Zohran Can Happen Anywhere (But Having an Opponent Like Cuomo Helps)

The Intercept

2 days ago

A worker dismantles the stage following New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo's election-night watch party for the Democratic primary on June 24, 2025 in New York City. Photo:Zohran Mamdani's victory on Tuesday night has launched a wave of enthusiasm across the progressive left and a wave of analysis in the political press.
The core question is simple: Can a young, Muslim, card-carrying Democratic Socialists of America candidate beat powerful establishment figures anywhere in the country? Is this a New York phenomenon, or a sign of a shift in the Democratic electorate as a whole?
The answer is yes.
Yes, the failure of the 'too big to fail' mayoral candidacy of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, armed with millions in establishment cash, in the face of a volunteer-driven challenge from the left, can happen anywhere. Cuomo can stand in for the increasingly tone-deaf national Democratic Party leadership, which has insisted since the 2024 loss that the party has to moderate its views and dismissed elected youth leader David Hogg for threatening to primary older Democratic congressional members, even after the debacle of the Biden 2024 campaign.
And yes, the specific combination of a generationally talented, principled, and authentic candidate with deep connections to social movements whose campaign successfully mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers going up against Cuomo, in particular, played a significant role in Mamdani's success.
The lessons from Mamdani's campaign can power insurgent progressive challengers to moderate Democratic machine candidates in other races, even outside of deep-blue urban centers (and it's worth remembering that New York has a long history of Republican mayors).
First, Mamdani hammered on affordability, pushing an economically progressive policy platform of free buses, a rent freeze, and free child care, which sent a clear message to voters about his priorities. He also pushed a handful of innovative ideas, such as municipally owned grocery stores and higher taxes on the rich, which drew people in with the spark of the new.
And he hit the streets. With public engagements and visits to communities across New York City, he presented an image as an open-minded and wholesome man of the people, and included his commitments to human solidarity and dignity — including for the Palestinian people — throughout his speeches. His campaign quickly became associated with cost of living, and while his proposals were attacked for not being 'realistic,' he stayed faithful to his message, which motivated over 29,000 volunteers to knock over 1 million doors.
His successful use of social media, including strategic collaborations with popular progressive influencers, also helped get his message out. The economic message, commitment to solidarity, and amazing ground game can absolutely be replicated, with the right principled candidate and a strong network of grassroots organizations and mobilized volunteers.
Mamdani also stressed social justice issues, such as protections for the LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities from Trump. And though he was never shy about expressing his beliefs on Palestine, his campaign focused mostly on universal issues of economic justice and access that would disproportionately help marginalized communities and communities of color.
For example, Black families with school-age children have left New York City over the past 20 years at the highest rate compared to any other group, according to census data, simply because the cost of having children was too high. Mamdani's plan to provide free child care at birth (and the soaring costs of child care is documented as a significant source of economic pressure for New Yorkers), baby boxes to new parents, and universal afterschool programs in the NYC Department of Education would be a boon to the diverse communities that benefit most from such services, while still providing help for New Yorkers across all levels of income. Almost three-quarters of New York City public school students fill federal criteria for 'economically disadvantaged' — and the universal pre-K program set up by Mayor Bill de Blasio remains one of his most popular achievements, and is used by families at a range of income levels.
Running on popular economic issues, standing up for social justice, and organizing a good ground game and social media campaign can all succeed anywhere.
But the race, like all races, still hinged on particulars.
Mamdani was running with some handicaps that other candidates seeking to reproduce his success may not face. Multiple rivals dinged the 33-year-old state assembly member for his youth and relative inexperience. Mamdani also faced racist attacks, as attack mailers sent by Cuomo's PAC depicted him with a darkened beard, in an attempt to play into Islamophobic tropes. Mamdani managed to turn his youth and identity to his advantage, mobilizing young voters and Muslim and South Asian voters across the city. Any candidate seeking to replicate his success can also change their liabilities into advantages, and use their positionality to mobilize and energize 'less-likely voters,' who are underrepresented in polling samples, but it's certainly a difficult feat to pull off.
Then there is his opponent. Andrew Cuomo came in with immediate name recognition, the backing of New York's Democratic establishment, and outspent Mamdani with a $25 million super PAC — but ran a lackluster campaign, and was shadowed by a long legacy of toxicity across many corners of politically engaged New York City.
In many ways, Mamdani became a representative of every marginalized progressive in New York City who had fought Cuomo's terrible politics, and terrible style of governing, for over a decade.
Cuomo, a dinosaur of the Clinton era 'Third Way' Democratic Party — he served as President Bill Clinton's housing and urban development secretary — came into the governor's office in 2011, as the state was recovering from the 2008 financial crisis. Cuomo swaggered into office with an extreme austerity budget, cutting 2.7 percent over the previous year, which included billions of dollars in cuts to necessary services like education and Medicaid, a loss intensified by losing federal matching funds, and only a tiny revenue bump from changing lottery rules. This budget delayed the court-ordered budget increases to high-needs schools and included provisions to fire up to 10,000 state workers. (Many of these job cuts were reversed when unions accepted cutbacks, wage freezes, and furloughs). Cuomo came into his first year in office wielding an austerity axe, and seemed to relish making enemies in public sector unions, health care, and education.
