S2 Episode 9: Discussing Zohran Mamdani with Maria Danzilo

Special guest Maria Danzilo, attorney, activist and politician from New York joins Richie Greenberg in discussing the candidacy of Zohran Mamdani for New York City mayor and possible ramifications she he win this November. Great insight from native New Yorkers on this veery important topic.

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Transcript

Season 2 Episode 9

Zohran Mamdani, discussion with Maria Danzilo

Hi, I'm Richie Greenberg and welcome to really San Francisco, the podcast where we discuss everything about San Francisco and beyond, and good and the bad, and all the politics going on, and all the wackiness and shenanigans in City Hall and elsewhere.

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Richie Greenberg: Today I have a special guest who is joining the show from New York in there. So there's the beyond. We're beyond San Francisco from New York is my friend Maria Danzillo, and she is a longtime politician, an attorney. She lives now in the upper West side of Manhattan. She is the founder and executive director of one

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Richie Greenberg: city, rising a grassroots, nonpartisan group that's working like what we have here in San Francisco to try and make things better, logically and

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Richie Greenberg: and just prudently. And she happened to run for New York State as a New York State Senate back in 2022. So, Maria, thank you so much for joining.

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Maria Danzilo: Hi, thank you, Richie, thank you for having me and looking forward to the conversation and hello to everyone in San Francisco.

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Richie Greenberg: Yeah. My favorite.

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Maria Danzilo: Second favorite, city.

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Richie Greenberg: Really? What's your favorite one? Which is your favorite.

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Maria Danzilo: New York. Of course.

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Richie Greenberg: Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

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Maria Danzilo: So.

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Richie Greenberg: We bonded a few years ago over a few different issues, including the Chesapur Dean recall. But also I'm I'm a native New Yorker. I was born in Queens and forest hills, and then my parents. My family moved out to Long Island when I was a few years old, but I still have a lot of connection and affinity to New Yorkers, and because we like to tell it

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Richie Greenberg: as it is, we like to just.

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Richie Greenberg: You know, we don't have a filter at times, and so that's some people don't understand that. But you know, if you're together with a room full of New Yorkers, even if we're somewhere else, not in New York, people will say, Well, looks like they're all angry at each other. No, no, we like each other. We all understand? Right?

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Richie Greenberg: So that's the good thing. So

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Richie Greenberg: I am asking you a few questions that a lot of people would like to know about this candidate that is running for Mayor of New York City, Zoran Mamdani, and I know that you know who this person is. I think everyone in America now has their eyes turned on this guy. And

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Richie Greenberg: so I'd like to hear from your point of view

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Richie Greenberg: about him, or about Mamdani. Why is he so popular? What is it that that makes him attractive as a candidate or or otherwise? And who is he popular with.

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Maria Danzilo: Well, there's no doubt that he has a following here in New York. The question is, who how big is that following, really? And who are they as you? You're asking.

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Maria Danzilo: So just to put this a little bit in context, Zoran Mamdami just won the democratic primary. We have a closed primary system in New York we're only one of a handful of states that still holds partisan primaries, and in that primary Zoran received 5% of the vote in New York.

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Maria Danzilo: So we have an extremely low voter turnout. So he ran as a Democrat. He got around 10% of the registered Democrats voted for him, because we had so few actually turn out, and that number that he got the number of votes he got represently 5% of New York voters.

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Maria Danzilo: so that win, I think, has been, you know, blown up and been described by various media outlets and across the country as a mandate or a vibe shift or something like that. But we're not seeing that here. What we think is we've got a broken, closed primary system that certain

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Maria Danzilo: parties took advantage of. And what I'm thinking about specifically is that Zoran was endorsed by

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Maria Danzilo: by party calls the different Socialists the Dsa. And also by their affiliate organization working party. The Working Families party is a highly funded party. They are funded by the George Soros open societies to the tune of, You know, 25 million dollars, and they have a lot of grassroots. They have a lot of money to build

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Maria Danzilo: support to build an organization that can present as a grassroots organization. And so when Zoran was in the race, polling at one or 2%, and suddenly, within a month or so, he's polling much higher because he supposedly had, you know, 20 or 30,000 volunteers. I ran for office twice.

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Maria Danzilo: I did very well in both races. I came in second out of 6 people in my 1st race running against an incumbent, and in my second race I got a 3rd of the vote running against an extremely well-known incumbent again, and with, you know, not a lot of funding, and I had plenty of volunteers. But let me tell you, it's hard to get 4 volunteers. It's hard to get 40. It's hard to get 400. I find it

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Maria Danzilo: just not credible that he was able to get

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Maria Danzilo: 40,000 volunteers within a month or so, so I think there was an existing machine in place that helped him and propelled him forward. And I don't think that story is being told. I think that it's not coming out. As to exactly what happened, how he was able to win with that said.

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Maria Danzilo: there is no doubt that he is a

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Maria Danzilo: has a charisma that is attractive to certain types of voters. He is a assembly member, in

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Maria Danzilo: which is an area that Aoc is also the assembly member. He's very popular in certain. You know, parts of Brooklyn that we call new Yorkers feel are inundated with gentrifiers. People from

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Maria Danzilo: You know, recent recent graduates who come to New York from other places, and you know, for whatever reason, Zoran has captured their attention, and he's become very popular.

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Maria Danzilo: That, of course, fed into his popularity across other groups. He certainly had. You know what many describe as a very simple message of free buses.

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Maria Danzilo: freeze the rent. And you know, government grocery stores. So these are these 3 things that he's proposing are all you know, simple and straightforward. Freeze. The rent sounds easy, free buses. Why not

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Maria Danzilo: Government grocery stores? Well, some people think that could actually work, I think. Go to, you know Caracas or Havana, and I think you'll find out it actually doesn't work, but for some people it has a certain allure. As far as freezing the rent we do have a big. There are, I think there are about

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Maria Danzilo: a million and a half people living in rent, stabilized apartments, and I think that the idea of freezing the rent might be attractive to people who are living in rent, stabilized apartments. They he is not proposing freezing, you know, taxes for the landlords who have to

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Maria Danzilo: cover the taxes for the building, or you know the cost of water or electricity, or building maintenance, or anything like that. So you know, it is worrisome, because freezing the rent could mean that those buildings are not repaired, that the landlords default, and that they could even lose their apartments. People could even lose their apartments if such an idea were to take hold.

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Richie Greenberg: So that actually is.

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Maria Danzilo: And when we are elusive.

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Richie Greenberg: Yeah, that that leads me into another question and concern. That is and piggybacks onto this right, that you're mentioning a few of the key propositions that he had proposals and and policies that that Mamdani is campaigning. On.

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Richie Greenberg: What kind of pushback would you think he would get if he won, if you know we don't want him to win. But if he somehow was able to pull off victory.

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Richie Greenberg: would there be lawsuits? Would there be city Council boroughs, and other leaders, or even the Governor of New York, saying to Zoran, saying, You know these things that you're saying that you want to do. They're unconstitutional. They go against State law, they go against city law, and there's going to be lawsuits. And you can't do this. Do you foresee any of that happening is that a factor.

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Maria Danzilo: Well, I think that the

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Maria Danzilo: Governor, Governor Hochul, the Governor, does have right in New York City in the New York State charter to remove a mayor for for cause. That's pretty narrowly defined. I would think it would have to be a pretty egregious situation for the governor to remove.

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Maria Danzilo: You know, I would say, in terms of Zoran winning, he does have a tremendous advantage going into November as the Democratic nominee. He has the Democrat line. So that's a tremendous advantage. I think we you know we have. You know, we're hoping that

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Maria Danzilo: the independent candidates who are running we do have unity and one candidate, and we have a shot at not having him win. But if it does win the biggest, real, existential problem that we're facing in New York that you've identified is that the City Council really

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Maria Danzilo: is not going to be a stopgap on the mayor. If anything city council and the mayor are going to be very closely aligned. We have a very.

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Maria Danzilo: I would say, a far left progressive city council in power, while the what's called the progressive caucus is only, I think, around 10 or 12 members out of 52. They have an outsized influence, and they regularly threaten

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Maria Danzilo: the more moderate Democrats with a primary challenge, knowing that our broken primary system would favor the more extreme and radical candidate who has already a built-in base of support from one of those 2 parties that I told you about before.

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Richie Greenberg: So.

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Maria Danzilo: The idea of a primary challenge is something that the progressive caucus wields as a weapon to prevent the more moderate dems from standing up to them. So we are looking at very, very difficult 4 years ahead. Should he win what we can, there are many things we can and will do, including activism.

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Maria Danzilo: Sorry you were gonna ask something.

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Richie Greenberg: Yeah, also. We've got Alvin Bragg, at least in Manhattan, who is also problematic in in many ways. So

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Richie Greenberg: so yeah, I mean, it's like it could wind up being unfortunately a perfect storm of the far left progressive. Even, you know, Socialists, that all come together, and they're all going to have each other's back rather than a checks and balances. Does that sum it up.

