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In an exclusive interview just hours after incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s decision to end his reelection bid, we sat down with Democratic nominee for mayor, Zohran Mamdani, to lay out his campaign and his vision for an affordable city. We discuss his platform, his support for Palestinian rights and why he identifies as democratic socialist. Mamdani also responds to Adams’s decision to drop out, which is expected to help consolidate votes for Mamdani’s main opponent, disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. “The reason that Donald Trump is seeking to clear the lane for Andrew Cuomo is because he knows that Andrew Cuomo will clear the lane for Donald Trump’s agenda,” he says.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

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

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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........

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