The Next (?) (!) Mayor of New York!
He's Here! He's Zohran Mamdani! Get Used To It!
I’m updating my recent post about New York City mayors past and future, built around an easy reach for a pop-culture play on words,
but
’s headline was better: The Incredibly Stupid, Self-Defeating Democratic Panic about Zohran Mamdani. Now, Dan Pfeiffer has a new column, and it’s worth reading, and sharing (as is this Substack!). writes,
I am not worried about Zohran Mamdani. I am excited by his victory. I’m impressed by the campaign he ran, and I’m inspired by the movement he built. I believe there are lessons in his win for every Democrat running for office in every part of the country—from places as blue as New York City to as red as rural West Virginia.
He goes on to share five key lessons in Mamdani’s victory he sees as a Democratic communicator. I’m one too, and I agree with Dan! He points out, for example:
His policies were memorable, easy to understand, and communicated his values. Every voter knew that Mamdani wanted free buses and a rent freeze. Those policies signaled that lowering the cost of living was his top priority. Trump’s plan to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it was nonsensical, but it served a similar purpose.
Kamala Harris had a website full of economic policy ideas. They were all written by very smart people. They were substantively sound and would have helped millions if implemented. But can you name one of them?
In my original post, I cited an op-ed from Mamdani’s media consultant who said “more 25- to 34-year-olds had cast ballots than any other age group.”
Now we know more about what was more.
The New York Times is out with an analysis of how Zohran Mamdani changed the electoral map.
In the 14 days leading up to the registration deadline for the Democratic primary, about 37,000 people registered to vote, compared with about 3,000 people in the same period in 2021, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Mr. Mamdani’s campaign had focused on registering voters, and he also appears to have drawn thousands of voters to the primary who did not vote four years ago.
Zohran Mamdani won the same way (bear with me on this) Donald Trump won, by expanding the electorate. Trump brought the bros, Mamdani what used to be called the “rainbow coalition” that powered—and empowered— Democrats.
His campaign mobilized 46,000 volunteers who knocked on more than one million doors and Mamdani campaigned everywhere, every day, all at once—reaching even the most politically disengaged youth on their cell phones1 to show why this election mattered.
Campaign professionals usually build their strategies on the “low-hanging fruit” of what we call “prime voters,” the folks you’d have to drag kicking and screaming away to keep them from showing up at the ballot box. But, as this grumpy Cuomo insider whimpered to the New York Times:
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said that the campaign met most of its turnout goals, but had not foreseen Mr. Mamdani’s ability to “expand the electorate in such a way that no turnout model or poll was able to capture.”
Some political strategists refer to the group Mr. Mamdani activated as “zero prime voters” — New Yorkers who had not voted in several recent primary elections, and the opposite of the highly coveted “triple prime voters” who can be counted on to vote in every election.
I’m not convinced that Andrew Cuomo is sufficiently deluded, in love with himself, or desperate enough to go ahead with another doomed campaign, nor will Eric Adams be able to rehabilitate himself to win a second term.
As one of my readers says here,
This town is so out of whack. Is it really surprising that Mamdani's message of fighting for those with less, for those who are being pushed out, for those young people who want to live and work here but you need a well-off parent to make that possible? Is it hard to understand that how the national Democrats failed us, how as a party they aren't putting up a real opposition to a lawless president and his radical administration, is exactly why the "fight" that is Mamdani won the day in a City where our immigrant neighbors are being disappeared in the most brutal of ways??? I am not surprised. I was Team Lander but I am willing to give Mamdani a chance because the things he is fighting for resonate with my hopes and dreams that all people can thrive here -- not just survive.
I won’t be surprised to see a Deputy Mayor Lander, or some overtures to Wall Street that end up being well received. Zohran Mamdani knows he didn’t just get elected Mayor of Berkeley or Burlington.
Mamdani was on Meet the Press this week and I recommend the full interview, once you get past the headline: Zohran Mamdani says, ’I don’t think that we should have billionaires’ (which also just made it into the New York Times)
That philosophical aside aside, Mamdani speaks confidently and, I hope, reassuringly to those who question his positions, although the distance he puts in this interview between himself and the words “globalize the intifada” is not yet enough.
Just like “from the river to the sea” is as offensive as the “n word.”
From the Times story:
“Do you condemn that phrase, “globalize the intifada?’” Kristen Welker, the moderator of the show, asked Mr. Mamdani.
“That’s not language that I use,” he said.
When pressed, he said that many Jewish New Yorkers had shared concerns with him about antisemitism. “And I’ve heard those fears, and I’ve had those conversations, and ultimately, they are part and parcel of why in my campaign, I’ve put forward a commitment to increase funding for anti-hate-crime programming by 800 percent,” he said.
But, Mr. Mamdani added, “I don’t believe that the role of the mayor is to police speech.”
Not good enough, and likely not to be his final answer.
But Zohran Mamdani is still New York’s next (?) (!) Mayor because it’s still a Democratic city, and neither Cuomo or Adams can beat him. He talks in that Meet the Press interview about building support for tax increases, but that’s the Sort of Thing That Liberals Say.
We’ll see how New York’s next (?) (!) Mayor handles expectations and picks his battles as Mayor, but Mayor he’ll be. The Wall Street Journal and the panicky plutocrats who claim to be packing for Miami (but, I’d wager, won’t end up leaving their penthouses2) will just have have to get used to it.
My own daughter, for example.
This concludes today’s exercise in alliteration.
I hope your speculation of a Deputy Mayor Lander turns out to be true. They make a great team, and Landers, who has deep administrative experience, political chops, and is a longtime activist, would be a huge asset.