Marion McKeone: Zohran Mamdani win rings starting bell for Donald Trump vs New York fight
New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. His relentless focus on the cost of living for ordinary New Yorkers, along with his sunny disposition and media expertise enabled him to create the biggest wave in the Democratic Party since Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in 2018. Picture: Heather Khalifa/AP
Nine months ago, fewer than 1% of New Yorkers could even identify Zohran Mamdani, the hitherto undistinguished state Assemblyman from Queens. On the other hand, everyone in New York and beyond knew exactly who Andrew Cuomo was; the former two-term governor of New York and scion of one of most powerful and connected Democratic families in the state’s political history.
For months, every twist and turn in this David and Goliath mayoral battle has riveted and thrilled New Yorkers.
Its culmination in Cuomo’s defeat at the hands of a 34-year-old Muslim running on a democratic socialist platform seemed, like all the best story endings, both shocking and inevitable.
Mamdani’s victory represents the biggest rupture in the sclerotic Democratic Party establishment since Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s trouncing of Democratic Congressional grandee Joe Crowley.
It has provided the starting bell for the fight with New York that Donald Trump seems to crave.
But in the short term at least, Mamdani’s victory is likely to prove more problematic for the Congressional Democratic leadership of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries than for Trump and Vance.
Schumer’s failure to endorse the Democratic party’s new star, or even to say whether or not he voted for him and Jeffries tepid last-minute effort is an error their New York constituents, already exasperated by their ineffectual leadership in the Senate, is unlikely to forget. A 2028 primary challenge for Schumer’s Senate seat from Ocasio Cortez now seems inevitable.
Mamdani’s path to victory was both complicated and accelerated by a series of unpredictable events. The catalyst for this most contentious of mayoral races was the indictment of the current mayor, Eric Adams, on corruption charges. Adams' resulting quid pro quo with Trump’s department of Justice, which was partially rescinded by an irate judge, outraged New Yorkers and scuttled his chances.
Enter Cuomo. Desperate for rehabilitation and trading on his father’s legendary status, he was immediately supported by the billionaire class. Former mayor Mike Bloomberg poured millions into his campaign along with a hefty chunk of Wall Street. But money couldn’t buoy Cuomo’s leaden campaign, and his abrasive persona provided the perfect foil for his opponent’s sunny demeanour.
In September, Mamdani did the unthinkable in US politics; he gleefully posted a TikTok video telling his supporters not to donate any more money.
New York’s mayor-elect will be the second youngest mayor in New York history, the first to receive more than a million votes since 1969, the first South Asian, and the first Muslim.
It’s this biographical fact, more than any other item on Mamdani’s flimsy CV that induced the apoplectic contagion that infected the White House, the Republican Party, and a large swathe of the Democratic party in almost equal measure.
Mamdani was 11 years old when Al-Qaida terrorists crashed hijacked passenger planes into New York’s twin towers, killing almost 3,000, fuelling a surge of Islamophobia that has never abated.
The attacks kept coming with joining the chorus of liberals who couched their Islamophobia in a pretence of concern about his lack of experience. Others were not so subtle and Cuomo nodded along as they balked at the prospect of a Muslim in Gracie mansion.
But New York is home to almost a million Muslim people who are, Mamdani declared, tired of being treated like interlopers in their own city. Working-class Muslim immigrants in New York run bodegas and food stalls, they drive taxis, work in education and healthcare, and currently form the single biggest sector of new recruits in the New York police department.
In short, along with working class and middle-class Irish, Italian, Hispanic, and black communities, they form a significant chunk of the millions of ordinary New Yorkers who have been priced out of their own city by soaring rents, unaffordable food prices, and the daily struggle of trying to make ends meet.
Mamdani’s backstory is far more privileged than that of most of his constituents. He was born in Uganda to wealthy Indian parents. His father is a professor at Columbia University.
His mother, Mira Nair, is a respected film director. He was seven years old when his parents moved to New York and attended private schools and colleges. He was still in high school when he started knocking on doors for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and spent much of his time in college learning the campaign ropes as an activist with progressive groups like MoveOn.org.
New York’s energy and hustle comes from the never-ending infusion of 20- and 30-year olds who come to the city from all over the US and all over the world. And it’s that demographic that latched on to Mamdani like filing chips to a magnet. Here was a politician they could identify with — a 33-year-old idealist who exudes enthusiasm and eloquence in a way that was reminiscent of Obama.
While he ran on a platform that focused almost entirely on the cost of living, he didn’t shy away from the war in Gaza at a time when pro-Palestinian campus protests were prompting outrage and fury in New York and across the US.
And just as Obama opposition to the war in Iraq showed a prescience and willingness to break ranks with established orthodoxy in a post 9/11 world of strait-jacketed patriotism, Mamdani’s willingness to decry Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war in Gaza as a genocide resonated with younger voters and significant sectors of the New York’s Jewish community.
Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller, who is Jewish, became one of Mamdani’s most vocal supporters when his bid to become mayor ran out of steam.
He may be the most exciting newcomer on the Democratic political scene night now but he has a limited trajectory. As a naturalized citizen who was born outside the United States, there is no path to the White House for him.
If there’s one lesson Democrats should take from Mamdani’s victory, the resounding victories of Abigail Span Berger and Mikie Sherrill in the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, Gavin Newsom’s audacious annexing of five Congressional seats in California, and the hugely significant victories of three state Supreme Court judges in Pennsylvania, it’s that Democratic candidates don’t have to be hewn from the same stone.
New York is seen as something of a separate entity: Even conservative Americans who loathe its liberalism view it as something of an autonomous appendage to the United States as a whole. What soars in New York won’t fly in North Carolina.
What voters want above all else, it seems, is a candidate who are willing to fight back, to call out the rising tide of authoritarianism that threatens to drown American democracy.
His mastery of social media helped; the breezy clips of him engaging with New Yorkers across the five boroughs, the campaign platform that you could fit on a Post It (or an X post) focused entirely on the cost of living. It’s doubtful that his proposed solutions will survive contact with the battlefields of state and city politics.
New Yorkers pulled the lever for audacity over the status quo. Mamdani’s optimism, exuberance and charisma resonated with voters desperate for a leader that would stand up not just to Trump, but to the Democratic establishment that helped facilitate his re-election.
In his victory speech, Mamdani made it clear he wouldn’t shirk from the fight ahead, appalling cable news pundits who thought he should be conciliatory in victory.
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