Cuomo pushed these cuts through and would continue his strongman rule of the New York state government, thanks to a divided legislature, which allowed him to occupy a role as a central dealmaker for the state. But Democrats won control of both the New York State Assembly and the Senate in 2012, and Republican dominance of the Senate appeared to have come to an end. But four Democratic senators created their own breakaway caucus called the Independent Democratic Conference, or the IDC, which then chose to form a coalition with the Republicans, effectively handing back control of the Senate.
Cuomo quickly used this to his advantage, mostly to slow the rate of progressive legislation. While Cuomo claimed to not be involved, reports beginning in 2014 showed that Cuomo encouraged the creation of this conference and even offered advice and strategy to the IDC. Cuomo also became mired in ethics scandals after he created, then quickly shut down, the Moreland Commission, created in January 2013 to root out corruption in state government. This made him a target for a principled primary challenge from good governance expert and law professor Zephyr Teachout in 2014. Teachout won a third of the primary vote, signaling disapproval of Cuomo among the electorate, but Cuomo did not take the challenge seriously. Cuomo continued to govern with disproportionate control, using the divided government to his advantage and engaging in policies that hurt New York City, such as cutting hundreds of millions of dollars of MTA funding and threatening to cut $485 million from City University of New York funding (about one-third of the state's contribution) in 2016.
Criticism of Cuomo intensified following Donald Trump's 2016 presidential victory. When state senators from deep-blue Democratic districts in diverse urban communities joined the IDC in early 2017, that sparked new outrage and brought new attention to the issue. Constituents became activated under the broader #Resistance movement of the time, and began to hold their senators accountable and threaten primaries. In order to placate these activists, Cuomo 'negotiated' a deal in late 2017 in which IDC senators would return to the Democratic conference following a timeline. However, activists, including new Resistance groups and established entities like New York's Working Families Party, could not be placated and ran progressive challengers, raised money, and succeeded at beating 6 of the 8 IDC challengers by September 2018.
Despite his association with Republicans during the Trump administration, Cuomo managed to win in 2018 against his progressive challenger, Cynthia Nixon, who made taking out the IDC a central part of her platform. The IDC, along with Cuomo, stalled many progressive reforms in New York state, lagging behind comparable states like California. But in 2019, with Democratic majorities in both houses, the New York State Legislature passed a historic slate of progressive reforms, including the DREAM Act, progressive criminal justice reforms, the codification of Roe v. Wade into state law, gun control laws, and historic extension of the state's rent regulation laws — all passed in thanks to the Democratic control and injection of progressive state senators.
Many anti-IDC activists remained frustrated at Cuomo's Teflon-like ability to ignore criticism. His invincibility seemed more apparent during his meteoric rise to national stardom during his daily Covid-19 briefings in 2019. But his ascension to stardom was quickly matched by the dizzying fall to disgrace when 13 women, mostly former staffers, came forward to share their stories of his sexual harassment and retaliation. As key Democratic leaders, in the wake of #MeToo, called for his resignation, he resigned in disgrace. But his final year was also riddled with other ethical crises, including the nursing home crisis and his use of employees in drafting his 2020 Covid memoir. Taxpayers paid $60 million to cover the legal fees from these scandals, and some of Cuomo's sexual harassment suits are still being contested in court.
It's a mystery why Cuomo decided that his scandals did not matter, and decided to jump into the mayoral race once current mayor Eric Adam's own legal troubles became a major political liability.
Perhaps in the age of Trump's second presidency, Cuomo decided that #MeToo was over. Like other national Democratic leaders, he saw the future of the Democratic Party in moderates who could appeal to disaffected Republicans. Perhaps, like Hillary Clinton in 2016, he believed that his 'qualification' arguments would crowd out voters' concerns about his misdeeds. Cuomo the governor apologized for his behavior in 2021, but mayoral candidate Cuomo claimed in 2025 that he did nothing wrong, saying his only regret was his decision to resign. Perhaps the shift from Biden to Trump voters from 2020 to 2024 in many immigrant and communities of color in NYC convinced Cuomo that voters would want a similarly traditional and swaggering man from Queens, like Trump, to run their city.
Cuomo has been proven wrong. He made mistakes almost every step of the way, refusing to meet the press, hold public events, attend candidate forums, and take his opponents seriously. While his PAC flooded TV with exaggerated attack ads, Mamdani was in the streets, meeting and engaging with voters, crafting a hopeful message for an affordable New York with clear, easy to understand policy proposals. Cuomo leaned on a tired, conservative narrative, pushing fear of subways and homeless people, and painting New York City as a lawless and terrifying place.
Cuomo and his countless Democratic operatives and billionaire funders failed to realize the long memory and activation of so many progressive New Yorkers, especially members of the New York City DSA and Working Families Party. Perhaps he hoped that most people would forget the details of his scandals. The hundreds of people energized by his collusion with the IDC would not, nor would feminist and health care activists furious about his abuse of women and nursing home patients.
The existing mobilized and well-connected networks of anti-Cuomo activists made sure that as many New Yorkers as possible would not forget. The 'Don't Rank Cuomo' coalition used the city's ranked-choice voting system to urge voters to exclude Cuomo from their ballots. Combined with Mamdani's strategy of cross-endorsing other candidates, such as Brad Lander and Michael Blake, this amplified the anti-Cuomo message and made his opponents seem cooperative and effective.
While Mamdani ran a historic campaign and is certainly a uniquely charismatic and talented candidate, the work of existing progressive and socialists activists on the ground fighting Cuomo for 14 years came together to erode the former governor's advantage. All of this led to Mamdani's success on June 24.