As the Democratic Party struggles in the political wilderness following last year’s national Republican sweep, the American left is being electrified by the improbable and inspiring election on Tuesday night of Zohran Mamdani as the mayor of New York City.
The young state legislator emerged from virtually nowhere – polling at a mere 1 per cent at the beginning of the year. But by running a campaign directly targeting the city’s existing establishment and tackling its debilitating affordability crisis, the charismatic upstart prevailed. He crafted an improbable coalition behind promises to redistribute resources to less affluent constituencies.
He’s not merely charismatic. He’s electrifying. American liberals yearning for signs of political dynamism within their ranks provided national attention and support for his extraordinary campaign.
He will now be judged on numerous “kitchen table“ policy outcomes. He must deliver results on some deeply challenging commitments, especially more affordable housing, and the seemingly incompatible twin promises of free and faster bus services.
These central issues, along with education, crime, policing and basic citywide services, will ultimately define his success.
Nonetheless, as Mr Mamdani’s victory speech made abundantly clear, he has already established himself as a major foil for US President Donald Trump. A direct confrontation is entirely plausible, especially if the White House decides next year that New York City urgently requires the removal of essential national funding or the insertion of unwelcome military forces.
The two New Yorkers are, in many ways, personal and political polar opposites. Mr Mamdani, who will be the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century, is a mere 34 years old, while Mr Trump is nearly 80. Mr Trump is a right-wing populist rather than a conservative, and Mr Mamdani describes himself as a Democratic Socialist – which he underscored at the start of his victory speech by quoting Eugene Debs, the famous socialist leader in early 20th-century America.
Mr Mamdani, an immigrant of South Asian origin from Uganda, celebrates diversity based on immigration while Mr Trump has based his whole political career around opposing immigration and promoting fear and hatred of non-white immigrants.
Mr Trump is known for his “Muslim ban” policies in both his terms, prohibiting travel to the US by nationals from countries that are almost all Muslim-majority – while Mr Mamdani will be New York’s first Muslim mayor and, arguably, the country’s most high-profile Muslim elected official. He even peppered his victory speech with a few Arabic phrases, echoing the Yemeni-owned coffee shop that served as his de facto campaign headquarters and demonstrating his proficiency in the language.
Mr Mamdani certainly understands this stark juxtaposition and has energetically taken every opportunity to position himself as a counter to Mr Trump, even though (as an immigrant) he is neither eligible for, nor apparently interested in, the White House itself. Yet Mr Mamdani was at pains to cast his election as a model for how to defeat the President and what he stands for, saying: “If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.”
Positioning himself for the looming post-Trump era that will begin at most in three years, when the current incumbent will no longer be eligible to remain president, Mr Mamdani added: “This is not only how we stop Trump, it’s how we stop the next one.”
Much of the unusual and outsized national attention on this New York City mayoral campaign swirled around Mr Mamdani’s history as a pro-Palestinian activist, typically combined with his Muslim identity. These factors provoked a deluge of breathtakingly vicious racist and Islamophobic political attacks against him, at times even from pro-Israel Democrats.
He was routinely and spuriously smeared as anti-Semitic, as if passionate criticism of Israel – and especially the occupation that began in 1967 – could be explained only by bigotry rather than principle. The attacks often degenerated into hysterical and bizarre accusations that Mr Mamdani would be creating a “caliphate” in New York City or imposing “sharia law”. It was easily the most far-reaching and savage campaign of anti-Muslim hate speech in American public life since the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Mr Mamdani’s victory was, therefore, imperative rather than optional for the political health, not just of New York City, but of the country as a whole – because the phobic campaign against him was indeed a national phenomenon.
It would have been calamitous if Americans could have concluded that the most effective approach to dealing with the political engagement of Muslim Americans is to smear them all as reactionary Islamist theocrats, even when they spring from the socialist left rather than the religious right. It would have invited endless repetitions of such hate speech throughout the country and for decades to come, ensuring that any rising Muslim-American political star would face similar co-ordinated campaigns of vicious bigotry, which invariably impugn Muslim Americans in general and as a group, and not just the individual public figure.
So, it’s exceptionally important that voters in New York City were apparently impervious to this barrage of despicable abuse. It was at least wholly ineffective and potentially even backfired by strengthening the determination of some opponents of hatred to repudiate these appeals by voting for him, potentially despite some doubts about his policy positions or relative inexperience.
This is plausible not just because he won, but also given the record turnout he helped to inspire – making him the first New York City mayoral candidate since 1969 to garner more than one million votes. His appeal was certainly primarily rooted in his promises to make the city more affordable and more responsive to its working-class residents rather than the wealthy. But, if his identity didn’t help him in any way, then at least the bitter vitriol it inspired was no obstacles to his success.
It’s unclear if Mr Mamdani’s election will, or even should, provide Democrats around the country with a template for how to thrive during the second Trump term. New York City is a very particular environment, and a mayoral election there may not provide any meaningful guide to the challenges and opportunities facing Democrats anywhere else.
But liberals and Democrats generally – and not just Democratic Socialists – have an exciting new political star. That alone will give many of them reason enough to celebrate.
