The Daily - An Iran Cease-Fire — and Why N.Y.C.’s Mayoral Race Matters for Democrats Everywhere

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Overnight, Iran and Israel said they had agreed to a cease-fire — after an Iranian attack on a U.S. air base in Qatar that appeared to be a largely symbolic act of revenge.But the main topic on “The Daily” is the mayor’s race in New York City, where Tuesday is Democratic Primary Day. The race has quickly become an excruciatingly close contest between two candidates who are offering themselves as the solution to what’s wrong with their party in the age of President Trump.Nicholas Fandos, who covers New York politics for The Times, discusses the competing visions competing for the mayoralty and who is most likely to win.Guest: Nicholas Fandos, a reporter covering New York politics and government for The New York Times.Background reading: In the N.Y.C. mayor’s race, top democrats take on President Trump and their own party.Here’s the latest on Israel and Iran.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Hilary Swift for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Hey, it's Michael. Before we begin today's show, a quick update on the situation in the Middle East. On Monday afternoon, Iran struck back against the US. Iran's military launched an attack on the Al-Odeid base in Qatar, the largest US military installation in the region. It was retaliation for the American attack on three of Iran's critical nuclear sites over the weekend. But according to the Times, Iran had coordinated the attacks with Qatari officials beforehand in order to minimize casualties. US air defenses intercepted almost all the Iranian missiles, and US officials said that there were no reports of American

casualties or meaningful damage at the base. It appears that Iran carried out a largely symbolic act of revenge that would allow both sides to potentially de-escalate the conflict, and within a few hours, President Trump seized on that possibility, declaring that both Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire after a deadly week of war. That's what we know for now. As always, we'll keep reporting on any developments and bring them to you as soon as we can. OK, here's today's show.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro. This is The Daily. In New York City, today's Democratic primary for mayor has quickly become an excruciatingly close contest between two candidates who are offering themselves as the solution to what's wrong with their party in the age of Donald Trump. I spoke with my colleague, Nick Fandos, about the competing visions that the election is offering, who's most likely to win, and what the outcome may tell us about the kind of party that Democratic voters now want.

It's Tuesday, June 24th. Nick, welcome back to The Daily. Michael, it's good to be here again. We're going to be talking about one of our favorite subjects, New York City. Best city in the world. So we are both New Yorkers and a mayor's race here, I'd argue, is inherently interesting to us, you and I, and to the citizens of our fair city. But I'd argue the timing of this election gives it meaning beyond New York. Do you agree?

Absolutely, I would agree. This is the nation's largest city and it's the biggest city of Democrats. And this primary is really one of the first major democratic contests in the country since President Trump stormed back to power in the 2024 election. And it's taking place against the backdrop of his increasingly aggressive efforts to impose his agenda on liberal cities like Los Angeles, like New York. And Democrats across the country have never been at a lower point. They are looking for somebody who can lead them not only out of the wilderness, but stand

up to Donald Trump. And this election is giving them an opportunity to figure out what kind of person are we looking for. And there's a bunch of different candidates. Many of them have experience, many of them have ideas. But really, as this race has accelerated towards election day, it's narrowed into a two man sprint. And the two candidates who have risen up, I think have done so in large part because

they're offering the clearest answer, albeit very different ones to that question. What should a democratic leader look like right now in the era of Donald Trump? Right. And in the era of democratic despair. So Nick, briefly tell us the story of how this democratic primary for the mayoralty of America's biggest city became a two-man contest and, if you're to be believed, a kind of referendum on the future of Democratic politics. Yeah. So we should start by taking a big step back.

The last time I was on the show, I was here talking about the current mayor of New York, Eric Adams, who is himself a moderate and just four years ago came into office calling himself the face of the Democratic Party in the future. So we've been here before, but his administration has turned out to be a real mess. He was indicted on federal corruption charges. That did a lot of damage to his standing among New Yorkers. But arguably, even more damage was done when the Trump administration intervened and tried to drop the charges against him. There were allegations, including from prosecutors in the case, that there was a kind of quid

pro quo where Adams had agreed to help the president with his immigration agenda in exchange for his legal case just disappearing. Right. So there was a sense that the Democratic mayor of New York had essentially sold out Democrats to the Republican president. Exactly. And other Democrats in New York were so concerned that they decided they were going to run against him. That's very unusual to run against an incumbent in New York City. But Adams' standing was so bad that he actually had to pull out of the Democratic primary

altogether and just make a go at it this fall in the general election. So all of a sudden, you basically have a wide open Democratic primary with no clear front runner. Candidates are joining by the day. You have the current Comptroller of the City of New York. There's several state senators and members of the assembly. The city council speaker decides to get in the race. Right. It is a very crowded, crowded primary field. Right. As we said, this is a city of a lot of Democrats and a lot of them want to get to the top.

