WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Daniel Idfresne: Why Mamdani’s Win Could Spark the Cost‑of‑Living Crisis

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

New York City just sent shockwaves through the political world with Zohran Mamdani’s stunning upset in the Democratic mayoral primary. His radical platform—rent freezes, fare-free buses, and expanded welfare programs—has energized voters battered by a $4,571 median rent but triggered panic among business leaders and high earners already eyeing the exits. Daniel Idfresne, a junior at Syracuse University and a Young Voices Social Mobility Fellow, offers a powerful perspective at RealClearPolitics on the battle unfolding between populist promises and economic reality. He joins Emma Wiermann on WRFH to discuss.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Emma Weirman. With me today is Daniel EFriends, a junior at Syracuse University and a Young Voices Social Mobility Fellow. You can read his essay, Zoran Mamdani, working class mayor for upper class voters at Real Clear Politics.com. How are you doing today, Daniel? I'm doing the wall. Thank you for having me. Yeah, of course. So today we're going to be talking about the recent upset in New York City. We have Zoran Mamdani, who... one, the primary for New York City mayor for the Democrats. So that's crazy. So you obviously know a lot about this, being a New York City resident yourself. And for the listeners, I am also a New Yorker. I'm from Long Island. So this is near and dear to my heart as well.

So let's start out with you telling us who exactly is Zoran Mamdani, or more like who does he claim to be versus who is he really. Yeah, that's a great place to start. Zora Mamdani is a Queen's Assemblyman with really limited, limited experience, work experience. We know for a fact that he hasn't ran a business or organization in his life, honestly. And now he's trying to run one of the biggest cities in the world. And he's a self-proclaimed democratic socialist. And you see that with the policies that he's been proposing, such as free.

in the rent-stabilized apartment, free busing, and other proposals that ring similar to a lot of the socialist policies that the far left of the Democrat Party have been espousing over the past few years. Okay. So I hear that he claims to represent the working class. Is that the case? Well, it's certainly not the case. And in my analysis for Real Clear Politics, I decided to take a look at the so-called working class, small donations that Mom Dani referred to during his primary debates.

And when you look at the map, it looks very similar to the actual primary map that we see on the New York Times, which is gentrified enclaves. Typically, young New Yorkers in a professional class, not the working class, the professional class, who are. are not only voting, who are not only donating to Mamdani, but are also voting for Mamdani. But you don't need to take, you don't need to do the analysis that I did if you're a long-time New Yorker. You see it in the posts that Mamdani's core supporters

put on social media. You know, the work at class isn't necessarily wearing hot girls for Zoran shirts. And I voted stickers at 2 p.m. on a weekday. they're working. Yeah. And so whether you take a mathematical analysis or a qualitative analysis on Mamdani's core support group, we know for a fact that Mamdani is speaking to a certain

class of New Yorker that is really certainly not the working class. Yeah. So just to recap, basically you're saying that if we look at an electoral map, we'll see that both the areas that he won in the primary and the areas that gave the most money to him are not actually primarily working class areas. These are the gentrified areas of New York City. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. And for your listeners, I really urge you to take a look at a map of New York City. I'm going to briefly explain some geography to prove the point. When you look at the map of New York City and you look at the neighborhoods where Mom Donnie

one, you're looking at Astoria Queens, Williamsburg, Bedford-Suyvesant, Flatbush. These are areas that are where typically younger New Yorkers who are in a professional class try to cluster as close to the city center. These are not neighborhoods like East New York, like the South Bronx, where they are working class New Yorkers. And so, again, whether you take a geographic analysis of New York City, financial or qualitative analysis, the answer is clear. Okay. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, and I'm Emma Weirman talking with Daniel E. Friends,

a junior at Syracuse University and a Young Voices Social Mobility Fellow. So, in addition to claiming to represent the working class, I also heard that he claims to represent displaced families and such. But in your article, you referenced that his campaign is actually powered by the the very people replacing these displaced families. Can you go into that hypocrisy? Okay, yeah. So according to, and you're exactly right,

according to my real clear politics analysis, when I took a look at specific neighborhoods around sort of the boundary of where younger professional class New Yorkers typically are settling in and working class New Yorkers, let's say, just call them gentrified neighborhoods, if we take Flatbush and East Flatbush, for example, Flatbush has been dealing with a quite bit of gentrification over the past decade.

