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    Self-identifying ‘hot girls’ are mobilizing to elect a progressive as New York City mayor

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    “Hot girls” may not be a pollster-approved voting bloc in the way that young men or the college-educated are, but since the 2020 election the demographic has held a particular status – at least for the very online.It started in 2020, when the model Emily Ratajkowski officially endorsed Bernie Sanders’s pre-pandemic presidential campaign. Inspired by Ratajkowski, self-professed hot girls piled on their endorsements, posting selfies with the hashtag #HotGirlsForBernie. Some saw it as a way to counter the persistent “Bernie bro” narrative, a rebuke of the idea that Sanders’s fandom consisted solely of obnoxious, socialist-in-name-only men who lived their lives on Twitter.Five years later, “Hot Girls for Bernie” is a relic, one of the last gasps of hope young progressives felt before the reality of Trump 2.0 took hold. Nevertheless the phrase has returned, this time in support of Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist and state assemblyman from Queens who is running for New York City mayor. This week, a social media account called “Hot Girls 4 Zohran” dropped on X and Instagram to give away free Mamdani swag.View image in fullscreenThough the account is unaffiliated with the Mamdani’s official campaign (and Mamdani’s representative declined to comment), it speaks to the grassroots enthusiasm fueling the millennial’s run for office.Mamdani does not have the widespread name recognition of contenders such as the current mayor, Eric Adams, who is running as an independent after a series of scandals, or Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor of New York in 2021 after facing multiple sexual harassment accusations, which he denied. But Mamdani’s campaign has tapped a hyper-progressive wellspring by putting forth policies that sound ripe for a Fox News scare segment. They include increasing the city’s minimum wage from $16.50 to $30, opening city-owned grocery stores, and making childcare and bus fares free.Mamdani, a failed rapper and son of the indie filmmaker Mira Nair, is most at home on social media, especially TikTok. He exudes a kind of nerdy-cool vibe, which has earned him a GQ profile and a spread in Interview Magazine, where he fielded questions from New York luminaries such as Chloë Sevigny, Cynthia Nixon, Eileen Myles and Julio Torres. Last month, more than 18,000 citywide donors helped his campaign secure $8m, hitting the fundraising limit set by the city.Hot Girls 4 Zohran is run by two friends, Cait, 24, and Kaif, 28, who live in Brooklyn and did not want their last names published due to privacy concerns. Cait, who is very active on X, says she has been harassed by users who don’t agree with her political opinions. But she’s fine with her face being out there – she posed for the account next to a box of Hot Girls 4 Zohran T-shirts.Cait and Kaif say they are supporting Mamdani because he wants to make the city more affordable for the working class and courts individual donors over the super-rich. “We’re both fairly skeptical of institutional politicians, especially given the last election,” said Cait, who works in marketing. “We really just want to get his name out there.”And hot girls help. Not in an ogling way, but as a tongue-in-cheek way for voters to self-identify and convince others to do so too. “It’s empowering for women, and it brings us together,” Cait said. “There’s an intersectionality to it.” Kaif says that they use the “girl” descriptor liberally – it’s more of a mindset than a gender classification. “So many men have also reached out to us asking for T-shirts,” he said.Cait was in high school when Hot Girls for Bernie went viral. “I was still pretty young, but I noticed it even back then,” she said.She has Danaka Katovich to thank for the inspiration. In 2020, after seeing playful memes about Ratajkowski’s support for Sanders, the then student at DePaul University in Chicago made a group chat for “hot girl” Bernie supporters. Katovich told Vox that 50 friends joined the group, which dropped a social media campaign featuring equally sexy and silly selfies.“I’m surprised people are still doing this,” said Katovich, who is now 25 and working for a feminist non-profit aimed at ending US warfare and imperialism. “Back then, journalists asked me: ‘What does Hot Girls for Bernie mean to you?’ I was 20 – it didn’t mean anything to me, since it started as a joke.”Katovich remembers people criticizing the “hot girls” label for being glib or exclusionary, but she insists it was inclusive. “Anyone could post a picture, non-binary people were included,” she said. “Sure, there were some dudes who would comment on a picture and say, ‘You’re actually more of a seven,’ but at the time, it didn’t feel like anyone who mattered really cared what you looked like at all.”View image in fullscreenKari Winter, a professor in the global gender and sexuality studies department at the University at Buffalo, agreed that “hot girls” can mean whatever posters want. “Although I personally would not use the term ‘hot’ or ‘girl’ as a trend, I like the way young women, LGBT, non-binary and disabled people use it to claim their own multi-faceted existence in the world,” she said. “It reminds me of a time when a lot of us had bumper stickers and T-shirts that said, ‘This is what a feminist looks like,’ and the point was to be inclusive, because feminists look like everything and anything.”A recent AARP New York and Siena College poll shows that Cuomo holds a strong lead of 34% in the Democratic primary pack, thanks to older voters. Mamdani follows at 16%, and 20% of Democratic voters say they are undecided among the nine total candidates. The June primary is ranked-choice voting, a confusing system that has New Yorkers listing candidates in order of preference. The winner will probably face off against Adams and a Republican in November.Despite Cuomo’s early lead, Winter says that Mamdani’s intense focus on courting working-class voters can serve as a lesson to Democrats. “Democrats need to understand that the way to energize people is not to keep trying to play to some mythical middle, but to galvanize people who are so sick of corruption and the pandering to wealth,” she said. “The only way forward is to galvanize people who care about common people and the common good.”View image in fullscreenThe Democratic national convention might not recognize a hot girl delegation, but Bernie evangelists say the movement wasn’t all frivolous. Hadiya Afzal, a former DePaul University student who was active in the Sanders group chat, says that many of her friends went on to work in progressive politics and still dedicate much of their time to the causes they care about.“I think that’s what folks should take away from this kind of campaign: at the end of the day, it’s about the policies,” Afzal said. “There would have been no Hot Girls for Bernie without an actual policy platform. That’s the backbone of what made it meaningful.”Over at Hot Girls 4 Zohran, Cait and Kaif want people do more with the T-shirts than pose in them for social media. “If you wear the shirt out and about, then it spreads the word, and we really want to mobilize voters of all ages,” Kaif said. Ultimately, he and Cait hope the moniker will aid the candidate in his goal of building “the single largest volunteer operation” of any New York mayoral race ever. With a force of 10,000 door knockers, Mamdani is well on his way.One of those volunteers is Joshua Leirer, a 37-year-old who lives in Ridgewood, Queens. When Leirer canvassed in one of Brooklyn’s parks in March, there were so many volunteers that they had to spread into the “outskirts”. And, crucially, “the volunteers are hot.”“The people I talked to were really cool and friendly,” Leirer said. “A lot of glasses, a lot of beanies. I would call it a Brooklyn hot.” More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Tesla is a good target’: Elon Musk’s car business is focus of fury for political role

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      Hundreds of people protested at Tesla dealerships across the US over the weekend, as the backlash against Elon Musk and the Trump administration continued despite a warning from the attorney general that the government would be “coming after” protesters.The protests, in cities including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and New York, have come as Musk has seen his net worth plunge and the sales of Teslas plummet in Europe. In Brooklyn, New York, about 50 people gathered outside a Tesla showroom on Saturday afternoon to loudly make their displeasure clear, the fourth such protest in the last four weeks.Other anti-Tesla actions have seen bullets fired through a dealership window and molotov cocktails thrown at a charging station. But this was a rather more genteel protest, as evidenced by the signs on show. “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,” read one, channeling a poem by the American poet James Russell Lowell.One banner said: “Musk is too brusque,” another: “Very uncool.” One sign, however, offered a more prosaic example of the anger on display, riffing on a Dead Kennedys song: “Nazi trucks fuck off.”As protesters chanted: “Hands off our data,” and “Arrest Elon Musk,” there certainly seemed to be plenty of support from passersby. People in cars and trucks repeatedly blasted their horns – including, at one point, a man driving a Tesla.“This is probably the most consequential moment in US history since, I don’t know, the civil war. I don’t know what to liken it to, but we’re on a precipice, and so I can’t actually concentrate on anything right now except protesting,” said Kirsten Hassenfeld, a 53-year-old artist and editor who lives in Brooklyn.