Copyright The Boston Globe
Now Mamdani has also decisively won the general election, again beating Cuomo, who mounted a third-party bid after losing the primary. So how did Mamdani — who kicked off his campaign with virtually no name recognition — manage to become a national figure, seemingly overnight, and get elected to lead America’s biggest metropolis? In the days and weeks to come, you’ll hear a variety of answers to that question from Democrats and pundits trying to glean lessons from his success. The election postmortems will almost certainly include Mamdani’s laser focus on affordability, his creative and wide-reaching social media presence, and the degree of discipline he showed as a candidate. There will also be references to other factors like the mayor-elect’s charisma and convincing authenticity. The truth is that, yes, all of those elements of Mamdani’s historic campaign undoubtedly contributed to his victory. But there’s also something simple missing from all that analysis: Mamdani showed voters, again and again, that he’s actually trying to do something — anything — that will make life better for all New Yorkers. By definition, that might sound like any other campaign. That is, after all, what elections are supposed to be about. But in recent years, the Democratic Party has been stuck in a funk. Since Donald Trump first won the presidency in 2016, Democrats have largely focused their campaigns on how to stop the president and his assaults on democracy. And to their credit, that strategy had some moderate success, as in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election. But Trump is back in the White House and voters are tired of hearing that they need to show up to the ballot box just to stop the world from getting any worse. They do want to hear about how we can get to a brighter future. And that vision doesn’t tend to come from candidates who keep lecturing people on what’s not possible; it comes from candidates who campaign on fresh ideas and the notion that so long as we really want something — cheaper housing, higher wages, more livable cities — then we can make it happen. That’s exactly how Mamdani campaigned. While his opponents and critics argued that he was too naive, too inexperienced, or maybe even a swindler for suggesting that his policies can make New York more affordable, he was telling voters that the next mayor should, at the very least, try. Think about it: If I asked you what policies Mamdani has proposed, what comes to mind? Even if you don’t live in New York City but are mildly tuned into the news, you can probably think of a few, like freezing the rent, fast and free buses, and city-owned grocery stores. But what if I asked you what policies Cuomo proposed during the course of his campaign? Does anything actually come to mind other than, maybe, hiring more cops? Mamdani has been pioneering on two fronts: first, coming up with creative ideas that respond to voters’ primary concerns — especially when they relate to the high cost of living — and second, turning them into sound bites that are easy to digest and understand. Freezing the rent, for example, is a tangible step the city can take to bring rent increases under control for millions of residents living in rent-stabilized apartments. Making buses fare-free might not fix all of the city’s public-transit woes, but it would save you $2.90 per ride. And while there’s little the mayor can do to actually bring down the cost of groceries, the idea of starting a pilot program of five city-owned grocery stores — one in each of New York’s boroughs — shows voters that Mamdani is keen to experiment. Those ideas may not work. Even getting them off the ground will take a good deal of effort — in some cases requiring the state Legislature and governor to cooperate. But the power of these proposals is that they’re out-of-the-box — ideas you don’t usually hear from Establishment politicians — and that’s precisely what a lot of (especially younger) voters are looking for. Politics as usual has only led to steadily rising rents, so people are ready for someone to break the mold and try something new. That’s ultimately what Mamdani offered voters. And to be sure, he didn’t do that through his policies alone; his entire candidacy embodied a new kind of politics. He came off as an authentic candidate because he tried to maintain his principles, even on controversial issues he has little to no control over as mayor. He proudly identified himself as a democratic socialist, for example, while running to lead the financial capital of the world. He presented himself as a staunchly anti-Establishment candidate in a jurisdiction that’s home to some of the country’s highest-ranking Establishment figures, from Senate leader Chuck Schumer to House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. And he was undeterred by accusations of antisemitism hurled at him because of his advocacy for Palestinian liberation, doubling down on his criticism of Israel even though he was running in the city with the largest Jewish population in the United States. He and his supporters have faced escalating Islamophobic attacks and anti-Arab bigotry, and instead of shying away from Arab Americans — a community often derided, ignored, or flat-out dismissed as un-American — Mamdani unapologetically courted and embraced them with an ad featuring him speaking directly to that community in Arabic. That in and of itself showed people that he represented a rejection of the status quo — a style of politics where, win or lose, there’s a genuine interest in trying things out, even when they’re not poll-tested or focus-group approved. What Mamdani figured out, in other words, is that polls can only tell you so much. You also have to lead with conviction and not just play it safe. That’s what many voters found appealing about him and his ideas. His opponents, however, didn’t seem to understand that and instead kept telling voters that Mamdani promotes pie-in-the-sky ideas and promises that he won’t be able to keep. But the basic premise of Mamdani’s campaign wasn’t about making unrealistic promises. It was about sending the message that government isn’t working because no one has been willing to give new ideas a chance. He didn’t suggest, for example, that New York needs to completely overhaul how groceries are sold. He simply proposed a modest pilot program, and if it proves to be successful and popular, then the city can expand it. It’s hard to see how Mamdani will be able to maintain the level of popular enthusiasm his campaign generated when he takes the reins of City Hall and the reality of governance sinks in. But as Cuomo’s own father, the former three-term governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, liked to say: “You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose.” So far, Mamdani has aced the first part, and all because he was willing to try something new.
