If Zohran Mamdani weren’t in his first year as mayor of New York City, he might just as easily have ended up as a risk manager at an investment firm. He excels at making political investments with limited downside for him when they fail but magnificent upside when they succeed.
Mamdani’s initially long-shot mayoral campaign, launched in October 2024, was the first such investment. Since New York State and City elections are staggered in alternate years, he didn’t have to give up his seat representing Queens in the state assembly to run. The worst potential outcome, from his perspective, would be to gain a citywide and perhaps nationwide profile. And the best that could happen? Well, it happened: he became mayor of America’s greatest city.
Finally, a reason to check your email.
Sign up for our free newsletter today.
Mamdani won in part both because of charisma and because he worked relentlessly. But also, like all great investors and skilled politicians, he saw what no one else saw: while New York’s political establishment and press focused on local corruption scandals and the continued fallout from the massive crime surge in 2020 and 2021, regular people—including the hundreds of thousands of relative newcomers to New York City, many of whom would support his campaign—were more concerned about the city’s ever-more oppressive cost of living.
A year on from his primary win, Mamdani has pulled off another masterfully hedged bet. His full slate of congressional candidates won in New York City’s Tuesday primary races.
Two of his picks won big. Claire Valdez, a 36-year-old state assemblywoman and former Columbia University clerical worker and union organizer, beat Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso by double digits; and Brad Lander, former city comptroller and one-time rival to Mamdani for the mayoralty, beat two-term incumbent Dan Goldman, also by a two-digit margin. Meantime, Darializa Avila Chevalier, a researcher for public defenders as she works toward a Columbia sociology doctorate, won more narrowly against five-term incumbent Adriano Espaillat.
It looks like Mamdani took a big risk and won big, again—but note how little risk he really took. He needed only one of these three congressional seats to claim a victory. Even a single seat flipping from establishment Democrat to the insurgent Left would have changed the status quo and given him some bragging rights.
Flipping one seat was always going to be easy: Goldman, representing the lower third of Manhattan and northwest Brooklyn, was vulnerable because of his support for Israel in a city increasingly hostile to the Jewish state. And without much of a political base of his own, Goldman was easy pickings to a challenger like Lander, who has had a long career as an elected official with a base in traditional liberal-progressive northwest Brooklyn. (Unlike this week’s other two insurgents, Lander is not a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.)
Valdez, running to represent Brooklyn and Queens extending from the Manhattan waterfront, and Chevalier, running in Manhattan from Harlem northward, were classic DSA-style candidates. Mamdani could hardly have refused to support them in the spirit of solidarity, but if either or both had lost, he still would have been fine. Neither is as charismatic as, say, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Mayor Mamdani himself. And Chevalier is extreme even for a DSA member: she believes in fully open borders and full prison abolition.
If any of these candidates had lost, Mamdani could have implied that their weaknesses couldn’t overcome his presence in the race. In a recent Manhattan city council race, his preferred candidate, Lindsey Boylan, best known for making the initial sexual-harassment allegations that helped bring down former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, lost big to an establishment Democrat. Hours later, everyone had forgotten.
Mamdani had to support this congressional slate, too, because of what he didn’t give the DSA this year. He refused to back a challenger to Governor Kathy Hochul, who is also up for reelection in the fall, and he wouldn’t endorse a challenge to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who represents east and south Brooklyn.
These calculations were politically pragmatic. New York State is more conservative than New York City, and Jeffries, for now, can still rely on an older, black voting base more moderate than Mamdani’s core supporters.
These moves were also pragmatic from a governing standpoint. Mamdani has consistently shown that he likes to play the good cop to someone else’s bad cop. Jessica Tisch, his police commissioner, a holdover from the Eric Adams era, performs this function on public safety. Governor Hochul plays the role by blocking some of Mamdani’s key campaign promises requiring state approval—from $9 billion in annual new taxes on high earners and big corporations to free buses in New York City.
Mamdani’s gains may make it harder for the Democrats to take over the House in November. Republicans can now tell swing voters that a vote for a local Democrat, seemingly moderate as he or she may be, is really a vote for a party whose socialist wing is ascendant.
But why should Mamdani care if Republicans hold on to the House? He gets along fine with President Donald J. Trump, who understands these political dynamics full well. If Trump holds Congress for the Republicans, he’ll have Mamdani partly to thank, and both men know that.
Many extraordinarily gifted politicians screw up eventually (see Andrew Cuomo). Often, this happens because they grow too arrogant after a series of political bets paid off. Mamdani’s tenure has a long way to go, but for now, his careful bets are still coming up aces.