Chris Hayes: You know, you were an assembly member just like the last time, maybe the last time I saw you actually, and just a few months ago. It's a very different job than this job. What's the biggest thing you've learned, the biggest realization you've had, actually being in that position?
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: You know, I think the biggest thing, first and foremost, is that New Yorkers trust all of the big ideas that we have about delivering universal childcare [and] about making the most expensive city in America affordable for working class people who help keep it running. That trust starts when you fill in those potholes, because you can't tell someone to trust City government and its ability to deliver free childcare for two-year-olds for the first time in its history if they can look out the window and see the same pothole unfilled as it was the day before, the week before, the month before, [or] the year before.
And so, at the same time that we've been pursuing this agenda that would transform the lives of New Yorkers, delivering a pathway to universal childcare on day eight, we've also filled in 102,000 potholes in that same 100-day period. We started to repave more than 1,000 miles of roadway. And all of this comes back from a belief that there's no problem too big, no task too small and we call this "pothole politics."
Hayes: Well, you know, there's this phrase called "sewer socialism."
Mayor Mamdani: Yes, sir.
Hayes: It comes out of Milwaukee particularly, right? There's a number of socialist mayors in Milwaukee, and the idea [is] that, you know, the only way you deliver on your ideology - whatever it is, particularly if it's a radical one - is that you have to give people clean water and things like that. Are you informed by that tradition? Is that something you're thinking about?
Mayor Mamdani: Very much so. I think oftentimes people think of politics as an intellectual debate. Working people want to know if you can actually deliver for them. And one of those mayors in Milwaukee, their phrase was, "Go after it and get it." We've talked about this for long enough. New Yorkers want to see [if] can you actually deliver on these things? And they want to measure it in the way that they experience government on a day-to-day basis. That's why we're focusing on the little things while also pursuing the big ones.
Hayes: Do you think that you have? I mean, you are - the mayor of New York is always somewhat of a national figure, kind of. They also never have a national career in politics. Those two things I think are related. It's a tough job to come out of everyone being like, "That guy's awesome." Do you feel like you're carrying an ideological burden for the flag of democratic socialism, which you proudly are, right? And you're the most powerful democratic socialist in the country. And people are going to point to whether things go well here or poorly here as evidence of whether that's an ideology that is worth anything.
Mayor Mamdani: Well, I think it goes back to what you were saying earlier, which is that the worth of an ideology is judged in its delivery. And to me, this is an incredible opportunity. We've been told for so long, even over the course of the campaign, that things like universal childcare could never be done. On day eight, I stood next to Governor Hochul; we announced $1.2 billion in funding that will now, for the first time in New York City history, deliver free childcare for two-year-olds. And that is something that you don't have to explain to a parent.
Hayes: But you got 2,000 - just to be clear - you got 2,000 seats. It's a big city, eight million people.
Mayor Mamdani: 2,000 seats this year, 12,000 seats next year, and then every single two-year-old by the end of year four. And the importance of that-
Hayes: By year four, if it happens, right?
Mayor Mamdani: It will happen. This is not an inshallah promise. This is definitely happening. And I say that to you because, you know, Senator Warren talks about childcare as infrastructure. The way that you deliver this, it's not just a question of securing the funding. It's also working with the childcare providers who have been at the heart of what's made it possible for so many families to be here and building out their capacity to deliver for more children than we've ever seen engaging in this kind of service in New York City.
Hayes: You know, affordability, which we're going to talk through throughout the hour, was the sort of central-
Mayor Mamdani: I was thinking about it.
Hayes: Yes, well, you're very on message, which, you know, [is] to your credit. You know, in the mayoral election before you were elected, and particularly coming out of 2020, 2021, there was a huge amount of attention on policing and crime, right? And we saw a big uptick in crime in New York City and nationally. We're seeing something pretty remarkable happening, which is basically the inverse. And, you know, you came out and celebrated the lowest homicide rate I think the city's recorded in many, many decades.
But it's not just New York City. Mayor Lurie in San Francisco is going to take credit for it there; Brandon Scott in Baltimore, Kash Patel the FBI and Donald Trump in the White House are going around saying, "Hey, we've got the lowest crime rate ever because of what I did." What is your understanding or theory for what is happening with crime in your city?