“I think there are people that haven’t woken up to this yet, but I think that we’re sliding into a full-on authoritarian state. I’m terrified,” she said.Musk has witnessed a mass sell-off of Teslas in recent weeks, in protest against his unprecedented intrusion into the US government through the so-called “department of government efficiency”. Sales of new vehicles have declined around the world, with February sales in Australia down about 72% compared with the same month in 2024; in Germany sales were down 76% for the same period, while Tesla’s stock price has lost almost half its value since December.As protests have grown, the White House has rallied round Musk. Last week Donald Trump claimed the boycott was “illegal”, while Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said on Friday she would launch an investigation into vandalism against Tesla vehicles and showrooms.“If you’re going to touch a Tesla, go to a dealership, do anything, you better watch out because we’re coming after you. And if you’re funding this, we’re coming after you. We’re going to find out who you are,” Bondi told Fox Business.In Brooklyn, people were apparently undeterred by the threat. Teslas driving past the protest were treated to a volley of boos, and lusty chants of “Sell your Tesla”. The demonstration certainly appeared to have restricted the number of people entering the dealership: the Guardian counted three customers in the space of an hour and a half.Donna C, who asked not to give her last name, said it was her fourth time protesting at that dealership.“It’s important for me because Elon Musk has carte blanche to destroy our country, destroy our democracy, destroy the institutions that millions of New Yorkers and millions of Americans rely on. Donald Trump has allowed him to buy his way into the government with hundreds of millions of dollars of contributions,” Donna said.“I think what these protests are doing is opening the eyes of Americans in their millions across the US to what is actually going on,” she said. “My parents grew up in fascism in Italy under Mussolini. I’ve seen what can happen. We know the history, the same steps are being taken.”Nearly 20 Tesla showrooms and charging stations have seen deliberate fires set over the past few weeks, while dozens of owners have had their cars variously egged, used as receptacles for dog feces, or coated with Kraft cheese singles. The protests on Saturday seem to have largely remained calm, however, despite the anger of those attending.“I’ve been pissed off and furious for a while, and a friend of mine told me, ‘If you want to come and scream and shout at Tesla, then show up on Saturday,’” said Yedon Thonden, 57.“Tesla is a good target. You know, their stock prices are sinking. Their leadership is cashing out their investments. And I think Elon is obviously worried about his company,” she said.“I think that this administration is going to realize pretty quickly that the economy is tanking. So the more we can highlight that, the better.” More

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      in Elections

      Mayor Adams’s Biggest Backer in the State Capitol Endorses Cuomo

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      Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, chairwoman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, had been one of the mayor’s staunchest supporters.An assemblywoman who leads the Brooklyn Democratic Party and who has been a key backer of Mayor Eric Adams endorsed his main rival in the upcoming mayoral election, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, on Sunday.The decision by the assemblywoman, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, is one of the clearest signs yet that the winning coalition Mr. Adams built in 2021 has been completely fractured. She is not only endorsing Mr. Cuomo but will serve as his senior political adviser, an honorary role.Ms. Bichotte Hermelyn stood by the mayor when he was indicted on five federal corruption counts last year, and she remained at his side when he was accused more recently of entering into a quid pro quo with the Trump administration to secure the dismissal of those charges.But the fallout from that accusation, as well as record-low poll numbers and several serious challengers in the Democratic primary, has made Mr. Adams’s path to a second term rockier by the day.“The governor has the experience and the record to hit the ground running and provide the leadership and the steady hand that we need,” Ms. Bichotte Hermelyn said in an interview.Brooklyn has always been crucial for Mr. Adams, given his reliance on Black voters. He served as a state senator and borough president there before becoming mayor. Ms. Bichotte Hermelyn’s endorsement is likely to bring additional supporters to Mr. Cuomo’s side.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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      in US Politics

      ‘Show me the money’: how Eric Adams made it to the top – and fell back down

