Tuesday was a historic election day from many angles in California, Virginia, and perhaps most vividly in New York City.

Over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands.

'As more Americans learn about Zohran Mamdani, I've invited a highly respected figure of New York media to give us the full story of how an unknown state assemblyman launched himself into city hall and the national conversation. Errol Louis is political anchor for Spectrum News and NY1, who moderated the last mayoral debate, which earned him an iconic send-up on Saturday Night Live.

Hello and good evening from New York One. I'm Errol Louis, and I am now officially the least famous person to be impersonated on SNL. But trust me, it's uncanny.

I'm David Chalian, CNN political director and Washington bureau chief. And this is the CNN political briefing. Stay with us. Errol Louis, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

Great to be with you, David.

'Let's start with the overall takeaway of Tuesday night. We'll get to Mamdani, his policies, we'll get into that. But one of the things that struck me, and I just wanna hear from you on this, is the unbelievable turnout and engagement from New Yorkers into this election. And I don't know if it was just driven by pro-Mamdani forces. It seems that there were some anti-Mandani forces that fed to that turnout.

'Oh, to say the least, there were anti-Mamdani forces that were fueled by tens of millions of dollars worth of outside spending. So, you know, when the totals are all complete, I think we're going to have seen more than a hundred million dollars spent on this one race. And more than half of that came from outside groups. And so these outside groups, almost without exception, were almost wholly dedicated to trying to tear down Zohran Mamdani and drive up the vote for Andrew Cuomo. So there were a lot of different reasons for people to come out. Another factor though, and this is a local thing that national media wouldn't necessarily know about, but this is only the second mayoral election in which we've had early voting. Early voting was not part of New York political culture for literally hundreds of years. And now this is the only the first time was during COVID. Uh, so we didn't really even have a baseline from which to measure this. And so for the first time, there were basically 10 election days instead of the traditional one election day. And that made it all the more likely that a lot of people were going to turn out.

Yeah, it was astonishing to see that turnout. So in your estimation, Errol, how did Mamdani do it? What was the key to his getting 50% of the vote here and walking away with a victory?

'Well, he put together a new political coalition. If he had played by the traditional rules in which you try to appeal to the democratic base, which is mostly, you know, liberal activists, voters, black voters, Latino voters, he would have had stiff competition and maybe not have made it at all past the primary, but what he did was create his own new coalition and that coalition is of South Asian voters, of which there are many more than anybody realized, and that's lots of different nationalities, but it's the Indian diaspora, it's Bangladeshis, it s Sri Lankans, Nepalese, all over the city. And then there was the Muslim population, which has just been growing by leaps and bounds. We know that there are more Jews in New York City than anywhere else in the country, but the same is true for Muslims, of which there are at least three-quarters of a million here in the city and they've been politically organizing for more than a decade now, so that's a second leg of the stool. And then the third and most significant one I think that pulls the whole thing together is young voters define it any way you want -- under 50, under 40, under 30. They all gave super majorities to Zohran Mamdani because he kind of embodies the plight of younger New Yorkers who are finding it really hard to get an apartment, get a job, get ahead, get grounded. And he personally sort of embodies their plight, but also put together a program to try and speak to their needs and give them some kind of relief.

Not only did the young voters give them a super majority, but they also had a bit of an uptick in their overall share of the electorate.

'Yeah, that is unheard of. And that really is like the big lever that moves the whole thing forward. Normally, I think it's something like 60% of the vote in a general election for a municipal office here are older voters, meaning like 60 and up. So it's been seniors that have kind of controlled things up until now. And now for the first time, I think, it was closer to 50-50 between seniors and non-seniors, and especially with a lot of young people turning out. That really just kind of changes the whole equation. So, you know, I mean, all in all, what we saw here and the reason it's so newsworthy is that he put together an entirely new coalition. If he had tried to play by the old rules, he would have lost. He's got, he basically invented a new game and he's the one who has mastered the rules of that new game.

Now of course comes the challenge of governing for him and the transition has become, I know he's named his transition committee or at least the heads of his transition effort. He has said he wants NYPD Commissioner Tisch to stay on in her role. I don't know if you have any late breaking news on whether they've sat down and hammered that out and if she'll accept that, but what do you make in the immediate, in this transition period, his toughest challenges? Because I think a lot of eyes are on what he said himself during the campaign, right? That he's young and not arrogant about his youth. He would make the case that he understands that he needs to surround himself with people who have real experience in governing and managing a city like this.