They shifted towards Mamdani by 16 points. In comparison, East Flatbush, which is a more Caribbean-dominated neighborhood, higher race of homeownerships, homeownership with longtime New Yorkers, they went for Coleman by 37 points. And so this is just one microcosm of a larger story where let's take neighborhoods, neighborhoods like Bedford-Suyvesant, for example, which is the epicenter of a lot of gentrification within Brooklyn, the western parts of Bedford-Stuyvesant, voted for Mondani versus the eastern part of Bedford-Suyvesant, the Ocean Hill area, closer to Brownsville,

opted for Cuomo. And so it's not only Flatbush and East Flatbush, it's not only Bedford-Stuyvesant, when you look at neighborhoods in which you are seeing an increased split between, again, the young professional class and long time working class New Yorkers, that split between support for Mdani and support for a more moderate candidate, that split is visible. So this is all really interesting. It's almost like I feel like I've heard this before with the Democrats. I'm not sure if you could think of a specific example.

I'm not able to think one right now. But it's just this feeling of it's like they're playing a game and they're putting on an act. Oh, here's another example. And Ocasio-Cortez. For example, she pretends to be a girl from the Bronx who's, you know, who knows what it's like to be working class, this or that, and that she's representing all of them. When actually she's up, she's from some really nice town upstate.

I was just watching an expose on this. So it's like Zoranam Dhani is doing the same thing. It's like he's playing some game, putting on an act. He's claiming to know and represent the people. But where is he even from? And he, I'm pretty sure his parents were professor. right? Well, well-off professors. So what exactly do you think is going on there?

Momdani has, from my understanding, he moved to New York City when he was seven years old. It is true that his parents are more well-off. The question as a New Yorker isn't necessarily, and I hear this a lot on the right. Yeah. And I disagree with this. A lot of the rhetoric on the right is, is Mamdani, even American? And some have even called for his deportation. I disagree with that rhetoric wholeheartedly.

Okay. I think that in New York City, we have, the New York City populace is full of immigrants. It's full of people who've moved there, not even, who are not born American, but I've come here to have a better life. But, and so, you know, Mondani is a New Yorker just like the rest of us. It's just that his parents are wealthy. His dad is a professor at Columbia who has similar ideals to him. and his mother is very successful. And so it does create that disconnect

where I think Mabdani's discourse and his policy prescriptions on the working class more is sort of comes from that ivory tower sort of analysis of the working class rather than an actual day-to-day understanding of where working class New Yorkers are coming from. Yeah. And I totally agree with you

and New York City is made up of immigrants. That's why I'm from New York. My ancestors came over in the last couple generations, and they were immigrants as well. And that's really what America is. It's a land of immigrants. But the thing is, when we move here, we're supposed to have American ideals and become Americans. But it seems like he's bringing other ideals. He's bringing communistic agendas and such, and notions such as, like, globalized the antifada

and things like that. So, I don't know. That's just something to be very wary of, for sure. So in your piece, you mentioned Mayor Bill de Blasio's disastrous ruin of New York City in the past due to his progressive policy. So that was another mayor we've had in the past. Could you tell the listeners what that was like and whether that might show some parallel for what we could see happen with the progressives or on Mamdani? When I think of Mayor Bill de Blasio, I think when I think of his progressive run in New York City, I think of two things in particular. I think of his push to worsen education in New York City.

