America's Talking - ELECTION DAY 2025: NYC elects Mamdani, Democrats sweep VA, NJ governors' races

Episode Date: November 8, 2025

(The Center Square) – Self-proclaimed democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani will be the next mayor of New York City after taking down the former Democrat New York governor for a second time on Tuesday. Democrats also won their respective races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia Tuesday.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Read more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_3591145a-5e5e-4ba9-b632-621c8f02b14c.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Good morning. I'm Sarah Roder Fitch, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. This is America's talking. And joining me this morning is Kristen Smith, our Northeast regional editor. I'm talking today about the elections that happened this week in New York and New Jersey and Virginia, for that matter. Welcome. Hi. How did things go this week? Well, I see, I push back against that a little bit because we're talking about blue races and blue states, right? Right. And so I guess, though, let's start from the top in New York City. And that's kind of, again, surprise. The polls didn't seem to suggest that this was a surprise. But culturally and socially, this is a big deal for not just New York, but the country. Right. So Zohan Mamdami won the mayor's race against Andrew Cuomo. Now he is a self-described democratic socialist. He is Muslim. And he has a lot of controversy around those two facts of his existence, let's just say. He, and he supports a lot of very democratic socialist policies, such as affordable housing, childcare that is covered by taxpayers, things of that nature that are going to cost a lot more money, but the city of New York apparently is

ready for. There's also a lot of concern about him from particularly Jewish communities, pro-Israel communities. The Anti-Defamation League came out with the Mamdani monitor to keep track of anti-Semitism, both through his policies and through any of his appointments. So there's a lot of concern, uncertainty about what this means. A lot of people are looking at New York City. This is, depending on where you stand, this is a great victory or this is the beginning of the fall if we're going to see it in New York City. So, you know, that could be a a dramatic interpretation, but it is truly a sea change when it comes to leadership policies in some of our biggest cities. We're not just Democrat. Now, we're full-blown, far-left democratic

socialist, which is something that the younger base of the Democratic Party, particularly millennials and Gen Z, they've been pushing for for a long time. They want the party to veer left more so than the centrist government that Cuomo argued. It's also a funny, I've seen a funny take about this is that the reason Cuomo lost was because Trump supported him, right? So that we have no way of knowing that's true, but it's a funny take on the situation. Then if we moved down to New Jersey, there was the race for governor between Mickey Sherro, who is a congresswoman, and Jack Chirrelli, who has tried to run for governor before and came close within three points in the last governor's election. But this time, he was handily defeated by double digits. And

Republican saw this as a blow because he had become very pro-Trump lately, and they thought that there was a chance that they could flip the governorship in New Jersey to red. And that didn't happen at all. So they, you know, there's this sense that there's a referendum on the Trump administration because of this. Now, again, reminder, New Jersey is deep blue. And so while it's not completely unexpected, I think probably the clobbering that he took. was the one that that hurt the Republican Party deep in their souls. So where do you think this is going to lead as far as, like, New York? I mean, the Trump administration has been pushing back on, like, crime in different cities and everything like that. Where do you think this is going to lead? Do you think he's going to try to, you know, intervene there in New York now? What is, where is this, what is the feeling? Are people trying to leave now the city?

I've seen different reports as people are saying, hey, they're going to be moving out of the city. Things are getting bad. I mean, is it, is the handwriting already on the wall, do you think? I think it depends. There's already states who are making overtures to New Yorkers and New York businesses in New Hampshire, the governor there, is kind of welcoming New York businesses with open arms because there's just a lot of concern about affordability and how much Mom Donnie. these policies, if enacted, would spike the cost of living in New York, which is already one of the most expensive cities in the country to live in. And so that's something, you know, the center squares really kept an eye on is how, yes, you know, he uses the word free to describe a lot of