Mayor Mamdani: Well, I think there's a few things. We're seeing that our approach to public safety is working, and not just in a sense of a general decline, but to actually correct you a little, it's not just the lowest number of murders in the last few decades. It's the lowest number of murders ever in recorded history [and] the joint lowest number of shootings. It's a decline of crime across major categories by more than 9 percent. It's also not enough.
New Yorkers do not measure their lives by statistics. They want to know that you are doing everything in your power to deliver public safety. And the importance of public safety, is not actually divorced from the conversation around affordability. It's the cornerstone. It's the platform that allows you to do that work of affordability. Because if someone is not safe in their city, then that is the first concern they have, even before the other ones that we speak about.
Hayes: I mean, let me give an interpretation of what I've seen, and you could respond to it, which is that progressive governance is impossible if people are scared. And progressive politics essentially becomes choked off. And what I've seen is you're someone who has had these commitments to fast and free buses and universal childcare. When you look at policing, there's things you've said you want to do. You want to get rid of this gang database, which you've been very critical of.
There's a special unit that sort of polices protests you said you want to disband. The gang database is still there. The special unit that polices protests just arrested a bunch of people at a protest. From the outside, it looks like you basically said, "Look, I'm not going to touch the policing stuff. It's too dangerous, either substantively or politically. I'm going to focus on this other stuff, and I'm going to let the commissioner and sort of status quo policing continue." Is that a fair characterization?
Mayor Mamdani: I wouldn't say so. I'll push you on it a little bit for a few reasons. One of the reasons that I made the decision to retain our police commissioner was not just because of what she was delivering in terms of public safety, but also [because of] how she'd been able to uproot corruption from the upper echelons of the NYPD. We need a government that is not just efficient but also excellent, one that can be trusted in the work that it does. Now, my belief in the importance of disbanding the Strategic Response Group, continues just as strongly as it [did] during the campaign. The reason for that is I don't think we need to couple our response to protests with our response to counterterrorism threats. This is a modern conflation that has happened, and it's one that I'm committed to disbanding. The disbanding of it is one that we're going to do thoughtfully to ensure that we are also respecting the right to protest and keeping New Yorkers safe, but again, it's not an if for me. It's a when.
Hayes: You've gotten a lot of attention for the relationship that you have cultivated with the president. You've been asked about this a lot. It is, I mean, I got to say, again - from the outside, it's an amusing thing to watch, particularly when you said to the reporter in front of him, like, "No, he is a fascist." And he said, "No, it's okay, go ahead and answer." What's going on there? Like, what is it? Explain it. Why? How did this happen?
Mayor Mamdani: Well, you know, when you were introducing this and we were stepping out, you were saying, "These are New Yorkers. No one's going to be shy about their opinions." And in many ways, one of the few things the president and I have in common is that we are both New Yorkers. For all of our political disagreements, we have one agreement of chief importance, which is that we love this city. And with the president, I'm honest, I'm direct and I try and always bring it back to what would actually benefit this city.
So, when I'm sitting there with the president and I'm talking about the opportunity to work together to deliver more housing than we've seen in a single housing development since the early 1970s, I'm also speaking about the fact that I think that ICE raids are cruel and inhumane, and that the fact that morning they had detained a Columbia student is part and parcel of why this is not something that is actually serving the interests of public safety. And so, I gave the president a list of five names of people who were detained in or around Columbia. He called me 30 minutes after the meeting and said, "I've made the decision to release the student that you brought up."
Hayes: He's not happy with the new tax plan on the basically second homes for very, very wealthy people. He said, you're "Destroying New York. It has no chance. The United States of America should not contribute to its failure. It'll only get worse. The tax, tax, [tax] policies are so wrong. People are fleeing. [They] must change [their] ways, and fast. History has proven this stuff just doesn't work. Thank you for attention in this matter." It did seem a little more in sorrow than in anger. He felt a little betrayed.
Mayor Mamdani: I think the president knows exactly where I stand on these issues, and I know where the president stands on these issues. I ran a campaign speaking very plainly about the fact that in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the world, it's unacceptable that one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty. And as we're facing a generational fiscal deficit, I believe it's only right to ask those who don't live in New York City but who own a second home in New York City, and that second home is worth more than $5 million in New York City, to pay a little bit more so that everyone can afford to live here.
Hayes: It did occur to me he might actually have to pay the tax.
Mayor Mamdani: We don't have exceptions in our taxes that we propose.
Hayes: You mentioned ICE and you mentioned immigration. It has been notable that we've had this trail of elevated ICE enforcement and CBP enforcement; that we saw [it] in Los Angeles [and] we saw it in Chicago. We, of course, very famously saw it in Minneapolis and the Twin Cities. There [has] been elevated ICE enforcement here in New York City. They've been at the courts and things like that, but we have not seen something like the operation in Minneapolis. Does that hang over you as a kind of sort of Damocles? Does it feel like it's something the president could threaten in every moment? Do you feel like part of your relationship with him is staving that off, to be honest?
Mayor Mamdani: I mean, my relationship with the president is important to deliver for New Yorkers, and I've made it very clear to the president that increased ICE presence, would just be an increase on what we've seen with ICE raids, which is just cruel and inhumane. I've also been honest about the fact that I think ICE is an agency that should be abolished. It's a modern creation. Our country has had answers to immigration long before we had ICE. And we also see that these kinds of raids - just a few nights ago, ICE detained a delivery worker.
This is a man who came to this city with the dreams of building up a life for himself and his family. No active investigation, no warrant. He finished a Grubhub delivery and then was taken by armed, masked federal agents. That's what we're talking about here in New York City. It's the public school student, Dylan Contreras, whose family we worked with to ensure that he would come home; that's the kind of person that's getting detained in this city, and that's why New Yorkers are sick of this approach - one, frankly, in a complete absence of humanity.
Hayes: We're going to talk to one of those delivery drivers here in the city; there's tens of thousands of them. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, we have a lot more to get to. A lot of people here with questions, and I don't wanna cannibalize their time, so stick around; we'll talk all about it next.
[Commercial Break.]
Hayes: Mayor Mamdani's campaign was going out to Fordham Road here in the Bronx and Hillside Avenue in Queens right after Trump got elected to find out why people in this very democratic city were so ticked off. And the answer they kept coming back to was affordability. Things are too expensive. Mayor Mamdani's back with me here. Joining us now, Cristian Spariosu, a former Trump supporter [and a] voter who supported the mayor. Sarah Bediako, whose daughter is in a Pre-K class the mayor and President Obama visited here in the Bronx last weekend. You might've seen pictures of that. Great to have you both here.
Cristian, let me start with you just because the sort of conceit of that video the mayor did was, if you looked at New York City returns, Trump got a lot more votes than you might've expected. You were a Republican, Trump supporter [and] Trump voter. What's sort of driven you in the direction that you are now in terms of voting for the mayor, and what are you looking for from him now?
Cristian Spariosu: Yeah, so like some of my background: I went to Siena College, double major in economics and political science with the goal of helping people in public policy and getting involved in government. I always had strong principles of conservative values of limited government, for example, not getting involved in foreign wars.
So, when I saw Trump campaign as a populist for the American people saying, 'We're gonna lower inflation, we're going to support the American worker, and we won't get involved in foreign wars," that really attracted me to his campaign, which was obviously all a lie. So, I feel like right now we're fighting a war in Iran.
Hayes: Your politics have changed over time, but this question of prioritizing workers and bringing inflation down - how much do you still think of that as a North Star for whether this mayor succeeds or not?
Spariosu: Well, I really admire you championing affordability, especially when it comes to housing, for instance. I live in a rent-stabilized apartment, so over the years in Astoria, I've seen more and more people get pushed out of the neighborhood because they can't afford the rent, especially immigrant families. And you're pro-union; I really support that.
Hayes: One of the dynamics of this city, right? One of the challenges is there's lots of very rich people, there's a lot of people really struggling and there's things you can do on the policy side. You can tax some of those rich folks and you can create services, universal Pre-K for folks that are struggling.
Mayor Mamdani: This sounds great.
Hayes: Yes, but also you want to build middle-class jobs, right? Like if it keeps going in that direction of a city of like Wall Street folks and billionaires and folks that are just like making minimum wage, that's a tough city to sustain. It's a tough city to sustain culturally, fiscally, financially. How do you think about that, about building a middle class here that's independent of taxing the rich [and] paying for services?
