Why Zohran Won the NYC Primary

What Democrats Can Must Learn from Mamdani

By Max from UNFTR

I can hear the spin already.

“New York is too liberal.”

“Of course New York City voted for a socialist.”

“New York deserves what it gets.”

Here’s the thing—New York is not as liberal as many think. Far from it, in fact.

This is the city that gave two terms to Rudy Giuliani and three to billionaire Michael Bloomberg—an on-again/off-again Democrat who was once a Republican, switched to independent before running a catastrophic primary campaign for president as a Democrat.

In anticipation of the response to Mamdani’s victory, we need to clear the air about what this means for the future of the Democratic Party. Beyond the throwaway “liberal New York” moniker and cries of socialism, here are the pundit fallacies that will emerge almost immediately.

• The Democratic establishment will dismiss Mamdani’s success because it’s a primary.

• The Democratic establishment will criticize ranked choice voting.

• The Republican establishment will say the liberal media influenced the outcome.

• They’ll both say he ran against a flawed candidate in Andrew Cuomo.

• And they will dismiss his candidacy because it’s New York and not representative of the rest of the country.

They will be wrong on all counts.

New York City is more of a bellwether than people outside of it might imagine. New York State is blue-ish.

Yes, the bicameral legislature in New York is dominated by Democrats and a Democrat has held the governor’s office since George Pataki left in 2007. New York City is even deeper blue, with Democrats dominating the city council and state legislative districts, and it carries the state in federal elections.

But when it comes to selecting a mayor, policies matter. Red, blue, purple or green. New York City voters will not be taken for granted and they will not be patronized.

More to the point, there are multiple shades of blue on the political color palette, and New Yorkers have a broad brush. There are months and miles to go until the election in November and the “Zohran is a Commie” fiesta has only just begun. But know this: Mamdani beat Andrew Cuomo in the primary because his ideas resonated.

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A Blueprint for Victory

It’s important to put New York City into context because this was Cuomo’s race to lose. Let’s dismiss the objections regarding the election one at a time.

Fallacy 1: The Democratic establishment will dismiss Mamdani’s success because it’s a primary.

This is an easy line to take because primary voters are typically more enthusiastic and consistent. But conventional wisdom says that primaries favor the establishment candidate and whomever appeals to older voters. The establishment can coordinate get-out-the-vote (GOTV) canvassing among union members and patronage loyalists. Older voters tend to favor the more conservative candidate, even in a Democratic primary. So on both counts, this should have been a cakewalk for Cuomo. Instead, a galvanized base of New Yorkers of all stripes and in every borough got the job done for a candidate who was a virtual unknown just a few short months ago.

Not to mention, this was no typical primary.

Both Mamdani and Cuomo hit their $8 million spending limit on their individual campaigns, a requirement to obtain city matching funds. But Cuomo’s outside support turned this into a billionaire bonanza with more than $24 million for city primary races raised by a PAC called Fix the City, which boasts funders like Bill Ackman, who endorsed Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election, and Michael Bloomberg, who didn’t necessarily see eye-to-eye with Cuomo when they were both in their respective positions. Of this eye-popping sum, nearly $16 million was reportedly spent trying to elect Andrew Cuomo. That’s nearly $25 million from Camp Cuomo alone to win a primary against a previously little-known state assemblyman.

Much of it went to smearing Mamdani by framing him as an ineffective, inexperienced, anti-semitic socialist. Nevertheless, he persisted.

Lastly, because the Republican Party in New York City has been summarily dismantled over the past decade, it has focused on smaller battles and left the mayor’s race to the Democrats. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t large swaths of Republican voters and independent-minded Democrats. Joe Biden won NYC by 53 points in 2020, but Kamala Harris only carried 68% of the vote in 2024. That’s how much the complexion of voting has changed in just a few short years and a harrowing reminder of how much the Queens native in the White House dominates mindshare in this country.

