Zohran Mamdani's primary win and the Democrats' Tea Party moment

It's Been a Minute

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🗓️ 27 June 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani pulled off an astonishing upset this week. In the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, he beat out the long-favored winner, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who conceded the race only hours after the polls closed. The two candidates were of the same party, but held very different positions within it: Cuomo is older, spent more than a decade as Governor and positioned himself as a law-and-order centrist. Mamdani is younger, newer to politics and a total progressive. This is a primary race in just one city, but it's been making national news and could shake up the Democratic party's strategy post-Trump re-election. Brittany sits down with Christian Paz, senior politics reporter at Vox, and Max Rivlin-Nadler, reporter and co-publisher at Hell Gate, a local news site for New York City. They discuss what this race says about where progressive energy is coming from - and why the Democrats might be having a Tea Party moment.

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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0:12.1	Learn more at RWJF.org.
0:17.9	Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
0:35.7	This week, we're connecting the dots between millennials, big tents, and a heated election.
0:41.2	I know, I know.
0:42.2	How are all of these things connected?
0:44.3	Well, we're going to find out with Christian Pa's senior politics reporter at Fox and Max Rivlin Nadler, reporter and co-publisher at Hellgate, a local news site for New York City.
0:54.3	Christian, Max, welcome to it's a bit of a minute.
0:56.5	Good to be here.
0:57.2	Yeah, thanks for having us.
0:58.6	Okay, I am a longtime New York City resident this year makes 13 years.
1:03.0	Max, you also live in New York.
1:04.8	How would you describe the energy around this year's Democratic mayoral primary and the energy in New York on Tuesday night?
1:10.2	Yeah, I mean, you know, we had the highest voter turnout in New York City mayoral races
1:16.7	since 1989, still only around one third of registered Democrats voted. But because New York
1:23.4	City is such a massive city that's still over a million people voted, which is more people than
1:28.0	vote in several Senate races. So people were tuned into this race. You know, I'm somebody who covers
1:34.5	this day in and day out over at Hellgate and I was floored by what we saw here. I thought
1:40.3	we were going to be in for several days of vote tabulation, that ring choice voting was going to come into play.
1:46.5	And sure enough, it was pretty much decided by the end of the night that Zora and Mom Dani had won.
1:51.7	Yeah, I mean, I was so caught off guard. I was watching the results at home with my husband.
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