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      Last week, on a grey September morning, the New York City mayor, Eric Adams, was struggling to get ahead of federal prosecutors.News had already leaked that Adams, a former police officer who won in 2021 with a law-and-order message, was about to become the first mayor in city history to be indicted on federal corruption charges.Just minutes before the US attorney for the southern district of New York – an office known for taking on white collar criminals and the mafia – formally announced charges of bribery, wire fraud and the solicitation of campaign contributions from foreign nationals, Adams held his own press conference, in which he painted himself as the victim of a 10-month-long campaign of “leaks”, “commentary” and “demonising”.“We are not surprised,” Adams said solemnly, standing at a small wooden podium. “We expected this.”Behind the mayor stood a line of Black clergy members, an obvious gesture suggesting Adams was part of the long lineage of courageous Black leaders targeted by the white power structure.View image in fullscreenBut as one heckler in the audience that morning made clear, Adams – who had attempted to cut school budgets, raised rents for rent-stabilised tenants and cozied up to the city’s largely white corps of business leaders – might have a harder time projecting himself as a victim of the deep state.“This is not a Black thing. This is a you thing,” the protester shouted, as Adams grinned awkwardly.“You are a disgrace to all Black people in this city,” the heckler continued. “The things that you have done are unconscionable. You hurt our schools. Our streets are dirty. Our children are harassed by the police.”After a few minutes, Adams was able to speak and took questions from reporters, who had just got their hands on the freshly unsealed indictment against the mayor.The sprawling, 57-page filing alleged that for years in the run-up to his mayoral election Adams knowingly sought out and accepted illegal campaign contributions funneled to him by people part of or close to the Turkish government – not to mention luxury hotel stays and more than $100,000 worth of free or discounted flights going everywhere from France to Sri Lanka to China.The day after the indictment’s release, Adams had to go to court. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.This was not the future Adams had imagined for himself three years before when it became clear he was going to become the mayor of the US’s largest city by population.Back then, the candidate’s greatest support seemed to come from beyond.View image in fullscreenGod had previously told Adams, he recalled, that he was “going to be the mayor”, and, indeed, in 2021, right before the pivotal Democratic primary, everything seemed to fall into place for the once obscure Brooklyn politico.New York City’s progressive camp cannibalised itself. One of Adams’s top centrist rivals collapsed in the polls due to decades-old harassment allegations. And after months of protests over the police killing of George Floyd and a temporary rise in shootings, Adams rode a tough-on-crime backlash into office, eking out a victory over a former garbage commissioner with less campaign cash and little name recognition.“Look at me and you’re seeing the future of the Democratic party,” Adams told supporters at the time. “If the Democratic party fails to recognise what we did here in New York, they’re going to have a problem in the midterm elections and they’re going to have a problem in the presidential election.”And it wasn’t just Adams who was predicting big things.A chorus of national political columnists, consultants and analysts heralded his coming reign. Even the political forecaster Nate Silver had high hopes for the former Republican cop turned mayor.“It’s probably foolish to think a NYC mayor will successfully translate into being a national political figure, but I still think Eric Adams would be in my top 5 for ‘who will be the next Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden’,” Silver tweeted a few days after Adams took office.Today, as he faces federal charges, historically bad polls and a growing pool of mayoral challengers smelling blood, Adams looks more like a future one-term mayor than the future of the Democratic party.This was not an outcome that national commentators predicted. But former Adams staffers, aides, local lobbyists and elected officials – the kind of people who know how the Empire state runs – say they’re not surprised.Adams came to power through the backrooms of New York machine politics, a seedy but powerful subculture built more on favour-trading and loyalty than any strong ideological convictions. Over two decades, Adams attached himself to influential state lawmakers and party bosses from Brooklyn, cultivated some of the borough’s top real estate and legal titans, and developed a close-knit coterie of advisers and staffers who rose with him for years from the fringes of Brooklyn politics.View image in fullscreen
