New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently revealed why the “difficulty” of his job makes it so rewarding, and his explanation is getting love on social media.
Mamdani, while taking questions at a WNYC event last week that recognized his first 100 days in office, responded to an audience member who began by describing a desire to “change the world” and how the mayor has a chance to make his and New Yorkers’ ideas “real.”
“Can I just ask you: Is it worth it?” the audience member asked.
“I think so. I think it’s — it’s an incredibly difficult job. It’s also unbelievably fulfilling. It’s truly the greatest job I could ever think of,” Mamdani replied.
The democratic socialist, who stunned former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the mayoral primary before his big general election victory last year, went on to stress that winning something means you can “change someone’s life.”
He said, “It’s not an intellectual victory. It’s not some sense of self-satisfaction. It’s that someone else in the city is living a better tomorrow because you fought for them today.”
The mayor, who has used his “rental ripoff hearings” in recent months to take on “bad landlords” in the Big Apple, recalled using his first day in office to visit an apartment building with “innumerable” violations.
He noted that one of the tenants invited him into her apartment, where she had been living for 20 years, before pointing out rust in her bathroom that made it “not habitable.”
“People have come to accept these things as if they are normal,” said Mamdani before crediting the administration for securing millions of dollars in settlements by landlords and fixing thousands of apartments, as well.
He emphasized that this makes the “difficulty” of the job worthwhile.
“Because it is not hypothetical, it’s not intellectual. It’s real, it’s material,” he concluded.
Social media users on Instagram were delighted over the exchange, with one user writing the audience member about their “absolutely thoughtful” question and the mayor’s “lovely response.”
Another simply stated that the mayor gives “hope to the whole world that decency and integrity can prevail.”
Others on X described Mamdani as a “breath of fresh air” and the “embodiment of servant leadership.”
