Could the election of Mamdani as New York mayor show there is still hope for America?

It felt bold to the point of scary when Mamdani looked into the camera to directly address Trump, starting off with the words: 'Turn up the volume.' Picture: AP/Yuki Iwamura

I moved from California to Dublin on January 15, the same day as Rosie O’Donnell. With all the press coverage about her self-exile from Donald Trump’s United States, I joked that media outlets might soon knock on my door. It didn’t happen. 

Once I saw the statistic that the number of Americans moving to Ireland had risen by an astounding 96% between 2024 and 2025, I got it: I am one of a multitude. And now that we know the results of this week’s elections across the US, many of us are feeling something we thought we might have lost: hope.

I went to bed early on election night, having exhausted myself by obsessively checking the news on TV, my laptop, and my phone. As a born and bred New Yorker, the tightening in the polls sizing up mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s lead over his rival Andrew Cuomo gave me a queasy feeling of déjà vu. 

The mainstream Democratic Party and moneyed interests (way too often one and the same) have a long track record of ensuring progressives can’t have nice things. 

And Mamdani, with his principles, eloquence, and youth seemed like maybe he was too good to survive the American electoral swamp.

When my fitful sleep broke around 2 am, I grabbed my phone. Voting was ending up and down the East Coast. First the press called it for the Democrat running for governor in Virginia, then for the one in New Jersey. 

This week’s elections offer evidence that straight talk about income inequality coupled with ambitious plans to make things better for poor and middle-class Americans are a way to win. Picture: Leonardo Munoz/AFP via Getty Images

I kept jumping between news sites and refreshing ballot counts on my phone. Occasionally, I cleansed my palate by watching Mamdani’s rap videos, recorded under the adorable name Mr Cardamom (I highly recommend 'Nani', starring the then-86-year-old legend and cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey). 

Then word finally came in. Be still my jaded heart: Mamdani will become the city’s next mayor on  January 1.

I scrolled around my phone, drinking it all in. Not just the talking heads marvelling at (and sometimes bemoaning) the victory of a young, Muslim, Democratic Socialist, but his feisty victory speech. It felt bold to the point of scary when Mamdani looked into the camera to directly address Trump, starting off with the words: “Turn up the volume.” It was both cocky and delightfully belittling, since it conveyed a whiff of “Use your ear trumpet, you old fart” condescension.

Things got better still when the election results were called in California, my most recent home in the US. The numbers were so lopsided, the press was able to almost instantly declare victory for Proposition 50, California’s fight-fire-with-fire response to Trump and his henchmen’s gerrymandering of Texas’s electoral districts to help Republicans keep their tenuous stranglehold on the House of Representatives. 

As an American now living in Ireland, I have to admit that part of my jubilation at witnessing Democrat candidates sweeping Tuesday's elections was envisioning how angry Donald Trump would be

Hearing the resounding way California’s citizens countered that Texas tomfoolery, my soul erupted in a resounding “Yeehaw” — as they say in the Lone Star state. Part of my jubilation, I freely admit, came from envisioning the hangdog faces of Texas Trumpsters like Governor Greg Abbott and Senator Ted Cruz.

While confessing to schadenfreude, I’ll cop to its most bountiful source: imagining how Donald Trump was feeling that election night. 

I’ve had my heart broken watching people labelled “animals” and “enemies from within”, terrorised by the Feds and soldiers Trump deploys to menace both immigrants and citizens. 

I’ve been infuriated by risible spectacles like Trump’s dreary and obscenely expensive military parade and last week’s Great Gatsby celebration at Mar-a-Lago (complete with disco music and more or less bottomless dancers — both of which would have puzzled F Scott Fitzgerald and anyone else around during the original roaring ‘20s). So it felt almost inexpressibly good to imagine Trump feeling bad.

No, it doesn’t make up for the bile of watching world leaders (including Ireland’s) cringe, flatter, and kowtow to survive audiences with America’s preening and absurd would-be king. 

Or the fear an unspooling sociopath with the nuclear codes could wipe out millions if he strays much further from sanity. Nonetheless, the night of November 4 felt damn wonderful.

It also felt hopeful. As NYC mayor-elect Mamdani observed of Democrats and their anti-Trump allies in the New Yorker a few weeks ago, “I think for far too long we’ve tried not to lose, as opposed to figuring out how to win.” 

This week’s elections offer evidence that straight talk about income inequality coupled with ambitious plans to make things better for poor and middle-class Americans are a way to win. 

Maybe Tuesday night’s results will jolt the sclerotic Democratic Party into promoting inspiring policy proposals so it triumphs in next year’s midterms, pulling the country back from Trump’s authoritarian grip. Which looks looser — and shakier — now than it did last week.

• Maria Behan writes fiction and non-fiction. Her work has appeared in the Irish Times, The Stinging Fly, and various anthologies.