Five Lessons from the Mamdani Win

Last night the votes were counted for the Democratic Primary for the New York City Mayors election in November. There were many candidates, but thanks in part to ranked choice voting, the most popular candidate won, Zorhan Mamdani. Born in 1991 in Uganda of South Asian ancestry, he moved to New York city when he was seven years old. His mother is a well known filmmaker, father an Anthropology professor at Columbia, he went to Bowdin.

He was running against Andrew Cuomo who, like his father, was governor of New York state, he resigned due to very many charges of sexual harassment and has faced many corruption charges throughout his career. At the national level, Bill Clinton appointed him head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In general he has been a big shot in Democratic Party his entire adult life.

The following are the five most important things to learn from this upset.

The Status Quo v. Decolonization

The real division in the Democratic Party is between those who more or less support the Status Quo (the Clintons, Biden, Harris, Cuomo, etc) on one side and the Deconlnizers, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Octavia Cortez on the other. Who endorsed Cuomo and who endorsed Mamdani is a good indication of who is on which side.

Applying Status Quo to the Cuomo and those who endorsed him seems the most accurate way to describe them. And Status Quo v Decolonization is different from Left Right. The Status Quo is the group of people who are fundamentally pretty comfortable with the fact that those who have billions, individuals or corporations, control how US society is organized. They also tend to be comfortable with how the Democratic Party operates and how it undertakes political competition and elections. A good recent example of Status Quo v Decolonization was the internal election among the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair's race last year between Ben Wikler from the Decolonizers v Ken Martin from the Status Quo. After the loss of the 2024 election, many hoped that the Democratic Party would reform itself after yet another debilitating loss. Nope. Ken Martin, the Status Quo candidate, won the DNC election in the first round. I asked for an assessment from the most knowledgeable DC insider I know. He said, "the vendors will be happy".

Decolonization may sound to some like a charged word, too academic, radical, woke (whatever that means), identity politics, attacking traditional values (whatever those are), cancel culture (whatevs), guilt politics, all that stuff. But for many, particularly educated young people, it's simply an accurate way to describe the job ahead. I could have said "foundational" to be more mild, but same thing really. Those who control giant capital, billionaires, or the top 1%, have colonized us and it is time to decolonize. Pretty simple.

Mamdani is often described as the most left. But Left/Right doesn't really mean much any more. Traditionally the Republican Party was the conservative party in the US. That meant keep things mostly the way they are, keep the power structures in tact, and proceed with caution. The Democrats, except in the South East, were those who wanted change. But after the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965 and African Americans political participation started becoming normal and at times eventually decisive, Richard Nixon really really started changing the Republican party. It more and more was the party that would pretend to want change, but would actually promote greater corruption, cruelty, and division. The Democratic Party just keep doing what it always did, a big tent and an unending internal monologue with itself about candidates and messaging. It's disinterest, some would say anxiety, about bringing in new younger voters and candidates, has meant the Party itself has largely been able to keep the Decolonizers out.

The Republican leadership is now indistinguishable from the billionaire Oligarchs; they work together to create even greater corruption and destroy the institutions and democracy that could control them. But the party works hard to persuade voters that they are the party of change and most Republican voters believe that this same oligarchic leadership is shaking things up and addressing real problems. But their change is destroying institutions. But they are keeping the oligarchy in power. That's the whole idea.

When Zoomers and Millennials are motivated to vote, electoral outcomes change

Zoomers (born 1997 to 2012) and Millenials (born 1981 to 1996) want real change and will vote and get engaged when they believe that their participation can create real change. When the Democratic Party leadership prevented Bernie from winning the 2016 nomination, it was perhaps the most consequential coup by the Status Quo over the Decolonizers the Democratic Party had ever seen and gave strong arguments to those saying Democrats and Republicans are the same. They aren't at all the same, but it is true that both are comfortable and will even operate in underhanded ways to favor Status Quo candidates.

The fossilized New York Democratic Party, a lazy collection of insiders was typified by sitting congressman Joe Crowley in 2017. The story of how AOC and the guy who recruited her, Saikat Chakrabarti, beat Crowley in the Democratic primary is story with similarities to Cuomo's and Mamdani's. The differences between Crowley and AOC are less about their policy positions, or how radical they are, and more about their comfort or discomfort with the current Oligarchy, and therefore who they appealed to, and therefore how they ran their campaign.

The Status Quo Machine will do everything for him not to end up Mayor

The Oligarchs will do everything in their power, and I mean everything, to prevent Mamdani from becoming mayor. Plenty of Cuomo's supporters were generic Billionaires, property developers, and big companies like DoorDash and Lyft hoping for favors that they would have been much more likely to get from business-as-usual Cuomo than Mamdani.

