Democrats could take the wrong lessons from Mamdani
His politics might have played to a bare majority in New York City. But they won't play nationally.
The aftermath of last week’s elections serves as a crucial lesson in politics: Don’t become distracted by shiny objects. For those of us who do not live or work in New York City, the shiniest of objects is Zohran Mamdani.
Without a doubt, Mamdani is a bright, talented, and charismatic young man. If I were a member of the American Association of Political Consultants, I would vote his operation as the “Campaign of the Year” and his manager “Campaign Manager of the Year.” Political operatives should use the Mamdani campaign as a case study in social media and creative marketing.
But as interesting as Mamdani is, his victory is hardly important in the grand sweep of national politics. No mayoral race has ever been a harbinger of the direction of American politics or an indication of what would happen in any other election anywhere else. Municipal races, even those in New York City, are fought over totally distinct and highly localized issues, often with idiosyncrasies that non-residents of that city do not appreciate.
Perhaps most critically, the job of New York City mayor has not been a springboard to greater success for at least 157 years, the last time a sitting or former New York City mayor went on to be elected to any other office. Plenty have tried, but the last to actually win something was John T. Hoffman, an ally of Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed, who served as mayor from 1866 until 1868, the year he was elected governor.
While it may be the largest city in the country, New York wasn’t even the largest jurisdiction voting last week. You could find a greater number of people voting next door in New Jersey or a few hundred miles down the Acela Corridor in Virginia.
In fact, not only did Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger each win more votes in their respective gubernatorial wins than Mamdani did in New York, each of the winners and losers in the races for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general won more votes than Mamdani. Even Jay Jones, the scandal-plagued Democratic nominee for Virginia attorney general who was swept into office on Spanberger’s coattails, won more votes than Mamdani.
In terms of the share of New York City voters casting their ballots in this general election, Mamdani’s 50.4 percent is somewhat underwhelming when compared with Kamala Harris’s 68.1 percent of the citywide vote in the 2024 presidential general election or Joe Biden’s 60.9 percent four years earlier. It is also well behind Eric Adams’s 67.0 percent in the 2021 mayoral general election. Nearly 49 percent of voters cast their ballots against Mamdani—41.6 percent for Andrew Cuomo, whose allegations of sexual harassment damaged him badly; and 7.1 percent for Curtis Sliwa, a gadfly who has been gallivanting around the city for decades wearing a red beret.
Many progressives will still see the New York mayoral race as a watershed event, a rallying cry to nominate like-minded and similarly styled candidates in less hospitable places. While that may not be a big problem in progressive bastions like Austin, Berkeley, Boulder, Cambridge, or San Francisco, it would be in purple states, districts, and precincts, especially among the swing voters who determine the outcomes. Such a candidate would go over like a lead balloon.
Mamdani’s victory, according to exit polls, came in spite of his performance among independent voters, not because of it. Among those who initially identify as independents (unleaned party ID), Mamdani lost to Cuomo by 2 points, 46 percent to 44 percent. Among pure independents, those who don’t lean toward either party, who made up 9 percent of voters in this election, Mamdani lost to Cuomo by 18 points, 53 to 35 percent.
Democrats had a great election last week, but they can still screw it up in the midterms next year. One easy way to seize defeat from the jaws of victory would be to follow the instincts of their base, nominating candidates in swing states and districts who may be extremely popular among the party faithful, but completely incompatible with swing voters.
We have seen that happen plenty of times on the Republican side over the last 15 years, costing Republicans at least four Senate races in 2010 and 2012, when GOP primary voters got over their skis, nominating toxic, tea-party-style candidates in places that weren’t tea-party-oriented. We saw it more recently when MAGA-aligned candidates won nominations in about two dozen critical races for the Senate, House, governor, attorney general, and secretary of state in 2022, preventing the GOP from capitalizing on President Biden’s poor job-approval ratings at the time. We saw it twice in Arizona, when Kari Lake, the former local TV personality and election denier who is spectacularly unpopular with swing voters, lost the governor’s race and the open Senate race in back-to-back cycles. In 2024, Donald Trump prevailed in Arizona by 5.5 percentage points, but Lake lost to then-Rep. Ruben Gallego by 2.4 points, an almost 8-point difference.
Republicans should never nominate red candidates in purple states, just as Democrats should not nominate blue candidates in purple states. The bar scene in the original Star Wars movie was entertaining to watch, but hardly the place to draft nominees in critical races.
Unfortunately for Democrats, the attention that should have gone to New Jersey and Virginia, and victories elsewhere, was diminished and overshadowed by all the attention that the New York mayoral race drew. In the Garden and Old Dominion states, Democrats nominated candidates who could capitalize on Trump’s poor standing with swing voters. It was 180 degrees different than in 2021, when the two states last had gubernatorial races, and Biden’s approval ratings had just dropped 14 points in four months. This cost former Gov. Terry McAuliffe his bid for a second (non-consecutive) term in Virginia and nearly cost New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy his own reelection bid. To a certain extent, last week’s results were a reversion to the mean. Voter blocs that had been relatively loyal to Democrats until 2024 snapped back into place once the focal point shifted from Biden and Biden-Harris to Trump.
Republicans can thank the heavens that Democrats nominated a proud, card-carrying democratic socialist to run the media capital of the world, and hope that Democrats will see Mamdani’s win last week as a template for 2026 and 2028, rather than those of Sherrill and Spanberger.
No good option for Democrats in the shutdown fight
For Democrats, the government shutdown has been a “Sophie’s Choice,” a no-win situation. On the one hand, they were trying to preserve Obamacare subsidies for millions of Americans who are facing enormous increases in their health insurance premiums.
On the other hand, the shutdown was hurting a lot of people the Democrats wanted to protect—from the millions of federal employees to those dependent on federal programs like food assistance and those who travel by air.
They were, in effect, using the second group to obtain leverage to help the first. It certainly wasn’t malicious on the part of Democrats—they genuinely wanted to help both—but this was the means to the end. As time went on, the millions in the second group desperately needed the stalemate to end, and Democrats were making little headway in resolving the crisis for either group.
Congressional Democrats have conflicting impulses. Which organ should they follow: their hearts, their brains, or their glands? Until Sunday night, the glands, represented by an increasingly loud party base, were winning, effectively hurting both groups in order to obtain a pound of GOP flesh.
In some ways, things were much easier for congressional Republicans; it’s not their call. Trump now owns their party and it wasn’t going to be over until he said so. There is little that the GOP leadership or rank and file can do to influence him either way, which effectively shifts the decision burden back to Democrats.