A Mayoral Campaign Captures a Cool Crowd

New York Times

17-05-2025

To be young and online in New York is to be aware of a set of social media cool kids — artists, podcasters, writers, models, folks about town — with the power to define what's in, and what isn't. Typically, these people anoint influencers, restaurants, bars, literary magazines and other cultural institutions, permitting them entry into a glossy universe of good taste.
Now they've set their sights on a mayoral candidate.
In the past three months, Zohran Mamdani, the upstart Democratic Socialist mayoral hopeful, has appeared onstage at Brooklyn Steel to speak to a sold-out concert by MJ Lenderman, the Pitchfork-approved singer-songwriter; he has tagged along with the ubiquitous TikTok host Kareem Rahma for his show 'Keep the Meter Running'; he has accompanied the leftist personality Hasan Piker on his wildly popular streaming show; and he has posed at campaign events with figures of the Brooklyn cultural elite including the millennial celebrity chef supreme Alison Roman and Ella Emhoff, the fashion-darling stepdaughter of former Vice President Kamala Harris.
The event that best summed up the embrace of Mr. Mamdani's campaign by New York City's young microinfluencers, though, is one that took place in March at an East Village club.
It came about with the help of the publicist Kaitlin Phillips, who has a roster of clients that includes A24, Prada and the Substack phenom Emily Sundberg. Her name is synonymous with the world of Lower Manhattan hype and image making: fashionable, online, in the know.
Yet when the campaign found out in February that Ms. Phillips wanted to offer her services gratis, they had never heard of her.
Andrew Epstein, the Mamdani campaign's communications director, started reading around about Ms. Phillips and was surprised that she wanted to help. 'It's a symbol of our ability to reach into networks far beyond the expected ones,' he said.
A few weeks later, after some well-placed calls to her friends and to the reporters in her Rolodex, Ms. Phillips helped organize the only fund-raiser of the mayoral race to appear in all three of Vanity Fair, Curbed and Feed Me, Ms. Sundberg's newsletter, which referred to the event as 'the hottest party in New York this weekend.' (Ms. Sundberg has also mentioned the mayoral campaign of Scott Stringer.)
The hosts included the actress Rowan Blanchard, the left-wing podcasters of Chapo Trap House and the owners of the artsy Lower East Side boutique Café Forgot — a cross section of celebrities, niche media figures and Lower Manhattan trendsetters devised to draw out other cliquish culture makers. It took place the same evening as the Oscars, selling out the venue, the East Village hot spot Night Club 101 (tickets ranged from $20 to $250), and sending a line down the sidewalk.
In other words, it was a genuine clout bomb: a marketing strategy that involves gathering as many internet-famous figures in one setting as possible to push a product — or in this case, a political candidate. The fund-raiser took in more than $22,000, according to Mr. Epstein.
'It was a coalition of cultural figures who are banding together to say, 'When it comes down to electoral politics, we have a common interest,'' said Aria Dean, 31, an artist and writer who was one of the organizers.
Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo remains the faraway favorite in the Democratic primary polls. But Mr. Mamdani's precipitous rise to second place has been helped along by a savvy use of social media to communicate his easy-to-digest policies around rent (he wants to freeze it for rent-stabilized apartments) and transportation (he thinks the city's buses should be free to ride). His candidacy has also been embraced and even shaped by a hip social media class that wields not official endorsements, but something more nebulous and fickle: a social stamp of approval. It raises a question, though: Does this kind of influence actually move the needle in a mayoral election?
It wasn't so long ago that a Democratic politician who surrounded herself with celebrities and appeared on podcasts and in TikTok shows lost the White House. But Mr. Mamdani, a New York State assemblyman who has represented a western slice of Queens since 2021, is young, fluent in the language of the internet and — most important, his supporters say — championing policies that many find appealing.
Mr. Mamdani's online political content has three essential ingredients, said Chi Ossé, the only Gen Z member of the City Council: 'It has to be entertaining, it has to be concise and it has to be excellent policy.'
Mr. Ossé, 27, is himself a student of combining pithy social media appearances with easy-to-explain progressive policies — mostly notably his FARE Act, which passed real estate broker fees on to landlords.