But there's one candidate during this whole period who is looming just off stage and his presence is being felt, but it's not clear, is he going to get in or isn't he? And I'm talking about Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, the scion of one of the state's biggest political dynasties, a guy who dominated New York's politics for decades. Just a few years ago, he was forced out of office in scandal. And so when Cuomo decides to jump into the race in early March,

it's nothing short of a seismic event. It launches a pretty audacious comeback attempt, because remember, this guy resigned over a series of sexual harassment allegations, which he denied, and concerns that he had mishandled COVID in state nursing homes, leading to thousands of deaths. But it's also a seismic event, because there are still few figures in New York politics

that have a more loyal following, a bigger brand. I mean, this was a guy who rebuilt LaGuardia Airport. He raised the minimum wage. He legalized same-sex marriage. And in the chaotic early days of the pandemic, he was the guy that most of us were watching every morning on TV, giving us guidance when it seemed like the federal government was all over the place. So he arrives in the race, yes, with unusual levels of baggage, but also an uncommonly

large platform to run on, especially in a moment when his party and New York City seem to be a mess. Well, Nick, how does Cuomo, who in many senses could be seen as the past of a Democratic party, try to position himself as its future? Yeah, it's a really fascinating move that he makes because here's somebody who's been in public office since the 1990s, who is in many ways a totem of the democratic establishment. But when he ran into trouble back in 2021, he was basically kicked out of the democratic party. Everybody from President Biden on down said, this guy has got to go.

Forget about all his popularity. He doesn't have a future in this party. And he was basically sent into exile, which at one point looked like it might end his political career, but in this moment is allowing him to do something of a sleight of hand. We are here today because we know New York is in crisis. From the moment he announces his candidacy in a rally, he is very open that he is critiquing his own party. And we know that these politicians now running to be mayor made a terrible, terrible mistake.

To claim, you know, he was offstage for the Democratic Party's collapse over the last several years. An outsider of a sort. An outsider of a sort who is now returning and saying, what a mess you've made. They uttered the three dumbest words ever uttered by a government official, cut police funding. Because Cuomo's diagnosis of what went wrong, it has to do with ideology.

It created a city in chaos. People got hurt. It was a deadly mistake. The Democratic Party let itself get tied up in purity tests, in ideas like defunding police departments and focus on social issues like transgender rights and lost sight of what working people really care about. And let's build thousands of units and create thousands of new jobs and let's do it now.

Jobs, economic issues, a city that works for them, that's easy to get around, that feels safe. You ever get depressed walking around this city saying, can we turn this place around? Can we do it? And he says, I'm the man to do it. Go look at the new LaGuardia Airport that went from the worst to the best. Go look at the new JFK Airport rising from the ground. Go look at the Second Avenue subway. Go look at the Mario M.

Cuomo Bridge. And the polls suggest that there is a large segment of New Yorkers that think, yes, this is exactly what I want. He shoots to the front of the pack and has stayed there pretty much ever since March. Let's do it. Let's do it together. And let's start now. God bless you and thank you. And beyond arguing Democrats have moved too far to the left, What is his pitch to New Yorkers? His pitch really has two big parts.

One of them has to do with President Trump. Yes, New York City voted for President Trump in bigger numbers than it ever had before in 2024, but he's still very unpopular here, as have been many of the early moves in his administration. And Cuomo is rightly intuiting that Democratic primary voters in this race want somebody who will stand toe to toe with Trump. And so what he's saying is, you can trust that I'll do that

because I've done it. Remember Trump's first term? I was governor back then and I wrangled with him on COVID. I wrangled with him over funding issues. I've known this man a very long time and he respects me. This isn't time for an amateur Put me in and the second part of his pitch is really policy focus and I would characterize it as a kind of moderate

business friendly Approach to approve quality of life in New York City. He wants to put Thousands of more cops into the New York Police Department To try and crack down on crime in the subways and on the streets. He wants to remove all homeless and mentally ill people from the subways immediately. He wants to loosen regulations so that real estate developers can build more quickly and bring onto market the hundreds of thousands of new units that New York really needs right

now to try and bring down rents and other housing costs. And as the spring goes on, all of this starts to put him on a path that feels like he's inevitably heading towards City Hall. He picks up endorsements from most major labor unions. Some of his allies set up a super pack where big businesses and wealthy New Yorkers are putting millions of dollars to spend on his behalf much more than anybody else in the race. Even many of the Democrats who had called for him to resign just four years ago, who said this guy's not fit to lead the state, started changing their tune.

