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How Brad Lander Helped Push Zohran Mamdani Toward Victory
In New York’s mayoral primary, Andrew Cuomo was no match for the energy of progressive rivals who saw a virtue in unity.The night before Tuesday’s Democratic primary in New York City, Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander appeared on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” bringing their progressive bromance to a national viewership. Ostensibly running against each other to be New York’s next mayor, their alliance showcased what parliamentary-style coalition politics could look like in the age of so much vitriol and polarization.Not long before early voting began, the candidates cross-endorsed each other in the name of an ideological victory and the defeat of the better-known, better-funded front-runner. “We both agree that corrupt, abusive Andrew Cuomo should not be allowed anywhere near City Hall,” Mr. Lander, the city’s comptroller, said on the show, as the studio audience cheered. And now it looks as if he won’t.Against the predictions of nearly all polling, Mr. Mamdani is on track for a decisive win — even before the tallying of several rounds of ranked-choice voting, assumed to be the only route to defeating an opponent with such an imposing advantage. Mr. Mamdani leads in the first round of counting by 7 percentage points, a margin significant enough that Mr. Cuomo quickly conceded on Tuesday night.The result could reasonably lead to the assumption that a still-novel method of ballot casting in New York had little to do with the outcome. But in fact, ranked-choice voting, now in place in at least 60 jurisdictions around the country, shaped the competition from the beginning.It rewards a campaign style that played to Mr. Mamdani’s strengths: ever-present, on-the-street, nonstop voter engagement. Mr. Mamdani was doing everything — even jumping into the freezing cold ocean to call attention to his proposal for a rent freeze — and his many thousands of campaign volunteers were everywhere.All of this stood in sharp contrast to Mr. Cuomo’s I’ve-got-this-locked-up strategy, one that relied heavily on big-money TV advertising, little noticed by voters under 70, and the conviction that there was no one well-known or formidable or experienced enough to beat him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Eric Adams Meets With Business Leaders Desperate to Stop Mamdani’s Rise
Daniel Loeb, the hedge fund manager, and some other New York City business leaders are aghast at Zohran Mamdani’s success in the Democratic mayoral primary and are considering backing Mr. Adams in the general election.In a conference room in Manhattan on Wednesday night, Mayor Eric Adams and Daniel S. Loeb, the hedge fund manager, met with other business leaders and political brokers to discuss how to stop the rise of Zohran Mamdani and possibly bolster Mr. Adams’s re-election campaign.The business leaders were impressed that Mr. Adams was already staging a public fight against Mr. Mamdani, several people familiar with the meeting said. Earlier in the day, during an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Adams called Mr. Mamdani a “snake-oil salesman.”Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist state assemblyman from Queens, on Tuesday shocked the New York political establishment by outperforming Andrew M. Cuomo, the former New York governor, in the Democratic primary for mayor. Mr. Cuomo is now considering whether to run as an independent in the general election, or end his campaign altogether.Should Mr. Cuomo withdraw, Mr. Mamdani is poised to face off against Mr. Adams, who is running as an independent; Curtis Sliwa, the Republican founder of the Guardian Angels; and Jim Walden, a lawyer also running as an independent.The prospect of Mr. Mamdani’s campaigning as the Democratic standard-bearer in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by six to one has sent shivers down the spines of many New York business leaders, who recoil at his plans for expansive new government programs funded with tax increases on corporations and the wealthiest New Yorkers. Some have quickly begun to throw their support behind the incumbent mayor, despite the scandals that have tarnished his tenure.Andrew Epstein, a spokesman for Mr. Mamdani, said the businessmen at the meeting were simply scared of “our plan to tax them a little bit more to fund an agenda to lower the cost of living and improve the quality of life for all New Yorkers.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Zohran Mamdani’s Winning Style
In all the post-mortems that have appeared since Zohran Mamdani upset the political apple cart to potentially, if unofficially, clinch the Democratic nomination for New York mayor, one particular aspect of his appeal has been largely overlooked: not how Mr. Mamdani conducted his campaign but how he looked while conducting it.Put another way: Mr. Mamdani didn’t just record himself for his various social media platforms running into the freezing Atlantic on New Year’s Day to publicize his pledge to freeze rents; he recorded himself running into the freezing ocean not in a wet suit or a bathing suit, but in a suit and tie.Sure, it was funnier that way. But it was also tactical. For a 33-year-old progressive and democratic socialist trying to be the city’s first Muslim mayor, whose opponents are painting him as a “100 percent Communist lunatic” and a “radical leftie” (that from President Trump on Truth Social), not to mention trying to other him because of his racial and religious identity, dressing like an establishment guy offers a counterargument of its own.Leaving a Passover rally in April.Andres Kudacki for The New York TimesOn election night.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesAs Mr. Mamdani walks the tightrope between embodying change, generational and otherwise, and reassuring those who may be leery of such change, his clothes have played a not insignificant role. His mouth may be saying one thing, but very often his outfit is saying another.This is a man, after all, who appeared in Vogue India as long ago as 2020, when he won his seat in the State Assembly, and whose mother is the film director Mira Nair. He has long understood that costume is one way to convey character.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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If Everyone Had Voted, Kamala Harris Still Would Have Lost
