Zohran Mamdani Has Already Won.

A recent poll showed that Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, running as a Democrat in the New York City mayoral primary, took the lead over disgraced former NY governor Andrew Cuomo.

Of course, it’s only one poll and critics say that it’s unreliable because it’s weighted toward text responses and not the traditional land line polls. But if we look at the trajectory of polling data over just the last couple of months, there’s no question that Mamdani has surged well beyond every other candidate not named Cuomo. Even the most cynical conservative outlets like the New York Post admit that this is a two person race. And I will admit as a progressive that the field is an embarrassment of riches as there are some serious progressive bona fides to be found in this slate.

Hitching to Zohran’s wagon is even a strategy for others in the race. Brand Lander, who is having his own 15 minutes of fame after being arrested by ICE agents, cross-endorsed with Mamdani encouraging people to rank them together on their ballots. Soon after, Michael Blake from the Bronx followed suit in a press conference with Zohran.

The sore thumb in the race with zero progressive bona fides is the former governor and sonofa-governor who holds a tenuous lead in most of the polls.

In this way, Mamdani has already won because he has defied the odds in a way that very few people saw coming. When we spoke with him in early April, his campaign had already passed the fundraising threshold to receive public matching. Not only was he first to get there, it was the fastest on record. But he was still far from the household name he’s quickly becoming.

With sitting Mayor Eric Adams having left the Democratic Party to run as an independent, the race has indeed narrowed to just Mamdani and Cuomo. Whichever one emerges victorious on June 24th, will be in the best position to become the next mayor as supporters are fleeing from Adams, and the Republicans have all but given up on New York City. Evidence of that statement is in the fact that they’re trotting out Curtis Sliwa again whose largest constituency remains his fostered and adopted cats.

The Smear Is On

The corporate media has tried everything to smear Mamdani. First and foremost, always, is the charge of antisemitism because he supported the BDS movement. He was even pressed on whether he would visit Israel if elected mayor to which he responded that he had no plans to travel but that he would be working to take care of all New Yorkers. So-called liberal publications like the New York Times are subtle in their approach to portraying Mamdani as young and inexperienced, making sure to keep his faith front and center in the headlines. They even issued a non-endorsement in the race, but they spilled the most ink smearing Mamdani:

“Unfortunately, Mr. Mamdani is running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges. He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance. He favors rent freezes that could restrict housing supply and make it harder for younger New Yorkers and new arrivals to afford housing. He wants the government to operate grocery stores, as if customer service and retail sales were strengths of the public sector. He minimizes the importance of policing.”

These are unbelievable lies.

They claim he ignores the trade-offs of governance despite being the most policy-heavy candidate in the entire race. And they offer nothing to substantiate such a nebulous claim.

Freezing rent would not restrict housing supply. Again, no evidence, just a throwaway statement. Pricing people out of their homes to make way for new, younger New Yorkers literally makes no sense in the context of restricting supply. Either you increase the supply of affordable housing or you don’t. What they’re calling for is called gentrification, something the city doesn’t need.

He’s not calling for government-run grocery stores all over the city, he’s talking about city-run operations in food deserts so working class New Yorkers don’t have to leave their neighborhoods to buy expensive food. He’s following a very successful cooperative model that would actually nourish poor New Yorkers.

He is not minimizing the importance of policing. His platform is the exact opposite. He’s proposing the establishment of a community safety department staffed with mental health and crisis intervention professionals so the police can do more policing and fewer interventions, which take up valuable response resources and have a tendency to end badly because that’s not what they’re trained to do.

Publications like the New York Post are a wee less subtle, making sure they’re readers know he’s an “antisemite” and “a socialist.” Neither of which is true—Mamdani identifies as a Democratic Socialist, as there is no socialist party—but it’s the Post and we’re all just here for the headlines and sports columns anyway.

In terms of youth, Mamdani would in fact be the youngest mayor of NYC in more than a century. It’s likely one of the reasons he’s connecting so well with the youth vote but that’s also what makes this race tough to call.

Turnout for NYC elections has been dropping since a high of around 60% in the late ‘80s, which is down from the absolute heights in the ‘60s. And for primaries, as one can imagine it’s even worse with the lowest turnout being among young voters. This is, of course, not unusual, so if Mamdani has a weakness right now it’s ironically his strength among younger voters who aren’t likely the ones who will decide the outcome.

But the city is extremely unpredictable. Turnout varies by borough, age and along ethnic lines as well. The Bronx has historically low turnout along with several neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn. Staten Island has higher turnout but more for the general election and it’s a Republican stronghold. The older Jewish population on the Upper West side of Manhattan leads the way in turnout, which is where Cuomo is doing the best according to the polls. And even though Asian voters now make up around 13% of voters in New York, they are less likely to be affiliated with a political party, which makes them far less influential in a primary.

As usual, turnout will be the deciding factor.

Cuomo is doing better in the older demographics and polling well among Jewish and Black Democratic voters, which will be a challenge for Mamdani to overcome, given they typically turnout better. But Cuomo has been running a very corporate, top down, low visibility campaign that relies heavily on ads and media hits. He’s been operating under the assumption all along that his name recognition and visibility from the COVID days where he was literally on TV every day for months will win the day. And he has somehow maintained heartthrob status among older white female voters, even after the allegations of sexual harassment and assault that led to his downfall.

Mamdani, on the other hand, has one of the best get out the vote operations that we’ve ever seen. Because he started building a grassroots movement so early and hit the matching threshold, he has not only been ubiquitous on local television through ads and media hits but his supporters have been fanning out across the boroughs with the goal of knocking on one million doors before the primary. And he just might get there.

