On Tuesday night, Zohran Mamdani shocked the political establishment. There are lessons that national Democrats should take from his strong showing in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. But I worry they won’t. Democrats have a curiosity problem, and it’s losing us elections.
After Bernie Sanders mounted a formidable challenge to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary, precious few Democratic leaders asked what they could learn from it. Two years later, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out of nowhere to defeat the No. 4-ranking Democrat in the House. They again dismissed it as a fluke.
The party establishment’s impulse to stifle and ignore some of its most exciting emerging voices isn’t limited to progressives. Take Chris Deluzio in Pennsylvania or Pat Ryan in New York. While decidedly more moderate than Mr. Mamdani, both congressmen campaigned last fall on bringing down costs for people in their swing districts and taking on huge corporations and billionaires, a strategy Mr. Ryan described as “patriotic populism.” Even though it won them both races, Washington Democrats have been hesitant to embrace that strategy.
I saw similar complacency last year while advising Ruben Gallego’s successful Senate campaign in Arizona. Although Mr. Gallego was the only Democratic candidate in the race, we struggled to get buy-in early on from the Washington Democratic establishment. It saw his blunt-spoken style as too risky for Arizona. He went on to outperform Kamala Harris by eight points.
If Democratic leaders don’t start asking themselves how these candidates won, and what they can learn from their success, we’ll be doomed to fail in the future.
Since their losses last fall, Democrats have obsessed over how to reverse their declining fortunes. By and large, the consensus has been that we need candidates with a sharp economic argument that can connect with young people, men, voters of color and the working class.
In the New York City mayoral race we got a candidate who checked many of those boxes: Mr. Mamdani.
My media consulting firm made ads for Mr. Mamdani, so maybe I’m a bit biased. But whether you agree with him on the issues or not, it’s clear from early results — and Mr. Cuomo’s stunning concession Tuesday night — that he succeeded. The race may not be called until next week, and the general election isn’t until November, but Mr. Mamdani indisputably managed to leap from obscurity to front-runner in mere months. He did so by staying relentlessly on message and grounding that message in affordability. Ask an Andrew Cuomo voter for some of his top policy ideas, and he or she will probably struggle to name one. Ask a Mamdani voter, and I bet he or she could name a few: “Freeze the rent,” “free buses,” “a city you can afford.”
Mr. Mamdani also got creative about how to communicate his message. He broke through on social media with viral videos that reached beyond the professionally online crowd. Mr. Cuomo and some of his other rivals derided him as a “social media messenger,” as if that were an insult. They mocked his videos at the debates.
Mr. Mamdani’s viral debate clip attacking Mr. Cuomo for his record of scandal and misconduct racked up over 10 million views on X and over a million more on TikTok. Sure, X is not real life, and virality alone doesn’t win elections, but actually motivating young people to go to the polls sure can.
Early voting more than doubled this year compared with 2021, largely because of a huge influx of young voters: As of Thursday, more 25- to 34-year-olds had cast ballots than any other age group. Mr. Mamdani also polled well with men.
While Mr. Cuomo and his allies wrote off Mr. Mamdani’s social media success, they missed how it was manifesting in palpable enthusiasm across the city. We saw that at the ballot box on Tuesday, but even before they started counting votes, you could feel it.
On Friday, starting around 7 p.m., Mr. Mamdani walked the length of Manhattan — about 13 miles. As he walked by, street vendors recognized him and shook his hand. Outdoor diners jumped up from their tables to tell him that he gave them hope, and young people waiting outside of bars screamed his name and took selfies with him. Some supporters joined in on the walk after they said hello. It reminded me of the “Forrest Gump” scene where he runs across America and slowly crowds join in behind him.
Sounds like a candidate for the party to invest in, right?
Instead, national Democrats — with the help of Trump donors — came together to try to stop him by funneling $25 million into a pro-Cuomo PAC.
Winning elections is about addition. We need a big tent. That’s why instead of writing off candidates who resonate with voters because we disagree on an issue or two, Democrats should be asking why voters were drawn to them in the first place.
I’m not saying Democrats should try to run candidates exactly like Mr. Mamdani everywhere. That’s not going to work for a lot of reasons.
But I am begging Democrats to embrace candidates who can authentically speak to the electorate they’re running to represent, whether they’re in red, blue, urban or rural areas. And we should not be so quick to squash exciting candidates just because they seem risky, look different or challenge the status quo. Sometimes we have to try new things.
And when we do find candidates who resonate, we should welcome them into our tent — and try to figure out how they do it.
With so much on the line in 2026, Democrats can’t get curious soon enough.
Rebecca Kirszner Katz is a founder of the Fight Agency, a media consulting firm for populist candidates.
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