Mamdani is the mayor of NYC. Are you meaning to insinuate that his cabinet and policy shapers act without his approval?
He was asked a direct question about residency wrt to the municipal grocery stores and tee'd it off to his expert that he presumably put in charge to give an answer on that.
He both understood the question and whom could immediately answer it and the very first sentence was 'an id' mechanism.
I'm just asking a question. I would expect that being the mayor of NYC involves juggling more issues than the governors of some states. So, if he didn't know every single detail of a program, I wouldn't be shocked.
I'm not defending him, just playing devils advocate. If he was caught out in a moment of hypocrisy, so be it. If he didn't know about it, maybe he should have, but it wouldn't be an earth-shattering revelation if he didn't. Politicians at that level have to delegate a great deal of responsibility and can't micromanage their people.
Like I said earlier, I'm not even sure that this sort of program is good idea in the first place.
I should acknowledge that your posting about Mamdani's apparent hypocrisy in this particular thread is appropriate, as it does point to a problem with liberal democracy - inconsistency and hypocrisy. It's a problem that totalitarian governments don't worry too much about, since such shortcomings are far less likely to be called out by the press, or common folk.