The Republicans are running Curtis Sliwa again, of Guardian Angels and talk show fame. In other words, they gave up a long time ago, most likely because everyone in city circles knew Cuomo was going to make this his big comeback campaign. For all intents and purposes, this was the election and not simply a primary. That said, Cuomo may not go quietly into the night because he pre-emptively established a third-party line.

If he continues his mayoral bid, despite running an uninspiring campaign for months, the general election field will include Eric Adams, the disgraced current Democratic mayor running on an independent line and the disgraced former Democratic governor, two corporate candidates voters rejected in favor of a candidate who established a deep connection with the city’s residents, mostly by being accessible and genuine. In Adams and Cuomo, you have two people who favor corporations above all else and are less interested in picking up the working class, especially true for Cuomo, whose listless campaign suggests he only wants the job to rehabilitate his political career.

Fallacy 2: The Democratic establishment will criticize ranked choice voting.

This one is already on the lips of disaffected insiders, but it’s an easy one to dismantle.

First of all, no candidate reached the threshold required for victory even under the prior rules. Therefore, a run-off would have occurred anyway, costing the city millions of dollars and reducing turnout for the second round. That’s what happened in 2001 when Fernando Ferrer came in first in the primary but didn’t surpass the threshold for victory. Then he ran against the second-place finisher, Mark Green, two weeks later and lost. File this under “careful what you wish for.”

More importantly, complaining after the fact about ranked choice is like saying you lost a sporting event because the wind was too strong or the sun was in your eyes. Everyone was in the same race, operating under the same rules—each side playing in the wind and the sun. So get over it.

Fallacy 3. They’ll both (Dems and Republicans) say he ran against a flawed candidate in Cuomo.

Heading into the primary, Cuomo held a commanding lead in the polls and had all the name recognition required to win. He was leading before he even entered the race. And all throughout, New Yorkers were aware of his sexual assault scandals, because we were the ones who pressured him to leave the governor’s mansion. They were keenly aware of his mishandling of the nursing homes during the initial outbreak of COVID. They were aware of his reputation as a bully.

Because of the overhyped media era during the pandemic, when all we had was television and the Internet to fuel our obsessions, pretty much the entire country was aware of Cuomo’s failings and all-consuming political style, thus the moniker, “King Cuomo.”

New Yorkers were aware of all of it, but just as the entire nation is intimately aware of Trump’s dirty laundry, most attacks against the former governor ricocheted right off. Yet he began with and long maintained a commanding lead because, well, there’s name recognition, and then there’s being the heir of a political dynasty. While the former carries a ton of weight during primaries, the latter seemingly makes someone like Cuomo inevitable.

But then something happened.

Someone emerged with fresh ideas and energy. Someone took to the streets, day and night, week after week to speak to New Yorkers about the things that really mattered to them. Voters didn’t learn anything about Cuomo that they didn’t already know. They were just finally offered a clear choice and a vision.

Fallacy 4: The Republican establishment will say the liberal media influenced the outcome.

Anyone who lives in New York can attest to the utter nonsense behind this sentiment. The New York Times has been critical of Mamdani, making sure headlines point out that he’s a Muslim, a socialist, a Muslim-socialist and inexperienced. You know, just so everyone knows.

But they saved their most savage remarks for the non-endorsement/endorsement of Andrew Cuomo saying, “We do not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots. His experience is too thin, and his agenda reads like a turbocharged version of Mr. de Blasio’s dismaying mayoralty. As for Mr. Cuomo, we have serious objections to his ethics and conduct, even if he would be better for New York’s future than Mr. Mamdani.”

This came after they lied about Mamdani’s accomplishments, then said Cuomo has “significant shortcomings” before crushing through a litany of his purported achievements. It was clear the editorial board knew that endorsing a serial sexual abuser was bad optics, so they gave the equivalent of a Willy Wonka “No, stop… don’t” endorsement.

As for the rest of the city publications, the Daily News has been dragging Mamdani from the beginning. The New York Post? Fuhgeddaboudit. amNY said, “Cuomo is the one. Rank him number one — and only him — on your ballot.” The Jewish Press said Cuomo has “baggage” but that “Mr. Mamdani, who would be a danger to everyone who lives in New York City, and especially its Jewish citizens.” The New Yorker lamented all of the candidates.

