We can have nice things

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In early March I sat in a Brooklyn bar with two friends who are deeply-involved in New York City politics and asked them if there was any possibility in the whole world that Andrew Cuomo wouldn’t be the Democratic nominee for mayor. They answered honestly based on the polling and atmosphere at the time: “No.” 

Then a week later something happened: New York State Assemblyman and lesser-known mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani confronted Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan in the hallway of the state capitol building about his inhumane immigration policies. “How many more New Yorkers will you detain?” Mamdani bellowed at Homan as he passed nearby. After watching the inspiring clip, I texted another friend saying “there’s a mayoral candidate making a splash who doesn’t suck!!!” Soon the tide would start to turn, and now look where we are. 

Today for the first time in a long time I’m feeling something resembling hope. Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City Democratic Mayoral Primary doesn’t erase the abundance of bad in the world right now. ICE continues to disappear people off our streets. Trump has gotten us in the middle of war between Iran and Israel. The proposed budget in Congress strips funding from Medicare and a host of other essential programs. And the federal government continues to be disemboweled. It’s because of—and not in spite of—these things that having a person with a positive vision of the future feels like such a boon.

Perhaps most exciting of all is that Mamdani showed it’s possible to win while staying 100% true to progressive values. Instead of throwing immigrants under the bus like current Mayor Eric Adams, or abandoning LGBTQ+ people, as too many Democrats have shown they’re keen to do, Mamdani leaned in. He confronted the immigration ghouls in the federal government. He said that as mayor he would pledge $65 million to improving trans health care. He appeared on the online show Gaydar hosted by drag queen Anania to talk about the campaign. He didn’t have to prove he was an ally because he simply was one.

Predictably, negative reactions began rolling in as soon as Cuomo conceded and Mamdani was declared the winner. Prison-bound disgraced former-congressman George Santos had a meltdown on video. Right-wing Jewish/Zionist organizations urged Jews to evacuate the city. Billionaire Trump supporter Bill Ackman, who threw many millions at the Cuomo campaign, said he would back Eric Adams in November’s general election. Donald Trump Jr. declared on X, “New York City has fallen.” 

Many of the people who feel we’re a city at war have the least skin in the game. They’re by and large wealthy Republicans or centrist Democrats who rarely (if ever) ride the bus, haven’t had to worry about rent prices in years because they’re homeowners, and don’t understand the need for city-run grocery stores because they’ve never lived in a food desert. They’ve never been without air conditioning on a day like primary day when it was 100 degrees, and they can escape the sweltering city summers to second homes by the beach or in the mountains. They’ve never been stopped by the cops, and rarely see them around their neighborhood. 

People whose top priority for the future mayor is his perspective on Israel also see ours as a city at war, and their votes skewed heavily towards Cuomo. Borough Park in Brooklyn, a neighborhood with a large Orthodox Jewish community, chose Cuomo by a 69-point margin. The false idea that Mamdani is anti-semitic gained traction at least in certain areas, and the Islamophobic idea that Mamdani presented an existential threat to Jews took hold. 

(Similarly in NYC Council District 39, a cynical billionaire and Republican-backed primary challenger named Maya Kornberg tried to take down current Councilwoman Shahana Hanif with false smears of antisemitism. Hanif, the first Muslim woman to serve on the council, ended up trouncing Kornberg in the Brooklyn district by a margin of 70-26.)

One's perception of Mamdani comes down to one’s perception of Israel. If you believe, as I do, that Israel is committing genocide, that israel should exist as a state with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians, and that pro-Palestinian activists aren’t a threat to Jewish freedom, then you’ll have no problem embracing Mamdani. But if you fall on the other side of those issues, you absolutely will. And it may not be possible to bridge that gap. 

It can be difficult to explain to people living in fear that it’s possible to choose another way. If you’re being bombarded with messages about someone trying to destroy you, you may believe it after enough repetition. The politics of fear have been used as a cudgel against the American Jewish community in the months since October 7th, presenting us with a contrived binary: Either huddle tighter within ourselves, or align with outsiders. But Mamdani’s win destroyed that false choice by showing that Progressive Jews could align amongst ourselves and then unite outward with a multi-racial, multi-faith coalition that supports prosperity for all. 

“Jewish New Yorkers are just like other New Yorkers: we also want affordable housing & childcare, and excellent public transit, and for this city to be a place where we can build a future,” Sophie Ellman-Golan of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) told The Handbasket. “That's what Zohran ran on, and that's why New Yorkers—Jewish and non-Jewish alike—voted for him! He was hit with a staggering onslaught of outside funding, panicked editorials, and racist and Islamophobic smears. But despite Cuomo and his backers’ efforts to fear-monger and buy their way into Gracie Mansion, the power of the people proved too strong to overcome.”

JFREJ was heavily involved in Mamdani’s campaign, and according to Ellman-Golan, played an important role in merging with fellow candidate—and Jewish New Yorker—Brad Lander. The pair appeared together at multiple events in the closing weeks of the primary campaign, cross-endorsing one another in the ranked choice voting system. 

“Instead of vicious infighting, we got joyful collaboration,” Ellman-Golan said. “We got to see what happens when we join forces as progressives and Leftists, have each others’ backs, and maximize our collective power.”

That solidarity remained constant Tuesday night even after the results were in, with Lander congratulating Mamdani in a speech at his own headquarters, and declaring “We are not going to let anyone divide Muslim New Yorkers and Jewish New Yorkers.” Later he dropped by Mamdani’s victory party where the exuberant crowd was chanting his name.

Mamdani Advisor Morris Katz posted on X Tuesday night: “Will have a lot more to say. But hard to tell the story of the Election Day results without @bradlander who went all out in the closing 10 days, defending Zohran, spending nearly half a million dollars attacking Cuomo, and building momentum that could not be overcome.”

I’ll take a political bromance over acrimony any day.

In the minds of cynical Democratic strategists, fear was supposed to be the main motivating factor getting people to the polls: fear of anti-semitism; fear of crime; fear of immigrants. But it takes a lot to pull one over on New Yorkers, and when we looked around, the city described in Cuomo attack ads simply did not exist. We recognize that the city’s problems come mostly from the people above, and not the ones sitting next to us on the subway.

This comment on an angry op-ed about Mamdani’s win puts it perfectly into perspective:

But ultimately the failure to embrace Zohran is a failure of imagination. If you can’t allow yourself to picture a world better than the one we’re in and fundamentally believe positive change is impossible, then of course you can’t get on board. And if the status quo is personally benefiting you, electing someone with the vision to imagine that feature is downright threatening.

There’s a reason real estate and business leaders allegedly held an emergency call today to discuss “The Zohran Situation”: Voters came out in droves to say they reject Eric Adams’ New York, and they’re ready for something radically different.