Mayor Mamdani: I think that's at the heart of what we're looking to do, because what the middle class represents to so many, not just New Yorkers, but Americans, is stability. It's dignity. It's the ability to not just go out there and work but also have somewhere to come home to at the end of the day and be able to rest on top of that. And-
Hayes: And not need the government to subsidize you directly, right, or not be depending on programs.
Mayor Mamdani: Well, I think the beauty of a public good is that it should be so good that everyone uses it. To me, I don't want public goods to be something that you only use if you don't have enough money in your pocket. The dream of New York City is in many ways the dream of the subway at its best. It's the fastest way to get around. [It] doesn't matter how much money you have; that's how you get to where you're going. And that's what we want childcare to be. That's what we want so much [for[ this city to be so that working class New Yorkers are not worried about whether they can survive in this city, but actually, can they build a life in this city? That's what we want the answer to be.
Hayes: The childcare, your daughter, right, is in childcare.
Sarah Bediako: Yes.
Hayes: Got to meet the former president of the United States the other day.
Bediako: That was a surprise, so thank you for bringing him.
Mayor Mamdani: You're welcome.
Bediako: Yes, so she's in childcare right now, learning through playing. It's a great place that she's at. I feel safe and comfortable. I don't have to worry about her going to that class. I wish that we had it for 2-K because I had to stay home for almost two years to care for her because childcare was so expensive. When I was researching, at that time, it was almost $1k a week just for my child to go to a quality and safe childcare.
Mayor Mamdani: And you're not alone in that. This is the story of so many parents who a good deal would be if they found $20,000 a year for a child. That's a good deal in New York City. And this is not something that just affects working class New Yorkers or middle-class New Yorkers. We have people making north of six figures for whom that is still going to have a huge impact on their ability to live in the city.
Hayes: Cristian has gone fully from CPAC to socialism. Chris Quinones [is] here with us, who you might recognize, who was in - and I remember seeing you in that video, and you said, "Ah, a million-dollar question." And you said - you're a Republican; you voted for Trump.
Chris Quinones: Thanks for the pitch forks-
Hayes: No, you know, New York contains multitudes and we welcome them all. Do you have a question for the mayor, or what are you looking for him to deliver on for you to become a [inaudible] or at least a supporter?
Quinones: I'm a reasonable person. I mean, given what people think and say about Republicans, I don't parrot; I think for myself. Maybe I'm unique, maybe I'm not. I'll leave that for smarter people. What I would like to say is that I understand where you're coming from [and] what you want to provide for the people. And my personal belief, not that I'm gonna parrot, but my personal belief is that if you're gonna charge me a tax, I want you to show me something for it.
So, I don't know how people feel about taxes, cause people feel differently about taxes, and that's a conversation for another time. But what I would say is, if you can show beyond any reasonable doubt - like if this, whatever you're planning had to go to court - beyond any reasonable doubt, that any New Yorker on the street can say, you know what, I am willing to pay that extra dollar.
Hayes: That's the big question, right? It's one of the highest tax jurisdictions in the country, right, New York City? Just to be clear, it's got one of the highest municipal governments. It's not like this is a small government place. The question of like, are the services up to how much people are paying for them?
Mayor Mamdani: And I think it is something that I think about often. Because as much as I think about public goods, I think about public excellence. We don't want to try and convince a New Yorker in a conversation about the worth of something; we want to be able to prove it to them through what it is that we're delivering.
And I think that's where it comes back to: the taxes that we're calling for on the wealthiest of the wealthy, the most profitable corporations of those that do business here in New York, are ones that we would then use that revenue to transform the lives of every New Yorker. Because when we go back to it-
Hayes: But let me stop you there for a second.
Mayor Mamdani: Please.
Hayes: Would you say that, for instance, New York City's public education, right, the public schools. I'm a proud of New York City public school product and parent now, okay? So, are [they] excellent? Are they up to where you think they should be? Do they earn the trust of taxpayers that they need?
Mayor Mamdani: I don't think there's anything where we should look at it and say, "I'm satisfied." Everything is something that has to be improved upon. And this is one place where I actually have a point of agreement with Jamie Dimon. I believe that none of us should rest on our laurels. [For] a long time where people have thought that greatness is something that can be inherited. You have to fight for it and earn it every single day. Whether it's our schools, whether it's our streets, whether it's our subway, we have to win the trust of New Yorkers by what we're delivering to them, not just tell them, "Trust me, this is actually as good as it can be."
