The Anatomy of Mamdani's Political Earthquake
Five years ago, as Covid-19 ravaged New York City, claiming the lives of 45,000, Andrew Cuomo was at the apex of his political power. Watched by millions as he delivered daily televised briefings as the governor of New York, he offered a stable and moderating force in the state of New York at such a tumultuous time. Many flirted with the idea that Mr. Cuomo would replace Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket or run for president in 2024. Zohran Mamdani, a then-unknown 28-year-old, was running for State Assembly as a democratic socialist in the gentrifying Western Queens neighborhood of Astoria.
He would prevail by fewer than 500 votes.
So much has changed since then that it’s almost akin to a Shakespearean tragedy, with its twists and sudden upheavals. Mr. Cuomo’s star began to wane in light of the revelation that his administration had deliberately withheld the date of COVID-19-related deaths in state nursing homes by as much as 50 percent. Any support Cuomo had left vaporised after eleven women brought forward credible sexual harassment charges during his time as Governor, leading to his fall from grace and flight from Albany. Meanwhile, Mr. Mamdani, the David in this story of David vs Goliath, steadily built up a reputation in the New York City Senate as a reliable and down-to-Earth representative, eager to champion the interests of the city’s most vulnerable constituents. He commuted to work on the subway, met constituents in their homes and workplaces and emphasised with their concerns and needs.
Until Tuesday night it seemed unfathomable that the Cuomo legacy, a defining feature of the politics of both the city and state for over 30 years since Andrew’s father, Mario, served as Governor, could be defeated. So entrenched was the family in the inner workings of , it was effectively akin to a strand of the state’s DNA, synonymous with power and prestige. Every major powerbroker in the Democratic Party rallied around Mr. Cuomo, from former president Bill Clinton to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
When Mr. Mamdani entered the race, it wasn’t difficult to reach the conclusion that he would just become another footnote swept up in New York City’s rapidly changing political tide. For most of the race, the idea Mr. Mamdani could be competitive, let alone win, was considered an impossibility, a political anomaly. He was a no-name senator with few achievements to list, going up against a political titan with instituional backing.
Yet, as the polls closed across the five boroughs, it quickly became clear that Mr. Mamdani would not only defeat Mr. Cuomo, but by a convincing margin, winning the most votes in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. He did so by assembling a wildly diverse coalition of college-educated Whites, Latinos and Asian-Americans, under-employed 20- and 30-somethings, single mothers, and immigrants - Marx’s much-maligned lumpenproletariat.
While Mr. Cuomo’s core coalition bookended the ends of the economic spectrum (the wealthy and the poor), Mr. Mamdani’s coalition was the in-between (working-, middle- and upper-middle-class renters spanning white, Hispanic and Asian neighborhoods). Rooted in ideology, age and a relentless cost-of-living message, Mr. Mamdani’s unique campaign outperformed expectations across the five-borough mosaic. He did so by staying relentlessly on message and grounding that message in affordability. Ask an Andrew Cuomo voter for some of his top policy ideas, and they will probably struggle to name one. Ask a Mamdani voter, and I bet he or she could name a few: “Freeze the rent,” “free buses,” “a city you can afford.”
Mamdani’s pitch was simple: the cost of living is crushing working people but the municipal government can lower costs and make life easier. He vowed to bring down rent, boost the standard of public transit, and support families. These are hardly radical ideas. Really, they are basic social-democratic policies which wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in Berlin or Barcelona. But in American politics, particularly in the Democratic Party’s calcified centre-left wing, they represented something genuinely threatening: actual change.
The party establishment’s impulse to stifle and ignore some of its most exciting emerging voices isn’t limited to progressives. Take Chris Deluzio in Pennsylvania or Pat Ryan in New York. While decidedly more moderate than Mr. Mamdani, both congressmen campaigned last fall on bringing down costs for people in their swing districts and taking on huge corporations and billionaires, a strategy Mr. Ryan described as “patriotic populism.” Even though it won them both races, Washington Democrats have been hesitant to embrace that strategy since. A similar complacency befell Ruben Gallego’s successful Senate campaign in Arizona, whose blunt-spoken style was seen as too risky by senior Democratic consultants.
