Photo: Bloomberg via Getty Images
Zohran Mamdani is on the verge of seizing the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York. This sentence, on its own, would have read like dream logic one to two months ago, but it’s even more remarkable given that Andrew Cuomo is nowhere close to winning.
With nearly all precincts reporting, Mamdani, a 33-year-old socialist assemblyman, holds a 44-36 percent lead over Cuomo, the disgraced former governor, among first place votes. The ranked-choice calculation is suddenly irrelevant: it is highly unlikely Cuomo makes up the deficit on July 1, when the ranked-choice process is finished. He is done in the primary. Unless he attempts a desperate run in the general election on an independent line, Cuomo’s political obituary is written and will have no revisions.
This is a realignment election in the city, and perhaps one of the most significant victories by an unabashedly left-wing candidate in the history of the United States. No one like Mamdani has ever won an election where as many as a million people voted. This is akin to a socialist winning a medium-sized state. There is no real precedent for what happened tonight. Progressives across America will genuflect to him. For Republicans, he is the great new bogeyman.
Mamdani, who polled at close to 0 percent when he entered the race last October, slayed a political dynasty and a Democratic establishment that wanted him dead. He beat back a super PAC funded by the wealthiest men in the world, including Michael Bloomberg, that unleashed over $25 million in ads, many of them savage attacks on his policies and character. He weathered it all. He would be, if he won, the city’s first South Asian mayor and first Muslim mayor. He is already one of the most prominent leftist politicians in America, joining the pantheon with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. Neither member of Congress, however, ever won a race like this one. (Disclosure: In 2018, Mamdani managed my campaign for State Senate.)
One parallel, if lofty, might be Barack Obama. Both Mamdani and Obama were initially derided by their opponents, regarded as too inexperienced, ineffectual, and even foreign. Few Americans imagined someone with a name like Obama’s could become president of the United States. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, even a year ago, might have sounded farfetched, too.
Within New York, Mamdani wrote a new playbook. He beat Cuomo in three boroughs—Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan—and won a multracial youth vote that seemed far beyond the reach of most candidates. Cuomo’s coalition was classic and seemingly durable, a blend of organized labor, the rich, and outer borough moderates. It was enough to get Eric Adams elected. But it couldn’t shove Cuomo past a rival who was more than thirty years his junior. A new city was born in this election: a much younger progressive bloc that flexed its muscle like never before. And Mamdani proved an avowed leftist could reach deep into the city for votes, winning over racially and economically diverse neighborhoods. His populist campaign spoke to a city reeling from an affordability crisis, and his pro-Palestine views, alienating to conservative Jewish voters, were a great draw for a youth wave sick of the carnage in Gaza.
A word for Cuomo: he ran, arguably, the worst front-runner campaign in New York history, if anywhere in the country. He entered the race with an enormous polling lead, universal name recognition, a tremendous fundraising advantage, and a bevy of institutional endorsements. None of it matters because he hardly campaigned at all. He avoided public appearances and media questions. His various scandals, from the sexual harassment allegations that forced him from office to his mismanagement of Covid, continued to dog him, and he had no answers. His campaign was a leaky dreadnought. Mamdani sank it.
Before tonight, there was a lot of talk about a potential general election between Mamdani, Cuomo, Mayor Eric Adams, and Curtis Sliwa, a Republican. Cuomo as an independent seemed bound to run, even if he lost, and now the question will become whether he tries again in the fall. The power elite in the city — the real estate and finance class — are terrified of Mamdani, and are casting about for someone who can block his ascent. Adams, who skipped the Democratic primary, is extremely unpopular and scandal-scarred, but he suddenly seems no less unappealing than Cuomo, who just got blasted apart by a young socialist. Does Adams get a second wind? Does Cuomo try again anyway? Can Sliwa sneak through with a plurality?
With this kind of victory, Mamdani is emboldened. The Democratic establishment, which Cuomo so cowed, will now drift toward him. Labor endorsements will be forthcoming. Mamdani will have a great deal of money. He’ll be his own juggernaut. A new city has risen, and we’re about to find out what it will look like.
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