As his rivals in the New York City mayoral election slouch into the final two months of the race, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani of Queens easily maintains his double-digit lead in polls, and national and state leaders continue to fret over how a socialist with no executive experience is set to take charge of America’s largest city.
It’s not that New York voters have suddenly become socialists in the past four years, any more than national voters suddenly became MAGA militants last fall in re-electing Donald Trump as president.
In both cases, more traditional Democrats failed to realize that it’s not enough to point out a transgressive candidate’s shortcomings. You have to offer voters something better. And few Democrats seem to be able to do that.
Despite Mr. Mamdani’s charisma and campaign prowess, he, like Mr. Trump, should be a mainstream Democrat’s dream opponent. His economic policies, like Mr. Trump’s, are transparently impractical.
Mr. Mamdani’s vague idea to open city-run grocery stores couldn’t address what’s causing high food prices. His proposal to nearly double the city’s minimum wage, to $30 an hour, ignores that the city still hasn’t recovered tens of thousands of lost retail and hospitality jobs. His promise to freeze rents on regulated apartments would only superficially limit housing costs and would make it hard for property owners to pay higher costs for fuel, labor and taxes.
Yet Mr. Mamdani’s opponents have failed to puncture his lead as they have increased their focus on his imperfections. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, vanquished in the June Democratic primary and now running as an independent, has attacked Mr. Mamdani as a “rich” person hoarding a rent-stabilized apartment that a “homeless” single mother needs. Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat also running as an independent after choosing not to seek his party’s nomination, has called Mr. Mamdani a “snake oil salesman.”
Both men are making the same mistake made by Mr. Trump’s opponents in 2016 and last year. They assume that Mr. Mamdani’s unorthodox policy ideas and personal flaws are so self-evidently disqualifying that voters will reject him if they keep hearing how bad he is.
Instead, Mr. Mamdani’s opponents are simply reminding voters that it is not just his easy manner and casual promises that make him successful: They have no winning message of their own.
Like Mr. Trump and his “make America great again” promise, Mr. Mamdani offers a simplistic message: He can decree a more affordable city, whether a decree over the rent, a decree over the grocery price or a decree over the wage.
Even if Mr. Cuomo or Mr. Adams had a coherent message to offer, they would make selling it harder, just by being themselves.
All Mr. Cuomo has accomplished this summer in attacking Mr. Mamdani is to demonstrate his unsteadiness in a new political world. “I live rent-free in his head,” Mr. Mamdani said after Mr. Cuomo attacked him for living in an apartment with a regulated rent that a lower-income person could use.
Mr. Cuomo has countered Mr. Mamdani’s promise of a rent freeze with a convoluted proposal that would make many middle-class voters ineligible for rent-stabilized housing — hardly a wise political gambit. And Mr. Cuomo’s increasingly manic campaign style could remind discerning voters of his third term as governor, when, panicked over challenges from the left, he became unmoored from his centrist instincts and approved deeply flawed laws on bail reform and rent regulation.
Mr. Adams, who was elected to reduce crime and to some extent has done so, could contrast himself with Mr. Mamdani, who once favored “defund the police.”
Except nobody now takes Mr. Adams seriously on anything.
He escaped federal corruption charges only because the Trump administration got them dismissed in what seemed like a deal to get his support for the president’s deportation efforts. Corruption accusations hang over a number of his close aides and officials, including new charges by the Manhattan district attorney against his former chief adviser and reports that Adams operatives have been handing out money to reporters.
Mr. Adams is struggling to get above single digits in polls and, despite being a sitting mayor in a Democratic city, trails the Republican nominee, the Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.
Mr. Mamdani is ahead not because voters are ignorant about his plans or his flaws or too dumb or desperate to care. Many do like his plans. But he’s mainly leading because he has run a competent, engaging campaign, and his opponents have not. Even if Mr. Mamdani is as awful as his opponents insist, campaigning against an opponent’s flaws works only if you don’t seem even worse.
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Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
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