New data, based on authoritative voter records, suggests that Donald Trump would have done even better in 2024 with higher turnout.A voting line in Phoenix in November. Jon Cherry for The New York TimesIn the wake of last November’s election, many Democrats blamed low turnout for Kamala Harris’s defeat.It wasn’t entirely without reason, as turnout dropped in Democratic areas, but many months later it is clear the blame was misplaced. Newly available data, based on authoritative voter turnout records, suggests that if anything, President Trump would have done even better if everyone had voted.The new data, including a new study from Pew Research released Thursday, instead offers a more dispiriting explanation for Democrats: Young, nonwhite and irregular voters defected by the millions to Mr. Trump, costing Ms. Harris both the Electoral College and the popular vote.The findings suggest that Mr. Trump’s brand of conservative populism once again turned politics-as-usual upside down, as his gains among disengaged voters deprived Democrats of their traditional advantage with this group, who are disproportionately young and nonwhite.For a generation, the assumption that Democrats benefit from high turnout has underpinned the hopes and machinations of both parties, from Republican support for restrictive voting laws to Democratic hopes of mobilizing a new progressive coalition of young and nonwhite voters. It’s not clear whether Democrats will struggle with irregular voters in the future, but the data nonetheless essentially ends the debate about whether Ms. Harris lost because she alienated swing voters or because she failed to energize her base. In the end, Democrats alienated voters whose longtime support they might have taken for granted.The 2024 election may feel like old news, especially in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York City on Tuesday, but the best data on the outcome has only recently become available. Over the last two months, the last few states updated their official records of who did or did not vote in the election. These records unlock the most authoritative studies of the electorate, which link voter turnout records to high-quality surveys. More
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How Mamdani Won, Block by Block
<!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [!–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>At a raucous rally in Manhattan last week, amid a sea of yellow bandannas, “Freeze the Rent” signs and “A City We Can Afford” banners, Mr. Mamdani took the stage to a groundswell of applause. He […] More
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Trump Won by Turning Out Voters and Building a Diverse Coalition, Report Finds
A new Pew Research Center study found that 85 percent of President Trump’s 2020 supporters came out to vote for him again, a better rate than Democrats pulled off.One of the most robust studies of the 2024 election shows that President Trump’s return to the White House was powered more heavily by his ability to turn out past supporters than by winning over Democratic voters, even as he built one of the most diverse coalitions in Republican Party history.The new report, released on Thursday from Pew Research Center, offers some of the most detailed analysis yet of what actually happened last fall, in particular how infrequent voters broke for Mr. Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris.In the end, the math was simple and significant: A larger share of voters who supported Mr. Trump in the 2020 election — 85 percent — showed up to vote for him again in 2024. Ms. Harris earned the support of just 79 percent of former President Joseph R. Biden’s 2020 voters.The analysis showed that 5 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters flipped to Mr. Trump, while only 3 percent of Mr. Trump’s 2020 voters flipped to Ms. Harris.But the bigger factor was turnout: 15 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters did not vote at all in 2024, Pew found.Tony Fabrizio, who was the lead pollster for the Trump campaign, said the new report validated the campaign’s strategic successes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Mamdani Triumphed Without a Majority of Black Voters. Where Does That Leave Them?
Black city leaders are worried their influence is waning at a moment when the rising costs that Zohran Mamdani put at the center of his campaign are pushing Black New Yorkers out of the city.For years, the conventional wisdom in New York among strategists and candidates alike has been that in any Democratic primary, the road to victory runs through Black communities.Then came Zohran Mamdani.In the race that culminated on Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani forged a new multiracial political coalition to become the likely Democratic nominee for mayor and topple Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor, who had far more name recognition, financial firepower — and political baggage.And Mr. Mamdani did so even as he lost many of New York City’s most solidly Black neighborhoods. A New York Times analysis of the results shows that Mr. Cuomo dominated in precincts where at least 70 percent of residents are Black, more than doubling Mr. Mamdani’s support, 59 percent to 26 percent.The result is a break not just from the parochial politics of New York — Black voters helped deliver the mayoralty to both Eric Adams and his predecessor, Bill de Blasio — but from the nation as a whole. Black voters have served as the Democratic Party’s most important voting bloc this century, elevating Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the party’s last three presidential nominees, oftentimes sanding down the most exuberant instincts of the left.Most famously, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina rescued Mr. Biden’s flagging 2020 effort by rallying Black voters before his state’s primary in a bid to thwart Senator Bernie Sanders, though Mr. Clyburn’s backing did not appear to help Mr. Cuomo in this race’s closing stretch.In a city whose politics have been defined by race-based math, Mr. Mamdani’s success as a democratic socialist upended these traditional calculations and birthed a new and unconventional coalition. It also highlighted tensions between older and more moderate Black voters and the party’s most strident progressive wing, typically anchored by wealthier white voters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
