropping out will have on your electoral prospects?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I think it’s very much the same race. We have seen over the course of this race, especially in the final weeks and months of the primary, that Andrew Cuomo wanted nothing more than a one-on-one fight with me. And we gave him exactly that, and then we beat him by 13 points. And we continue to be just as confident.

And yet, what separates us from these other candidates is that we’re not focused on them. We’re focused on New Yorkers. New Yorkers deserve leadership that is thinking about how to benefit the people of the city. And too often politicians, be it Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams, the meetings that they have or the phone calls with someone like Donald Trump, they’re only speaking about themselves. It’s time to actually think about New Yorkers.

AMY GOODMAN: So, in the New York City mayoral race, the Republican nominee, who’s still in the race, Curtis Sliwa, says at least seven wealthy individuals have offered him money to end his campaign. He says he’s going to stay in the race. If you can talk about that, who you think these seven wealthy individuals are, and are they the same people who are funding ads to the tune of millions of dollars against you?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Well, I can tell you, there’s no shortage of Trump donors who are seeking to influence this election, who are looking to spend more money than I would even tax them to try and stop our campaign. And at the same time, of Eric Adams, Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, Curtis Sliwa is the one that I would trust the most. And I do think it is very real that there are many who are threatened by our campaign and our politics of putting working people at the heart of this city’s focus, and are trying to do everything in their power — and we’ve seen that with Donald Trump being on the phone with Andrew Cuomo, trying to do everything in his power — to ensure that they stop this movement. And the sad news for them is that they won’t be able to.

AMY GOODMAN: Is this going to change your strategy in any way, where you now — it’s gone from a four-person race to a three-person race? But, of course, people are saying that with Eric Adams out of the race, it’s much closer to a two-person race: you and your leading opponent, Andrew Cuomo.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: We will have the same focus as we’ve always had, on working-class New Yorkers, their struggle to afford this city, and also to be very clear with New Yorkers that the reason that Donald Trump is seeking to clear the lane for Andrew Cuomo is because he knows that Andrew Cuomo will clear their lane for Donald Trump’s agenda. There is a reality to the fact that it takes two to tango, and these are the two people that are so often on New Yorkers’ minds as an example of the politics we have to leave in the past.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, indeed, Zohran, your entire platform has focused principally on affordability and, as you said, helping the working class. But what appeared surprising to some in the Democratic primary is that Cuomo had a double-digit lead over you in low-income neighborhoods. So, how do you explain that? And what are you doing to assuage whatever the concerns of this constituency are?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, when I started this race — and I was here on the first day of the campaign, I was also here on Primary Day, and I’m very happy to be back — I spoke about the fact that I was a state assemblymember who at that time was polling, let’s say, 1%, and that’s being charitable to me. That’s rounding up. And I think for much of the campaign, it was introducing myself and our movement to New Yorkers. And we introduced ourselves to quite a few, which, by the end of that primary, meant that we won close to 600,000 votes.

And yet, that work still continues, because when I’m running against Andrew Cuomo, it’s not just his name or his record that comes to mind for New Yorkers, it’s also that of his father. And so, for many New Yorkers, that was the association that they began the race with. And now we are building a coalition that shows our agenda as one that will deliver that affordability to each and every New Yorker.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about affordability and talk about your planks. I mean, I think people are looking at this all over the country, and the question people have is: How can this be afforded — for example, when you have free child care, when you have free buses, you put a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments, so housing, and city-owned grocery stores? Go through your planks. It’s not that it’s never been tried in the country, and in many cases very successfully, but you’re putting it all together.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: And I think it requires an approach that addresses this crisis across the lives of New Yorkers. You know, New Yorkers are not just bus riders or parents. They are all of these things at once, while also many of them being tenants. And as you’ve said, there is a precedent for all of these commitments.

When we talk about freezing the rent, that’s something that doesn’t come at a fiscal cost to the city of New York. It is through the power we have of the Rent Guidelines Board to tell the landlords of those more than 2 million New Yorkers that they cannot raise the rent for these four years, to provide relief to those tenants to the tune of close to $7 billion, and also to still work with those landlords to reduce the cost burdens they’re facing from insurance, from the water bill, from Con Edison, because it’s not a competition. It’s a question of ensuring that this is affordable and workable for each and every New Yorker.