The so-called liberal media outside of New York, on the other hand, was extremely enthusiastic about Mamdani’s candidacy. This is true. But for every ebullient non-New York media piece about Mamdani, there were three hit pieces inside the city and about $25 million worth of advertisements to back it up.

Sorry, Charlie. The media didn’t decide this one. The people did.

Fallacy 5. They will dismiss his candidacy because it’s New York and not representative of the rest of the country.

Once again, this is the city that gave us Giuliani (twice) and Bloomberg (thrice). When it comes to local representation and federal elections, NYC is tried and true blue. But mayor is another thing entirely. This is not uncommon, mind you. Certain positions transcend party, causing voters to “bullet” the ballot and go out of their comfort zone. In some states, it’s the governor’s mansion. Case in point: Andy Beshear (D) is the governor of Kentucky; Phil Scott (R) is the governor of Vermont. In some cities, like New York, it’s the mayor’s office.

Candidates who transcend party affiliation have either extraordinary charisma or ideas that resonate with voters. Mamdani just happened to have both. But it was his ideas, repeated like mantras over and over again in interviews, on social media, in advertisements and by the legions of volunteers who fanned out across New York, that ultimately prevailed. If you live here, you can sing along.

• Freeze the rent.

• Make buses fast and free.

• Deliver universal childcare.

The establishment pundits like to say that “wokeness” cost Harris the election. But Harris didn’t run on a “woke” campaign. Neither did Biden before her. Or Hillary Clinton before him. This idea that leftist or progressive policies are tanking Democrats’ numbers is a complete misdirect. In both 2016 and especially in 2020, the establishment threw the kitchen sink at Bernie Sanders when his ideas began to catch fire across the country.

In 2016, Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned as Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair after leaked emails gave credence to the Sanders campaign’s claims that the organization was tipping the scale toward Clinton. In 2020, when Sanders was running the table in the early states, the DNC encouraged every candidate in the primary to back out of the race and endorse Joe Biden. The only one who didn’t was Elizabeth Warren because they knew she would split the progressive vote with Bernie.

“A good idea doesn’t care who it belongs to.”
- Plynn Williams

Clinton and Harris ran moderate, if not conservative, campaigns with confusing economic messages, tough on the border stances and tax cut pledges. The most popular aspects of Biden’s 2020 platform—college loan forgiveness, green energy construction incentives, expanding Medicaid, reducing prescription drug costs for seniors and universal free pre-school—were progressive ideas that were incorporated into the platform in return for Bernie’s endorsement. And he won. (Even if most of the progressive ideas were ultimately quashed.)

Democrats need to exit the circular firing squad and adopt winning strategies and platforms that speak to people, not at them. There’s nothing “woke” about universal healthcare. Or free public colleges. Universal pre-school. Voting access. A pathway to citizenship. Reducing military spending. Not only are these very human ideals, they’re attainable. (Oh, and they poll extremely well.)

Mamdani and his volunteers knocked on nearly 1 million doors throughout the campaign. And when those doors opened, they listened. And here’s what they heard: The city rent is unaffordable. Public transportation is terrible and expensive. Groceries are too costly and stores are too far from poor neighborhoods. Childcare is out of reach. Petty crime and physical assaults are on the rise and the cops don’t respond.

These grievances formed Mamdani’s platform, not the other way around. We’ve become so accustomed to top-down messaging from our political leaders that we’re shocked when a politician runs on what people want.

Illustrator Plynn Williams once wrote, “A good idea doesn’t care who it belongs to.” It’s time to get over the labels and start focusing on policies. And listening. And winning.

Max is a contributor to the MeidasTouch Network and President of UNFTR Media.

For deeper dives into economic and socioeconomic stories, visit UNFTR.com or @UNFTR on YouTube.

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Watch or listen to MeidasTouch’s interview with Zohran Mamdani on the MeidasTouch Podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Watch Ben Meiselas’s breaking news report on Zohran Mamdani’s victory here: