The Age-Old Question Behind the New York Mayor's Race

New York Times

a day ago

It was a night when thousands of 20-somethings were glued to their laptop screens for a battle whose stakes were both immediate and metaphorical, a contest between experience and youth, veteran versus vitality. Mike Tyson, a decorated, tested legend of boxing, was taking on Jake Paul. Mr. Paul, decades younger and with fewer fights under his belt, radiated energy, but his reputation was based more on social media videos than prowess in the ring. The newcomer triumphed.
Of course, in sports the advantages of being the scrappy, enthusiastic upstart in a fight with an old hand are obvious. There's an energy that's visible in quick leaps, fast punches, unflagging endurance. The same may be true in math, music or the arts. In politics, though, the fresh face is often written off. The median age of a U.S. senator is the age at which many American retire. The last two presidents were born before the invention of the transistor radio and the hula hoop.
But some political contests force voters to laser in on whether all that grizzled experience is really what they want.
New York's Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday was one of those. The competition between the two front-runners, Zohran Mamdani, 33, and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, 67, played out not just on the plain of policy but also on the plain of experience versus enthusiasm: Did New Yorkers want a mayor who was relatively new to local politics, or someone whose record, scandals and all, was basically tattooed on the city's brain? If New York is 'a city for only the very young,' its politics don't often seem so, shuffling well-known names around seats of power like musical chairs. What's the value, some watching the mayor's race wondered, in someone totally new?
That question feels urgent on a national level, too, not long after a presidential campaign that featured a septuagenarian and an octogenarian, and weeks after the exodus of a lightening rod Zoomer from the Democratic National Committee.
The dichotomy of wizened experience versus fresh-faced enthusiasm has played out many times in the business world, too — in corporate boardrooms, where silver-haired executives debated their firm's succession; on startup teams, where founders scratched their heads over whether to bring in veterans or workers with fresh ideas.
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