He attempted to remove the specialized high school's admissions test. I'm a Brooklyn Tech graduate. And I think it's well documented in studies that testing, standardized testing is crucial. It's a very good marker when we're determining whether a prospective student will do well in a certain environment. and the Bill de Blasio, he rolled back charter school expansion, which is really important for black and Hispanic New Yorkers who live in the outer boroughs. We know that charter schools do very well. Black and Hispanic New Yorkers and charter schools perform very well compared to black and Hispanic New Yorkers

in public schools across, in regular public schools across the city. And then the second thing that Bill de Blasio, one thing that he really, really felt at was his push to defend the police, especially right after the BLM protests and riots in 2020. We know, we also know that Black and spending New Yorkers want more policing in their communities, not less. And we know the down effects of policing, the effects of less policing. It has economic ramifications, quality of life ramifications very obviously. And what we see with Zormam Dani, at least on an education front, and he hasn't really articulated. a policy on education, but he has said before that he's willing to remove the

SHSCT, like de Blasio tried. Okay. And we have receipts of Mondani saying that we must defund the police, that is queer liberation to defund the police. That sort of rhetoric, that sort of policy ideals is just, we now know, because we've already tried it, we've already done it when $1 billion was removed from the near police department. It doesn't work.

And so we shouldn't really be championing prospective mayors who are doubling down on failed policies from Bill de Blasio. Yeah. I mean, we literally just saw that it didn't work. And you know what else we've seen repeatedly not work in history that he wants to give a try again? Communism. It's amazing that he's even said out loud that one of the goals is for the government to seize the means of production in America.

But that's a whole other can of worms. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, and I'm Emma Weirman talking with Daniel E. Friends, a junior at Syracuse University and a Young Voices Social Mobility Fellow. So what will New York City become? And what will the streets be like if he does get in? What should we expect? I think the two most pressing things is quality of life within busing and within housing. Okay. So let's take busing, for example. With busing, he wants to make. buses fast and free. That's what he says on the campaign trail. The problem is that when you make an already

heavily subsidized program like the MTA, like busing in the MTA specifically, you're loaning the quality of service of that busing. Right. Again, we're going back to that major theme of progressive policies, try to provide solutions for a problem, but in reality policy,

it's really a configuration that the populace wants. So if you make buses free, the government, the New York City government is going to have to pull that revenue from other places. The problem is when the New York City government and New York State government have to allocate a specific dollar amount for busing because we're not paying it

when we paid a fare, but it's going to be a part of the New York City and New York State budget. That budget is more susceptible to cuts. That budget is now more susceptible to the other budget priorities of New York City and New York State. And so in an event that New York City and New York State decide to decrease the budget for busing for the MTA, and we already know that the MTA is facing a lot of

financial troubles, we will see that reflected in a decrease in the quality of service for people who are taking buses. And then for housing, the problem with a rent freeze, a four-year rent-stabilized apartments, is that it shifts the supply and demand. It shifts the market, right? So you will have greater demand for these rent-sibolized apartments because they're effectively not moving. they're not changing in price over four years. But at the same time, you're going to have increased demand, but you're going to have limited supply

because we've in rent-stabilized apartments, we will see people try to get these rent-simbalized apartments fail, and the spillover happens in market rate apartments. So, Mamdani's policies will have an adverse effect on the housing market. It will make it more unaffordable to rent out apartments. And not only that, you know, there's, and I think this is because of the oppressor dynamic within a lot of progressive circles.

Yeah. They believe that landlords are these big faceless corporate landlords who do not care about tenants, right? But in New York City, a lot of quote-unquote landlords are really just small homeowners. Really just like, again, working class, typically immigrant New Yorkers, who's been here for a long time. time they've invested in their communities when it wasn't as pretty and gentrified as when a lot of

the young professional class has moved in, right? Yeah. These small homeowners bought these buildings when their communities were more dangerous, less safe, less economic, there was less economic activity. And they're not necessarily wealthy themselves. They typically rent out the other rental unit within their building. in order to make some money to pay off their mortgage. Right?

And so, and half of New York City's apartments are rent-stabilized. And so when you freeze a rent on those rent-stabilized apartments for small homeowners, they will not have the money to be able to renovate and to keep up costs. Right. And to renovate these apartments. And what we see is that, again, with these small homeowners who cannot keep up with New York City law because, again, they're working. they're just renting out another unit in order to pay their mortgage.