      This political network and Adams’s own unceasing work ethic helped the candidate build a campaign war chest that proved large enough to get him past the finish line in 2021 – a fact he well understood.“You win the race by raising money. Have to raise money. Everything else is fluff,” Adams texted a close supporter ahead of the election, according to messages cited in the indictment. “I have a 7 million dollar race. I have a clear plan to raise it and each night we are out executing the plan.”But it was this exacting drive, prosecutors allege, that caused him to cross ethical and legal lines in the pursuit of campaign cash and the power that comes with it.In the indictment, former Adams staffers, who appear to have cut deals with prosecutors as they built their case, claimed that their boss personally solicited illegal donations from foreign businessmen and approved of “straw donor” schemes, which used American residents as pass-throughs to mask the money’s true origin. One text message exchange cited in the indictment shows Adams personally pushing a staffer to seek “help” from a Turkish businessman, now accused of funneling him straw donations.Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for Adams, did not provide the Guardian with a comment for this story. Vito Pitta, Adams’s campaign counsel, and Alex Spiro, Adams’s criminal defence attorney, did not respond to requests for comment.Last Friday, after Adams formally pleaded not guilty, he stood outside federal court with Spiro, his attorney, who predicted the charges would be dismissed and accused prosecutors of bringing the case because they were excited by the “spectacle”.How aware, how involved the mayor was in these alleged schemes, may soon be left up to a jury to decide. But for years before the mayor was summoned to stand before a federal judge in lower Manhattan, political insiders say, there were signs that Adams was unafraid to skirt up to the edge of the law on his way to the top.The racetrack scandalWhen Adams first became a state senator from a working-class part of Brooklyn in the mid-2000s, he had a reputation as a reformer.During his early days as a cop, the Queens native publicly clashed with the department’s white ethnic brass. As a young lawmaker, Adams marched with Occupy Wall Street demonstrators and spoke out against the NYPD’s notorious “stop-and-frisk” program, an initiative that pushed cops to search young Black and Latino men en masse in the off-chance that they had a knife or a gun.But while his rhetoric as a press-hungry lawmaker could at times be progressive, Adams – whose long-term ambition was always to become mayor – showed more interest in cultivating alliances than passing landmark pieces of legislation.And some of the causes he did champion were obviously in his self-interest. In 2007, Adams, then a moustachioed freshman lawmaker, stood on the Senate floor and shouted about the need for lawmaker raises. “Show me the money,” declared Adams, wagging his finger to the chamber. “Show me the money. That’s what it’s all about.”Two years later, Adams found a way to raise more in campaign funds, if not personal ones.In 2008, Adams helped broker a deal that made his good friend, the state senator John Sampson, chair of the chamber’s Democratic majority – one of three positions at the time that in effect dominated the New York legislature, which was then considered by some to be a finishing school for political corruption.The following year, as chair of the senate racing and wagering committee, Adams got to work with Sampson to decide which company they would recommend for a multibillion-dollar video slot machine contract at a state-owned thoroughbred racetrack in Queens.New York’s inspector general later concluded that the selection process was tainted by favouritism.Investigators found that Sampson, for example, leaked “one or more confidential internal senate analyses of the competing bids” to a lobbyist working for AEG, the company that eventually landed the contract.View image in fullscreenAnd Adams and Sampson both met New York’s then governor David Paterson over dinner and pushed him to approve the contract for a company called AEG, Patterson later told investigators.The same month, Adams received more than $6,000 from AEG-linked contributors.Adams would later insist to investigators that he did not meet for dinner, contrary to the claims of the governor and his good friend Sampson. Adams said he just so happened to momentarily bump into the governor, Sampson and an AEG representative at the restaurant.“I just said hello to them and I moved on,” he told investigators, a claim that they said strained “credulity”. Four days after the contract was awarded to AEG, Adams and Sampson decided to attend a $1.5m “victory celebration” at the home of the company’s lobbyist.After the scandal came to light, the contract was rescinded. But federal prosecutors never brought any charges against Adams, who insisted long after that he upheld the “highest” of ethical standards throughout the episode. Sampson, who was also not charged for the AEG scandal, was subsequently indicted on embezzlement charges stemming from a separate incident a few years later. In the years after he was released from prison, the former lawmaker benefited from his association with Adams, as the Guardian previously reported.