Zohran Mamdani won last month’s New York City Democratic primary promising radical solutions to the city’s cost-of-living crisis. But the real difficulties still lie ahead, assuming the left-wing hopeful can clinch city hall come November. As mayor, the thirty-three-year-old democratic socialist will face stiff opposition from more conservative Democrats in Albany, to say nothing of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the many business interests that are making the city unlivable for lower- and middle-class New Yorkers will stop at nothing to resist Mamdani’s agenda.

Ian Brossat is a French senator and municipal councilor in Paris. Between 2014 and 2023, he served as deputy mayor in charge of housing policy, overseeing an aggressive expansion of the public housing stock that has provided an important cushion against the pressures of real estate speculation otherwise remaking France’s capital. A longtime member of the Parti Communiste Français (PCF), he is a candidate for mayor in the municipal elections to be held in March 2026.

Brossat sat down with Jacobin’s Harrison Stetler for an extended conversation on Mamdani’s electoral breakthrough, the upcoming mayoral elections in France, and the challenge of governing a global metropolis from the left.