The people of New York have spoken. Despite all the odds, a 34-year-old Muslim Democratic socialist has been elected to lead the largest city in the United States. Zohran Mamdani’s win is a huge victory for all New Yorkers, but it is also meaningful far beyond the five boroughs of this city.
Just as amazing was that this election wasn’t even close. Mamdani’s main opponent, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, ran a campaign that was as devoid of imagination as it was of hope and even personality. Having dramatically lost the democratic primary this past summer, Cuomo was forced to run as an independent, an almost comical political affiliation for a man whose campaign was utterly dependent on donations from the billionaire class.
Mamdani’s run was completely different. Funded overwhelmingly by donations under $100 and fueled substantially more by human capital than greenbacks – over 100,000 people volunteered for the campaign – Mamdani’s campaign mobilized a level of civic participation in local politics that I have never witnessed in the more than three decades I’ve lived in this city.
The chattering classes of American media mostly ignored this hard and dedicated work by largely faceless volunteers, wanting instead to focus on all the wrong reasons for his win. He’s charismatic and good looking, they said (though Trump, of course, believes he is better looking). He’s winning because he’s good at social media. He’s successful because his supporters are lonely people.
If only it were that easy. The real reason Mamdani has won is that he is the candidate who best understood what the people of New York want and need at this moment. He took the debilitating amount of economic anxiety that so many Americans are suffering through right now and turned it into a message of economic justice, believing that we all should be able to afford to live in the city we call home. He took the political anxiety that so many of us feel right now, as authoritarianism emanates from Washington DC, and turned it into New York pride for its legendary rambunctious spirit. (“To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us,” he said during his victory speech.”)
He refused to compromise on the rights of the Palestinian people to live in dignity. The last one is particularly significant. The old guard has long believed that expressions for Palestinian rights were equivalent to an electoral kiss of death. For the last year, they have predicted his downfall for this reason alone almost daily. Now, he has proved every single one of them wrong.
From the beginning of Mamdani’s rise in this election, it was clear that none of the old political logic was working. Regardless, his opponents continued to believe that his defeat must be premised on their own appeals to the vilest racism. Queens Republican Vickie Paladino, a New York City council member, demanded Mamdani be deported, and she questioned if he had been a citizen long enough to be elected mayor. During a radio interview, Cuomo laughed when the host claimed that Mamdani would “be cheering” another 9/11. “That’s another problem,” the former governor responded. Then, the day before the election, a political action committee supporting Cuomo ran a disgusting ad with Mamdani in front of video of the twin towers crashing down on 9/11.
The real lesson of the election, however, is that this noxious racism didn’t work. “No more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election,” Mamdani said in his victory speech.
That doesn’t mean that Islamophobia has been summarily defeated, any more than it means that economic injustice has been ultimately vanquished. Years from now, this electoral victory will be seen as the easy part. The real work, as we all know, lies ahead.
But what’s unique about this victory is that the Mamdani campaign has mobilized so many people locally to fight the good fight. The possibilities are as necessary as they are exciting. The election, both in its campaign and its results, have shown that the citizens of New York City are ready to actively forge a better future for all and together as one. The future is local.
It’s no surprise that the Mamdani campaign has resonated so loudly across the world. In a time when rightwing authoritarianism is rising dangerously and globally, Mamdani’s win is an object lesson in how left, local, and participatory politics can win. During his victory speech, the now incoming mayor expressed the kernel of this truth, and he did so in Arabic, the first time I can remember hearing this routinely vilified language in a politician’s acceptance speech in the United States.
To me, this is not just a simplistic politics of recognition. On the contrary. What Mamdani said points to how this message will travel from New York to Marseille to Berlin and beyond. It may be the key to our survival at this moment, and we should all listen to it carefully. “Ana minkum wa ilaikum,” he said, which means: “I am of you and for you.”
Now, we hold him to those words, and we hold ourselves to them as well.
Moustafa Bayoumi is Guardian US coolumnist