‘A true friend of Turkey’Since he was an NYPD officer in the mid-nineties, Adams had quietly harboured ambitions to become mayor, and, in 2013, he took the next step towards his goal, becoming borough president of Brooklyn. The position had few major responsibilities, but it served as an excellent launching pad for his long-planned mayoral bid.Once in office, Adams began using the post to boost his profile. He hung a large banner of himself on the columns at the front of borough hall. He plastered his image on advertisements for free concerts his office was organising. And soon he began flying to countries around the world – cultivating relationships with foreign government officials and business leaders, which frequently preceded suspicious clusters of campaign donations from members of those nations’ diasporas back in New York City.In his second year in the new post, Adams found time to take two trips to Turkey, arranged by a Turkish government official and businessmen with ties to the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, according to federal prosecutors.In 2016, the Turkish government official connected Adams to a manager at Turkish Airlines, which is partially state-owned. And in the years that followed, prosecutors allege, the airlines provided Adams and members of his inner circle more than $100,000 worth of free or discounted airfares to India, France, China, Hungary, Ghana and Turkey, where the borough president enjoyed free dinners, a boat tour of the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara and a Turkish bath at a seaside hotel, among other perks. In 2021, with Adams at this point officially running for mayor, the Turkish government official personally helped him harvest illegal campaign cash, according to the indictment. In one case, a New York City-based Turkish construction owner, acting at the behest of the Erdoğan official, held a fundraiser for Adams, prosecutors allege. The government official sent his driver to deliver campaign checks to the event, and the construction owner had several of his employees act as straw donors each giving $1,250 to Adams, having received the exact same lump sums earlier from their boss.Two months later, Adams won New York City’s Democratic primary, in effect making him the mayor-in-waiting.That September, the Turkish official, having cultivated Adams for almost six years, asked his friend for help, prosecutors allege.Erdoğan’s was visiting New York City for a United Nations meeting, and the Turkish consulate needed to ensure the president’s trip would coincide with the opening of a $300m glass skyscraper, slated to serve as the headquarters of multiple Turkish diplomatic missions, according to prosecutors. But the building still had numerous fire safety defects, which Turkish officials feared would prevent their leader from being able to preside over its inauguration.So the Turkish government official began reaching out to Adams’s eastern Europe Muslim countries liaison, the federal indictment alleges, telling her that Turkey had supported Adams and now it was “his turn” to support Turkey.View image in fullscreenThe next day, Adams sent his liaison a message saying he would contact the fire department, prosecutors allege. And in the days that followed, Adams repeatedly contacted the fire commissioner to fast-track the process, even as one department employee warned higher-ups that the site’s fire alarm system had “major issues”, according to messages cited in the filing.“In my opinion, this document does not take any liability that we would be comfortable with,” wrote the department official on 9 September, referring to a letter from a consulate contractor describing the state of the alarm system, according to an email included in the indictment. “I believe it actually tells us this building is not safe to occupy.”The next morning, Adams pushed the fire commissioner for an inspection, messages cited in the indictment show. “They really need someone … by today if possible,” Adams wrote. That afternoon after additional department outreach from Adams, one of the commissioner’s direct subordinates told the agency’s fire prevention chief that if he did not clear the bureaucratic hurdles for the Turkish consulate, they would both lose their jobs, prosecutors allege. The fire prevention chief then bypassed standard department procedure and issued a letter clearing the way for the building to open, an action he later described as “unprecedented”, according to prosecutors.At 2.17pm, Adams got word and messaged the Erdoğan official minutes later, according to an exchange cited in the indictment: “From the commissioner: Letter being drafted now. Everything should be good to go Monday morning.”“You are Great Eric, we are so happy to hear that 🙏🙏,” the Turkish government official wrote, the legal filing states. “You are a true friend of Turkey.”At a press conference last Thursday, federal prosecutors said the investigation into Adams’s ties to Turkey remained ongoing. (Federal authorities are also currently investigating another longtime Adams liaison linked to separate clusters of alleged straw donations, first revealed by the Guardian US in collaboration with the news sites The City and Documented.)The same morning, outside in the rain, Adams watched as protesters repeatedly interrupted his own press conference, calling him a “disgrace” and an “embarrassment”.Between their shouts, Adams asked the public to withhold judgement.“Everyone that knows me knows that I follow campaign rules and I follow the law,” he said. “That is how I live my life. I don’t see coming into the 60s at my age to all of a sudden change what I’ve done all the time.” More