Thirty-three-year-old state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s momentous victory in the New York City mayoral primary over his chief rival, former governor Andrew M. Cuomo, has “stunned” New York’s establishment, and superficially ushered in a new day in which New Yorkers no longer care about public safety and order and instead are focused on securing more free stuff. Before declaring the dawning of a new socialist era, though, consider just how unusual this election was.
1. Turnout. The primary didn’t spur a massive increase in voter participation. With 96 percent of the vote in, just shy of 1 million people have voted, not a significant increase above the 950,000 people who came out in 2021. What changed the makeup of this voter base was arguably not an ideological shift in the city, but electoral rigor. Which brings us to . . .
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2. GOTV. Mamdani, who garnered 43.5 percent of the vote, ran an enthusiastic and competent get-out-the-vote operation, which started last October. He turned his campaign into a social event, particularly for young people, and he adeptly used the tens of thousands of volunteers he attracted to capitalize on New York’s early-voting period, which started June 14. Early voting surged. Cuomo, by contrast, didn’t even enter the race until this March. He didn’t try to connect with the grass roots, and instead ran a more traditional get-out-the-vote strategy, reliant on union members and paid workers, and focused mostly on the weekend before Election Day and Election Day itself. Which, as it turned out, was hot—very hot.
3. 100°F. The New York City temperature on Election Day was 100 degrees, which kept some of Cuomo’s voting base—older people—home. They stayed home in part because of the dangerously oppressive heat and humidity but also because of …
4. The cracked vessel. Cuomo voters were not enthusiastic about their candidate. Crime and public order easily rival affordability as New Yorkers’ top concern, but for moderate voters repelled by Mamdani’s defund-the-police history, Cuomo was only the least-bad alternative of several lackluster choices. Voters had to overlook not only the character flaws that culminated in his resignation from the governorship in 2021 but also forget the fact that Cuomo was the governor who approved a slate of pre-2020 laws that loosened the state’s criminal-justice regime as well as moved psychiatric beds from intensive inpatient hospitals to less rigorous community settings. In 2021, Eric Adams, a former police captain, ran on an uncompromising platform of law and order; this year, moderate voters had to squint to find what they wanted to see in Cuomo. By contrast . . .
5. Simplicity. Mamdani offered a clear, simple message. Free buses. Free childcare for babies on up. Freeze the rent. As part of a journalists’ group called the New York Editorial Board, which includes my colleague Liena Zagare, I met with every Democratic candidate save one—Cuomo, who refused to meet with us. Without looking at the transcripts, I couldn’t tell you today what the main message of any of the other six candidates was. They ran on everything and nothing. They all agreed on one thing—build more housing—about which voters didn’t seem interested. Similarly, four years ago, Adams ran on a clear, simple message: reduce crime and revive the city’s post-Covid economy—which propelled him past his more technocratic chief rival, former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia.
Mamdani’s victory is obviously not all about packaging. He ran and won handily, and if he wins the general election in November, he will have a voter mandate to enact some policies truly harmful to New York City—particularly higher taxes on businesses and on wealthier residents, who can easily move elsewhere, and have been doing so. All we know for now is that Mamdani won not so much because of a platform of radical socialism, but for an old democratic reason: he ran the best campaign. He wanted it more than any of his rivals, and it showed.
New Yorkers will have one last chance, in November, to decide: do they want socialism, or not?
Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images