How social media videos fueled Zohran Mamdani's success

Straits Times

9 hours ago

NEW YORK - As a millennial politician, Mr Zohran Mamdani is a digital native, at ease on both sides of a camera and well versed in the slangy 'terminally online' lingo of those with active social media accounts. He is also the son of an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, with a sharp eye for aesthetics and moving images.
So it is perhaps not surprising that Mr Mamdani's campaign for mayor of New York City has relied heavily on engaging social media posts. But during the Democratic primary, his high-energy videos also inspired his supporters to create their own clips, which encouraged others to respond with even more videos. Before long, Mr Mamdani, a 33-year-old Assembly member, was not just a politician. He was a vibe. He was a meme.
Among the factors in Mr Mamdani's stunning lead in the primary last week was his ability to translate his campaign message about making New York City more affordable to TikTok and Instagram, where clips by and about him had been going viral for months.
He was on the internet talk shows Subway Takes and Gaydar. Comedians Ilana Glazer, Marybeth Barone and Sarah Sherman made videos asking voters to rank Mr Mamdani first on their primary ballots. There were clips that used NBA highlights to explain his campaign. And a video in which he spelled his name, M-a-m-d-a-n-i, set to the track 'Hollaback Girl' by Gwen Stefani. There was even a clip set to a Japanese pop song in the style of a 'fansub,' a phenomenon that only the extremely online would understand.
The more Mr Mamdani posted, the more people posted about him, and soon, whether or not you were following the mayoral race, there were Mr Mamdani videos in your feed.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who had spent months as the perceived front-runner in the Democratic primary before Mr Mamdani outpaced him, derided his social media popularity during a debate this month. 'Mr Mamdani is very good at videos, but not reality,' he said, criticizing his rival as inexperienced and his policy proposals as impractical.
New York Mayor Eric Adams, who is running in the general election as an independent, also discounted Mr Mamdani's social media strategy, without naming him. 'Let's be clear: They have a record of tweets,' Mr Adams said at the launch of his general election campaign last week. 'I have a record on the streets.'
It is impossible to say how many of the Mr Mamdani videos actually translated into votes. But especially for some of the city's youngest voters, who get much of their information from social media, the campaign appeared to resonate. Mr Mamdani's videos explained his plans for a rent freeze, free bus service and free child care in simple terms, propelling him swiftly from relative obscurity as a state lawmaker to a household name. Videos created by his supporters found broad audiences.
Ms Oladoyin Ogunsola, a 22-year-old artist and content creator, said she found herself inspired. She posted a 12-second video of herself on TikTok, leaning out of a cab window, eyes closed, followed by quick clips of the subway, Times Square and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The caption? 'I'm ranking Zohran first because I deserve the opportunity to build a life in the city that raised me.' The video has had more than 30,000 views.
Ms Ogunsola, who often posts about herself and her life in New York, said she connected to Mr Mamdani as a fellow child of immigrants raised in Queens. She said she was not contacted by or paid by his team to create the video. 'It's hard to manufacture something like this, for real,' she said.
Ms Vivien Maskara, 19, seized an opportunity to make a Mr Mamdani video after an in-person encounter in Queens' Sunnyside neighborhood. The candidate was in her neighborhood for a campaign event, and she asked if he would make a video with her. 'I didn't want a photo,' she said. 'I wanted a TikTok.'
Ms Maskara used a popular TikTok meme, 'I'm passing the phone to –,' that comes with built-in suspense; viewers don't know where the phone will land. 'I'm passing the phone to our future mayor,' Ms Maskara said in the video. Mr Mamdani accepted the handoff with a smile and quickly urged viewers to vote 'for a city that every New Yorker can afford.'
Ms Maskara's 10-second clip quickly reached over 500,000 views. 'I think he's really changed campaigning,' she said.
One TikTok user who lives in Brooklyn created a Ms Mamdani video that doubled as dating advice. 'If you're going on any first dates in the next couple of weeks,' the woman said to the camera, 'the first thing you should ask is: 'Are you ranking Zohran No. 1 in the mayoral primary?''
The 25-year-old creator, who did not wish to be identified by her real name, also made a clip directed at Jack Schlossberg, whose cousin Kerry Kennedy was previously married to Cuomo. 'Are you ranking Zohran?' she asked. 'I hope you're not ranking Cuomo.' That video got more than 100,000 views. Ten days later, Mr Schlossberg, the grandson of President John F. Kennedy, posted a photo of Mr Mamdani on his Instagram account, and the woman responded with another clip. 'We did it!' she said. 'Cyberbullying works, you guys.'
Ms Isabela Buitrago, a 23-year-old content curator born and raised in Jackson Heights, first learned about Mr Mamdani on social media. Once she started following him, the algorithm served her more and more Mr Mamdani. 'The short videos were great because, you know, Gen Z, our attention span sucks,' she said.
Ms Buitrago, who posts information for the queer and Latina community in New York City, has almost 20,000 followers on TikTok and almost 35,000 on Instagram. She emailed Mamdani's campaign team and said she wanted to share his message with her followers.
His team set up a brief walk-and-talk with Mr Mamdani on the day he campaigned on foot from Inwood to Battery Park. A 26-second snippet of her interview, titled 'How New York is Zohran?!,' has had more than 300,000 views.
Helping a political campaign by creating videos doesn't necessarily require an enormous expenditure of time. Shortly before the primary, Ms Charlene Kaye, 38, a New York City-based musician and comedian who creates funny songs about pop culture, posted a clip of herself playing a keyboard and singing a catchy song with the hook 'Everybody rank Zohran.' She said she penned the tune in five minutes – and it has been shared more than 1,000 times.
'I just think that our forefathers would have wanted grassroots change to start with the musical comedians of Brooklyn,' she said.
Ms Kaye noted that although many other politicians try to reach younger generations with social media videos, it does not always work. 'You have to have impeccable rizz – and not everybody has that,' she said.
Ms Allie O'Brien, a political content creator with more than 600,000 followers on TikTok, was not surprised that Mamdani's particular online persona caught fire.
'Not only is he young and charismatic and clearly enough of a digital native that he and his team have a really good sense of how to perform well online,' she said, 'but his social media strategy backed up a really objectively popular campaign.'
Ms O'Brien often works with people she calls 'fancy elected officials' who don't take social media videos seriously. 'They think, if we make jokes from time to time, if we do something relatable, people will fall in line and will love us. And it's really not always the case,' she said.
She suggested that Mr Mamdani's appeal, even to people in other states, who can't vote for him, is a result of the ear-to-ear smiling positivity emanating from his videos.
Proving her point: Mr Mamdani appears in a dreamy montage set to the Addison Rae track 'New York,' created by a TikTok user with the screen name fleuririva. Her account has only 19 followers, but the video featuring Mr Mamdani has had more than 38,000 views.
Reached by phone, the user behind the account, who did not wish to be identified by her real name, said she did not vote for Mr Mamdani – because she lives in Virginia. But, she said, what Mr Mamdani stands for 'is inspiring to a lot of the younger generation.'
Asked if she was paid by Mr Mamdani's campaign to make the video, she laughed. 'No,' she said. 'I, like, literally just graduated high school.' NYTIMES
Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.