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Maria Danzilo: Yes, I believe that that's the threat that we're faced with, and that's why it has become so important for people in New York to stand together to try to you know, ensure that we have somebody in a crazy mansion who can be a check

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Maria Danzilo: to the already extreme city council that we have. There are some very good Council members I can think of, you know, 5 or 10 who are excellent. We had a couple of new people who were elected. This cycle, who were very excited about once rising, had 2 of our endorsed

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Maria Danzilo: city Council members win. So we do have some really good and strong people, but, like everywhere, you need

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Maria Danzilo: unity. You need people in power. You need a community to have. You need voter to have the backs of the electeds you need a lot of. They need a lot of help.

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Maria Danzilo: We also have a city that's very much run by special interests and lobbyists.

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Maria Danzilo: We we had 8 years of Blasio.

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Maria Danzilo: who did a great deal to fund up a lot of these very radical special interests.

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Maria Danzilo: When we look at the amount of taxpayer money that's going to fund to going to fund groups are, you know, extremely radical. It's a very high number. So our perfect storm is like.

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Maria Danzilo: I don't even think a perfect storm quite captures the moment it's

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Maria Danzilo: I don't know a volcano erupting a hurricane. I don't know a tsunami.

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Richie Greenberg: Perfect storm is what we we typically say, but yeah, that would be yeah, exactly.

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Maria Danzilo: Pretty cool.

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Richie Greenberg: Yeah, it's mild. So and also just

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Richie Greenberg: the upcoming general election. The final right is not ranked choice voting.

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Richie Greenberg: So there in New York. You have ranked choice for the primary, and that is how Mamdani got in. He won in the rank choice mechanism. But that will not be the case in in the file, in the general in November. Right? That's not what's going to happen. It's just the standard voting. What do you think about the fact that

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Richie Greenberg: because it's ranked choice and because it's a primary that is a closed primary. As you said, that it's the voting is is based on the voters registered party, so libertarians could not vote for

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Richie Greenberg: or against Mamdani. As a Democrat. The Republicans could not vote against Mamdani, who is a Democrat, and those significant number of undeclared, undecided, independent. Whatever you use in New York here in San Francisco, we call it no party preference. That's when you're not stating who you what your party preference is.

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Richie Greenberg: They can come out in force, and I bet that you're hoping on that as well, that they'd come out in force against Mamdani not to actually support him? Does that sound

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Richie Greenberg: plausible.

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Maria Danzilo: Yeah, I mean, we have 1 million unaffiliated voters in New York City, and that number is growing unaffiliated. Voters is the largest and fastest growing group here in New York. 700,000 of them are veterans.

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Maria Danzilo: They were not. They are not able to vote in our party primaries, I should say, as a note here, that the mayor, our mayor, Adams, impelled a charter revision mission, and on July 21st they're going to issue their final report on whether they're going to put open primaries on the ballot.

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Maria Danzilo: So I testified 3 times in favor. I've submitted written testimony. Ocr. Has submitted written testimony. We've got a lot of people out to testify. We are hoping that it happens. But in the meantime we're stuck with the broken primary system and non-ranked choice situation in November.

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Maria Danzilo: We have a big problem here, because there are 3 candidates running independently and one running as a Gop. So we've got Curtis Liwa running as Gop, and 3 independent candidates, including Andrew Cuomo, our former governor, and Eric Adams, our mayor, and Jim Walden, an attorney who's polling at about 1%.

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Maria Danzilo: So because we have 4 candidates running against mandami and a non ranked choice voting situation, we think it's going to be virtually impossible

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Maria Danzilo: for there to be a path forward unless

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Maria Danzilo: the candidates don't get together, and and 3 of them need to drop out, and if one candidate runs and the other 3 endorse that one candidate. There is a chance, even though even that might be a bit of a long shot, to actually stop this train wreck from happening.

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Maria Danzilo: I will say that one city rising is taking the position that until we have one candidate, we're not endorsing anybody in this race because we need the candidates to step up. Andrew Cuomo. Yes, Monday. Today is Wednesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Andrew Cuomo

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Maria Danzilo: done.

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Maria Danzilo: Yeah. It's Wednesday. Andrew Cuomo went on New York one Errol Lewis on Monday, and he said that he will drop out in September and endorse the candidate who is polling the highest, and he wants everyone else in the race to do the same thing. Jim Walden, the Independent has already said he will. We're waiting for Eric to commit, and we're waiting for Curtis to commit

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Maria Danzilo: points.

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Richie Greenberg: I saw in the New York Post. No, I think it was in Daily News last week an OP-ed, an opinion saying or calling on the Gop candidate, Curtis Leeward to drop out. I saw that recently as well. Did you see that.

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Maria Danzilo: I don't think I saw that one, but there have been quite a few, and I'm glad to hear that I was hoping people in the Gop would start putting some pressure on Curtis. You know he is a smart, committed New Yorker, but he.

