Martin and Mamdani call bingo numbers and smile for the cameras in heart of Irish New York

Zohran Mamdani is running the bingo numbers in the Paddy Reilly Community Hall. Lunch is just over. He has Micheál Martin as a co-host. The two men are enjoying themselves but the summer announcers in Bundoran or Tramore have nothing to worry about.“I26, pick and mix,” calls the mayor of New York to gentle “oohs” around the hall.“Up to tricks. G46,” counters the Irish Taoiseach.“Do they all have to rhyme?” Mamdani asks at one stage, perplexed for a second.READ MOREThe New York Irish Center, with its recognisable green awning, has been a staple on Jackson Avenue, in Long Island City, since 2005. It was dreamed up by a Belfast priest, Fr Colm Campbell, with balladeer Reilly a staunch supporter. This is the mayor’s first visit to the Center. It’s a supreme public relations coup for the Irish Government and a glimpse behind the curtains of the tightly choreographed, relaxed spontaneity which has defined Mamdani’s drop-ins around the city.“I haven’t met him and I am sure he is going to be a wonderful mayor,” Anne McLoughlin, an Irish Center regular, tells me.“But I think Mayor Koch will always be my mayor.”We are in mythological country here: the twilight generation of the 1950s and 1960s emigrants who sent vital envelopes home when Ireland had not a bean to rub together. McLoughlin’s is one of the countless quietly extraordinary stories from those who gather each Wednesday for the community lunch here. She grew up in Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim. Her father, Patrick McSharry, and her uncle, James McSharry, both fought for the United States army in the first World War. Her uncle was killed. She repeats her father’s story of trying to chase after her uncle as he was carried away, when he heard an instruction: “Mac, if you run after him, I’m gonna shoot you in the back.”Micheál Martin sits with Irish Americans at the New York Irish Center in Long Island City Her father returned home in the 1920s and met Anne’s mother, a Fermanagh woman. Through his service, their children were entitled to US citizenship. “I was 17. I’d finished school. The technical school. And for some reason my father always made America sound so wonderful. Came here and loved New York. I love Ireland and we go back on vacation, but New York is it.”She worked in banking and, after raising a family, for the city council. The Manorhamilton lilt is still strong. The city has been her life as, in a different way, it is Zohran Mamdani’s life. As the members eat lunch, the musicians sang a series of classics, including Thousands Are Sailing. In this setting, those lyrics of the late Shane MacGowan’s acquire an almost sacred power. In front of the old bingo machine, Mamdani and Martin forge an affable brotherhood, evincing the easy manner of born politicians.Taoiseach Micheál Martin and New York mayor Zohran Mamdani George Heslin, the director of the Center, draws an appreciative nod from Mamdani when he tells him that among the films screened in the Paddy Reilly Hall was The Namesake, directed by his mother Mira Nair.It’s all done in half an hour. It’s primarily an exercise for the cameras. Little of consequence is said and there are no speeches, which is a shame. It would have been interesting to hear Mamdani’s reflections on his perspective of Irish New York.Instead, he takes Micheál Martin on an arranged subway ride on the G Train. They ride the stops towards Bedford-Stuyvesant, Mike Tyson’s haunt in the poverty-ravaged 1980s but, like vast concrete acres across the five boroughs now, under steady colonisation by gentrification. Still, it’s a long way from home for a well-brought-up lad from Cork.[ Micheál Martin rejects Binyamin Netanyahu’s criticism of New York mayorOpens in new window ]“Mr Mayor, come check us out any time of the day – we got your back,” a local store owner calls out.“Thank you!” Mamdani shouts back. “The prime minister of Ireland here.”“If he ever needs, I’ll let him know,” he said, before turning to the Taoiseach to explain: “Marijuana dispensary.”“Was it?” exclaims Martin.The subway ride was designed to honour John McDonald, a Cork man and one of the original conductors for the system. Along the way, Mamdani is asked about his views on Irish unity. His eyes twinkle as he bats his answer into safe territory.“I trust the Irish to make that decision. I believe in self-determination; that should be extended to the Irish. It is up them to decide 26 plus six, what it answers.”When quizzed about the Republic of Ireland’s upcoming football international against Israel, he flips into a compliment.“What I would say is that I appreciate the Irish people – and I actually mentioned this to the Taoiseach as well … When we are thinking in New York City as to what is an example of solidarity it often comes to answer of: the Irish, who stood up for dignity and a real belief in human dignity, and applying it to Palestine when so many people draw a line and refuse to do so. So, I am truly in appreciation, and I will leave that question to the Irish.”Taoiseach Micheál Martin with Zohran Mamdani As they travel, Martin tells him about how the Bloomberg mayoral era was inspiration for his introduction of a smoking ban in Irish pubs. Mamdani was 12 years old when Bloomberg introduced the ban here. Last summer, the former mayor donated some $13 million to political action committees designed to stop Mamdani’s phenomenal campaign, from no-hope outsider to unstoppable force. His emergence from obscurity to mayor in a city of eight million has lost nothing of its miraculous sheen. The subway ride lasts about 20 minutes, during which time Martin and Mamdani talk housing, and sport. The mayor of New York is invited to Ireland.Back in the Irish Center, Ann McLoughlin recalled late nights on the train when asked about how New York City has changed over the decades she has lived here. “It’s very different now. It is probably better economically but there is the crime factor which maybe back then in the late 1960s we were too innocent maybe to even recognise it. We went to a lot of Irish dances in New York and on a Saturday and Sunday night come home on the train at one o’clock in the morning, and never even thought about it.”