But if Mamdani becomes mayor he will conduct a big important experiment in a big important city, much watched by other cities in the US and the world, particularly by oligarchs. The experiment or hypothesis is that you can tax the extremely rich, they will complain but pay, and with that money do things that will make regular people's lives better. Even if elected, city mayors don't just get to snap their fingers and their policies become reality, and if he is elected, there will be many saboteurs trying to prevent this experiment from happening. But if he is elected, and the experiment is conducted, it will work and everybody will notice. And the Oligarchs are really afraid of that. Their message is and will always be that taxing billionaires is dangerous, socialist, Marxist, cataclysmic, and that having billionaires untaxed, around, and happy is somehow useful or important for cities. It's not, as Mamdani's experiment will show.

Oligarchs will try to prevent Mamdani from being elected via three main methods. The first is to have as many oligarch supported diversionary candidates as possible. This means candidates that can peel off various demographic groups. Their purpose won't be to win but to take votes from Mamdani. The second will be a massive paid digital campaign micro-targeted to each likely or possible Mamdani voter to discourage them from voting in the 4 November 2025 General Election. The messages of this digital campaign will be tailored to the recipient and have nothing to do with Mamdani himself. Grow petunias in your window box and you're a member of some "I Love Petunias!" group on-line? Get ready to be barraged with, "What's Mamdani's problem with Petunias?" "Momdani's Petunia Ban, Pros and Cons" headlines until 4 November. It will be general disinformation, but microtargeteding to discourage voting by some, likely supporters. "Mamdani's hobby is microwaving babies, true or false?" Lots will be of the Swift Boat Veterans variety, high school acquaintance that nobody remembers interview, "I'm not saying he microwaves babies, I have no idea, but I remember I think I saw him with what could have been microwavable ramen thing once, so he probably had a microwave at home, and....you know....where there's smoke there could be fire." And the third will be around mid-October to fall behind one competitor, whoever is in second place, and go all out for them.

It will be very interesting to see among the extremely rich, who lines up with the Republican Oligarchs and Plutocrats to try to sink him and who will support him and how loudly. It will be a good test of character for individuals and for the rest of us to better understand the very rich and the billionaire class. There are great and nice billionaires, Laurene Powell Jobs or MacKenzie Scott for example, neither in New York and not directly connected to this election. But what will 83-year-old-Mike Bloomberg do? An honorable person who doesn't like fascism. Will he support Mamdani in a serious way, or will he work loudly or quietly against him to keep his $106 Billion from becoming taxed into $104 Billion?

The Media ignores turnout

There are two stories in elections. The one that the media covers is who won and who lost, what is reported is the percentage each got or the spread. As I write the count was finished only a few hours ago and the fact that Mamdani got 43.5% and Cuomo got 36.4% is everywhere, although not super clear what that means in a ranked choice election. The media treats it as a race, the number that matters is the percent spread and that is really what matters. The rest of the article, that nobody reads is just a bunch of speculation about who voted for who and why.

The other story that they don't cover, and never cover, is the turnout. Right now, it seems as if this was among the highest turnout primaries ever in a NYC Mayors race, and that information could be reported, dissected, and portrayed, but isn't. And it won't be because journalists never tell that story. I don't have the data, so I am guessing, but I bet that is the much more important story.

When everything written is about the percentage, there is a tendency to think of "the voters" and to think of them as roughly the same people in every election. They aren't. I am guessing that what made the difference in this primary was people who had never voted in a primary and that their numbers where huge. Not living in New York, I wasn't even really paying attention to this election, until a very insightful 22-year-old told me about it. She also doesn't live in NYC but was really interested in it. She said people she knew in NYC were very energized, and that they were actively connecting with friends and family to get them to vote, and to support Mamdani. I bet that is largely what did it, but the percentage/horse race coverage won't allow that story to be told. I hope at least those who care about electoral outcomes look carefully at the turnout numbers if they are ever even available to the public because turnout of new voters will save democracy in America and this vote will show the way.

Ranked Choice and Approval Voting is a much better way to choose candidates.

This primary was ranked choice. This is a much MUCH better way than the usual method used in the US which is called First-Past-The-Post or Plurality voting, where no matter how many candidates there are, whichever gets the most wins. There are ways to play with that, like the winner must get some percentage or else there will be a run-off but then people have to vote twice which lowers turnout. In a First-Past-the-Post election, with no turnout lowering runoff, you could easily have a winner with twenty or thirty percent of the vote, a winner who everybody else hates. Ranked choice voting tends make it difficult for candidates to be elected who lots of people hate. The method also helps lesser known candidates. The only problem with ranked choice voting is that it is very difficult to count; the count can't be done at each polling station, it needs to be central, and can take a while.

Ranked Choice voting's quieter sibling voting method is called Approval Voting. This is where you have a group of candidates, and the voters just vote yes for the ones they like. They can vote for as many or as few as they want. It is much easier to count, and to vote, and the outcomes are almost always the same as ranked choice voting.

So what's next

The election will be decided by turnout. A high turnout overall will favor Mamdani. A lower turnout will favor his opponents whoever they may be.

Hope you will send around and comment below. If you comments elsewhere, please use #MamdaniTurnout with what you write so we can find each other. Thanks!

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