his policies. He wants to do state-run grocery stores, but in a state like Pennsylvania where I live, we know that state-run liquor stores and other kind of, you know, industries. routinely face higher cost of taxpayers because of the state-run angle. And in fact that there's Republicans and Democrats in our state who wants, you know, the future recreational cannabis industry to not have state involvement. So that is a concern that a lot of people in New York City have. I've seen reports that, you know, they expect an exodus of sorts. We already saw that during the pandemic. A lot of people, once they had the opportunity to leave these high-cost states like New York and California, they did. So one can only imagine that what will happen in New York City. Now, will they be replaced by people who are very excited about this Democratic Socialist vision? Maybe, but it's still going to be an incredibly unaffordable city for most people. So we're going to have to see what happens there. But this is really a big experiment for people, I think. Like I said, there's excitement and big fears depending on where you stand on the political spectrum. So I think we're all just going to have to sit back.

and watch. And that's either scary for some people or, you know, interesting for others. So we'll see where that goes. Yeah, I think the same is kind of interesting here in Virginia. There was also, that was the other big state was in Virginia for elections going from, you know, there's been a lot of people making a lot about it, going from Republican, kind of trifecta, the government between the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general. And now it's going back. It's going Democrat. It was for a while. It is a blue state, kind of the same sort of thing. Not deep blue state like New Jersey or New York, obviously. It's kind of been considered purple, but it's moved in that direction as far as everything goes. And seeing how that is playing out here before the kind of the election sort of took off Abigail Spanberger, who won against Lieutenant Governor, Winston Earl Sears. She was sort of thought of as sort of a centrist Democrat. And then a as the sort of the campaign went on, so she was painted and kind of came out more, more leftist. Obviously, the big election, a lot of eyes were on.

The attorney general race with Jay Jones, he beat Jason Mierrez, who was the Republican Attorney General. Of course, Jay Jones had some pretty bad, some this and the text scandals where he fantasized about Gellian's opponent, his opponent's children. I mean, you know, some horrific stuff. like that. And he came out winning. And yeah, so there's like, oh, is this a referendum on Trump, or is it just, or is this sort of just blue states just being blue? You know, like, what is this going to happen here? But I think one of the other things, too, is that we haven't really looked at,

but I think in Virginia, one of the things that impacted it, not just the Trump stuff, but was the government shut down. And I'm wondering if the government shut down because you're saying the double digits, the Republicans thought, hey, they couldn't get some more. If that was impacting the elections there in New Jersey and New York, if that hurt, or the Doge stuff? Do you think that that had some sort of, do you think that played anything into the elections at all? Particularly, I think the government shutdown is a big issue for voters. And Democrats have been pretty good at framing that as a Trump administration fault, even though the Center Square has done a lot of reporting on the bigger picture of it, and I encourage anyone watching or listening to check that out. But particularly in the governor's race,

I think that government shut down had a big impact, especially because Jack Chitarelli was aligning himself more with Trump than he had in the past. Another big issue, and I think you could look at this for more in New York City, but broadly across the northeast, is the the Trump administration's immigration policy. There's a lot of sanctuary states and cities in our region that are vehemently against what ICE is doing. And Mamdani has been one of those voices and has committed to stopping ICE as much as he can. And so you have to imagine that the voters there are obviously in New York City. They're on board with that. But is that a factor in the New Jersey race? I think it's entirely possible. Those are also

some of the biggest issues that voters have been pulled on recently. And so it makes sense and that's where the biggest divide is and perhaps where the Trump administration has lost favor among those purple voters. But again, we also have to know that the midterm elections, off-year elections in general, because we're not at mid-term yet, the minority party often turns out in droves because they're pretty angry about the situation. And I think as long as Trump is in office, you're going to see really big swings as far as that goes. So again, like we said, is this a referendum against Trump or is this Democrats being really mad about Trump and what has happened? And Republicans kind of being complacent. We'll never know. But that is, those are kind of the things that are weighing

over, over these elections. Thank you so much. I appreciate Kristen. This has been an interesting conversation. You want to learn more about this, the elections or any of the government shutdown, I encourage you to visit the center square.com.