Part of this is motivated by a fear amongst the establishment of losing their monopoly on power. Mamdani. Gallego. Deluzio. Three men of different backgrounds and conflicting rhetorical styles share one thing in common: they represent a clean break from a 40-year neoliberal consensus where economic populism is sidelined in favour of sterile technocracy: small tinkerings around the edges while the fundamental structure is preserved, to insulate party leaders and high-profile donors from accountability.
No clearer sign of this generational divide was visible in the final demographics of the race. Mamdani led among voters under 50, white New Yorkers, and college-educated voters by double-digit margins, then increased those numbers on election day. Young people, facing impossible rents and diminishing prospects, finally found someone speaking their language rather than the consultant-tested pablum of establishment Democrats. While older voters settled for the known quality in the former governor, shying away from anything too radical.
Andrew Cuomo, conceding the race, looked exactly like what he was: a relic from an exhausted political tradition that had finally run out of gas. Mr. Cuomo had disingenously used the Democratic primary as a vehicle to attempt a comeback and resuscitate his political career. Those ambitions failed. Cuomo thought he could coast to victory on name recognition and TV ads. He lost even after enormous sums of money were poured into the race on his behalf by big donors, including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The days where name recognition brought loyalty may be at an end as the party starts to graviate away from the Clinton-dominated nucleus and towards a younger, more experimental centrifugal force.
Beside his policies, Mr. Mamdani also got creative about how to communicate his message. He broke through on social media with viral videos that reached beyond the professionally online crowd. While Mr. Cuomo and his allies wrote off Mr. Mamdani’s social media success, they missed how it was manifesting in palpable enthusiasm across the city. We saw that at the ballot box on Tuesday, but even before they started counting votes, you could feel it. Mamdani also had a robust field operation that reached voters who had long been ignored or taken for granted by politicians like Cuomo. You could see that when Mr. Mamdani walked the length of Manhattan — about 13 miles. As he walked by, street vendors recognized him and shook his hand. Outdoor diners jumped up from their tables to tell him that he gave them hope, and young people waiting outside of bars screamed his name and took selfies with him. Some supporters joined in on the walk after they said hello. It reminded me of the “Forrest Gump” scene where he runs across America and slowly crowds join in behind him.
While the next mayor isn’t officially to be decided until November, given how Democratic-friendly the city is, the primary is all but a coronation. Barring some major upset, Mamdani will be New York’s next mayor. The next question is how he governs.
Looking to the future, there are two plausible outcomes for a Mamdani mayoralty:
If he translates this momentum to tangible change, appoints competent people and compromises with the City Council and Albany, he could end up as a fairly successful reformer. Progress could be made on tackling the city’s unaffordability crisis, lowering rents and providing free bus travel. More importantly, the city’s powerbase could perhaps be wrestled away from the corrupt police unions and Wall Street bankers and given back to ordinary New Yorkers. A tall order, but not an impossible one. Progressive mayors like Michelle Yu of Boston already offer a blueprint that proves electoral politics can be a force of good.
The more cynical interpretation is that Mamdani inherits the poisoned chalice that has been the downfall of other ambitious men and becomes just another name in a growing list of failed NYC mayors. It must be said that many of his stated goals are rather flatly impossible. Free buses and rent freezes sound lovely until you start asking about municipal budgets and state preemption. City-run grocery stores? Ask anyone who’s dealt with New York City bureaucracy about that one. Governing well is just not something mayors in NYC can do given how low-information voters perpetually complain and think they have far more power than they do in reality, especially since transit, one of the biggest issues, isn’t even fully in their jurisdiction. To successfully wage his reforming crusade (or, perhaps, more appropriately, Jihad), Mamdani will need to demonstrate remarkable flexibility and prowess, something the untested 33-year-old may struggle to channel.
In the broader context, Mamdani’s victory offers a few lessons. Democrats need to learn how to embrace candidates who can authentically speak to the electorate they’re running to represent, whether they’re in red, blue, urban or rural areas. And they should not be so quick to squash exciting candidates just because they seem risky, look different or challenge the status quo. Sometimes it's worth experimenting with new things.