Zohran Mamdani’s rapid rise from outer-borough state assemblyman to shock Democratic mayoral nominee was already one of the biggest political stories in years in New York City.
Now, the 34-year-old democratic socialist’s victory in Tuesday’s mayoral election has put him on the verge of becoming an even bigger story nationally. Operatives and political leaders on the progressive left and MAGA right are looking to nationalize Mamdani’s narrative for the midterm elections and beyond, as he begins his transition from campaigning to governing the nation’s largest city.
Whether the political tactic works for either side, to change or brand the Democratic Party, largely depends on just one thing: whether Mamdani is as effective a mayor as he was a candidate.
His success will depend on a few factors, starting with whom he hires and builds coalitions with, as well as which issues he prioritizes, former Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto said. Peduto said that Mamdani needs to bring in a combination of people from inside and outside government to fill out his administration, all while getting buy-in from state government and city institutions on his policy agenda.
Already, Mamdani has made clear that he is giving close attention to those factors, meeting with business leaders and others outside his core coalition after he won the Democratic primary in June. Once a strident critic of the New York City Police Department, Mamdani apologized for past comments during the campaign and announced that he would ask Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, to stay in her post in his administration.
Wednesday morning, Mamdani announced his transition team leadership, which includes veterans of Mike Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams’ mayoral administrations, as well as former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.
“The first mistake that an activist candidate makes is that they hire activists in government roles,” said Peduto, a two-term mayor in his city who was ousted by a progressive challenger in 2021. After a series of missteps, the new mayor was ousted in a primary after just one term.
“And activists are, for the most part, contrarians,” Peduto added. “They show you where the problems are. That’s important in a democracy, but you can’t run a government with people who only know where the problems are.”
In an interview with NBC News last week, Mamdani expressed openness to hiring members of the Democratic Socialists of America, the left-wing group that helped foster his rise, to roles in his administration. He also said he is looking to build a team of New Yorkers “who have served in a wide variety of mayoral administrations and whose track record can be characterized by a record of excellence and an ability to deliver on agendas that are as ambitious as the crises that New Yorkers face.”
“He has the opportunity to work beyond the base that elected him,” Peduto continued, adding, “Mayors work in a collaborative effort in order to be able to build consensus for their constituents. If he’s able to build those relationships and build those bridges in Albany, in Washington, and with City Council, there’s no denying that he’ll be able to utilize the energy he showed in this campaign in order to be able to make New York City a better place.”
The left looks for a leader
With a relative handful of votes still outstanding, Mamdani has just more than 50% of the general election vote in New York City, 9 points beyond former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the primary, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. The left-wing winner’s allies saw the 50% line as a key threshold to claim a mandate to govern.
“He can be an effective mayor by continuing to do what he has been doing,” said Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for the progressive group Justice Democrats. “If there’s one lesson to learn, it’s that everyone who told Zohran that he should move to the right on this, get less on this, talk less about this, don’t fight for these big issues, were all wrong. And the people who were right were the grassroots movement that [helped] Zohran win this election, not once, but twice.”
Mamdani did spend months seeking conciliation with New York stakeholders and residents who may have opposed or been concerned by his insurgent candidacy, but he struck an emboldened tone in his victory speech. He also highlighted the far-reaching policy aims that have run through his whole campaign, including freezing rent on rent-stabilized housing, enacting universal child care and creating a free bus program, while pledging to achieve the “most ambitious agenda” since Great Depression-era New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.
“New York, tonight you have delivered a mandate for change,” Mamdani said. “A mandate for a new kind of politics. A mandate for a city we can afford and a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that.”
“We will prove there is no problem too large for government to solve and no problem too small for it to care about,” he added.
For the mayor-elect, who will take office in January, campaign season may roll on. Mamdani’s rise was bolstered by his adept use of social media to keep affordability issues in the foreground.
“In one sense, the campaign never ends,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “The more storytelling and public engagement he does, the more leverage he will have to get his agenda passed quickly, through the council, through Albany when needed, and even culturally, through the bureaucracy that may instinctively be slower to want change as he’s demanding big changes.”
“In my mind, where Democrats have made mistakes in the past is when they’ve won elections and then brought the conversation entirely behind closed doors, kept the public unengaged, and then lost all the leverage of their mandate,” Green continued. “I don’t expect him to make that mistake at all.”
The right looks for a socialist to resist
Republicans are already betting on Mamdani’s failure.
