Copyright Salon
Conversations around the effort to defeat insurgent mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani have often started with a seemingly unrelated question: “Do you summer in the city?” At least they did for much of this past summer, when the ruling class of New York City still believed that a well-funded unified campaign to defeat the democratic socialist was on the table. Now, as Election Day draws near and a sense of fatalism sets in, the highest echelons of wealth and power in Gotham are panicking as a bungled attempt to reassert an old order enters its final push and becomes a desperate scramble, not only in the city but also within the Democratic Party at large. The stakes are much higher than one mayoral election. It’s about whether or not the rich and powerful can still command politics in the beating heart of American capitalism. In mid-July, around 150 people, including a handful of reporters, packed into a ballroom at the Women’s National Republican Club in Midtown Manhattan. “New York as we know it is over.” The clubhouse, the only such venue specifically dedicated to Republican women, is located just around the corner from Rockefeller Center. On that summer evening, it hosted a talk on how to prevent crime on the city’s subways by a researcher at the Manhattan Institute, the house think tank of New York City’s conservative elite, which is probably best known as the incubator for ideologues like Charles Murray, the author of “The Bell Curve,” and Christopher Rufo, who helped instigate the moral panic around critical race theory. Despite the club’s name, the crowd was a mix of well-heeled men and women who, before the talk started, loosely gathered around the seating area and bar, though almost no one was ordering drinks. Before the event, the members of the crowd spoke to each other in hushed tones about the recent Democratic mayoral primary. This was soon after the Board of Elections had released the final tally, which made it clear that Mamdani had romped through the primary, but before the race was certified. And indeed, many of the attendees, it seemed, were not there to hear about how more police interactions on the subways could stop crime. They were there because the former lieutenant governor of New York state, Betsy McCaughey, who had been plucked from the pages of The New Republic under former editor Andrew Sullivan to serve as former Gov. George Pataki’s running mate in 1994, had promised to give the crowd her theory on how concerned New Yorkers could defeat Zohran. McCaughey, who still commands a certain respect in conservative circles in the city, 30 years after The Washington Post dubbed her the “star” of the opposition to then-first lady Hillary Clinton’s health care plan, joked that if they rallied around her plan, the city’s wealthy and powerful wouldn’t have to move to Ohio — a reference to ads that Ohio gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy had posted in Times Square over the summer, which encouraged New Yorkers to move to the Buckeye State and vilified Mamdani as a dangerous socialist. Essentially, the plan revolved around the hope that Mamdani’s young supporters wouldn’t come out again to support him in November, at least not to the degree they had in the Democratic primary, and that the anti-Mamdani resistance could scrounge up about half a million voters who don’t normally vote in mayoral elections to support someone else — essentially, anyone else — this fall. The event acted as a sort of preview for an effort grounded in one-on-one conversations and private meetings in which a collection of folks who were big names 30 years ago — dressed in nice suits and behind closed doors — voiced their concern not only over Mamdani’s plans for fast and free buses or to freeze rents for rent-stabilized apartments, but also over what they believe his rise represents: the end of an old political order and, potentially, the birth of a new one. This attempt to reassert the old order has been fractured, ineffective and at times defeatist, according to interviews with sources in or around the push to defeat Mamdani conducted over the months since the primary. It all began back in the heat of summer, when conservatives and major capitalists were picking up the pieces after their attempt to stop Mamdani’s primary bid ran straight into the upstart socialist’s rock star popularity. From “Cuomosexual” to Trump whisperer Most of the schemes to defeat Mamdani have revolved around different ways to consolidate the field behind former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was the preeminent politician in the stat for more than a decade before resigning in disgrace in 2021 following allegations of sexual harassment, which Cuomo denies. Though Cuomo denies having spoken with the president about the race, plans have sometimes included intervention from President Donald Trump’s White House, marking a figurative political enemies-to-lovers arc