Many of them even endorsing him and saying, you know what, that was then. We didn't like what he did, but times change and things are urgent right now. We are in a crisis as a party. Many of these Democrats see the city in a crisis and they see the country in a crisis and they say, we need somebody who we can trust. We need somebody who we know is strong.

And maybe he's a bully, but he's our bully. Right, there's kind of a collective democratic genuflection toward Andrew Cuomo. Right. And the polling reflects that. It shows Cuomo up by 10 points, 20 points, 30 points in some cases, looking like he's going to run away with this thing. But This is New York. All kinds of crazy things can happen here. No lead is safe for a city that loves an underdog. And there's one in this race who happens to be half Cuomo's age. Social media savant with a catchy platform who is running all around the city and slowly, at first, starts to rise in the polls to the point where, on the eve of the election, this race is a dead heat.

We'll be right back. Nick, tell us about this underdog in the Democratic primary who has somehow, against all odds and expectations, turned this into a dead heat with Andrew Cuomo. I'm talking about Zoran Mondani. He is an assembly member from Queens who is just 33 years old. He's a Democratic socialist. He's born to pretty well-known parents. His mom's a renowned filmmaker. His dad is an academic.

He was born in Uganda, but is a naturalized US citizen. And when he enters the race, he's a real long shot. Nobody really knows who this guy is. His politics are probably pretty far to the left of the average New Yorker, I think it's safe to say. You know, he was seen as somebody who maybe he'll pull the field to the left, but this guy's not seriously going to contend to win. So in many ways, he's Cuomo's polar opposite.

But one of the interesting things to Democrats watching across the country is that he also has a powerful critique of the Democratic Party. In the wake of the 2024 election, where Democrats are wringing their hands about how old President Biden was about how old so many of their leaders are, he says, we can't keep doing this. We need young people with fresh ideas and energy. If we're going to expect to win voters back, it's not going to be with the same ideas and people of the past. But he also does something really interesting in the aftermath of

the election. Did you get a chance to vote on Tuesday? Yes! And who did you vote for? He puts on his reporter cap, he takes a camera and he goes up to the Bronx, to one of the neighborhoods where President Trump made the most gains in New York City during the last election. Ah, million dollar question. Trump. Trump. Donald Trump. Well actually the early voted, I Trump. Trump. Donald Trump. Well, actually, the early voter, I voted for Trump. He starts asking people, like, who'd you vote for? If you voted for him, why?

The swing is because people want lower prices. They probably believe that Trump would give them that. Energy, gas. La comida. Food. Most of these people are working families. They're working one, two, three jobs. And rent is expensive.

Foods are going up., utility bills are up. And that's your hope to see a little bit more of an affordable life? Absolutely. And what he finds are a lot of Trump voters who are telling him we voted for him because it seemed like he cared. I'm struggling economically. The city is expensive, groceries are expensive, housing is expensive. And it didn't really sound to me

like Democrats cared that much about that. They were not focused on those issues. They were focused on other things, fighting about social issues or things that seemed far away from me. You know we have a mayor's race coming up next year and if there was a candidate talking about freezing the rent, making buses free, making universal child care a reality, are those things that you'd support? Absolutely, he'd have my vote all day. In many ways, Mamdani's campaign has tried to offer an answer to that, or an antidote. He has been intensely focused on economic issues.

His platform really comes down to a few things, and he's done it in a way that's very memorable. My name is Oram Amdadi, and I'm running for Mayor of New York City. He's very good at creating simple videos that go viral one after another, explaining his ideas. As Mayor, I'll freeze the rent every year that I'm in office. That's a guarantee. To talk about his proposal to freeze the rent, he runs into the ocean on Coney Island on New Year's Day when the waters are freezing. Take it in. The true icon of New York, the Staten Island Ferry.

He wants to make buses free. Buses are the lifeline of working New Yorkers even more than the subway. And he films a spot on the Staten Island Ferry, the forgotten transportation of New York, to say, you know, the Staten Island ferry is free. Buses can be too. So when people say buses can never be free, don't ask them to take a hike. Ask them to take the ferry. On June 24th, let's get some more free transit.

He wants to make childcare free from a very young age for New Yorkers kids. And he even suggests the city should open its own grocery stores to fill food deserts and lower prices just a little bit by not having the overhead the profit requires. A very bold vision of government as the facilitator of affordability. That's right. And he says, look, we are in New York City. This is one of the wealthiest cities in the world. I'm just going to ask the rich to pay a bit more.