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Maria Danzilo: as people who don't know he's the founder and president of the Guardian Angels, which is a group that rides the subway wearing red berets to protect people from crime. And he's also a Radio

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Maria Danzilo: talk radio frequent guest. He might have his own show if I'm not mistaken. But I don't think he's regarded as a candidate who who could beat Mendami. Let me just say that he will receive

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Maria Danzilo: votes being the Gop. May I also mention that the Gop did not have a primary? Could have had a primary, and I think there was a lot. There are many disfruntled Gop people in New York right now who are really annoyed that there wasn't a competitive.

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Richie Greenberg: They didn't have. They didn't have a primary because there was no challenger. Is that why.

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Maria Danzilo: There were no challenges. We.

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Richie Greenberg: We automatically won. So yeah, the candidate

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Richie Greenberg: go to sleep and automatically win. Yeah, yeah, alright. So that.

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Maria Danzilo: There were at least 3 3 people in New York who wanted to run.

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Maria Danzilo: Yeah, but they were discouraged from running by the Gop establishment.

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Richie Greenberg: It's it's a really tough and potentially scary scary situation, scary scenario

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Richie Greenberg: for what? What may happen in New York. And

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Richie Greenberg: you know we don't want that. What about one last question here? What do you think about trump?

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Richie Greenberg: What I mean is, what do you think about Trump's potential influence. If Mamdani wins

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Richie Greenberg: that there could be enforcement on certain things coming down from above, coming down from the Feds from the Federal Government to try and rein in a potential Mamdani mayorship.

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Maria Danzilo: I mean, you know, Trump is a really big problem here in New York. I don't know if you have quite as many people in San Francisco with trump derangement syndrome, as we have in New York. But let me just say that there is a deep, deep hatred of trump among the voters generally the Democratic voters in New York.

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Maria Danzilo: That, you know, it's almost like

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Maria Danzilo: talk about a perfect forum. If trump, if trump favors somebody that's almost like they're going to lose. So Trump is a really, you know, I I would say that, you know.

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Maria Danzilo: given that it is so, you know, sort of nuclear whenever trump gets involved in anything that it would be good if we could just kind of get through this on our own without any interference from Washington that we can try to find a path forward to defeat Mundami, and if, in fact, he does win in November

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Maria Danzilo: I don't think it would be helpful for the Federal Government to have a heavy hand. I think we need to figure out how New Yorkers are going to address the crisis that we're going to be facing with a deeply Socialist

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Maria Danzilo: mayor supported by a far, far left city council. You know some of the economic policies that Zoran is proposing, like he really is a degrowth or a no growth candidate, he will devastate our economy, and so we would hope that the business community will step up, and that can, you know, do do what we need to do to

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Maria Danzilo: put pressure on the government with economic punishments. For example, if tax revenues go down significantly, and as a result, social services have to be cut. If Zoran is also his party, talks about strikes as if strikes are something that should be encouraged if

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Maria Danzilo: unions don't get their way. So if we start seeing massive garbage strikes, for example, that's the kid New Yorkers. We already have a lot of garbage. If you have a garbage strike here and people have to step over pounds garbage. We're going to be voting this guy out really quickly. So there are lots of things that that he stands for

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Maria Danzilo: are going to be so detrimental to the city that if we have to go through some pain to get to the other side. You know. I believe that we will get there, you know. I also just want to mention Richie, and I think it's important, in conversation with Ma'am Dami.

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Maria Danzilo: to really talk about his anti-semitism. We have in New York City

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Maria Danzilo: the largest population of Jewish people outside of Israel and in my district, the Upper West Side. We have more holocaust survivors than anywhere else in the country and the world outside of Israel.

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Maria Danzilo: So we have a city that is deeply, deeply welcoming to Jewish people, who have, you know, were forced out of their their countries over the last in the last century, because of the holocaust, and we are deeply, deeply protective of each other and our Jewish community. And Mongdami is an anti-semite.

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Maria Danzilo: So there, and and the bar for

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Maria Danzilo: showing that he's anti-sem for Jews, for some reason, is much higher than any other Islam, so know everything about his behavior in any other contact would be absolutely considered

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Maria Danzilo: racist sexist it for some reason anti-sexist doesn't get the same protection.

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Maria Danzilo: So example, on October 8, th 23, he issued, you know, his statement where he talked about. You know the loss of Palestinian and Israeli lives. This is the day after the worst

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Maria Danzilo: you know, killing of Jewish people since the holocaust.

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Richie Greenberg: Right.