for the former governor, who was once beloved by the “#resistance” and who now, in an ironic twist of fate, stands as the candidate of many Trumpists in New York and beyond. In many New York cities and towns, Cuomo would presumably be a shoo-in for mayor. As recently as last year, supporters of centrist Democrats like Rep. Tom Suozzi and Rep. Laura Gillen, who both represent suburban Long Island districts, whispered that they felt Cuomo had been railroaded by the national Democratic Party for becoming too popular at a moment when the party was pushing to rally around Joe Biden, then the oldest president ever. In some circles, Cuomo is still seen as the charming young man from Queens (he’ll turn 68 next month) and scion of a well-liked political dynasty, which at one point appeared on track to become Democratic royalty akin to the Kennedys. Others reminisce about his daily press conferences during the COVID pandemic, which stood in contrast to the Trump administration’s shambolic response. Still others may even be hanging on to the lingering remnants of “Cuomosexuality.” Ahead of the Democratic primary in June, a political director of one prominent union supporting Cuomo explained to Salon that their endorsement was driven by the preference of the members, who remember Cuomo fondly for policies like the state’s $15 minimum wage and the Healthy Terminals Act, which expanded healthcare access for airport workers. “He’s been pretty solid on his record when it comes to working people and labor. And so our members do not just recognize and know him, but they like him,” the union representative said. After his embarrassing defeat in the Democratic primary, Cuomo was eager to refashion himself as an underdog independent candidate. By September, it became clear that there was a plot afoot to clear the field and give his nascent post-primary campaign a leg up. By September, it became clear that there was a plot afoot to clear the field and give [Cuomo’s] nascent post-primary campaign a leg up. The New York Times reported that advisers to Trump were crafting a plan to appoint current Mayor Eric Adams as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, following Adams’ decision to skip the Democratic primary and run instead on the “EndAntiSemitism” party line in the general election. That news came as something of a surprise, given Adams’ well-documented relationship with Turkey (which led to his since-dismissed indictment on federal corruption charges) and his stated desire to retire to the Golan Heights. It certainly signaled Team Trump’s interest in intervening in the mayoral race on Cuomo’s behalf. Adams was already seen as potentially compromised by the Trump administration after he struck what one judge called “a bargain,” in which Adams received “dismissal of the Indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions” in New York City. Notably, Cuomo is also the subject of an unrelated federal investigation concerning his congressional testimony about New York nursing home deaths during the pandemic, an investigation that the Trump administration opened shortly after it dropped the charges against Adams. Cuomo has dismissed the investigation as politically motivated “lawfare” and election interference. Earlier that same September week, another Times report had detailed a potential plan to provide a cushy Trump administration job to Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa, a radio personality and the beret-clad founder of the Guardian Angels, a volunteer street patrol organization. Sliwa, who may have fewer ties to Trump than either Adams or Cuomo despite being a Republican, rejected those overtures. At the time, Adams also said he was still running for mayor. More recently, AMNY reported that he was entertaining three “dream jobs,” though it wasn’t clear whether any of them were the aforementioned ambassadorship. By the end of the month, Adams faced reality and dropped his flailing bid for re-election. Sliwa, apparently relishing his 15 minutes of fame, called Adams a “crook” and said he himself had been offered $10 million to drop out of the race by unidentified billionaires. A spokesman for Adams did not respond to a request for comment. “There’s no price that can get me out of this race, no amount of money, no bribe, and again, if anybody comes forward on behalf of Andrew Cuomo or anybody else, it will be recorded, and it will be brought to the proper authorities,” Sliwa said at a September press conference. Despite Cuomo’s insistence that he would stand up to Trump if elected, this wasn’t the only indication that Cuomo was the administration’s preferred candidate, and it wouldn’t be the last sign that Trump supporters were also backing Cuomo. As with the infamous 2021 Buffalo mayoral election, it appears that the fear of socialism can unite many mainstream Democrats and Republicans. This marks a sharp change from 2020, when Cuomo was celebrated by some liberals as the Democrats’ best chance to take down Trump amid the dark days of the pandemic. “He’s in the Hamptons with the billionaires” The problem for Cuomo’s backers all along has been that it’s not even clear whether the former governor would be favored in a head-to-head competition with Mamdani. A late October poll showed Sliwa running closer to Mamdani in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup than Cuomo despite calls for him to drop out to unify anti-Mamdani voters. At the 2025 NYC Mayoral Candidate Forum to Center Black Women, hosted in the Apollo Theater’s newest expansion at the Victoria Theater, Sliwa (who quipped that he was probably the first Republican to ever step foot in the Apollo) drew more than a few groans with his stock lines about single motherhood, before earning uproarious applause for attacking Cuomo’s Trump connection, while also dinging Cuomo for saying he “will move to Florida” if Mamdani wins. “He’s in the Hamptons with the billionaires. ‘Hey, Donald, that’s right. I need your help. Get Sliwa out of the race.’ Guess what? I ain’t dropping out,” Sliwa said. “And if I happen to lose, I stay, I improve, I don’t move, I’m not going to flee to Florida. Like Cuomo said, ‘Oh, if I lose the floor, I’m going to flee to Florida.'” Investment in the race has largely dried up, defying grandiose plans to raise tens of millions from worried megadonors. Part of the problem with mobilizing national and statewide Republican resources to rescue Cuomo is that many Republicans, in New York and elsewhere, still detest the former governor. There was a time not so long ago when signs calling for the repeal of the New York SAFE Act — gun safety legislation championed by Cuomo — could be found outside of every other McMansion from Montauk to Buffalo. For many conservatives, Cuomo was an old and defeated arch-nemesis that no amount of Red Scaring could rehabilitate. Another problem is that many Republicans see a potential Mamdani victory as useful midterm fodder for their party and its media organs. The New York GOP, for instance, is already fundraising off Mamdani’s meteoric rise, sending emails with lines like “Lol — Hochul got played by Mamdani” and “Police Cars Burn — Mamdani’s Agenda Burns NYC Next.” The aforementioned McCaughey plan to defeat Mamdani also faces an uphill battle and is nearly out of time. The plan revolves around driving up turnout by identifying around 500,000 voters who dislike Mamdani but weren’t planning to vote against him, and somehow getting them to the polls. At first, the target demographic was Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 but refused to follow the party’s “leftward lurch,” as McCaughey put it, and stayed home in 2024. After the primary, McCaughey co-founded a PAC called SaveNYC along with Ray Kelly, a former NYPD commissioner and veteran of the Clinton administration, and pulled together an array of wealthy and influential New Yorkers, many of them big names in the city two to three decades earlier. This group held events throughout the summer in familiar haunts for these sorts of nosebleed-elite New Yorkers, places like the tiny enclave of Bridgehampton, a village on the East End of Long Island with a permanent population of fewer than 1,300 residents, per the 2020 census. It was awarded the dubious title of “Most Expensive Place to Buy a Home in New York” by The Wall Street Journal earlier this year. McCaughey’s PAC has only raised around $550,000, but began canvassing in October in a bid to turn out the city’s condo and co-op owners, who are viewed as a useful proxy for the upper middle class and above. That group has replaced the 2024 stay-at-home Democrats as the turnout target. SaveNYC leaflets describe it as “the largest untapped voting bloc in NYC.” The flailing character of the various anti-Mamdani efforts is also illustrated by the financial contours of the race. Before the primary, donors shoveled tens of millions of dollars into making sure Mamdani didn’t win. Since then, investment in the race has largely dried up, defying grandiose plans to raise tens of millions from worried megadonors. The main independent group supporting Cuomo raised nearly $25 million ahead of the June 24 primary. Since then, it’s only raised around $7.6 million. And the characters supporting Cuomo have also changed. Before the primary, the committee was buoyed by significant contributions from major companies like DoorDash, billionaires like Bill Ackman and former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and many unions. Now, Fix the City Inc.’s coffers are largely filled by donations from the Lauder family of Estée Lauder fame, as well as some returning billionaires like Ackman and GOP donors like billionaire Steve Wynn. Ackman made a last-minute $1 million donation to another anti-Mamdani PAC, Defend NYC, in mid-October and threw in another $250,000 to Fix the City. Joe Gebbia, an Airbnb co-founder whose app is heavily regulated in the city, donated $1 