He has 832k~ followers on Instagram and a 313k~ on TikTok, and he knows how to maximize this following.

Cuomo has about 198k~ on Instagram and it’s not going well. Here are the top comments on one of his pinned posts.

• “Zohran for Mayor”
• “Oh you acted alright, and 15,000 New Yorkers in the nursing homes were killed.”
• “Didn’t you cut public services?”
• “I’m ranking Zohran #1”
• “Experience in ruining public pensions… check.”

A wise politician once told me, signs don’t vote. Well, neither do social media posts, but this is a fun and engaging way to gauge popularity. All that matters come election time though is who shows up. Complicating any polling initiatives and guesswork is also that New York City moved to ranked choice voting, which many people still don’t fully grasp.

Because Mamdani has made this such a tight race, it does seem clear that no one candidate will clear the majority threshold in the early rounds so the process might run several rounds. According to the Emerson poll at the end of May (before both the AOC and Bernie endorsements)  it takes ten full rounds for Cuomo to emerge victorious. But the most recent poll released on June 23rd has Mamdani winning after an eight round simulation with 52% to Cuomo’s 48%.

Leading the Way

Let’s talk about why Mamdani has already won by laying out the blueprint for progressive values and actually having a vision for the future.

Most people wouldn’t consider NYC a bellwether because it’s so firmly blue. So why would a primary even matter outside of our little bubble?

Because NYC isn’t as blue as you think.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s blue-ish. But the most notable modern NYC mayors were both Republicans. Sort of. Rudy Giuliani was obviously a Republican and Michael Bloomberg switched parties so many times it’s hard to keep track. (But he’s a fucking billionaire and governed very much like a Republican.) And because establishment birds flock together, Bloomberg recently committed $5 million to a PAC supporting Cuomo in the election. Another reason to yearn for the day that billionaires sew their wallets shut and let the people decide elections.

Point being, like many other blue states and municipalities, NYC will “bullet the ballot;” always blue on the national stuff but more parochial and conflicted when it comes to local representation.

When it comes to Andrew Cuomo, there are so many other factors at play beyond the headline narrative of “comeback Cuomo is done apologizing.” Even Democratic insiders are fearful of a Cuomo return to power because of his vengeful and tyrannical past as an executive.

In the early days of his career he earned the nickname “Prince of Darkness” among politicos in New York because it was known that he did his father’s dirty work. People have long claimed that he was the one behind the slanderous whisper campaign when his father Mario ran a primary for mayor against Ed Koch in 1977. It’s become the stuff of legend that it was Andrew who coordinated slogans like “Koch-Sucker” and “Vote Cuomo Not The Homo” as Koch’s personal life was the subject of conjecture back in the day.

Whether Andrew participated in this has been the subject of debate over the years, but I know from people who worked very closely with him that he is considered a complete sociopath hellbent on the intimidation, if not outright destruction of anyone who gets in his way.

Nevertheless, he’s the one with the name recognition and the hold over older voters, some of whom think that New York City needs a bully in the Mayor’s office to beat a bully in the Oval Office. And it seemed as though the distance between Cuomo and everyone else in the race might be just big enough to secure a victory on name recognition and reputation alone. That is until the flurry of activity surrounding the debates and the subsequent endorsements from AOC and Bernie. Suddenly Mamdani was on the lips of nearly everyone paying attention and even grabbing cherished local spots like an interview on the high profile Breakfast Club program.

But here’s the thing again about New York. Those outside of the city might be surprised to know that AOC is not representative of New York. Not even close. Even here she is an outlier. Among the multiple shades of blue in NYC, the old guard establishment liberal reigns supreme and progressivism is much less welcome than one might imagine. For every de Blasio there’s a Rudy.

It Lands

To put Zohran in context of the existential battle for the soul of the left in this country, it’s important to understand why exactly he’s surging. You’re talking about a 33 year old, Ugandan-born Muslim who identifies as a democratic socialist surging in a race to run the same city that gave us creepy drunk Rudy Giuliani, three terms of billionaire Michael Bloomberg and former cop/serially corrupt Eric Adams.

Mamdani is surging because his message is resonating with people. The big money Israel allied PACs are lining up to smear him as antisemitic. The Cuomo PAC is labeling him as an inexperienced socialist. The corporate media is piling on as well. Through sheer force of will and organizing he’s breaking through by tapping into people’s economic anxiety. New York City is the most expensive place to live in the country. As he says, a quarter of the city lives in poverty and the rest live in constant fear and economic precarity.

So when he talks about making buses fast and free, it lands.

When he talks about freezing the rent on rent stabilized apartments, it lands.

When he talks about building grocery cooperatives in food deserts to make food more affordable and accessible, it lands.

When he talks about taxing corporations at the same rate the New Jersey does and placing a tax on income above $1 million, it lands.

Direct, consistent and constant. Hammering away at leftist messaging and building a cult of personality around progressive values that speak to the average citizen who just wants a shot to live in the city they love.

This is the blueprint that the Democratic Party needs to follow. Not in a performative way, either. In a genuine attempt to reshape the narrative and shift the Overton Window left to where it was when people in this country enjoyed the greatest level of economic prosperity and opportunity.

The bottom line is this. If Mamdani wins, it will send shockwaves through the Democratic Party, especially among insiders who recognize that NYC is far from a progressive bastion. Even if he doesn’t win but makes Cuomo sweat, the message will be received loud and clear. Zohran is proving once again what Bernie did (twice): progressive values resonate and the biggest obstacle to the progressive agenda isn’t the GOP. It’s the Democrats.

You got this, New York.

Here endeth the lesson.

Image Source

• Bingjiefu He, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.