We arrive at New York’s City Hall at 11 a.m. for a 1:45 p.m. interview. I’m with two others working for The Root, the publication on whose behalf I’m here to interview Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The Root describes itself as a “free newsletter on Black culture, entertainment, stories and latest news.” The questions I have developed for this interview are understandably different from those I would have developed for a general-interest publication or for this Substack. In any case, I am less interested in the “controversies” that stalk the mayor than in getting to know the man inside him.
The mayor’s office has given me a 20-minutes for the interview, and his team is in the room to keep time. That is a relatively tight window, and it dictates how much time you can devote to follow-up questions. He knows this as well. Interviewees always know it. They know they can filibuster and consume whatever precious time you have.
We are directed to the ornate, high-ceilinged Governors Room, lined with portraits of chin-up white men, all former governors except George Washington, whose portrait anchors one end of the room. The walls are an ambiguous blue, the kind that could safely assert that it is green, depending on the light.
After hours of waiting, the mayor enters, his body forward, leaning out over his legs, purposeful, smiling as he greets me, like a man reuniting with an old friend. The body language is loud.
