Mamdani received by uplifting and uniting a few of New York Metropolis’s most forgotten voters. His coalition now has an opportunity to rework what’s potential for individuals all over the place.
Zohran Mamdani with supporters in Brooklyn on Could 4, 2025.
(Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis by way of Getty Pictures)
On a chilly February day in 2017, the gates came down on 1000’s of bodegas throughout New York Metropolis. Many had been Yemeni-owned, family-run shops—locations that nearly by no means closed, not for a blizzard, not for a blackout, not even for Eid. However simply this as soon as, they did. The event was Donald Trump’s first Muslim ban. The homeowners shut their lights, locked their doorways, and taped notes to the glass: “Closed in protest. Closed for dignity. Closed for America.”
That day, they gathered outdoors Brooklyn’s Borough Corridor below a winter sky, praying within the chilly and waving American flags. It regarded like a protest, nevertheless it felt like one thing deeper. It was a collective act of defiance—and belonging. For years after 9/11, Arab and Muslim New Yorkers had lived below the lengthy shadow of surveillance and suspicion, instructed to maintain their heads down, keep quiet, and be grateful. The 2017 bodega strike broke that silence. Right here had been Muslim employees and small enterprise homeowners—unapologetic, organized, and standing shoulder to shoulder—not asking for permission however asserting their place within the metropolis they helped construct. It wasn’t nearly Trump’s ban. It was a rupture with the post-9/11 politics of concern. It marked the emergence of a brand new sort of Muslim American politics—rooted in solidarity, seen in public, and grounded in energy, not simply presence.
Few noticed it for what it was. However that day was not solely an finish to hiding. It was the quiet starting of a realignment that will take clearer form years later, when New York Democrats selected Zohran Mamdani as their nominee for mayor.
Mamdani’s win is historic within the methods the headlines seize. He’s the primary Muslim and South Asian nominee for mayor of New York, and the primary democratic socialist in generations to have an actual shot at main a serious American metropolis. However the primary info aren’t the actual story. The actual story is how he received—and why.
When Andrew Cuomo launched his comeback bid, the Democratic institution appeared wanting to faux the final decade hadn’t occurred. Cuomo ran as if it had been nonetheless 2010, leaning on the identical donors, repeating the identical speaking factors, spending tens of millions on tv adverts, and betting {that a} weary voters would accept the satan they knew.
However Mamdani noticed one thing they didn’t. He acknowledged how a lot the bottom had shifted. That shift started, partly, with the bodega strike in 2017. Among the individuals who had organized or participated in that protest helped energy his marketing campaign. Others, who had been politicized by it or had been ignored since, joined his coalition. The reminiscence of that second—when immigrant communities stood as much as say, “We belong right here”—didn’t fade. It deepened. It matured.
These weren’t symbolic gestures. They had been seeds. Mamdani’s marketing campaign grew from years of organizing, frustration, and grief, particularly amongst younger progressives, immigrants, and Arab and Muslim communities who had lengthy been pushed to the get together’s margins. He didn’t simply run in opposition to Cuomo. He ran in opposition to the political amnesia that forgot the individuals who confirmed up when it mattered.
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No subject revealed that disconnect extra clearly than Gaza. Over the previous 20 months, as tens of 1000’s of Palestinian civilians had been killed by American-made bombs, Democratic leaders supplied excuses as a substitute of motion. Even because the get together’s base shifted towards supporting Palestinian rights, the management stood firm.
Within the major, Cuomo adopted this script, accusing Mamdani of extremism for his pro-Palestinian views and demanding loyalty assessments. However Mamdani didn’t flinch. He named what was occurring. He mentioned that solidarity isn’t a slogan, that multiracial democracy should imply one thing for these most frequently requested to attend.
Voters didn’t punish him for it. They rewarded him. As a Bangladeshi Uber driver instructed me on election night time, “Zohran is for peace, not battle. He’s for abnormal individuals. We don’t need extra wars. We’d like assist right here in New York.”
