Mamdani Wins NYC’s Democratic Mayoral Primary

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For months, pollsters projected that Cuomo would secure a comfortable victory. Mamdani had only spent four years in Albany at the state assembly and was largely unknown to New York and the nation prior to announcing his run. Only three of his 20-plus proposed bills were put into law, and with limited effect. But according to some Democratic strategists, it was Mamdani’s youth, charisma, and energy that made him a serious opponent for a 67-year-old Cuomo keen to reenter New York politics after sexual harassment allegations caused him to step down as governor in 2021. 

“The media will want there to be a competitive general, but I don’t think there will be,” Bradley Tusk, a New York-based political strategist, told TMD. “People are sick and tired of the Democratic establishment and Cuomo was a part of that. They were looking to reject it.”

The primary race began gaining national attention when the polls narrowed earlier this month: Last week, Marist’s final poll had Cuomo edging out Mamdani only after seven rounds of ranked-choice voting. And by June 23, Emerson’s poll—the last before Election Day—had Mamdani eking out the victory over Cuomo. “This wasn’t just new versus old,” a Democratic strategist told TMD, “but new versus old with baggage.” 

The New York City Board of Elections is expected to announce the full results on July 1, which will be determined by ranked-choice voting. The system allows voters to list their top five candidates in order of preference. Officials remove the lowest vote-receiver until a candidate is lifted above 50 percent of the vote. But the controversial ranked-choice voting system, which pollsters before Tuesday’s primary said might give Mamdani an edge, proved “irrelevant,” according to Tusk, given that results were so clear that Cuomo conceded after the first round.  

Mamdani carried the Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan boroughs in the early vote, while Cuomo took the Bronx and Staten Island. Mamdani appeared to perform well among young, college-educated white and Asian voters, while Cuomo picked up support in predominantly black and Orthodox Jewish communities. 

Mamdani’s economic plan for New York City has drawn much attention: He ran on free buses, city-run grocery stores, rent freezes, and a $70 billion affordable housing project. The ambitious plan aims to build 200,000 “permanently affordable” housing units in the next decade and promises no “pointless delays” on construction of those units, according to Mamdani’s campaign website. “We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city they can afford,” Mamdani said during his victory speech Tuesday night. “A city where they can do more than just struggle.” 

The city’s wealthy, who make up the foundation of its tax bracket, are less excited about the prospect of a Mayor Mamdani than the crowd he addressed: Cuomo’s best neighborhood in Manhattan was the affluent Upper East Side, where he secured 45 percent of the first round vote. 

Billionaire John Catsimatidis, who runs the Manhattan-based Gristedes supermarket chain, threatened to close shop if Mamdani takes office. Former Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg endorsed Cuomo and gave $8.3 million to Fix the City, the PAC responsible for anti-Mamdani attack ads. Many wealthy New Yorkers are threatening to flee to Florida—the Sunshine State’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, said Monday that a Mamdani victory would “see Palm Beach real estate go up another 20 percent.”

It was not just Mamdani’s economic plans that polarized voters, but also his social positions. Mamdani plans to create a Department of Community Safety and, in turn, defund the New York Police Department’s overtime budget and protest response units. Mamdani also supports expanding “gender-affirming care, making NYC an LGBTQIA+ sanctuary city, and creating the Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs,” according to his campaign website. 

As an undergraduate at Bowdoin College, Mamdani, himself a Muslim, co-founded the college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. The self-described “anti-Zionist” has since defended the phrase “globalize the intifada”—which refers to a series of Palestinian uprisings in the late 1980s and early 2000s that together left more than 1,200 Israelis dead—and compared it to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis, drawing criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, the U.S. Holocaust Museum, and fellow New York Democrats. Mamdani also said that, should Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ever visit New York City during his tenure as mayor, he would order the leader’s arrest. 

The hundreds of thousands of people “who voted for change and hoping for lower prices can’t be discounted,” Dane Strother, a veteran Democratic strategist, told TMD via email. “But Republicans will dance on these results.” 

Jewish voters have made up an operative 16 percent of the electorate in past Democratic primaries. Although Cuomo made it a large part of his campaign to emphasize Mamdani’s anti-Israel sentiments—even saying that his opponent’s remarks “fuel murder”—the Jewish vote was split between Cuomo, Mamdani, and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. Lander, the city’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official, gave Mamdani a cross-endorsement in the final weeks of the race. 

Still, Mamdani’s past anti-Israel statements were top of mind for some voters, particularly given the recent scourge of left-wing violence on behalf of the Palestinian cause—including an April arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home, the murder of Israeli Embassy workers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., last month, and the firebombing of Jewish demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado. New Yorkers in particular have come face-to-face with the rising tide of anti-Zionist activism in recent years, including at Columbia University, where some anti-Israel demonstrations led to the takeover of school buildings and Jewish students felt pressured to disavow Israel to fit in with their progressive peers. 

“I don’t like the idea of more populism and sloganeering and creating these feelings of community by excluding other people,” Ramon Maislen, who started a PAC encouraging New York Democrats to be more attentive to antisemitism, told TMD. “It’s depressing as a Jewish New Yorker to feel that you need to pass some loyalty test to be accepted.” 

Tensions over the issue came to a head in April when Cuomo criticized Lander’s calls for divestment from Israel at a synagogue. Lander responded by cursing him in Yiddish before adding in English, “Andrew Cuomo doesn’t get to tell me how to be Jewish.”

“I don’t think it makes Jews any safer to be a political football,” Maislen added. “Both the left and the right have a lot of trouble seeing antisemitism within their own party.” 

Many are already speculating about what Mamdani’s success might mean for the future of the Democratic Party in statewide or national elections, particularly amid growing intra-party divides. Mamdani received endorsements from many influential members of the progressive wing of the Democratic party, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, while Cuomo was backed by establishment Democrats like former President Bill Clinton. 

“Mayor is an operational, non-partisan job. So if Zohran rises to the occasion, hires really talented people, lets them do their jobs, works with everyone, and he’s effective, then that really empowers AOC in 2028 to take on [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck [Schumer],” Tusk said. “If he’s a disaster, [Schumer] will use that as the argument against AOC. So I think her fate, in many ways, is tied up with [Mamdani], and I’m not sure if she’s happy with that or not, but that’s the die she cast.” 

Other analysts have cautioned against overinterpreting the results of a city-wide election, arguing that New York City politics—however headline-grabbing—are still inherently local. “New York City is light years away from the politics of whoever’s going to win the nomination for president in 2028,” Joe Trippi, a Democratic pollster, told TMD. “You can go forth and project, but I don’t think it matters.” 

Whether Mamdani is a fluke or a bellwether, the little-known lawmaker’s rapid rise was sure to generate plenty of attention.

“New York City primaries for mayor are never quiet affairs,” Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist University Institute for Public Opinion, told TMD. “That’s why Broadway is in New York City.”

Worth Your Time

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Let Us Know

Do you think Zohran Mamdani’s victory is a fluke or a bellwether?