In retrospect, the signs of Andrew Cuomo’s political demise were hiding in plain sight.
He would have been the oldest mayor ever in a city powered by youthful dreams and energy. He foolishly hid from public scrutiny, refusing to talk with many journalists (including me), in a town where voters expect to see candidates answer questions up close and personal. He refused to address nagging questions of basic character, including credible accusations of ethics violations, sexual harassment, and toxic workplace behavior, in a city that forgives many personal sins but demands honesty in return.
In This Issue
Zohran Mamdani
And Cuomo’s main selling point, his decades of experience in government, proved to be a liability in a season when 77 percent of the city’s Democrats were telling pollsters New York is heading in the wrong direction.
Cuomo has led seven successful statewide campaigns — three as campaign manager for his father, Mario Cuomo, and four consecutive wins for himself as attorney general and governor combined. Those decades of success were part of why his campaign relied on outdated assumptions about how the city’s ethnic, political, and religious tribes behave.
A few hours before the polls closed Tuesday, Saman Waquad, president of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, mentioned to me in passing that Zohran Mamdani visited a head-spinning 135 mosques last week alone, marking the third time he had made the whirlwind tour through Islamic houses of worship. I thought immediately about the moment in a recent televised debate when I asked Cuomo why, during more than ten years as governor, he had never once made a public visit to a mosque. “I believe I have,” he answered, though he couldn’t remember where, when, or with whom.
Writing off the city’s 750,000 Muslims, we now know, is not a politically wise thing to do. “The Democratic Party is having to learn the hard way that other groups’ interests need to be taken into consideration, if not prioritized,” Waquad told me. “Muslims are a huge voting block in New York City. And I think the Democratic Party is going to see that they need to pay a little bit more attention to that voting block.” An overlapping group of 450,000 South Asians, not all of whom are Muslim, also got special attention from Mamdani, who released ads in Urdu, Hindi, and Bangla to reach Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi voters.
“Zohran, it is very clear, is a generationally gifted politician. Fundamentally, he has demonstrated that he knows exactly what the right message is that’s going to reach a lot of the voters that he’s trying to target,” political consultant Amit Singh Bagga told me. “The medium is very powerful, and it’s very memorable. When you have videos that include Bollywood clips and mango lassi trying to explain ranked-choice voting, these are iconic cultural devices that really do establish a connection between people’s real lived experiences every single day and what they’re seeing. And I think for all voters, no matter what your background is, you want to feel like you can establish a personal connection with a person who’s running for mayor of New York City.”
Cuomo might have been able to fend off Mamdani’s youthful surge if he had bothered to put together a field operation. Instead, his team relied on millions in television ads and ignored calls to put people in the streets. Throughout the campaign, polls consistently showed Cuomo with 40 percent approval among Democrats, more than his rivals but not great for a lifelong politician with a universally known name: It meant everyone knew the candidate but most were ready to choose somebody else. And that 40 percent number barely budged, even as tens of millions in advertising hit the airwaves, a sure sign that something was going wrong.
Surah Al-Baqarah, the second and longest verse of the Koran, includes the story of a youngster, Dawud, who battles and defeats a much larger adversary, Jalut, after which Allah bestows wisdom, blessings, and power on the victorious young man. The tale, found in the Old Testament as the story of David and Goliath, has resonated for centuries because it speaks to how societies renew themselves and find new direction. And when you strip away all the analysis, Mamdani’s victory is the triumph of a young political leader with great gifts and good aim against a lumbering giant destined to fall.
More on Mamdani's victory
- Bill Ackman Dumps Cuomo, Embraces Adams
- Trump Ramps Up Threats to Arrest Mamdani
- Can Zohran Mamdani Buy the NYPD’s Support?