million to each of those PACs around the same time. Despite their efforts, the anti-Mamdani campaign is much less well-funded than it was before the primary. Ackman did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The end of New York City as we know it? The relative financial collapse of Cuomo’s campaign also reflects his political quandary. He’s running as the nominee of the newly invented Fight and Deliver Party, but his personal brand and his surname are inseparable from that of the Democratic Party in New York. His father, the longtime liberal hero Mario Cuomo, was a three-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Cuomo was himself on track to serve three terms until he was forced to resign in 2021 amid an impeachment inquiry. The Nov. 4 general election can be understood as a low-impact relitigation of the primary battle, which saw the old guard of the Democratic Party, who would rather deal with Republicans and the billionaires that support them, attempt to stamp out the grassroots movement represented by Mamdani. That may help explain why the leading figure of the Democratic establishment in Washington, Sen. Chuck Schumer of Brooklyn, has refused to endorse Mamdani despite the latter’s evident popularity. Similarly, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, another Brooklyn native and the House Democratic leader, waited so long to endorse Mamdani that he’s a complete non-factor in the race. Even then, his endorsement was far from enthusiastic. “The movement he’s leading is one to change the entire political culture of the country.” The muddled, stop-and-start quality of the anti-Zohran campaign is strikingly mismatched with the apocalyptic language that many of his opponents, as well as the legacy media institutions aligned against him, have used to describe his rise. The New York Post, part of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, promised that Mamdani would make the city a “living nightmare” in an unsigned editorial. The New York Times, in its own unsigned editorial, panned Mamdani’s agenda as “uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges” and, despite the Times’ policy of not endorsing candidates in local races, specifically urged voters not to support him. Some of Mamdani’s foes have accused him of being a communist, a radical Islamist, a terrorist sympathizer and the death of the Democratic Party as Americans have known it, the latter of which is how Hank Sheinkopf, a grizzled veteran of New York politics who looks the part, describes Mamdani’s candidacy. Sheinkopf compared Mamdani to both Adolf Hitler and Trump in an interview with Salon in late September. Like those two, he said, Mamdani is more than an aspiring New York mayor — he is the leader of a political movement. “The man tells you every day that he is leading a movement that has nothing to do with being the mayor, right?” Sheinkopf said in a late September interview. “This is a social movement. When social movements govern, they tend to do the most extraordinary things.” In Sheinkopf’s view, a Mamdani victory would be the first impact of a wave that he fears could wash over the country, reshaping the what he described as a decrepit Democratic Party in its image. Mamdani’s victory could mark the end of old power structures in New York, he said, stemming from demographic changes and the shifting “ethnic politics” of the city. Asked by Salon whether he preferred the tarnished brand of Cuomo, as an embodiment of the old order, Sheinkopf declined to answer directly. “My favorite candidate is New York, and New York as we know it is over,” he said. “There’s going to be a different New York if [Mamdani] wins.” “The movement he’s leading is one to change the entire political culture of the country,” Sheinkopf continued. “They have a dead carcass called the Democrat Party, which they’re going to take over for their own use. This represents the end of the Democrat Party, for the time being, as we know it.” Zohran’s ruthless positivity wins over critics That kind of overwrought rhetoric seems mismatched with the feebleness of the actual effort to keep Mamdani out of office. There are several reasons. First, the positions of many onetime Mamdani opponents have softened in the general election. Many would-be funders of Cuomo or other hypothetical candidates have simply tapped out, and many in New York’s business elites no longer want to send good money after bad. Take former Democratic governor David Paterson, who took office in 2008 after his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, was forced to resign due to a prostitution scandal. Paterson’s short-lived governorship saw him appoint Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., (who was described as too conservative for New York even in 2009) to replace Hillary Clinton after Barack Obama picked the latter as secretary of state. Paterson’s brief tenure was punctuated by the financial crisis and allegations of