Mr. Ossé announced his endorsement of the Mamdani campaign in April by recording a video with the assemblyman outside the internet-infamous intersection of Myrtle Avenue and Broadway in Brooklyn.
'He's captured the hearts and minds and imaginations of young people,' said Mr. Rahma, 38, the 'Keep the Meter Running' host. 'I think he's doing all of the right things that a mayoral candidate needs to do in a city that feels overwhelmingly young and overwhelmingly online.'
It's now de rigueur for politicians to cultivate cultural influencers — think just of this past presidential election, in which President Trump made the rounds on manosphere podcasts, and Ms. Harris sat down with the 'Call Her Daddy' host Alex Cooper. Of course, Mr. Mamdani is seeking local office, so it's not especially unusual that he is engaging with the micro-celebrities of New York, people who appear meaningfully embedded in a version of the city that young people experience — or want to experience.
It's a contrast with the high-roller act of Mayor Eric Adams, whose attempts to be a cool-guy mayor include dining at wallet-busting restaurants and passing late nights at the members-only club Zero Bond.
Not unlike Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez during her underdog 2018 primary race, Mr. Mamdani says he is trying to broaden the group of people who feel connected to electoral politics.
'Ultimately we don't just want to talk to New Yorkers who think of themselves as political and engaged with politics with a capital P,' Mr. Mamdani said in an interview.
But Mr. Epstein, the communications director, said these tastemakers and cloutmeisters were not cultivated as part of a grand strategy on the part of his campaign. Instead, he said, the candidate's ascension among the city's young and niche-famous hobnobbers largely reflects a willingness to say yes to any opportunity to get his message in front of voters.
It started with a town hall at a church in Brooklyn Heights in December, when Mr. Mamdani was still polling in the single digits. Mr. Epstein asked the crowd for ideas: Which influencers should they be engaging with? Sitting in the audience was Cassie Willson, a 29-year-old comedian and content creator.
'I had this moment of, that's me, I'm literally an influencer,' said Ms. Willson, who approached Mr. Epstein after the event.
The pair agreed to collaborate on a lighthearted video, which Ms. Willson published to her social channels. It's since racked up more than half a million views on TikTok and Instagram.
Next came a live interview at the Bell House with Mary Beth Barone, 33, a comedian and actress who has a running series on Instagram called 'Politics for Hot People.' Ms. Barone, who said she had been considering her own run for mayor because she was so fed up with Mr. Adams, learned about Mr. Mamdani from a friend over a meal at Cafe Mogador in Williamsburg.
Ms. Barone said she had never voted in a mayoral primary before, but was drawn to the simplicity of Mr. Mamdani's policy proposals and the effectiveness of his presentation.
'It was about educating myself and sharing it with my audience,' she said.
And it doesn't hurt that Mr. Mamdani's screen presence — smiley, cheerful, game and witty — is a perfect fit for the vertical screen.
That such a straightforwardly earnest candidate would emerge as a favorite of the downtown world may seem unlikely: This set has been characterized as everything from reactionary to right-wing, and above all, governed by a certain ironic sensibility. But according to Ms. Dean, the artist, the embrace of Mr. Mamdani reflects instead a group of people who have been disillusioned with liberal politics since the unsuccessful 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders.
'For people in a cultural world with a lot of posturing, there hasn't been an outlet for those left energies,' she said.
And while some on social media have criticized Mr. Mamdani's embrace of the online 'it' crowd as a limited constituency, the veteran New York Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf said there was really no downside — especially for a young, ambitious politician with many campaigns ahead of him.
'Whether he wins this time or not he'll be back with this constituency,' Mr. Sheinkopf said. 'By doing what he's doing, he's consolidating the left. That's why the other candidates have not been able to gain traction. He's fresh, and they're tired.'
As the June 24 Democratic primary rapidly approaches, Mr. Mamdani campaign says it is continuing its large-scale canvassing and door-knocking efforts throughout the five boroughs — not just among the tote bag set.
'I would be worried if this was the entirety of our outreach strategy,' Mr. Mamdani said, 'but this is just a small part of it.'