One More Mamdani Hot Take
What the Democratic Party can learn, if it's willing
Like a lot of people around the country, I was not aware of Zohran Mamdani a month ago. Since his win last week, it seems like everyone has had their own take, but one thing I’ve seen over and over again is “A Democratic primary in a local race in New York City is totally different than the rest of the country.” It is this particular point I would like to address, from the perspective of someone who has run for Congress in a very red district in Texas (and shifted it 30 points), who has worked on campaigns in Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona. Here are my 5 takeaways from the Mamdani election that apply to the entire country, and that the Democratic Party ignores at its peril:
1) Youth “Swing” voters in November were younger and less white than the average voter. Anyone who has looked at the data from November knows the Democratic Party suffered a catastrophic collapse with young voters, in every swing state, and across the country. According to Pew, voters under the age of 35 shifted 24 points towards Trump between his 2016 election and 2024. That is a five-alarm fire in electoral terms, and Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries do not have the answer, but they could ask. Whether the 33-year old Mamdani’s success with youth was more due to his personal charisma (which can’t necessarily be replicated easily) or his progressive policies is debatable. What can’t be denied however, is that Mamdani was extremely successful at delivering his message to young voters in a place they would actually see it. Zohran’s catchy, funny organic videos (ie not paid ads) were his best form of communication, and what rocketed him to stardom. Most people in the 18-35 age bracket get almost zero news from broadcast or cable television (where most Democratic campaigns spend most of their campaign money, to this day). If the party wants to get its message to young voters, it needs to support candidates with proven success at getting to young voters where they’re at (on Instagram, TikTok etc. instead of the cable TV). If you never show up in a voters’ feed, how will they even know what you are trying to say? Perhaps the most stunned result from this election is that the two youngest age groups voted at the highest rates. I’ve never seen that before and if nothing else, the Democratic Party should study that result.
2) Money This is related to point 1) and a hill I will die on. Money does not buy elections. This is the biggest misconception in politics, and it is fueled by a political industry which wants that money spent with them, regardless of whether it helps the campaign win the election or not. Mamdani’s race is only the most recent example, but if you look through years of campaigns (as I have) you will see that money itself (which really means “number of ads bought”) is not the determining factor in competitive races. Money can be a proxy for incumbency (incumbents usually raise the most money and usually win) or a proxy for popularity (candidates who are popular in their district also raise a lot of money, but it’s the popularity that brings the money, not the other way around). The clearest proof of this is in races where you take away the incumbency and the popularity, but still have the money. These are called “self-funders.” (eg David Trone’s $62 million or Bloomberg’s $1 billion campaigns). These candidates often lose by huge margins, despite outspending their opponents by 10X or even 100X. In the NYC race, Mario Cuomo’s fundraising juggernaut blanketed every station and channel with paid negative ads against Mamdani for months. Meanwhile, Zohran was literally telling people, “Don’t send me money!” because NYC has a public financing system. He had no name recognition advantage and was polling at 1% in January. Most New Yorkers had never heard of him. But, then he exploded like lighting in a bottle, because of word of mouth and his “organic” social media (mentioned in #1 above) started going viral. People who saw. him loved him. (ie popularity). You can’t buy that with $100 million. Unfortunately, the party in Washington doesn’t look at that, or even have a way to measure it, beyond polls. Their #1 criterion, by far, of who is a “good candidate” is how much money they have raised, which is often a factor of how many rich people they know. In 2024, Kamala Harris spent more money and more swing voters saw ads from her than Trump (same as Hillary), but those voters still said they could better explain what Trump stood for than Kamala. If the Democratic Party is going to win in 2026 and 2028, it must stop evaluating candidates based on how many rich friends they have and how much money in the bank (the primary considerations currently) and start evaluating them based on how much on the ground support they have in their own district. (Also known as “votes.”)
3) Immigrants This one deserves it’s own section. First, I want to clarify that while “immigration” and “the border” continue to unfortunately be MAGA’s strongest issues, I don’t mean immigration policy. I’m talking specifically about immigrant voters. Even more than youth voters, immigrant voters shifted heavily towards Trump this election swinging 28 points in 4 years. If Democratic support among youth voters collapsed, this is more like complete and total freefall. Despite the Republican lie that Democrats are “importing votes,” clearly having the most anti-immigrant policies we’ve ever seen does not lose immigrant votes. Which begs the question, what gains immigrant votes? The answer: organizing immigrant communities. I take a point of personal pride on in this one, because Mamdani’s campaign has done (albeit to a much larger scale) exactly what I tried to do in my own campaign: include immigrants in the political process. Much of the “outreach” to immigrant communities I’ve seen in the Democratic Party consists of having the candidate stand on stage with some leader in an immigrant community or buying ads in Spanish in October. One Congressman literally said to me, “You’re the Asian guy, right? I’ve got a lot of Asians in my district. What do I need to do to get their votes?” By that he meant, “who do I need to stand with or what ad do I need to buy?” I replied, “What are the largest Asian communities you have in your district and how many volunteers do you have in each of them?” The Congressman looked at me with a blank stare, like I wasn’t speaking English anymore (I was). Since my own 2020 campaign, I’ve tried unsuccessfully to approach several Democratic Party leaders to replicate what we did back then: organizing every immigrant community we could, recruiting volunteers to campaign in the dozens of different languages that they actually use at home, and communicating on the platforms they get their information from. Unfortunately, I have not seen much interest from the party to standardize this or do it on any significant scale. Zohran’s campaign is the first one I’ve seen which really mastered immigrant organizing and immigrant communication. The big difference between his and mine is scale. I had about 1,600 volunteers. Mamdani has over 50,000 volunteers! (Bigger than most statewide campaigns). If the Democratic Party wants to stop the bleeding with immigrant voters, it needs to learn from campaigns who have successfully organized them.