corruption, and he ultimately decided not to seek a full term, putting Cuomo on a glide path to the governor’s mansion in 2010. In July, Paterson, now a Sunday morning radio host on WABC — and the husband of one of Curtis Sliwa’s many ex-wives— was among the first Democrats to come out against Mamdani. He attempted to rally members of his party against its own nominee, telling a small crowd of reporters outside the WABC offices in midtown Manhattan, while surrounded by other radio personalities like Sid Rosenberg: “I simply do not believe Zohran Mamdani is the person to lead New York City in these extremely turbulent times.” Even the rich and powerful have been charmed by the mayoral candidate’s charisma, honesty and ruthless positivity. Paterson hoped that sticky July presser might kick off a race to consolidate the field and unite it behind a single anti-Mamdani candidate. Paterson had endorsed Cuomo in the primary and then switched to Adams in the general election, at least until the latter dropped out. Cuomo appeared to drag his feet after the primary on deciding whether to run in the general election, and no viable alternative emerged. When asked by Salon how his thinking had evolved on the race in late September, a month the anti-Mamdani crowd expected to be critical in their efforts, Paterson said that his “feelings are essentially the same.” He added, however, that Mamdani “has noticeably worked to correct some of his more inflammatory previous statements and positions in pursuit of the mayor’s office.” Paterson, one of the few people to have ever earned an apology from “Saturday Night Live,” isn’t the only person who has softened on Mamdani — at least a little. People familiar with the deliberation of New York business leaders have described a range of reactions to their private meetings with Mamdani, but even the rich and powerful have been charmed by the mayoral candidate’s charisma, honesty and ruthless positivity. Many felt somewhat soothed by his willingness to meet with them and listen to their concerns, even if his platform appears at odds with their pocketbook interests. Jared Epstein is a former club promoter and the president of Aurora Capital Associates. In 2018, he was named to Crain’s 40 Under Forty list for his work as a developer in commercial real estate. Earlier this year, he hosted a fundraising call for New Yorkers for a Better Future, an anti-Mamdani organization. But he recently told Salon that he has observed fading enthusiasm for Cuomo, even among longtime supporters of the former governor. “Cuomo’s credentials are unmatched, but campaigns are about momentum as much as résumés. His general election effort hasn’t shown significant new energy, and unless he refreshes his message to reflect the city’s current challenges, he will be overshadowed by Mamdani,” Epstein said. In August, Epstein had expressed hope that September would be the month the anti-Mamdani crowd got serious. Reflecting on that expectation several weeks later, he admitted that the “gravitational pull” toward Cuomo hadn’t quite been what he’d expected, and that Mamdani had shown “real political talent and staying power.” Start your day with essential news from Salon. Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course. The “Mayor Mamdani” moment Another individual whom anti-Mamdani diehards say has grown soft on the Democratic nominee is Jim Whelan, the current president of the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY). Whelan, often appearing in an unassuming blue suit and with a tuft of tousled gray hair, made a splash at a swanky Crain’s business breakfast in a luxury building overlooking Central Park by saying, “We’re going to be looking to work closely with Mayor Mamdani if he is the winner on Nov. 4.” Whelan’s group, which represents some 14,000 members in and around the real estate industry, has since made clear that it doesn’t intend to compromise with Mamdani, still opposes a rent freeze (which it claims would make the city less affordable) and plans to advocate for its members in City Hall. Even so, Whelan’s “Mayor Mamdani” moment felt like a potentially formidable opponent declaring a truce. While REBNY is a nonprofit and cannot advocate for or against a political candidate, it’s free to run “voter education programs” based around specific issues, and its members could also organize a separate entity for political purposes. Cuomo aggressively courted the group last spring, in an effort to banish lingering doubts its members might have about him, owing to past not-so-landlord-friendly legislation passed during his tenure. Another example of someone who has apparently decided it’s no longer worth fighting to stop Mamdani is Kenneth Burgos, a former colleague of Mamdani’s in the New York state legislature who now leads the New York Apartment Association, which represents the city’s biggest landlords. Burgos, 31, still opposes most of Mamdani’s major policies, but he thinks people