'That's exactly right. And look, not since Mike Bloomberg have we had such a complete outsider come in. Mike Bloomberg had never even served in government. Zohran Mamdani at least was an assemblyman. But as you point out, he doesn't have any executive experience within city government. He doesn't know the agencies, not within an intimate sort of personal way. He knows what he doesn't know, which is good. And what it means is that he's going to bring on a lot of what we call the permanent government. People who have made a career out of mastering the creation and innovation and development of major bureaucracies. And so the the co-chairs of his transition committee have a ton of experience. I mean, literally like if you add it up probably a couple of centuries worth of experience between these very talented five women. What that also in turn suggests is that they're going to have a lot to do with who staffs this administration and if you follow the old management principle that personnel is policy, who he appoints will be absolutely key. The major task I think that he's going to be concerned about politically is to make sure that his campaign promises are converted into policy and that's a relatively small range of what city government does. Because in addition to that, there's everything else. There's sanitation, which got almost no discussion on the campaign trail. There's the school system, the $40 billion school system that got almost no discussion. There's a lot that they're going to have to sort of sort out for him. And they've got, what, 56 days to get that done.

I don't know about you, I was a little surprised by his victory speech on Tuesday night. Not that he was saying new stuff that we hadn't heard before. But boy, did he come out with a really fiery speech, a total commitment to his ideology and his principles. He did, you know, he gave the nod to wanting to be the mayor for all New Yorkers, even those that didn't vote for him. I'm not suggesting it was necessarily a divisive speech, but it definitely seemed like he was still in a fight, rather than sort of turning a page to the governing piece of this. What'd you make of how he approached that moment Tuesday night?

'Oh, there was certainly some fire and there was an edge to it, and it was a reminder that, you know, look, these groups that he put together in this coalition, they're coming to power with some grievances. There's some unfinished business that really has to be straightened out. I mean, we didn't amplify it and I'm glad national media didn't really pick up on it, but this was, there were some of the most vicious, racist, and Islamophobic imagery, words. I've never seen anything like it. I wouldn't have believed it could happen in New York. I mean, really raw stuff. You know, the burning towers from 9/11 with his face superimposed on it was one example of it. And that wasn't even considered shocking because there was so much more of it, AI-generated stuff, just horrible, horrible stuff. And it was a reminder, and he referenced it in the speech, that Muslim New Yorkers have put up with a lot of crap. I mean, they have put up with insults, denigration, accusations of disloyalty, physical attacks on the street, and this has gone on for a quarter of a century now. So they are not coming in into power -- that part of his coalition -- just happy to hold hands with everyone and join the melting pot of New York politics. They're coming in with a vow that the days of being denigrated and disrespected are over. Something similar is true for the young people, who are the product of Occupy Wall Street, the fiscal crash, the mortgage meltdown, who have been let down by the system in every way you can think of. And here again, they have a champion who has said, it's time for a change, this cannot continue.

We're going to take a quick break. We're gonna have a lot more with Errol Louis in just a moment. We're back here with Errol Louis of Spectrum NY1 News and the preeminent political journalist in New York City. You did an awesome job moderating that second mayoral debate, Errol. That was fantastic. I do want to get your sense of what you think the Trump impact was at the end of this race. I did, you know, when Trump finally came out and actually endorsed Andrew Cuomo at the end and he, you know, had been for months sort of hemming and hawing over this race and sort of torn between really not wanting Mamdani to be mayor of New York, it seemed, and yet understanding he could be perhaps a useful foil for Trump to sort of wrap the national democratic brand in the democratic socialism of Mamdani. But, it seemed to me, looking at where the returns come and how much the Cuomo vote shifted from the Democratic primary in June to where his base of support was in the general, and a lot of Republicans got pushed to Andrew Cuomo. And I'm wondering if you think Donald Trump had a lot to do with that.

'Oh, absolutely. He absolutely did. Um, you know, Curtis Sliwa was a Republican nominee ran four years ago. Four years ago, he did what Republicans normally do in New York City. I think he got about 29% of the vote. Over the last several cycles before that, Republicans usually come in around 27%, 25%, 29%. This time Curtis Sliwa ended up with 7%. Four years, he got, I think upwards of 300,000 votes. That was literally cut in half. He got about 146, 150,000 votes this time. And you can only attribute that to the logic of people being told that instead of voting for the Republican, this time you should vote for Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who was running as an independent. And Donald Trump did sort of push that, including at the end. There really was no other way to do it. It was a little bit of a high-wire act and Donald Trump is not known for being subtle or deft when it comes to politics, but he actually was in this instance. You have to keep in mind, David, as you know, New York City, the hometown of the president, has rejected him at the polls by supermajorities, not once, not twice, but three times in 2016, in 2020, and again, just last fall. So he is not the kind of endorsement you normally want if you're looking to win over most New York City voters. But in this case, what he was trying to do was help Andrew Cuomo and his, look, the Trump name is so toxic at the ballot box that Cuomo basically had to disavow the help, even as Trump was trying to give it to him. Look, they did the best they could, but they were facing a candidate who in the end got more votes than everybody else combined. He won it fair and square with a majority.

