MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
With, as we just said, Zohran Mamdani now officially mayor of New York City, we wanted to ask what his ascent might mean for the Democratic Party beyond the city of New York. We called Joel Payne for his thoughts on this. He's a Democratic strategist who's worked with leaders and activists from different wings of the party and across the country. Joel Payne, welcome. Thanks for joining us, and Happy New Year.
JOEL PAYNE: Happy New Year to you as well.
MARTIN: So Mamdani won the Democratic primary in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, so we shouldn't be surprised that he won. But his platform is one of the things that got a lot of national attention - you know, free child care, free city buses, a rent freeze for some housing. Does his agenda have an appeal outside of New York City?
PAYNE: Yeah. Michel, it's a good question. His platform makes sense for New York City. Those are parochial issues that matter - affordability issues focused on housing, focused on child care that might look different around the country for Democrats who may want to build off of what Zohran Mamdani is doing. The things that are going to be replicable outside of New York City is going to be the way he goes about his job, so moving fast, getting rid of some of the barriers. The types of folks who might oppose his agenda at the state level or at the federal level - either getting those folks on board or removing those obstacles. And also, not getting pulled into fights that don't really matter to the charter of why he was elected, people trying to focus him on things like foreign policy issues that really have nothing to do with why he was elected. Those are the things that if you're a Democrat around the country, you're going to want to watch how Mamdani goes about his work to see if you can replicate that.
MARTIN: So what is somebody like you going to be paying attention to? And by somebody like you, I mean somebody who thinks about how Democrats can not just win elections but accomplish their goals, their policy goals.
PAYNE: Yeah. I think people are going to be tempted to kind of view this as just a giant experiment of, hey, can somebody with this profile who speaks about himself in this way with this type of political coalition - can he be successful at actually governing, right? He's successful at campaigning and at holding that coalition together, but can he be successful at governing? And I imagine that there are folks in the Democratic Party, particularly in the establishment wing of the party, who are reticent about Mamdani, who are going to be watching to see, does this work at scale? There are many of us who believe that the ideas that Mamdani's espousing are popular and are populist and are, you know, kind of ways to reimagine what that Democratic coalition can look like. But I think there are a lot of skeptical folks who are going to be looking to see whether he can continue to be successful now that he's governing and not just campaigning.
MARTIN: But when you consider the ideas - and, you know, again, we're sort of gliding past the whole demographic piece and how that played a role in how he was treated and how his opponents, you know, tried to run against him. So just sort of gliding past that for a minute. But when you're considering the ideas Mamdani ran on, you have to assume he'll have to make compromises somewhere. So is the test for him which compromises he makes or how he explains them?
PAYNE: Yeah, I think you're laying that out the right way. The real test for Mamdani I don't think is going to come necessarily from his political opposition on the right. I think it's going to come from the people who he has allegiance to on the left. Are they going to give him the space to make either the types of compromises or to do the type of prioritization that you have to do when you are trying to be the administrator of a city like New York and trying to deal with the local politics that are at play in a state like New York State?
MARTIN: So, you know, like his colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's a member of Congress, obviously, and who will be at his big ceremony today. Republicans have already started using Mamdani as a foil, but has the president undermined that tactic in some way? Remember that very warm welcome he gave him in the Oval Office? How do you think that plays going forward?
PAYNE: Yeah. President Trump kind of gave the game away. I mean, one, President Trump was obviously charmed and somewhat impressed with Mamdani and his rise and his individual meeting with Mamdani. I think, you know, you've even seen Elise Stefanik, who was going to be the New York mayor's - or rather governor's candidate for Republicans, had already laid out this entire attack around Mamdani and actually could not, you know, be successful with that because of a lot of the things that Trump did to undercut that argument. And I think a lot of Republicans who planned to spend 2026 talking about Zohran Mamdani are going to have to rethink that now that Trump has intervened the way he has.
MARTIN: That's Democratic strategist Joel Payne. Joel, thank you so much for joining us, and Happy New Year again.
PAYNE: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NYC")
INTERPOL: (Singing) New York cares. Got to be some more change in my life. New York cares. Got to be some more change in my life. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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