Hayes: Cristian, Sarah, Chris Quinones, thank you very much. I really appreciate. Don't go anywhere; we'll be right back with more New Yorkers here with their questions for the mayor.
[Commercial Break.]
[Video Plays.]
Hayes: Zohran Mamdani is back with me. Joining us are Gustavo Ajche, a food delivery worker [and] co-founder of the Los Deliveristas Unidos, and Victoria Washington, a tenant who has been pushing back against her unaffordable housing. I went up to the La Marqueta site. First of all, just tell me like the theory on the - people are very obsessed with the grocery store because it does feel like, I don't know, genuinely socialist in some ways. And you know, it's got a lot of ideological incoming from FOX. Like what - it was a promise that you made. How confident are you that this can work? It's been tried in other cities, and it hasn't.
Mayor Mamdani: I'm confident, and I'm confident because of the fact-
Hayes: Well, you're always confident.
Mayor Mamdani: If I wasn't confident -
Hayes: You wouldn't be the mayor.
Mayor Mamdani: I wouldn't say that we should be doing this. I think at the end of it, we're talking about something that's not negotiable: food. This is not something that is a nice-to-have for New Yorkers. This is what they build their lives around. And since the pandemic, we've seen grocery store prices increase, and they haven't come back down. And we're talking about one city-run grocery store in each borough of New York City. Five in total.
And La Marqueta, the site that you mentioned, close to 100 years ago, [is] where Fiorello La Guardia opened up a market with the explicit intention of reducing the price of fruits and vegetables. In that very neighborhood, close to 40 percent of the residents in the surrounding area are on public assistance. These are New Yorkers who - they do not know if they can afford to get eggs, bread, chicken when they next go to the grocery store. We want them to be able to build a life around some certainty when it comes to the essentials.
Hayes: I was walking around East Harlem by La Marqueta, and I passed a grocery store. It's not that far from it. Jerry [is] here. Jerry Nunez is a manager in the City Fresh Market. It's a grocery store just a few blocks away. What do you want to ask the mayor about how this plan might affect the place that - you're a hard-working New Yorker - the small business you work at?
Jerry Nunez: We already provide, I believe, affordable groceries. Your store was supposed to be in areas where the community didn't have access. But we were right around the corner. Why so close? Why - won't this affect any other local businesses in [the] area?
Mayor Mamdani: I really - first of all, appreciate the work that you do. Grocery stores, New Yorkers build their lives around. I would say a few things. The first is, yes, there are food deserts in New York City. And also, we said that we needed to ensure that we were providing affordable groceries to the New Yorkers being priced out of it. When we talk about East Harlem or El Barrio, we're talking about a neighborhood where so many are being priced out of the basic essentials.
My vision is not that there isn't room for multiple grocery stores. My vision is that there is a grocery store within New Yorkers' reach where they know that they can afford certain things. The other thing I would say is the business model of a grocery store or of a bodega; these are business models also that have the revenue raisers of sometimes, whether it's selling alcohol or lottery products or tobacco-
Hayes: It's how they make money.
Mayor Mamdani: -That's not what a city-run grocery store is going to be selling. What we're talking about are the essentials that you can actually build a healthy life around. And what this comes back to is a lot of times in our country, we're condescending towards working people. We say, "Why don't you eat healthier? Why don't you eat better?" It is cheaper to eat worse in this country. We want to actually make it easier to be healthy.
Hayes: You know, that point about [it being] cheaper to eat worse is a good one. But just to put a fine point [on it], it would be bad if Fresh Market went out of business in favor of the La Marqueta city-owned grocery store. Right? We agree?
Mayor Mamdani: What we see in this city is that grocery stores can exist alongside other grocery stores. We know [this] in a lot of parts of New York City. My vision is not that this become the only grocery store, [but] rather that this be an option amongst an ecosystem that includes our brother's grocery store and so many others.
Hayes: You know, the thing you just said about how sort of eating worse has gotten cheaper and eating better has gotten more expensive, which is a thing that people around the country experience. And one of the things we saw come out of COVID is more and more people ordering out. That went up enormously. It stayed very high. It's a huge cost for folks. Sometimes it ends up [that] because groceries are so expensive, when they're doing the math in their head, they're like, "This works out."
