If there is one takeaway from Zohran Mamdani's victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, it's that there is no one takeaway. The democratic socialist and his wide-ranging canvassing team built a coalition that brought in voters of all backgrounds, leading to a defeat of Andrew Cuomo by a significant margin. There wasn't one sole factor that handed Mamdani the win, and everyone will have their own opinions on which campaign promise or tactic mattered the most. That said, it feels safe to say that one familiar opposition strategy resoundingly did not work.
Mamdani's primary agenda on his platform is to make New York City more affordable for its residents, through specific initiatives: freezing rent, free buses, no-cost childcare. While many of his opponents took time to pick at these progressive policies, they also relentlessly attacked his Muslim faith and support for Palestinians. In a race for mayor of New York City, they tried to make fealty to the state of Israel a strict qualification.
The conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism was deliberate, stemming from the typically (and historically) correct belief that paranoia and bigotry can be easily cultivated in the minds of voters. The specter of 9/11 was conjured, as if it were 2003. A pro-Cuomo ad darkened Mamdani's beard on a flyer. Elisha Wiesel, a hedge fund manager and son of the writer Elie Wiesel, released a frankly insane video that paired Holocaust footage alongside a clip of Mamdani talking about cofounding his school's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. In seemingly every televised interview, with a delivery that felt uncanny compared to the tone of the preceding and following conversation, someone would ask Mamdani whether he believed that Israel had a right to exist. His usual response was some form of the following: He believes that Israel has a right to exist as a state that offers equal rights to all its citizens and complies with international law.
Even when Mamdani would give a thoughtful answer to an asinine question—what nation has a "right to exist," and how is that right guaranteed in practice?—it wasn't enough. Stephen Colbert grilled him harder than he did Donald Rumsfeld.
Then there was a last-ditch effort to tank Mamdani's campaign by focusing on his measured response to a question by The Bulwark's Tim Miller, who asked about the phrase "Globalize the intifada" and whether it made the candidate "uncomfortable."
"To me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights," Mamdani said. "And I think what's difficult also is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it's a word that means 'struggle.' As a Muslim man who grew up post-9/11, I'm all too familiar [with] the way in which Arabic words can be twisted, can be distorted, can be used to justify any kind of meaning. And I think that's where it leaves me: with the sense that we need to focus on keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe, and the question of permissibility of language is something that I haven't ventured into."
As we now know, these accusations of antisemitism did not torpedo Mamdani's campaign. He stuck to his messaging and brought the focus back to those actually in a position to vote for him—people who live in New York City. He also forged a strong alliance with mayoral candidate and comptroller Brad Lander, a Jewish New Yorker who might have had differences of opinion with Mamdani on that particular phrase, but still opposed the Israeli occupation and didn't abandon or downplay the partnership when pressed on his fellow candidate's position.
"Look, no mayor is going to be responsible for what happens in the Middle East,” Lander said in his joint interview with Mamdani and Colbert. "But there is something quite remarkable about a Jewish New Yorker and a Muslim New Yorker coming together to say, 'Here’s how we protect all New Yorkers.' Jewish New Yorkers and Muslim New Yorkers are not going to be divided from each other. We build a city where you have affordable housing and good schools and safe neighborhoods—for everyone."
After years of watching candidate after candidate go out of their way to pledge loyalty to Israel and support its "right to defend itself"—even progressive politicians who align themselves with Palestine when convenient but discard it in a moment of opportunity—I found the joint approach by Mamdani and Lander to be heartening. More importantly, it worked. New Yorkers did not assume the worst of Mamdani, and his joint endorsement with Lander strengthened both of their positions in their fight to defeat Cuomo.
Another factor here is that voters have presumably paid attention to the news over the past two years. They have seen Israel continue to massacre Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. They have seen the photos and videos of starving children, brutalized civilians, Israeli soldiers gleefully documenting their war crimes. None of this looks like Israel defending itself, let alone fighting for existence. This is also not a fringe position, no matter what legacy media outlets insist. From the early days of Mamdani's campaign, right after Donald Trump's re-election, he was speaking to voters who had cited Gaza as a reason that they didn't vote for Kamala Harris, or at all. Mamdani's stance is not a liability, but a strength. Across a number of countries, public opinion has shifted negatively toward Israel and its aggression. The strategy of calling everyone and everything antisemitic—from children's entertainer Ms. Rachel to a Palestinian flag pin—has hopefully been exposed for the dishonest rhetoric it is. The strategy to convince voters that a Ugandan-born, Manhattan-raised assemblyman is part of Hamas, because he expresses support for equal rights for Palestinians, failed spectacularly.
Even more encouraging is that this failure was not exclusive to the mayoral race. In Brooklyn's 39th district, City Councilmember Shahana Hanif faced a challenger in Maya Kornberg, backed by pro-Israel political action committees that aimed to make the race about Hanif's support of Palestinians. In the 38th district, City Councilmember Alexa Avilés, a democratic socialist, faced competition from Ling Ye, also backed by pro-Israel PACs. Both incumbents kept their seats by significant margins.
It would be naive to declare complete victory. Mamdani will face some sort of independent challenge in November; many leading state Democrats are still reluctant to endorse him; the voter demographics of New York make this strategy difficult to replicate everywhere. But if Mamdani and Lander's consistent messaging and solidarity are not a total blueprint to winning elections, they surely provide some useful methods on how to avoid inane rhetorical traps, and instead simply advocate for the issues their voters care about. In the largest city in the country, that includes human rights for all.
