Four Quick Thoughts On Last Night’s Mayoral Primary

What we can learn from Mamdani’s clear, resounding victory

(1). The voters spoke. Extremely clearly. Zohran Mamdani ran a great campaign and captured their hearts and imagination. And the Democratic party as a whole is tired, old, stale. People are still very angry about Biden and wanted to reject everything the party stands for (and the more that the institutions like The New York Times told them not to, the more it sent them in the other direction).

(2). The general election is not going to be competitive. Even if Cuomo runs as an independent, he was heavily rejected last night. The voters don’t want him back — and he didn’t seem to want the job either. Adams polls at around 10% in terms of favorability and re-elect. He is not winning. Sliwa might do better than he did in 2021 but to be the GOP candidate without the support of Trump means he might not even hold onto the regular base (Adams could get some of those votes), so him coming out on top is very unlikely. And there’s a ton of energy on the left because of Trump and that isn’t going away anytime soon (if anything, Trump is Mamdani’s perfect foil and visa-versa, so they will both knowingly engage in a constant war that delights both of their bases). 

(3). If you love New York City, the best thing you can do is help Mamdani be a good mayor. Help him find talented, apolitical administrators to run agencies (which he says is what he wants). Help him prove he is not anti-semitic by working with local Jewish leaders on local Jewish issues. Help him focus on both core quality of life issues that Adams failed to address. 

While I’m not sure his affordability platform can work as proposed, help him structure it so it can work. For example, if we put up true gates at each subway turnstile, the $700 million you would save annually on fare evasion can pay for free buses, which costs an estimated $630 million a year. Or, if we want to radically expand childcare, it will require cuts to other sacred cows in the budget and really getting savings in labor contracts and that means standing up to the left. But it’s doable. Or, if you want better grocery stores, figure out how to partner with a really good national chain and through tax credits, incentives, grants, zoning and other city tools, make it happen. Or, if you want to lower the cost of housing, embrace an abundance agenda and force developers, unions, environmentalists and community leaders to all sacrifice. There are workable solutions to his ideas even if they’re not exactly the ones he proposed in the campaign. 

(4).  If we want better candidates, we have to change the way we vote. We have closed primaries that are only in person. Even with a decisive win, Mamdani got 432,000 votes. That’s about 5% of the city’s total population. There could have been far better centrist options than Cuomo but in a closed system where traditional and special interests have so much control, you can’t get those candidates to run. Ideas like mobile voting, open primaries, and aligning municipal elections with state and federal elections all have to move forward.