And if we think about universal child care, the cost of universal child care is around $6 billion — significant amount of money, has to be put in a context of a $116 billion municipal budget, more than $250 billion state budget, and also the context of the fact that it’s costing us nearly four times as much to not have affordable child care. And what I mean by that is, a few years ago there was a study of the economic costs of that lack of affordable child care, and it found it close to $23 billion, because it is, after housing, the leading cost pushing New Yorkers out of the city, which makes sense, given that it’s $25,000 a year for a New Yorker to find child care for their one kid. And so, this is an agenda that delivers on that, and it’s one that also understands, when you are faced with these costs, you are faced with a political choice. And it’s a choice I believe we have to make for working New Yorkers. And I think that there are two clear revenue streams to raise the money necessary to fund this.

AMY GOODMAN: And that is?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: That is raising personal income taxes on the top 1% of New Yorkers — that’s New Yorkers who make a million dollars or more a year — by 2%, and raising the state’s top corporate tax rate to match that of New Jersey. Together, those two initiatives would raise $9 billion. I think they’re the most straightforward, productive means of doing so. But if people have other ideas to raise the same money, I encourage it.

AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, on child care, what can you learn from New Mexico, which became the first and only state in the country to offer free child care to a majority of families three years ago. According to The Guardian, the program lifted 120,000 people above the poverty line.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I think it shows that this is possible. It shows that it’s not only necessary, but it is a question of our own political will. And we don’t have to look as far as New Mexico, frankly, because right here in New York City, the previous mayoral administration delivered universal pre-K. And that was something that showed us the possibility of city government meeting the needs of working New Yorkers.

And if we do not meet these needs, we will see — continue to see parents and aspiring parents leave this city in order to find a place where they can afford that child care. It’s time for us to actually deliver on it so we can keep people here and actually have room for others to join us, as well.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Zohran, you mentioned earlier, of course, housing is one of the central — you’ve made it one of the central issues in your campaign, because it’s true that New York City, one of the biggest issues is that people can no longer afford housing. You’re focusing in particular on deed theft. If you could explain what it is and your plans to create an Office of Deed Theft Prevention?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Absolutely. You know, the affordability agenda we have is one that doesn’t just speak to tenants. It also speaks to homeowners. And since 2015, we’ve seen more than 3,500 instances of deed theft take place across New York City.

Deed theft, for those who don’t know, is something that disproportionately targets older New Yorkers — they tend to be Black and Brown New Yorkers — where an individual will knock on the door of one of those same New Yorkers and say, “Do you need assistance in resolving your inheritance or refinancing your home?” preying upon their desire to actually pass that home on to their next generation or to ensure that they can stay in that home. And there are so many of those New Yorkers who have been — lost the title to their own home through this kind of being preyed upon.

And so, our office would take advantage of the new state rules that have allowed the city greater enforcement authority on this issue, would also fund, for about $20 million, lawyers and further legal assistance for New Yorkers, who would then be proactively reached out to by the city of New York, and would look at the example of a Tangled Title Fund in Pennsylvania and bring the success of that here, so that the city is assisting New Yorkers in ensuring that their next generation can inherit their home, as opposed to leaving them to the prey of someone who would look to actually engage in deed theft.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s talk, Zohran, about issues that, of course, are very relevant to people in New York, but the principal action is happening elsewhere, and what you’ve commented on many times — namely, what’s unfolding in Gaza right now. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was just here in New York, scheduled to meet Trump on Monday. So, if you could talk about what you’ve heard from New Yorkers on this issue?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, I can tell you I have heard, from New Yorkers across the five boroughs, a real sense of despair and horror at the genocide that we’ve seen in Gaza, and an understanding of complicity as Americans in the funding of this genocide. And New Yorkers are looking for someone to be their mayor who will focus on this city, who will deliver for the people of this city, and someone who also, amidst all of that, has the moral clarity to have a politics of consistency. And that’s what has been at the heart of our campaign, a consistent belief in the universality of ideals like humanity, like justice, like safety, and the ways in which Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide of Palestinians is a violation not only of those ideals, but also of international law. And we’ve seen that in the issuing of a warrant for his arrest by the International Criminal Court.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a journalist questioning Netanyahu at a White House dinner hosted by Donald Trump in July.

REPORTER: Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, has been a vocal critic of Israel and of yourself, and has said he would arrest you if you came to New York City, if he was mayor. Is that something you take seriously? Are you concerned about that? Do you have a response to that?