Speaking of Trump's and other Republicans nationally attempt, I mean, I just was hearing Speaker Johnson doing this again this morning, to make Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party nationally. How much do you think, in your assessment of Mamdani, your experience with him, like he'll take the bait on that or he's interested in actually playing a larger role beyond governing the five boroughs in his day job? How much do think he's gonna flirt with his national prominence?

I think he's going to use it to his advantage. And it's not even optional, to be honest with you. This is national and even international news. I mean, this is all over the front pages in India, I can tell you that right now.

No doubt, yeah.

'He is going to do, I think, what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other nationally known prominent democratic socialists have done, which is to lean into it, create an alternative fundraising base so that he's not dependent on the big money donors of the Democratic Party, secure his own political independence in that sense. Then as far as it plays on the stage, to be honest with you, I think there are two things that I'm going to be watching for. One is, can he govern well? Because what I think will happen, and this is a case of the Republicans should be careful for what they wish for. If they wanna make him the face of the Democratic Party, and if after January 1, he runs the city pretty well, keeps crime down, builds a lot of new housing, brings down the cost of living, and is popular politically and helps other people win elections, I think that whole scenario could just blow up in their faces, to be honest with you. The second thing to watch for is whether or not he has any real coattails, whether others try and follow in his mold. And by that, I mean, not the ideology so much, but the methodology. What was really striking about this campaign, David, is not that it was high tech, he had a lot of TikTok videos and they were pretty good at it, but it was high-touch. It was an old style campaign in which they had thousands and thousands of people knocking on doors over and over and again. And they came to my house eight different times during the primary season. The other candidates came zero times. It's very hard to beat back that kind of an approach. And so you could be running as a centrist, you could running as conservative, you could run on any party line, to tell you the truth. But if you are engaged in the way that they have been, the Mamdani campaign has been, you will win elections. People are craving authenticity, they want to be heard. If you go out and do what he did, which was simply ask people, what are the three or four things you're most concerned about? And then he fashioned policy responses to those three or four things and he had the discipline to never stray from those four things, no matter what you threw at him. Anybody who does that, you could, you can insert any ideology you want. You will win elections.

Shocking what letting voters identify priorities and then actually building a policy proposal around those priorities can do. I just want to end with something you touched on earlier a couple things you talked about his coalition comes to this moment now with real grievances. You talked about the horrific islamophobia that existed, and you also mentioned the Jewish population and we know the very real concern among a big chunk. I mean, I think he won maybe a third of the Jewish vote and more than six and ten Jewish New Yorkers were voting with Cuomo in this race. And so, I do wonder about the healing process and then the stitching the very divisive election back together. I know he crossed that majority threshold of 50%, but I do wonder given just how intense this election season was and that it is a new grouping of voters that you know, I just, how do you sense from him, if he has interest in that? And how do sense just from your reporting throughout the city, Errol, about if the city seems ready to sort of stitch itself back together from this?

'That's a hard question, that's a question I think more for all of us than for the mayor-elect. How do we put this city back together again? I think frankly a lot of the onus is on those who put out that divisive, hateful, bigoted rhetoric and imagery, so let's not let them out of the conversation: how do put this together? But look, you're right, Zohran Mamdani lost the white vote, He lost the Jewish vote. There are a lot of people who are not going anywhere who were not part of his coalition and he's going to have to figure out how to invite them in. Now, he's a good politician so he I assume he knows he's going to have to do that. He's also, because he's a good politician, I think, going to know that some of that is going to be symbolic it's not necessarily that you have to deliver money or jobs necessarily but you have to connect with people and figure out how to do it. How and when we do it, I do not know. I think this city is going to have to have a serious conversation. I mean, one place that we might look to, and I have only begun this process, I had a long talk with a producer from the BBC the other day. They're interested in this race and interviewed me. But I had a chance to talk with the producer about what happened with Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of London. At first, there were death threats, there was all kinds of outrageous xenophobic political energy that was directed at and around him, Conservatives tried to make hay of it, and in the end it didn't really work. And while of course nothing is perfect in any big city, the complaints about the mayor of London are mostly about the tube, about the subway system over there, and not anything else. And so if we are fortunate, New Yorkers will get back to grumbling about the mayor, not because of his ideology, not of his religion, not because of his views about foreign policy. But because the garbage didn't get picked up on time. The sooner we can get there, the better. And frankly, I'll call that a win. If we can talk again in February or March and people are complaining about the busses being late, as opposed to the religion or the ideology of the mayor.

Well, given your role in the city, Errol, I assume you will be the convener of such conversations and I look forward to following them. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, David.

That's it for this week's edition of the CNN Political Briefing. We'll be back with a new episode next Friday. Thanks so much for listening.