They typically just leave the apartments vacant. And so that's a problem that we're already seeing in New York City. And I think it'll be exacerbated if Momdani freezes a rent, unrent, sublights apartments over the next four years. Well, thank you for explaining that to us, those of us who aren't a New York City residence. Now we can get a better understanding of what exactly these changes in policy could mean and the trickle-down effects they could have. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, and I'm Emma Weirman talking with Daniel E. Friends, a junior at Syracuse University and a Young Voices Social Mobility Fellow. So something else in your essay that I found really interesting was that you talked about how Democrats have perfected the modern political campaign and how they've conquered Downs Paradox. Could you explain what that means?

Yes. I think ever since 2008, I think Democrats, have actually perfected the modern political campaign. And we've seen with Mr. Mumdani's primary, he ran a successful campaign, and you have to give him props for that. Yeah. He was very active on social media. He grew his volunteer base from,

I don't know what the original number was, zero, I guess. I believe it's 50,000 volunteers. Wow, that's a lot. There's a whole cultural ecosystem with those who are in the Democrat Party. Right. Again, we're talking about the Hockers Reservoir on T-shirts, I-voted stickers.

There's a cultural ecosystem in which the cost of voting, which is typically the cost of voting does not actually outweigh the tangible benefits, right? Those who are in progressive circles actually get tangible benefits from voting. You get a little bit of social cred. You get to, you know, be active on social media, you know, and they've built circles for themselves where at bars, they can, you know, probably. proclaimed that they've voted for whatever Democratic socialist or whatever Democrat candidate ends up running in the race.

So you mean like they get clout? Like when they post a selfie that has the I voted pin or the hot girls from Amdani thing and that that's what's working in the cultural ecosystem with the Democrats? Yeah. It is a cultural ecosystem that's self-forcing and it provides benefits. Those are tangible

benefits that somebody will easily say, okay, yes, I'm going to walk to the early polling site and vote. Another campaign has done this while I think Republicans are becoming better at this is the Trump 2024 campaign. When you buy a Make America Great Again hat, you've paid money, you've paid money in order to purchase it. That is a tangible benefit to you. And so you're more likely to actually go to the polls to vote. If you go to a Trump rally, you've actually put in effort to travel and to stand for hours on end and watch Trump speak,

you're more likely to go to the voting poll. And so, you know, Democrats have perfected a minor campaign. Republicans, specifically Trump has done it while I've created a parallel cultural ecosystem within a populist, the populist, right? Yeah. But again, like I said in the piece, you know, even though you've perfected a campaign

doesn't mean you actually represent the people that you claim to represent. Really good point. And people pick on that. Yeah. Pick up on that. Yeah, that was very well said. So to close out this conversation, could you let us know when is the election, now that we've had the primary? And what do you think the likelihood is of Mondani emerging victorious in this election?

So the general election is in November, early November. Right now, at least on parley market, we, see Mamdani securing a definitive victory in November. Mabdani's victory or Maldi's success is really dependent on the other candidates. We have Jim Walden, Eric Adams, and Andrew Como, apparently, who is still on the ballot. Oh, okay. And so there's, I think there's a large segment of New Yorkers who are kind of concerned about some of Mondali's, Mumbani's policies.

But the problem is that the vote very well may be split between the incumbent, Eric Adams, a political, a big figure in New York politics, Andrew Cuomo and Jim Walden. And if that's the case, the Mamdani will easily win in November. Oh, okay. It really, yeah, it really all depends on what the other candidates do. All right. Well, thank you so much for being with us today, Daniel. Thank you so much. Our guest has been Daniel E. Friends, a junior at Syracuse University and a Young Voices Social Mobility Fellow.

You can read his essay, Zoran Mamdani, working class mayor for upper class voters at realclearpolitics.com. And I'm Emma Weirman on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.