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: No, no, I’m not concerned about that. … Oh, well, look, I’m going to come there with President Trump, and we’ll see what the — how do you know who the mayor will be? I don’t know that. Do we know that?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: He’s going to be very fine. And who knows? It could — we don’t know who the mayor is going to be yet. But this is a communist. He’s not a socialist. He’s a communist. And he said some really bad things about Jewish people, and he said some really bad things about a lot of people. And I think he’s going through a little bit of a honeymoon right now, but he might make it. But, you know, it all comes through the White House. He needs the money through the White House. He needs a lot. He’s going to behave. He’ll behave. He better behave; otherwise, he’s going to have big problems.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can respond to both President Trump and Netanyahu? Trump has been going after you since you announced. He talked about detaining you, checking whether he might be able to deport you, talking about you as a communist. You, in exchange, talk about Trump-proofing New York.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, I think it’s — it is a sad reality in this country, where we have a president who ran an entire campaign premised on cheaper groceries and lowering the cost of living, and what he has instead delivered, time and again, is an exacerbating of that very crisis, all while focusing on the persecution of his supposed political enemies. And when we talk about Trump-proofing the city, it’s not just the question of hiring the 200 additional lawyers at our law department to bring us back to the staffing levels prior to the pandemic. It’s a question of actually standing up and fighting Donald Trump, and fighting Donald Trump because what his agenda is doing is endangering the welfare of New Yorkers.

This bill that he recently ushered through Washington, D.C., it throws millions of New Yorkers off of their healthcare. It steals SNAP benefits from so many hungry New Yorkers. And it does all of this in the interest of the largest wealth transfer that we’ve seen in this country. And to do those things while speaking about a cost-of-living crisis, it is truly a betrayal of so much of what his campaign was premised on, and an illustration of why he is so fearful of our campaign, because, unlike him, we don’t just diagnose this crisis, we will deliver on it. We will actually ensure that we have New Yorkers who can afford the city that they call home, that we freeze the rent for more than 2 million New Yorkers, we make buses fast and free, which are currently the slowest ones in the nation, and we deliver universal child care. And that’s what Donald Trump is afraid of: the stark contrast between our delivery of those things and what he has done as the president of this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Zohran Mamdani, what does it mean to be a Democratic Socialist?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, I think of the words of Dr. King from decades ago, who said, “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism. There must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country.” And New Yorkers understand that. We’re in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty. When I walked into this interview, I walked past a New Yorker who was sleeping on the street. That’s the level of poverty in the city, and yet it’s happening amidst great wealth. And the vision for this city has to be one that understands the dignity of working people must return to the heart of our politics, and to focus on that is to fulfill the ideals that brought so many to politics in the first place, and the abandonment of it has been what’s pushed so many away from it.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Zohran, let’s talk about some of the support that you’ve received that was perhaps almost unprecedented, and in this case, unprecedented. Over the weekend, you received an endorsement from Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, the very first time the organization has endorsed anyone in a mayoral race. In their endorsement, they wrote, “We are really very excited about Zohran and his platform not in spite of our commitment to Jewish values but because of them.” So, if you could talk about this endorsement?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, I am honored to have the endorsement of Bend the Arc and to be the first municipal candidate to receive it. It really is a privilege. And it showcases the fact that this coalition that we have, it is a coalition that not only continues to expand, but also looks to reflect the beauty and the breadth of this city. And one of the many things that makes the city so special are the close to 1 million Jewish residents of this city. And I take very seriously my responsibility and my opportunity to not only protect Jewish New Yorkers, but to celebrate so much of what they have brought the city and so much of what it means to be a city with such a thriving community.

And I think of this period of the High Holy Days as one where our politics and our politicians would do well to learn from the lessons of these very holidays that seek to impart a reflection on what the prior year has been, an atonement and a real level of humility as to what it means to lead. And that is the kind of lessons that I hope to learn in delivering leadership to this city.

AMY GOODMAN: I was getting messages from congregants at Rosh Hashanah when you went to a synagogue then, and also hearing about the reports of a woman handing you stickers she had made with a picture of bagels and lox and a message urging Jewish voters to support Mr. Mamdani. And on the stickers, it said, “Reject the smear campaign. Join the schmear campaign.”

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Yes, yes, this is very creative. And I think it’s a reflection that for all of the fearmongering that we’ve seen in this race, part of the reason that I sit before you as the Democratic nominee is because of the support of so many Jewish New Yorkers, of all generations. And I’m so excited by that support and the prospect of building that support by reaching out to Jewish New Yorkers across the five boroughs, including at their synagogues.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, Zohran, we know you have to go, but, you know, many people have talked about the fact that you mobilized so much of the youth vote. But you also mobilized a lot of the South Asian vote, many people voting for the first time in a mayoral election, and Muslim communities, as well. You’ll be, if you win, the first Muslim mayor of New York, the first South Asian mayor. So, if you could say, you know, how important was that support to you? And explain your decision, in fact, to emphasize the fact that you are both a Muslim, South Asian and, in fact, also African.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, these are parts of my identity. They are parts of what has formed me and my life over the course of both being a New Yorker and even before that.

