Photo: Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo
To win the nomination for mayor, Zohran Mamdani outwitted and outworked the city’s lethargic Democratic political Establishment. And that seems to be driving the old guard mad.
Think of New York’s Democratic Establishment as a network of political clubs, labor unions, big-money donors, elected officials, campaign operatives, newspaper editorial boards, and nonprofit advocacy organizations that collectively calls the shots in most elections. While a number of political leaders have pledged support for Mamdani, a significant faction is in full panic at the idea of a young Muslim democratic socialist taking control of City Hall without its help or permission.
Consider the recent freakout over a trivial news nugget published by the New York Times, which ran a breathless account — promoted on social media as a SCOOP — revealing that Mamdani, as a high-school teenager, checked the identity boxes “Asian” and “Black/African American” on his college application to Columbia University. (Mamdani, who is of Indian ancestry but does not identify as Black, was born in Uganda and spent the first years of his life in that country and in South Africa, making him literally African American. He says he was trying to fit his complex background into the boxes presented by Columbia, which ultimately denied his application.)
Mamdani’s rivals are trying to make this nothingburger from 17 years ago the center of the campaign. “This is not just dishonest — it’s possibly fraudulent,” said Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for Mayor Eric Adams. “This issue must be fully investigated because, if true, it could be fraud and just the tip of the iceberg,” said Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Andrew Cuomo, who got clobbered in the Democratic primary but is mulling the idea of running as an independent candidate in November.
One sure sign of the Establishment’s desperation is the number of public figures and institutions now starting to rally behind Adams, whose approval rating reached historic lows earlier this year. Politically active business leaders are organizing support for Adams that has included a swanky Hamptons fundraiser over the July 4 holiday weekend and a tedious social-media post by billionaire blowhard Bill Ackman. “People are deeply concerned,” the mayor told “Page Six.” “They see what’s coming if a radical takes over City Hall: massive tax hikes, a defunded police department, and policies that will tank property values and push families and businesses out of New York.”
“I think what they’re concerned about first and foremost is having the city run smoothly and having an opportunity to work with whoever is the new mayor,” Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City business organization told me. “None of the leaders of global companies has ever met Zohran Mamdani, so their initial reaction was ‘Who is this? A young man with little experience.’ It was less about any specific policies but ‘Who is this inexperienced young man who’s been elected by the Democratic Socialists?’”
Mamdani told me he looks forward to talking with business leaders. “I’m excited to speak with them because ultimately my vision for this city is one that includes all of us and that includes these same business leaders who are concerned,” he said. “What is incumbent upon me to do over these next many months is to showcase the fact that we’re looking to build a coalition — not simply of the New Yorkers who already voted for me or the ones who will even vote for me in November, but a coalition that looks like the city itself.”
What truly rattles the political Establishment is that Mamdani is leading a potent youth-driven movement — one that ran circles around the traditional Democratic political machinery and threatens to replace it.
“There was a new vibe, a new energy. You know, Mamdani literally had 50,000 volunteers who knocked on doors, who actually spoke to the voters regarding kitchen-table issues,” says Rodneyse Bichotte-Hermelyn, the chair of the Brooklyn Democrats. Bichotte-Hermelyn, who leads the state’s largest Democratic county organization, initially supported Cuomo but swiftly threw her allegiance behind Mamdani after he carried Brooklyn on the way to winning the primary. “He definitely resonated, and he was able to change the electorate. Lots of new voters, over 100,000 18-to-24-year-olds voted for the very first time in their lives,” she told me. “I think the grassroots approach, the energetic approach, the young approach to change really resonated with everybody.”
Smarter members of the Establishment recognize the existential threat posed by the nascent movement. “Mamdani’s the face of a new demographic in New York,” Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic campaign strategist, told The Wall Street Journal. “He’s reflective of a change in urban politics, where the old ethnic alliances we once had no longer exist.” Sheinkopf, who has worked on hundreds of elections, is not happy about the wave of pro-Mamdani young voters who espouse left-leaning socialist views. “New York’s a Democratic city, and the kids are also going to be the death of the Democrats. Not just in New York but nationwide,” he told the Journal. “All I know is that Mamdani must be stopped.”
All the apocalyptic end-of–New York rhetoric is overblown, says the candidate. “It’s a platform that is not just urgent, but it’s feasible and it’s grounded in precedent,” Mamdani told me on the day he clinched the nomination. In fact, nearly all his cost-of-living proposals have been enacted or attempted in some form in New York or elsewhere in the country.
Freezing the rent on the city’s stabilized units? Mayor Bill de Blasio did it three times, in 2015, 2016, and 2020. Raise the minimum wage? This year, following a decade of increases approved in Albany, the city’s minimum wage hit $16.50. Mamdani’s call for free public buses sounds an awful lot like the MTA’s Fair Fares program, which currently lets low-income New Yorkers ride for half-price. And an estimated 3 million hungry New Yorkers get 1.6 million government-supplied meals every day through federal SNAP benefits, so opening five government-owned grocery stores (one in each borough) is more like a tiny demonstration project than a Soviet-style takeover.
If Mamdani’s threat to tax wealthy New Yorkers sounds familiar, it’s because bills to do exactly that have repeatedly been introduced in Albany for at least a decade; all died in committee. It’s also worth noting that in 2021, then-candidate for mayor Adams called for a special tax on ultrawealthy New Yorkers. “If you make more than $5 million a year, we are asking you to pay a little more to stabilize our city,” he said at the time, a suggestion he promptly dropped after taking office.
The emerging showdown between Adams and Mamdani promises to be rough. Adams’s adviser and ex–chief of staff, Frank Carone, told me he considers Mamdani “an abject antisemite” who can’t possibly make good on promises to provide child-care vouchers, a rent freeze, and other benefits to New Yorkers. “He is stating that these are the things he will do, and he’s running on a platform of doing, and I think those are fraudulent statements,” Carone said. “Anyone who supports him or endorses him are co-conspirators to a fraud, okay?”
Ali Najmi, an attorney for Mamdani, had tough words in response. “Eric Adams and his administration and his goons like Frank Carone, they don’t have actual people behind them. They’re lucky they dodged a criminal indictment,” he told me. “Workers need a mayor who’s ethical, who’s going to work hard, somebody that they can trust to do the right thing. They’re not ready for us because they’re not really ready to serve the city that they were elected to serve. In fact, I don’t know anybody that really wants to see this movie play out again about Eric Adams. We’ve already seen how that goes.”