Now a bit more is $10 billion more a year in new taxes because we deserve better in this city. Like we shouldn't have to settle for what we have right now. It's a very forward looking message that says we need to raise our ambitions. We need to, and we can deliver more. Now, the reality is it's actually very difficult to do all of those things. Just explain that to those who don't understand New York City power. Yeah.

So the mayor of New York City is a very powerful figure. But on questions of finances and revenue, those are questions that are largely dictated by the state government. So if he wants to make buses free or he wants to provide free childcare, he's going to have to go and raise that revenue from state government. And in Albany, state lawmakers and the governor do not seem ready to do this. New York already has one of the highest tax burdens in the country and the governor has made pretty clear, I'm not going to raise him further on my watch. So it's hard to see a lot of what he's offering New Yorkers actually

happening. I think that's right but then again in politics actually delivering is not usually what wins campaign it's the promising and what it shows about your values about your vision and how hard you're willing to fight and especially on that last category I'm Donnie really sets him apart from the other Democrats in the field who have their own plans and vision and All of this seems to resonate first with young New Yorkers who like him are hungry for new leadership It resonates with New Yorkers on the left who maybe started out the race thinking they were going to support a better known progressive candidate, but start to be

excited by this guy's energy and ideas. He's using his foreign language skills to appeal to South Asian voters who are not often a part of mayoral campaigns. And he starts to rise in the polls a few points at a time at first, and then big jumps to the point where he is clearly the second place runner. And depending on what polls you believe in the last weeks of the race,

really knocking on Cuomo's door. And Nick, once this race becomes so much closer than anyone had anticipated after Cuomo entered it, what does it look like when these two candidates become essentially neck and neck? Cuomo had run much of this race trying to stay above the fray, not really make news. But as Mondani is getting closer,

he realizes he may have a real problem and he's gotta turn this low show campaign into something much more aggressive. He starts to get down in the muck and the two of them are slinging at each other hard. Experience matters. And this was on clear display during one of the debates when the two of them go head to head at each other and lay out their arguments. Mr. Mondani has had a staff of five people. You're not going to run a staff of 300,000 employees.

Cuomo says, you know, we're really going to entrust New York City, a city with a $115 billion budget, 300,000 people, the most important financial city in the world, to this guy? He's a man who has done nothing. He's accomplished nothing.

Three bills are all he passed. He's been around like 27 minutes. He's passed three bills. Like, he's a total neophyte. He's not up to the job. And now you have Donald Trump on top of all of that. Especially at a moment when Donald Trump is targeting New York City. Donald Trump's going to eat this guy for lunch.

And oh, by the way, he's exactly the kind of lefty that we don't need, who's going to lead us in the wrong direction. He supported defund the police in the past. Which, and let me just jump in here, Nick, is not just a critique leveled by Cuomo that Mondani has supported defund the police. I mean, that's a critique from many elements ofomo that Mondani has supported defund the police. I mean, that's a critique from many elements of the Democratic Party that any candidate who espouses that position is hurting the Democratic Party brand.

Exactly. And I think even Mondani realizes that this is not a tenable position in this race. He said, if you elect me mayor, I'm not going to defund the police. I'm not going to dismantle the police. So he's walked that back. He's walked that back. But Cuomo says, well, beyond that, here's a guy, he's no friend of Israel, his economic policies are unrealistic, and he may bankrupt the city.

Right, he's basically saying he's the exact opposite of bringing the Democratic Party back to where Cuomo thinks it needs to be, which is closer to the center. That's right. He has zero accomplishments. I want to be very clear. And now he thinks he's going to be ready to be mayor of the city

of New York. It is laughable. It is laughable, and it is dangerous. Now, Mamdani doesn't just take it, he hits back. To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace.

I have never cut Medicaid. This is experience. You wouldn't talk about experience. I'm glad I don't have your experience. I have never hounded. This is experience. You wouldn't talk about experience. I'm glad I don't have your experience. I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records.

I'm glad I don't have the experience of having been accused of sexual harassment, of having been accused of putting nursing home residents in this state in harm's way during COVID. You have received millions of dollars in funding from the very billionaires who put Donald Trump back into office. And he aggressively goes after Cuomo's donors. I mentioned that Super PAC, it's back in Cuomo. Mamdani makes great use of it saying like, look at who is putting money into this. It's DoorDash. It's the same Republican billionaires who supported Donald Trump. He's basically insinuating that Cuomo is in the pocket of big corporations

Hmm, and it's being backed by the same kind of people that in Mamdani's view got us in this mess in the first place Why would we want more of that? Mm-hmm. And so his message boils down to if we as a party are trying to go somewhere new to get back on our feet, why would we turn back to this guy that is so entangled with everything from our past? So Nick, at this moment, based on your reporting, based on the campaign that you have just described and based on historic voting patterns in this city, how should we think about what is most likely to happen in today's election? So for most of this race, I think I would have told you that Andrew Cuomo is going to pull it out. He's been around New York politics forever. You know, he's a very good inside operator. He's going to figure out a way to get to victory. I'm not so sure about that

now. Maybe he does, but it has been a very chaotic close to this campaign. Last week, we saw the third place candidate, Brad Lander, who's the city controller, get arrested in immigration court by federal agents as he was trying to escort an immigrant out of a hearing. That could have put him on the map in a way that frankly, he just wasn't before. We've seen a big surge in early voting, particularly among young voters who are more likely to vote for Mamdani. And then there's two final kind of wild cards in this race. One is the heat. It's supposed to be a hundred degrees in New York City and nobody knows exactly

how that's going to affect turnout, but it's probably not helpful to the Cuomo campaign as they're trying to get out their relatively older voter base to the polls. The other thing is that this race is being run under a ranked choice voting system. So that means that when Democrats walk into the booth, they're not just putting one candidate's name on the ballot. They're able to list up to five. And we've seen a number of the candidates in this race who are all against Cuomo, thinking of Mondani, Lander and others, link arms and kind of run as a slate here telling their

voters you rank me, but rank all these other people too, because we've got to block this guy. Right. And they're saying don't rank Cuomo. They're saying don't rank Cuomo. And so that creates the possibility, I think, that something unexpected could happen, that Lander or another candidate could rise up in a way that we don't see coming. Again, I don't think that's the most likely outcome, but it's possible. But at this point, the most likely situation is that either Cuomo or Mondani comes out as the Democratic nominee, that they become the clear favorite to win the mayor's race

in the general election in the fall. But almost immediately, they will also become a leading voice in the Democratic Party across the country. At this moment, as we've been talking about, where Democrats are looking for voices, where Democrats are looking for somebody to tell them where to go. And it occurs to me, Nick,

that if it is one of these two front runners that gets the nomination, yes, they're very different, but ultimately, both of them are demanding that the Democratic Party think long and hard about economic issues and making the party about working people. A group of voters that we know from many analyses over many years, the party has lost. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right, Michael. And it's tempting, and in fact, it is true,

that in many ways, this contest looks a lot like the divide that split the Democratic Party for like 10 years now, right? You've got the moderate versus the progressive, the young versus the old, the insurgent versus the establishment. But I do think that there's something else going on here. This race is not going to settle that kind of ideological question. But it does show, as you're pointing out, that both sides of that coin are now focused intensely on economic issues.

And it also shows, I think that democratic voters in elevating these two guys above the rest of the field seem to be looking for something similar. It's less about ideology or purity and seems more about scrappiness. They're looking for somebody who could stand up to Donald Trump immediately and defend New York City, but they're also looking for somebody who's tough on their own party because their own party has disappointed them, has failed them in many ways, and they think that without that tough love or bitter pill they're gonna be doomed to more of the same. And that I think is the idea

that might resonate well beyond New York City with Democrats as they get ready for the midterms and then the 2028 presidential election. They seem to be attracted to candidates who have a strong view about what's wrong with the party, a plan to fix it, and an instinct to fight to make that happen. Well, Nick, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you, Michael. Let's see what happens.

Polls in New York close at 9 p.m. tonight, but it's unclear when a winner will be declared. Unless one of the candidates has a commanding lead, tabulating the results of ranked choice voting could take up to a week. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The National Weather Service has issued heat advisories and excessive heat warnings across much of the Midwest, Ohio Valley, and eastern United States, where temperatures soared into the 90s on Monday and felt as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit because of high humidity. Meteorologists said that the temperatures were the result of a heat dome,

a high-pressure system that traps hot air like a lid on a pot, causing temperatures to rise day after day with little relief. In New York, this is Mayor Eric Adams, and it is getting hot outside. We're going to have several days with close to 100. In New York City, the Weather Service issued its highest level of alert and extreme heat warning through the end of today. And the city's mayor, Eric Adams,

warned residents to take every available precaution. We're going to open our cooling centers. They're free. You should utilize them. And if you're in a home with an air conditioner, please turn it on. Temperatures are expected to return to normal by Thursday. Today's episode was produced by Mujzadi, Jessica Chung, and Carlos Prieto. It was edited by Brendan Klinkenberg, contains original music by Alisha Ba Eto and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Alyk of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Boborio. See you tomorrow.