And I think it’s a desire at the heart of our politics to ensure that these electoral outcomes, these contests that we have, that they actually reflect the city at large. Too often New York City politics is focused on an ever-narrowing group of New Yorkers, the ones who vote every primary. And yet we know that there are so many New Yorkers who call the city home just in the manner of those voters, but are not spoken to with the same respect, are not given the same kind of time. And from the beginning of this race, we said we wanted this race to look like the entire city. And that means speaking to the very South Asian and Muslim New Yorkers that too often have been looked at as, at best, there to be for a photo op, as opposed to New Yorkers who are also suffering from this affordability crisis.

AMY GOODMAN: Zohran Mamdani, we are broadcasting this on Monday. We spoke to you on Sunday, right after Adams said he’s pulling out of the election campaign. We also spoke to you the day after he was indicted on corruption charges. Of course, Trump would dismiss those charges later. But I also wanted to ask you — on this day, Monday, that we broadcast this, apparently, the Democratic leaders will be at the White House — Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — meeting with Trump over the whole issue of the budget and whether the country is going to be shut down. I want to know which is more contentious: that meeting, Trump, Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, or their meetings, Hakeem Jeffries and Schumer, with you? I was just watching Senator Van Hollen, who was really castigating his fellow Democrats who had not yet supported you. Many have, from corporate Democrats, conservative Democrats, on to progressives. But talk about that, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer not having supported you yet, even though you are the Democratic primary candidate. And what is being said in these meetings? They keep saying they’re talking to you.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Yes, we have had a number of meetings, and I’ve appreciated the meetings, because the focus of the meetings has been on the fact that New Yorkers are facing twin crises: authoritarianism from Washington, D.C., and an affordability crisis from the inside. And we often tend to separate these out. We think about democracy as an ideal that must be protected, but not that democracy also has to be able to deliver on the material needs of working people. And it was Fiorello La Guardia that said, “You cannot preach … liberty to a starving land.” You have to be able to deliver on both fronts. And to me, in these meetings, the focus has been how to do so.

And I would say that the meeting that they will have with Donald Trump is going to be far more contentious than the ones that we’ve had. Ours have been focused on New Yorkers. Donald Trump is focused on himself and his donors. And it is time to showcase the cost of the legislation that he has ushered through, what it would mean for New Yorkers’ lives. I mean, I was at a hospital in the Bronx just a few days ago speaking to 1199 members who were telling me that these cuts, they could decimate their ability to take care of New Yorkers in their toughest moments and in their best moments. And yet that is the agenda that Donald Trump is pursuing. And I continue to be hopeful and to be focused on the necessity of turning back that legislation, ensuring those cuts do not come to pass in the manner that they have been written.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to end where we intended to begin today, before Eric Adams announced that he’s dropping out, which became top news, and that is by you saying your name. Of course, your main opponent, Andrew Cuomo, continually mispronounces your name. I want you to respond to that. This is how he does it.

ANDREW CUOMO: I’m running against a man named Zohran Mamdami. He’s a socialist.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can respond to that and tell us how you say it, your full name?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Zohran Kwame Mamdani. And I think what has been offensive to me is not whether a New Yorker can say my name on their first attempt or their second, but that what Andrew Cuomo has done is to deliberately mispronounce that name. And it is something whose meaning is not — it’s not just about me. It’s about how so many New Yorkers have to deal with this in their own workplace, in their own lives.

You know, I was at a mosque recently for Friday prayers, and I asked the uncles and the aunties there to raise their hands if they have ever had to deal with the basic indignity of having the name that they were given be butchered time and again with an intention of belittling them. And hand after hand after hand raised. And that shows me the ways in which so many have been overlooked, at the very least.

And our campaign, it’s not a campaign to ensure that everyone can say my name. It’s a campaign to ensure that each and every New Yorker is celebrated for the fullest version of themselves, who they actually are, and belonging to the fabric of this gorgeous mosaic, as David Dinkins once called it.

AMY GOODMAN: And your middle name, Kwame, where it comes from?

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I was named by my father after Kwame Nkrumah, the first prime minister of Ghana. And it is a point of pride for me and a reflection of the fact that I would also be the first immigrant mayor of the city in generations. I was born in Kampala, Uganda, in East Africa, moved here when I was 7. It’s the city where I grew up, the city where I met my wife, the city where I got my citizenship, and hopefully the city I will lead.

AMY GOODMAN: Leading New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, speaking with us Sunday just after Mayor Eric Adams dropped out of the mayoral race.

When we come back, thousands protest in New York as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the United Nations, and then Assata Shakur in her own words. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Unite” by Fatoumata Diawara, performing in our Democracy Now! studio.