Following a strong election night for Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey, elected officials and GOP operatives keyed in on Mamdani, signaling their intent to try to make him a key part of their midterm message. They had already started to dub Democratic candidates as “the Mamdani” of their state or district, betting that the candidate’s left-wing policy proposals, immigrant background and unapologetic pro-Palestinian activism will play poorly in swing district races often decided by political moderates.
“Commie Mamdani is the true leader of the Democrats,” Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., said in a statement. “The reason [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer shut down the government is because he is terrified that the Mamdani wing of the party is going to end his political career in a primary.”
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said Mamdani’s election opens up a conversation for Democrats about whether his brand of politics is the future of their party.
“I have adult Democrats in my state that are on farms and ranches that have been Democrats their whole lives and their parents’ whole life before them who will look at that and say, ‘That’s not my party, that’s not who I am,’” Lankford said. “That will cause even more and more socially conservative Democrats around the country to say, ‘My party’s left me. This is totally different than the JFK party when I joined.’ So we’ll just have to see where that trend goes.”
Yet, there is an apparent divide on the right, too, in how to respond to Mamdani’s ascent. One Senate GOP aide said that, while they believe Mamdani’s mayoral term is “going to play into our hands,” they also understand why the candidate ran a successful campaign. And the aide said it’s important for the Republican Party to take lessons from that, too.
“There’s a bunch of 20- or 30-year-old professionals in New York who can’t get jobs and go buy homes,” this person said. “They want good jobs. … It’s not hard to see why they might be upset.”
Meanwhile, the Trump factor looms over both Mamdani’s place in midterm messaging and his success as mayor.
The president already pledged to take punitive measures against New York City should Mamdani win, as he called the state assemblyman a “communist” and offered Cuomo a last-minute endorsement. After Mamdani’s win, the White House released an image that appeared to be a New York Knicks logo containing the words “Trump Is Your President.”
Mamdani has pledged to fight Trump head-on and said in his victory speech that he would dismantle “the conditions” in New York City “that allowed” Trump “to accumulate power.”
“This is not only about how we stop Trump,” he said, “but how to stop the next one.”
A person familiar with the White House’s thinking said how much the president and his allies focus on Mamdani in the midterms depended not only on whether he won Tuesday or by how much, but also on how he ended up governing.
“I’m of the mind that it’s too early to assess how useful he is as a national foil,” this person said. “We’ll know soon.”
One key policy area to watch
Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said he’s particularly keen to see how Mamdani moves to bring his universal child care pledge to fruition. National Democrats have pushed for similar child care policies in recent years to no avail, as costs have soared.
“It would both debunk a talking point that it’s impossible for him to get something done on things that require Albany’s approval and also be a North Star for Democrats, if he can actually get child care to be more affordable,” Green said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, has expressed interest in working with Mamdani on the issue. While Mamdani is set to oversee a bureaucracy that has a workforce of more than 300,000 people, his powers are somewhat limited, and he will need buy-in from the New York City Council, the state Legislature in Albany and other stakeholders to make his goals reality.
Already, Hochul has not expressed much enthusiasm for a tax hike, as Mamdani calls for a 2% tax on incomes over $1 million to fund his proposals.
Peduto said Mamdani can make progress on his agenda but needs to get corporations, local nonprofits and foundations, state leaders and the city’s congressional delegation on board to make it a reality.
“He can put together pilot programs and begin to put together different initiatives that will allow him to see success,” he said. “But only if he decides to be a consensus builder, and does not allow supporters who simply want to defeat another side control the agenda.”
As it stands, there is a Democratic divide over how much to feature Mamdani in their own midterm messaging.
Democrats who say they disagree with Mamdani do praise his focus on affordability, while progressives want to drive a contrast between Mamdani’s new vision for governance and center-left candidates who they say mostly built their campaigns around anti-Trump outrage
“Without worrying about the labels or even any one individual issue, there’s a defining choice for Democrats of — do we have just an anti-Trump message or a fresh feeling, forward looking agenda that taps into economic populism and challenges billionaires,” Green said, adding that Mamdani’s campaign “will be an ongoing symbol for Democrats.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., who has shared some political consultants with Mamdani, said his candidacy showed that candidates who talk “to the needs of the community, you’re going to have success.”
“I don’t agree with Zohran on everything, and I have different prescriptions for some of the ailments in society and the economy, but he’s talking about it,” Gallego said. “He ran against somebody who was both just corrupt to begin with, but No. 2, didn’t talk to people about what they were worried about. Voters in New York were worried about the cost of living, about having a future, and Zohran talked about that.”
“Zohran can’t win in Arizona, I can’t win in New York City,” Gallego added. “But we have very similar success in the fact that we talk to people and are trying to actually solve a problem that they feel every day.”
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