This readability wasn’t rhetorical. It was the inspiration of his marketing campaign. And it labored. Mamdani didn’t simply win in Park Slope or Cobble Hill. He received all over the city: in Jackson Heights, Richmond Hill, Sundown Park, Chinatown, and Flushing. He flipped swing districts like Oakland Gardens, locations that had voted for Joe Biden in 2020, for GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin in 2022, and for Donald Trump final 12 months. He united two groups that not often transfer in tandem: younger progressives and working-class immigrants.
This coalition didn’t seem out of skinny air. It was constructed over the course of a decade, beginning with Bernie Sanders’s 2016 marketing campaign, the rise of DSA in New York politics, the Justice Democrats victories of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, and the defeat of the Republican-aligned, Cuomo-backed Unbiased Democratic Coalition, a win fueled partly by the Working Households Social gathering. It gained power by means of protests, petitions, primaries, and losses. It realized learn how to win by studying learn how to lose—collectively.
By 2023, socialists held extra seats in Albany than at any time up to now hundred years. Arab, Muslim, and Bangladeshi communities had begun electing their very own leaders and forming sturdy establishments. Mamdani grew inside that motion. When he ran for mayor, he was prepared.
Whereas nationwide Democrats pulled again, Mamdani leaned in. He ran on a clear and grounded message: freeze rents, make buses free, construct public grocery shops. His stance on Israel and Palestine wasn’t buried, and it wasn’t remoted. It was a part of a broader argument about dignity, housing, and whose voices matter. He made democratic socialism sound like widespread sense. He invited individuals in—to not agree on every part, however to construct one thing larger than themselves.
He additionally understood that solidarity is one thing you do. His alliance with Brad Lander, New York’s progressive Jewish comptroller, was not simply symbolic. It was strategic. Collectively, they confirmed that Muslims and Jews may share energy with out flattening their variations, and that actual coalition is constructed by means of motion, not simply speak.
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Some will say Mamdani received due to Cuomo’s failures, or as a result of younger voters like TikTok. However this wasn’t a vibe marketing campaign. It was a marketing campaign about housing, buses, meals, and battle. Sure, the communications had been sharp. Sure, Mamdani understood the second. However what made his marketing campaign highly effective was its honesty. It didn’t simply look good. It instructed the reality.
The hazard now’s that Democrats will take the mistaken lesson from Mamdani’s triumph. They could attempt to copy Mamdani’s media technique whereas ignoring the content material of his message. Someplace, somebody is already pitching a crypto-friendly meme concerning the “Alternative Economic system” sponsored by JPMorgan. However what moved voters wasn’t the medium. It was the message.
Mamdani’s critics name him radical. So did critics of Fiorello La Guardia within the Nineteen Thirties. The New York Occasions said La Guardia was obsessive about “socialistic playthings” like public energy. Right now, La Guardia is remembered not as a radical however as one of many metropolis’s best mayors. They named an airport after him.
If Mamdani’s victory appears like one thing new, it’s. However it is usually a return. A return to a politics that sees dignity as nonnegotiable, solidarity as a technique, and management as a instrument for the various. In a metropolis lengthy ruled by warning, voters selected boldness. They selected reminiscence over forgetting.
They remembered the bodegas. They remembered the prayers within the chilly. They remembered what it felt prefer to be omitted—and what it felt prefer to struggle again. And this time, they didn’t simply protest. They voted.
The query now’s whether or not Mamdani’s coalition can govern. If it could, it may not simply change New York. It’d change what’s potential all over the place.
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Extra from The Nation
Neither Invoice Clinton nor Jim Clyburn nor all of Michael Bloomberg’s billions may save Andrew Cuomo from the defeat he deserved.
Amazingly, he then translated that right into a real-life victory that may eternally change the best way elections are fought.
Mamdani laid out the technique. Now the left ought to observe his instance and first Ritchie Torres, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and so many others.
In a rebuke to cynical Democratic insiders and the New York Occasions editorial web page, voters backed a democratic socialist for mayor of the nation’s largest metropolis.