And then there is in New York City basically a city's worth of folks who are delivering that food. I mean, it's like - I think it's 60 or 70,000 if I'm not mistaken. 80,000. Gustavo, you do this job. You're one of the organizers for the union. What is it like - what is the biggest challenge you face from your perspective being part of this food infrastructure?
Gustavo Ajche: My name is Gustavo, and thanks for having me here. [I've been] doing delivery work for more than 20 years. But through the apps, [I've been] doing it since 2016. So, I see the challenge that delivery workers face in the industry. And in the middle of the pandemic, we formed Los Deliveristas Unidos with the Worker's Justice Project. It's a union to protect ourselves and to fight for our rights. We did really good in the past years; we passed almost 10 or 11 laws-
Hayes: To regulate, yeah.
Ajche: But still, we are facing a lot of injustice from different apps, like Uber, Doordash, Grubhub, as many of you know. In the beginning of the Mamdani administration, we are so proud that we announced a settlement of $5 million. So, money that was from the workers. The apps are stealing from the workers. And this is not fair. And this has to stop. But so far, we [are] so proud that we have a mayor who is a working-class supporter; he really has our back. And we so proud of that-
Hayes: There was a big fight with the apps, and there was a $5 million settlement?
Mayor Mamdani: There have been a number of settlements. There was a settlement that Gustavo was speaking of. Overall, the settlements all come out to about $9.3 million. These are settlements for delivery workers [and] for low-wage workers at fast food restaurants. These are also settlements for small businesses who were ripped off by these delivery apps. And we're talking about being ripped off sometimes of wages, sometimes in terms of protections and sometimes making it harder for customers to give tips, which many delivery workers are relying on to actually make ends meet.
And I just want to say, brother, thank you for your advocacy, because the work that you and so many other delivery workers do in this city is incredibly difficult. And thanks to you and so many others, that's work that finally the city has to actually recognize.
Hayes: The two big things nationally that people say are too expensive in every poll - it's true in New York City, it's true everywhere - groceries is one, now gas and housing. I mean, housing is the issue. And housing has always been expensive in New York City. You could read novels from the 19th century that talk about how expensive things are in New York City. You live in New York City. You're a renter.
Victoria Washington: I am.
Hayes: The rent freeze was a big campaign promise. What do you want to see happen to housing affordability over and above the capping of the rent, which helps in the short term? But if you want a more affordable city, what are you looking for from the mayor?
Washington: I would love to know what your plans are, your administration's plans are, to have a large enough budget for the proliferation of affordable housing in the city.
Mayor Mamdani: I mean, this is where it comes back to, which is that we have to build more affordable housing and preserve more affordable housing, right? Right now, we're in the midst of putting together our housing plan, which is looking to chart out how we can make this a city where not only the tenants of today can be able to remain, but also we can build for the New Yorkers of tomorrow.
And so, for us, it's the capital of investing in building this housing, and then it's also the operation when we're talking about ensuring that we're actually having the inspectors to ensure the habitability of this housing. I mean, the first time that so much of what I've been able to see personally over the last few months has been accompanying inspectors as they've looked at so many of the conditions tenants have had to live through and found it far from habitable.
Hayes: Let me just say, I know nonprofit housing developers in New York City and the managed units, and these are not slumlords and these are not predatory folks, right? They're basically doing it because they want there to be affordable housing. And what they'll say is the margins are really thin. There's a lot of non-payment [of] rent, particularly since COVID, and it's pretty hard to keep the thing operating. When you look at what interest rates are and what they look in the spreadsheet, do you worry? I mean, sort of world's smallest violin for the landlords and all this, and I get that, but ultimately, do you worry about the math for large-scale development that landlords can make it work at a profitable level because you need people to be building stuff that they can rent out?
Mayor Mamdani: When I say that I care about the cost of living, I care about it for everyone, for tenants, for landlords-
Hayes: That includes landlords?
Mayor Mamdani: For everyone, truly. And what I've heard from a lot of landlords of affordable housing is one of the costs that has really been skyrocketing in the last few years has been insurance. We're seeing that go up to levels that have not been seen before in this city. And so, one of the things that we put forward was the creation of a city-backed insurance program that will finally be able not just to save the city money but also these landlords who have been price gouged at the insurance rates that they're paying across the city.