who still hope to beat the Democratic nominee in the general election are kidding themselves. “Given the current landscape, absent an act of God, Zohran is going to win at the end of the day,” Burgos told Salon in August, when there were officially still five candidates on the general election ballot. “You can try and pull down Zohran’s numbers. But in a crowded field, as the Democratic nominee, he holds a six-to-one advantage on Democratic registration, and that means something.” Burgos helped organize the Housing for All PAC, which spent $2.5 million in the primary to back Cuomo. Now Burgos seems ready to move on. “Absent an act of God, Zohran is going to win at the end of the day.” “The names on this ballot, absent Mamdani, are candidates you could theoretically pull out 20 years ago, right?” he said. “New Yorkers know who Andrew Cuomo is. New Yorkers know who Eric Adams is. New Yorkers know who Curtis Sliwa is, right? So I’m just not sure what the campaign messaging, what the vision would be, to all of a sudden generate a turnout that neither one of these candidates has ever seen in their political careers.” Burgos identified a key issue that has plagued the stop-Mamdani forces all along: None of the other candidates are exciting or new, and there’s widespread skepticism that any of them has what it takes to win. Kathryn Wyld, a silver-haired New York power broker who announced her intent to retire earlier this year, described the dynamic in a late-summer interview with Salon. According to Wyld, who has worked as a fixer and liaison for New York’s business interests for decades, Cuomo never had a particularly good relationship with many in the business community to begin with, Sliwa is seen as likable but unserious and Adams, while the personal favorite of many, became unelectable as the first New York mayor to be indicted while in office. She agreed that Cuomo, who by that time already looked to be the anti-Mamdani movement’s last man standing, was seen as out of touch and lacking the energy for a robust and rigorous campaign. “Somebody pointed out to me that Cuomo’s first social media post was him tinkering with cars, in a city where 80% of the population doesn’t have a car or drive,” Wyld said. Wyld is president of the Partnership for New York City, an organization that represents the likes of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Hearst CEO Steven Swartz and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon. Wyld declined to discuss the opinions of any current members, but said that even within her billionaire’s club some people have come around on Mamdani, in no small part because of his positive vision for the city, something she said other candidates lacked. “There are people who are enthusiastic about Mamdani because he represents new blood,” she said. “Those who have met him think he is an honest guy who will listen and that he’s smart and won’t want to be a failure as mayor.” That last point is important: In the eyes of the city’s business elite, Mamdani’s desire not to be seen as a failed mayor will inevitably lead him, democratic socialist or not, to work with the city’s arch-capitalists. In that context, the air of reasonableness and pragmatism he has demonstrated through his willingness to take meetings, listen and soften his language around issues ranging from policing to capitalism is more important than any specific policy. An army of believers Those who still want to stop Zohran also face a harsh political reality: Mamdani’s campaign has stood up an army of more than 90,000 volunteers in the general election, fueled by an enthusiasm that Cuomo and Sliwa’s campaigns haven’t been able to match. This enthusiasm is exemplified by volunteers like Kathy Cutler, a 27-year-old Upper East Side resident who has been canvassing for Mamdani since the campaign’s official launch last January. Cutler told Salon that volunteering for the campaign has occupied most of her time when she’s not at work. “After this campaign, I definitely will be a lot more involved in politics going forward.” Cutler said this is the first campaign she’d ever volunteered for, and Mamdani is the first candidate she’s encountered where she felt she didn’t have to settle. She liked his specific policy proposals, like fast and free city buses, and his specific plans to make those proposals happen. She also said that the campaign had helped give her hope after the crushing disappointment of the 2024 election. Cutler was one of the many New York Democratic voters who left the top of her ballot blank in 2024 after voting for Biden in 2020, citing Kamala Harris’ record as California attorney general and the lack of democratic process in deciding the party’s nominee. Cutler, who spoke with Salon following a canvassing event at Ruppert Park on the Upper East Side in late October, said that Democratic leaders’ treatment of Mamdani throughout his candidacy will be a factor in her future voting decisions. “It’s