The Mamdani Earthquake

In one of the most dramatic upsets in US municipal politics history, Zohran Mamdani—a Uganda-born 33-year-old democratic socialist and the city’s first potential Muslim mayor — declared victory in the Democratic primary, besting former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Whatever else may be true, he is also spectacularly sympathetic, politically astute and well-spoken.

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If his lead holds, which it should, it’s a stunning turn for a race that began as Cuomo’s comeback tour after his 2021 resignation over sexual harassment allegations. He entered with name recognition, millions in PAC support, and endorsements from labor unions and party regulars. But Mamdani’s campaign— fueled by grassroots energy and relentless door-knocking — caught fire. His promises of free buses, child care, housing and soaking the rich resonated with younger voters. Mamdani led a multiracial, youth-driven movement that felt more like a social uprising than a traditional campaign.

In November’s actual election, incumbent Eric Adams is running as an independent after skipping the primary due to legal troubles and a messy corruption probe. Republican Curtis Sliwa, the perennial law-and-order candidate, is also in. Cuomo may run as an independent too. To beat Mamdani, egomaniacs would need to unite — unlikely.

What does Mamdani’s win say about the Democratic Party in the Trump 2.0 era? Is this a fluke — or a new blueprint for progressives? And can Mamdani govern as effectively as he campaigned? To be sure, Mamdani’s victory hands Republicans a potent new talking point: the rise of a self-identified democratic socialist in America’s largest city. His platform—free public transit, higher taxes on the wealthy, expanded social services—will be painted by the GOP as emblematic of a Democratic Party lurching toward the far left.

In an election year already dominated by culture wars and inflation anxiety, Mamdani becomes a tailor-made foil for Republicans eager to brand Democrats as out of touch with working- and middle-class voters. Expect conservative media and Trump’s surrogates to spotlight Mamdani relentlessly, casting him as the face of an urban progressive elite that wants to “tax and spend” America into oblivion. It will have echoes of the campaign against London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

To unpack all this, I appeared on I24 together with New York Post columnist David Christopher Kaufman, who has covered both Mamdani’s rise and Cuomo’s attempted resurrection.

David Kaufman: It’s been a crazy night in New York City last night. Mamdani clinched what many thought was impossible. He is now the frontrunner to become the next mayor of New York – a 33-year-old Queen’s assemblyman who basically has never helped held public office and besides being a short-term rapper a couple of years ago he’s never really had a job. But this is not entirely unexpected. Over the last uh few weeks his poll numbers were really spiking and equally we began to see sort of a pulling back of Cuomo. The New York Post where I work had a column last week basically saying “where the hell is this guy – he’s not out campaigning, he’s not out championing his cause, he’s not out securing voters.” And we had Mamdani who’s young and cute and fun and groovy walking from the top of Manhattan to the bottom of Manhattan to to meet with the voters. And those voters turned out in full force for him.

Ellie Hochenberg, I24: Was it a vote Mamdani or against Cuomo?

DCK: I think it was a vote for Mamdani. This was very much about Mamdani in many ways. Cuomo … folks who were going to vote for him decided early on whether or not they’re going to vote for him. I think the issue was whether or not people were going to sway towards Mamdani and whether or not they were buying what he was selling, and people were buying what he was selling. He was talking about reducing the police force, food co-ops, rent freezes, all the kind of buzzwords that people want to hear, especially young voters. And young voters — not to be ageist — but they’re just a little young to understand that these are the types of lifestyle issues that might sound good but ultimately degrade the quality of life in New York City. If you have rent freezes, landlords and developers aren’t going to build new homes, and they’re not going to be affordable homes. If you don’t have police crime’s going to spike and nobody’s going to live in New York. So young people were voting ideologically but not practically. Even if it doesn’t follow through this time is it an indication to the changing climate in New York.

EH: Perhaps is it turning from a liberal city to a progressive one.

DCK: It’s it’s definitely turning to a progressive one and we have models for this all over the country. Los Angeles, which basically erupted in riots a couple of weeks, Chicago which has an epidemic of gun violence … what’s really concerning for our community is that Mamdani’s win of the democratic uh primary is really a repudiation of the attempt to end antisemitism. What basically voters were saying is that in many ways the antisemitic surge and epidemic we’re experienced in New York right now — they don’t really care, or they care more about progressive issues, progressive lifestyle issues, a nifty cool candidate. But really you know the opposition to Mamdani focused heavily on the antisemitism issue heavily, on the Israel issue. Cuomo basically said early on “antisemitism is the foundation of my campaign” and and basically what’s happened yesterday is voters, particularly young voters, said we don’t care. We’re going going to see an election in Los Angeles, we’re going to see elections in Boston and other big cities are going to have elections very soon and they’re even more progressive than we are in New York.

EH: So what does it mean for for for the Jewish community in New York?

DCK: This is a real like wake-up call for the Jewish community … because (they) really rallied around Cuomo and really poured millions and millions and millions of dollars — Cuomo had three times the campaign budget of Mamdani … and it didn’t work. So the question is now … if it wasn’t effective focusing so squarely on the antisemitism issue in the primary and we’re trying to get Eric Adams, the current mayor, elected, do we focus so heavily on antisemitism or do coalition-build … with the real estate community or the pro-police community or other more mainstream centrist communities and causes and maybe step back from from the antisemitism issue. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of soul searching this weekend.

EH: Dan Perry, what’s the future for Jews in New York?

DP: Mamdani really leaned into the fact that New York is becoming unaffordable for regular people, and he offered this huge raft of populist leftist policies, some of which are very very appealing because … the classic Democratic Party has refused to do it. He proposes to soak the rich, he has a proposal to issue special city taxes for people with incomes over a million dollars…. Well, there’s relatively few of those and a lot of people don’t have that income, and he benefitted from that basic fact. As for the antisemitism issue, look — most of the Jews may have voted for him but not all did. He also received significant support from regular centrist liberal slightly-progressive Jews who are fed up with the Israeli government — not only with the situation in Gaza but the West Bank, the coddling of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel. There’s a disconnect between liberal New York Jews and the Israeli government that was a factor.

EH: Is the United States safe for Jews?

DP: Clearly Mamdani is not the messenger for anti-antisemitism. He is pro-BDS, he refuses to countenance Zionism, he refuses to admit that Israel’s a Jewish state. But he has successfully framed this — he had a really good appearance on Stephen Colbert (BELOW) — as being against the settlements and not against Israel. But no doubt he’s no fan of Israel, He dislikes Israel. It rallied most of the Jews (against) him but not enough to counter the fact that Cuomo was a very very flawed messenger given his age and the fact that he resigned in disgrace from the governorship. Mamdani presented himself as the future and that oftentimes works … His policies are, well, as befits a very very young candidate, they’re infantile. If you’re going to have total rent control then you’re gonna have a collapse of the real estate market and that doesn’t help anyone. But it was a perfect storm for him.

EH: And the question remains whether or not it’s an indication of the future greater political landscape in the United States if the Democratic Party is going this direction.

DP: There’s no doubt that it is. The question is whether it gets past the tipping point where the progressives become majority of the democrats the way MAGA has become a majority of the Republicans .. and whether it can be arrested.