Hayes: Insurance and electricity are the two sleeper affordability issues across the country. I mean, you're seeing it right now in Florida; people [are] getting literally chased out of the state [by] it, electricity as well. Gustavo, Victoria, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Don't go anywhere. We've got a lot more with Mayor Mamdani after this.
[Commercial Break.]
[Video Plays.]
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is back with me, and joining us are Kathryn Wylde, former president and CEO of the Pro-Business Partnership for New York City, who also worked on the mayor's transition team; and Morris Pearl, chairman of the board of Patriotic Millionaires. Good to have you all here.
Let me just start on the vertical video. It's been striking, right? It was obviously very effective as a campaign tool. And sometimes there's a little bit of this sense that like, well, now we have the job, we're in a different mode. It feels like you're kind of still in campaign mode. Like I'm still seeing a lot of vertical video [and] social media. Is that on purpose?
Mayor Mamdani: We want to use every tool we have to actually reach New Yorkers. A lot of times in politics, it feels like you're just speaking in an echo chamber. And New Yorkers are very busy. They don't have time to tune into the exact way you want them to listen to you. You have to reach out to the way that they're engaging with the world. And I think about the greatest mayor in our city's history, Fiorello La Guardia. One of the hallmarks of his approach was the use of the cutting-edge technology of the time to reach out to every New Yorker. That's what we're looking to do. For all the focus on the medium, though, I would say that sometimes the message does get lost.
Hayes: Well, the message in the latest one is that we're going to tax the rich. You said we're going to tax the rich. We're taxing the rich. We announced this new tax that's going to be on second homes worth over $5 million, I think.
Mayor Mamdani: Yes.
Hayes: Kathryn, I know that a lot of folks at the partnership were very nervous about the tax the rich agenda of the mayor. What do you think of this new tax?
Kathryn Wylde: Well, in general, taxes should not be presented as punitive. And I think generally, the taxpayers feel that if they have a legitimate reason for raising a tax - at the partnership, we supported, for example, congestion pricing to support the funding of the MTA. We supported Mayor Bloomberg after 9/11 [and] had to raise the real estate tax to be able to bring back the city's services after the damages [and] rebuild lower Manhattan. We supported that tax. So, we were not knee-jerk anti-tax, but it was being clear that this is not punishment. This is something that's needed. The city has taken every step they can - or the state - to save money where they can, to get rid of waste, fraud and abuse, and then to have a conversation and a process about what makes the most sense, what's fairest in terms of tax increases, and to make sure it's going, as the mayor said earlier, that it's going to a good cause.
Hayes: But this does - I mean, the whole thing of people chanting "tax the rich" at the rallies, which they did, and putting out a video is like, there's a little bit of it's punitive.
Wylde: A little red meat there.
Hayes: It is - well, it is punitive, right?
Mayor Mamdani: Well, you have to eat healthy. You can't only eat red meat.
Hayes: I mean, there is something a little punitive about it.
Mayor Mamdani: I think what it's a reflection of is that we're speaking about a city that's the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty. We're speaking about people who can't afford their basics. Our vision of a city is not one where we push anybody out of it. Our vision, rather, is one where there's room for everybody to stay here. Because for all of the back-and-forth about the question of capital flight- and when we have a disagreement around fiscal policy, a lot of times it will come to that question - we don't spend as much time talking about the already existing exodus of working-class New Yorkers.
We're seeing New Yorkers leave this city, and a lot of it comes back to the cost of housing [and] the cost of childcare. I mean, we're talking about childcare, families - 80 percent of families with children under the age of five can't afford childcare in this city. They're leaving to find a place where they can afford it.
Hayes: But it's also the case - and I'll ask you about this, Morris, who's the rare rich person who wants to be taxed more, which [is], amazing that we found you. There are a few of them. You know, New York, for people, for high earners in New York, rich folks, particularly high-wage earners, is the highest tax jurisdiction in the country by far-
Wylde: World.
Hayes: In the world. Like, there's literally nowhere in the world that the marginal rate on a high-income earner is higher than here. And that includes the social democracies of Europe, including places that have all sorts of services, like you said. So, at a certain point, is there a limit, right? Is there some point that you cross where you do start to pay some real economic costs?
