It was not the most important story in the world – or perhaps even in America – this week, but the election of 34-year-old Democrat Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York captured attention far and wide. The charismatic Uganda-born socialist was widely expected to win, his remarkable campaign having long ago eclipsed that of veteran Andrew Cuomo, but that didn’t lessen the impact of what Washington Correspondent Keith Duggan called his “fairytale in New York” on Tuesday.
In many European states Mamdani would be regarded as unremarkably centrist in his views, but in the United States business leaders and the political establishment have been spooked by his rise. Donald Trump calls him a dangerous Marxist. The front page of New York Post the day after his triumph carried a picture of Mamdani with a superimposed red hammer and sickle in his hands beside the headline The Red Apple.
Mamdani is a talented politician who ran an astute campaign – one with parallels to that of Catherine Connolly in her run for the Irish presidency, according to Political Correspondent Harry McGee. And his success is already being closely studied by parties of the left across the world. (One lesson they – and all politicians – should draw, argues Finn McRedmond, is that likeable politicians with personalities are more likely to keep the populists at bay than boring proponents of managerial centrism).
But at the core of Mamdani’s success was his ability to speak to generations of New Yorkers who have been priced out of their city due to a spiralling cost of living, and to propose ideas they regarded as daring and necessary.
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“When Mamdani conceived an election campaign based on fixing a broken civic model for New Yorkers, he tapped into a massive reserve fund of frustration and despair and a desperation for change,” Keith writes.
“The groundswell of enthusiasm among the elusive 18- to 30-year-old voters became the oxygen of Mamdani’s campaign. He looked fresh and irresistible and made the establishment political machine appear jaded and bereft of ... everything.”
It was a good week for the Democrats. In addition to Mamdani’s victory, the party was celebrating the gubernatorial wins of Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey.
The strategies deployed by this week’s winners illuminate the party’s unresolved contradictions, however. Mamdani’s unapologetically progressive platform, including positions on Palestine that unsettle traditional party power brokers, stands in contrast to the centrist posture struck by Spanberger and Sherrill. Their pitch to voters focused on courting suburban moderates who deserted Democrats in 2024. These differences reflect distinct electoral landscapes. But they also reveal deeper ideological fissures that will shape the party’s identity ahead of the 2028 presidential race.
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