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Maria Danzilo: And he's never really called for the release of the hostages. On October 8th he immediately called for a ceasefire. He refuses to distance himself from the phrase, globalize the intifada. That's a deeply anti-semitic phrase.

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Maria Danzilo: On and on and on and on. So those are the things that we're going to have to call out and continue to call out if he's elected in November, we are not going to allow him. If he is elected, we will not allow him

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Maria Danzilo: to to do anything to hurt our Jewish community. And one more thing I want to say. When he was a member of the New York State legislature. He passed like 3 bills in the 2 terms that he had, but he did propose a bill to

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Maria Danzilo: punish synagogues

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Maria Danzilo: if they were to give money to certain settler groups, and the punishment was, the synagogues would have to pay a million dollars, or they would be subject to lawsuits.

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Maria Danzilo: So we all know those of us who studied. You know, the holocaust in Germany. We all know how the law was used to hurt Jewish people and really brought about the holocaust starting, you know, in the mid 19 thirties. So you know the fact that this is Zoran Mamdani's claim to his legislative.

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Maria Danzilo: You know, victories that he, he was able to, you know, propose a bill like this is deeply horrifying to us.

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Richie Greenberg: Did the bill pass his his proposed bill? Did it pass.

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Maria Danzilo: No, the bill didn't go anywhere, but he.

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Richie Greenberg: But he still thought it.

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Maria Danzilo: Anywhere, but he certainly uses it.

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Richie Greenberg: Yeah.

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Maria Danzilo: He? He thought it, and he uses it, and he uses it. You know we do believe that a lot of his campaign has been tapping into some anti-semitic.

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Richie Greenberg: Yeah.

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Maria Danzilo: The party itself. The Democratic Socialist of America seems to have very deeply anti-semitic roots, and we.

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Richie Greenberg: And we had we have, we have a we have a very.

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Maria Danzilo: Didn't want to leave this discussion without that.

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Richie Greenberg: No, it's very important. We have a Dsa branch here, too, in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, but but they're nothing like what you guys are dealing with over in New York City. They're very weak here, and they have very little fundraising. So they're and the workers. The the working families party is not even an official recognized party here in the State of California, either. So

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Richie Greenberg: they they try. They have websites, they. They're more like a nonprofit organization. They're not an actual political party. So yeah, you know, I think this was a very educational

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Richie Greenberg: chat with you, Maria, and it's mostly because the insight that you have given me and will be giving to listeners over here in San Francisco and in the Bay Area. Don't realize the the urgency of defeating Mom Donnie over in New York don't know how how

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Richie Greenberg: how extremely problematic it would be how damaging it would be to New York City if he wins. So I really want to thank you for enlightening me and enlightening all of our listeners over here in San Francisco. And yeah, I don't know what we could do to help. I don't know what we could do from over here, but.

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Maria Danzilo: Well, we're looking for help.

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Maria Danzilo: Yeah, yeah.

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Maria Danzilo: I you know. I say, that Minneapolis has a someone running for for Mayor. Now, who's who's also quite rash.

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Maria Danzilo: Somali Somalian guy, right? Yeah.

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Maria Danzilo: State of Connecticut. The very wealthy, affluent state of Connecticut have some very radical people, you know. I think that this is something that should be of concern. People everywhere, America. And you know, sure we can use all the help we can get over the next 3 months. I'm going to work in working 18 h days.

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Richie Greenberg: And I'm gonna put on my thinking cap.

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Maria Danzilo: You, through.

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Richie Greenberg: We're gonna do what we can. I mean. Yeah, I'm sure you and I will. We'll we'll be in. It will be in touch many times. I plan to come out to New York again soon to you know.

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Maria Danzilo: We we need help.

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Richie Greenberg: Yeah, I know. I this is, I can't even believe we're having that. We need to have this kind of conversation. This topic, you know, it's.

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Maria Danzilo: I know.

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Richie Greenberg: Ridiculous. It's mind blowing. So all right. I on that note, I will. We'll conclude our our podcast.

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Maria Danzilo: Okay.

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Richie Greenberg: Today, and Maria again. Maria Danzillo is a upper west side of Manhattan, resident, longtime native New Yorker, the founder and executive director of one city rising a grassroots organization. There you can look them up online. And a friend I have met with Maria, and we keep in touch over these few years, and

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Richie Greenberg: thank you, Maria, and enjoy the rest of your trip that you're you're zooming in on it from your trip, so I apologize for taking you away from that. And listeners here in San Francisco. Really, San Francisco, I am really happy that you had this opportunity to hear from Maria, and to talk about something outside of San Francisco over in New York, and

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Richie Greenberg: I look forward to the next episode of really San Francisco and take care. Thank you so much for joining.