Mayor Mamdani: I don't think that we are talking about that at this time, frankly.
Hayes: You just don't think we're near that limit?
Mayor Mamdani: I don't think that - you know, when we talk about increasing personal income taxes on the top one percent of New Yorkers by two percent, or we're talking about increasing the corporate tax on the most profitable corporations, a lot of times what we're talking about doesn't even come close to what the tax rates used to be in this city or used to be in this country, right? For all the conversation of the now, we forget where we were in terms of this country's relationship to the tax.
Hayes: Well, let me get Morris' thoughts first, because yes, I mean, we had 90 percent marginal rates under Eisenhower.
Morris Pearl: Sure. But there's the idea of rich people moving out? No. The whole point of being rich is you can live wherever you want. I live exactly where I want to live, in a co-op on Park Avenue.
Hayes: Yeah. Congratulations.
Pearl: The people I'm afraid [of] are moving out - like the teachers. I have a granddaughter who goes to PS 163, right on the West Side here. I want to make sure that they can afford to live in the city. I want to make sure the city can provide those services. The services like buses, like groceries, like hospitals and museums, and all the things that the people need that make New York such a place that rich people from all over the world are moving into New York. And middle-class people who want to have kids are moving out of New York, where they can afford childcare.
Hayes: Let me say this in defense of the pied-à-terre tax, as you've been calling it, the second home tax, right? It does strike me as being designed - it's not, you know, there's other taxes that would be on income, right, or on businesses. It does strike me as designed to hit folks that really do have quite a bit of money and aren't even really living here.
Wylde: I don't disagree with that, but I think what you have to put this in the context [of], though, is we cannot let the federal government off the hook. In 2018, as a result of the first Trump tax reform, we lost, after 100 years of being able to deduct most of our state and local taxes as a taxpayer, we lost that deductibility. That alone doubled the tax burden of New York City residents on their New York City tax.
So, it isn't like we haven't had a major tax increase. And those are the kind of things that we have to look at, is sort of what the federal government [has] quit doing that the city is now being forced to do, like adequate supply of food, like adequate supply of housing. We have to refocus, because a local tax base can never make up -we can't print money like the federal government.
Hayes: This is a great point, right, because it's - I mean, there's a little bit of the limits of like socialism in one city kind of thing, right, which is, you know, you're not the federal government, and it is a very unequal place. It's probably the most unequal place, I think, in America, likely. How much can you build here without the federal government?
Mayor Mamdani: I think that we're looking to get right up to that limit of everything that we can do. And the reason I say that is that one of the most frustrating things you can tell a New Yorker when they ask you for help is, "That's actually not my jurisdiction. That's a federal issue. That's a local issue. That's a state issue." New Yorkers don't have time for the technical differences between what government sector is responsible for what thing. They want to know, what are you going to do about it? And so, I know that this federal government has not had much interest in providing in the kinds of things that we're talking about.
Hayes: No.
Mayor Mamdani: You know, they have provided incredible tax cuts for the wealthiest across this country. And we're looking at a level of inequality right here in the engine of this country's economy. So, we're going to do everything we can to make this a livable city, and we're going to do it by asking ourselves, what are the non-negotiables for New Yorkers? How can we deliver them?
Hayes: Let me, well, last thing, you know, it occurred to me you're talking about this sort of flight question, right? Which is - and there's been interesting studies, right? Massachusetts, had taxes on millionaires. Did people leave Massachusetts? The same way that the airline wants to make your ride as absolutely unenjoyable just to the point that you won't stop flying on them, that like the optimal taxation level on rich people is like that. It's like the airline game. Like how much can we do it right before you stop, right before you pick up and leave? Is that the way to do it?
Mayor Mamdani: I think this actually goes back to the question that we had earlier from the New Yorker that I had met on Fordham Road, where he said, "I want to know where these taxes are going." For me, the importance of this is to deliver a quality of service that is unparalleled in this country. We're talking about earning people's trust of living in this city.
Hayes: So, we're going to - I'm going to get you to commit to doing another one of these in a few years. So, we can see - no, really, to see, like, does universal childcare live up to that standard? Is that fair?
Mayor Mamdani: We're going to deliver it.
Hayes: All right. Kathryn Wylde, Morris Pearl. Thank you very much. And an extra special thanks to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Appreciate it.