hypocritical of Democratic leaders who refuse to endorse him. It definitely will affect my vote,” she said. “After this campaign, I definitely will be a lot more involved in politics going forward and volunteering for other campaigns.” Cutler added, “How they acted in this election and if they’re supporting Zohran in the future — I think that’s important, especially for Democratic politicians, who are supposed to be better than Republicans. Right now, there’s a lot of Democrats who are not listening to the voices of Democratic voters, and I think that’s really disappointing.” The New York City mayoral election is often seen as the least politically relevant among the off-off-year elections that take place in the year following a presidential election. This year, it could actually be the most relevant. While gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia jockey for position, generating headlines about debates against an AI-generated opponent or a Republican’s awkward overtures to Black voters, and pundits try to read the tea leaves for next year’s midterms, Mamdani may be setting the course for the future of the Democratic Party. The establishment’s existential crisis In the context of the current Democratic Party, in which members on the periphery like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., often deliver a clearer and more forceful vision than actual party leaders, it’s an opportunity for those on the outside to push their way into the party’s new center and perhaps provide a positive vision for both its future and America’s. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio told Salon that Mamdani’s positivity and the clarity of his vision are the “great genius” of his campaign, adding that he “had a very specific sense of where New York City needed to go.” Mamdani’s campaign stuck to “kitchen table issues and relentlessly pursuing a very tangible vision,” de Blasio said. Many political observers would agree that the Democratic Party has lacked a “tangible vision” for many years. Its leaders have largely avoided crafting such a vision in their quest to court the anyone-but-Trump vote. But in politics, even a bad plan beats no plan; look no further than the 2024 election. This lack of any clear, positive vision, beyond a dogged defense of the status quo, is a big reason why Democrats have struggled in the Trump era, and also why Andrew Cuomo seems to be on the verge of another embarrassing defeat. “The days of moral victories must come to an end.” “That’s the doom for Cuomo,” de Blasio said. “He’s never, in this whole time, actually presented a compelling and appealing vision. He’s been sour as a persona and entitled, which is ironic given his scandals. But he spent so much time trying to knock down Zohran, trying to belittle Zohran, he never bothered to actually provide a compelling and appealing positive vision for the city. And the voters noticed.” The former mayor warned, however, that Mamdani’s likely victory, driven by a wave of energy and excitement, is only the beginning of the battle. Many of the forces that oppose him today will almost certainly seek to portray him as a failure once he’s in office. “People who want to undermine him will start doing it immediately,” de Blasio cautioned. “I think they’ll fail, but I absolutely believe there will be a substantial effort to undermine him for quite a while.” Such potential sabotage may already be underway, with Adams considering stacking the city’s Rent Guidelines Board with anti-Mamdani appointees to thwart his rent freeze proposal. But Mamdani himself maintains that his movement can, and should, reach the rest of the country. At the Working Families Party statewide convention in Brooklyn earlier this year, he laid out his vision before a small crowd of diverse and adoring supporters, using the sort of grandiose language he has rarely deployed on the campaign trail. “The success of our movement is not just success that can take place in one city. It is success that we must see take hold in all of these cities,” Mamdani said. “As I said in the weeks leading up to this primary, the days of moral victories must come to an end. The days of patting ourselves for trying have to be over. We must now enter into the days of victory, the days of delivery, the days of outcomes.” After decades that have seen the Democrats embrace big business, the Supreme Court open the floodgates for money to command American politics and a de facto and well-planned legalization of corruption, this movement, to many of the richest and most powerful Americans, represents an existential crisis. If the wealthy can’t stop a candidate willing to prioritize everyday people over the elites from winning in New York — a city groomed and cultivated as a playground for the wealthy for many generations — the door is open for their control to be challenged in many other cities, in statehouses across the country and, eventually, perhaps in Washington, D.C.
