Zohran Mamdani on his mayoral transition and what comes next

If one elected official had a breakout year in 2025, it’s New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. The 34-year-old former state assembly member came out of nowhere to win a Democratic primary that included established names such as incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Then, Mamdani won the election his way, lapping opponents with a modern campaign that effectively used social media, brought in new voters, and embraced his history of pro-Palestinian activism and longtime affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America.

Key takeaways

But since his win in November, Mamdani has had to confront the challenges of governance. Sweeping campaign promises like fast and free buses, universal child care, and a citywide rent freeze for government-subsidized apartments will require, at minimum, continued public pressure to make them reality.

He has angered some progressives by retaining NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and refusing to support a primary challenger against Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. Even more, Republicans (and some moderate Democrats) have sought to turn Mamdani into an avatar of incompetence, a boogeyman for left-wing politics ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

Against that backdrop, Mamdani recently sat down with Today, Explained at his campaign headquarters in Manhattan to discuss his administration’s priorities, his plans for keeping his coalition together, and how he’s prepared himself for City Hall.

Throughout the discussion, Mamdani stressed that he believes he will ultimately be judged by one thing — his ability to deliver on his affordability agenda. Everything else, he said, comes second.

Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s a special reported section in our episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. Early access to the full video interview is available right now on Vox’s Patreon.

We’re glad to talk to you at this point because we want to focus on the transition. We know that mayoral transitions can sometimes be the high-water mark for elected officials. I recently saw that you were 15 in your own favorability. How do you reverse what has been a historic trend? How do you make sure that this moment that you’re taking office is not the end of something but the beginning?

I think I am aided by the fact that I have not given much weight to polls and favorability in the past, which is part of the reason why I’m sitting in front of you, because I didn’t even have enough recognition to have favorability done at the beginning of this race.

So I think it comes back to the fact that we ran a race on an affordability agenda. It spoke to New Yorkers living in the most expensive city in the United States. We have to now deliver on that agenda. I think the premise of your point is that this is the moment of hope, and then the question of what comes next.

And even beyond the transition as a high-water mark, oftentimes in campaigns, there’s already a temptation of nostalgia for what the campaign was. We have to ensure the campaign is not the story we look back on. It’s the path to the story that we’ve yet to start. And I think that comes back to delivery. That comes back to freezing the rent, making buses fast and free, delivering universal child care. You have to transform people’s lives in a way that they can actually touch and feel and hold onto so that they’re not just grasping at the memories of what the struggle was like.

I feel like the first clues of how you all planned to do that came in the transition. You all had some unique moments putting out these explanatory videos about semi-mundane process things — like, the baseball cards for staff appointments. We were at the event that you all held last week at the Museum of the Moving Image.........

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