4) Democratic Socialism Much has been made of this label. There are endless articles about how “far left” Mamdani is and why that that is the kiss of death for Democrats. As mentioned in my previous post about Zohran, I tend to rank people on a 1-100 scale for thoughtfulness rather than a 1-100 scale for Left-Right. One reason is because swing voters don’t actually make their decisions that way. Most of the voters who decided this election were less engaged with politics than the average, but when you ask them about “progressive” economic positions, they agree. Even some Republicans, like Josh Hawley, are starting to promote progressive economic positions without that label. The key point is that swing voters are not politicos. Among voters who regularly pay attention to politics, Kamala won by double digits. With voters who don’t pay attention to politics, Trump won by double digits. So, if they don’t pay attention to politics, how do you talk to them? The #1 thing these voters mentioned to me, by far, was cost of living. Almost 60% of swing voters said they were experiencing financial hardship, and those people went for Trump by 8 points. Most of the ones I talked to had no idea what Kamala’s plan to address affordability was. What was Mamdani’s campaign laser focused on? Affordability. This is not rocket science, and it is not unique to New York, or this election. I have talked to countless voters who said they voted Trump , but would have voted for Bernie if he was on the ballot. That is not a “left-right” spectrum. Those are people who thought Trump and Bernie were both concerned with the things that affected them, and at the top of the list is: how to pay the rent. Not every Democratic candidate has to agree about the labels of “socialist” or “centrist”, or agree on all their policy positions, but I can say for sure that if the Democratic Party brand in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Lansing, MI and Scranton, PA (all places I campaigned) had simply been cheaper rent, cheaper food, cheaper child care, cheaper health care, cheaper transportation we would have done a lot better on election day. When the Democratic Party was at its apex under FDR, those things were its brand.
5. 3rd Rail Issues Certain issues are considered to be so sensitive that the party dissuades candidates from discussing them, especially on foreign policy. Without getting into a full debate over the solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as someone who lived there for several years and worked on these issues, it seems clear that there can be multiple moral/non-bigoted political positions (ie 2 free states for 2 free peoples, which Harris supports or 1 democratic state with equal rights, which Zohran supports) and multiple immoral/bigoted positions (expelling all Jews or expelling all Palestinians, or preserving the status quo of forever statelessness and occupation of Palestinians). It is clear the Democratic Party did not want to talk about Gaza before the election, even though overwhelming majorities of both Democrats and Independents disapproved of Israel’s military action in Gaza. I was at the DNC in Chicago. Overall, it was a very joyful atmosphere, Kamala Harris’ social media was on fire at that point, and there was more optimism than I’d seen all year…except around the issue of Gaza. Several groups tried to get even a small speaking slot, with a pre-approved script, for a Palestinian-American state rep from Georgia, but were denied. Clearly the assumption was that letting someone talk about this issue would hurt Harris’ chances in November. However, on Election Day, 6% of Biden 2020 voters did not vote for Harris, and 15% of Biden 2020 voters did not vote at all. The #1 reason Biden 2020 voters cited for changing their vote was Gaza and 36 % said they were more likely to vote for Harris, if she broke from Biden’s Gaza policy. Regardless about your personal position, it is undeniably true that this issue hurt Kamala Harris.
It is also true that Mamdani was able to win an election in the world’s second largest Jewish city, and recruit many Jewish volunteers, without avoiding this issue. Yes, Cuomo spent tens of millions of dollars on ads claiming Mamdani is "anti-Semitic,” despite Zohran’s explicit condemnation of anti-Semitism, his explicit condemnation of violence against Jews, his explicit commitment to spend resources to fight anti-Semitism in New York, and his endorsements by the highest ranking Jewish official in New York, the longest serving Jewish Congressman, and one of the most prominent Jewish Senators. The attacks didn’t seem to have the effect Cuomo expected. Even many people who do not agree with Zohran’s democratic-1-state-with-equal-rights solution to the Palestinian-Israel conflict nevertheless ranked him on their ballot last week, because they believed he was a good choice for Mayor of New York. This is exactly what coalition building looks like in a democracy, where people have diverse views. If the Democratic Party keeps trying to force candidates to be silent on issues that are deeply unpopular with their voters and deeply personal to the candidates themselves, they are only hurting their own chances of winning.
The national Democratic brand is now at its lowest level in my lifetime, just as we face the greatest threat to American democracy in our history. Democratic candidates across the country can still learn from his monumental upset, without having to copy his platform exactly. The party itself stands to gain the most from listening, instead of fighting the thing that worked better than anything they have done. In my experience over the last 8 years, the Democratic Party is very averse to changing their basic formula, which so far hasn’t been successful in stopping fascism. Hopefully, that will change soon, for all our sakes.