It’s official: Lefty, pro-Palestinian, gay club-attender Zohran Kwame Mamdani has won the mayorship of New York City! In February, he was polling at 1%; now he’s headed to City Hall.
This victory happened in spite of the Democratic establishment’s refusal to acknowledge the mayor-elect’s existence until it became nearly impossible to do so, despite the newspaper of record’s editorial board writing that Mamdani doesn’t “deserve a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots” in June, and despite centrist pundits’ repeated warnings that inching left would be an electoral death sentence.
This should be a wake-up call to moderates and think tanks who’ve shoved spineless candidates down our throats for decades: Political scarcity is a myth, and we don’t have to settle for ghouls whose platforms insist on the expendability of our kin.
Mamdani won not because he felt the need to concede any rhetorical ground to the far right (like Gavin Newsom repeatedly does, especially in the realm of trans rights), and not because he eventually capitulated to the massive social and institutional pressure to bend the knee to AIPAC. He stuck to his principles — a list of policy proposals both simple and revolutionary at once: free buses, government-subsidized grocery stores, universal childcare — and the city rewarded him for it. They screamed Mamdani’s name at a Haitian music festival in Brooklyn, received him with open arms at Black churches in Queens, and volunteered to knock on millions of doors across the city.
He was never anointed by elites with money, but he didn’t have to be. He went out into New York’s communities, day after day, and treated people like they deserved to live dignified lives regardless of status or income.
Gavin Newsom has a markedly different approach: For years, he has coasted on brand recognition. His desire for higher office has never been a secret, but over the last six months, he’s started moving towards a presidential run in earnest, powered by the seductive illusion that his ascendance to power is inevitable.
The mayor of NYC doesn’t have a lot to do with the day-to-day lives of Bay Area residents. But Mamdani’s meteoric rise reminds us — and everyone else in this country — that we don’t have to swallow our bile and settle for the nearest centrist with too much hair gel and all-caps Tweets because legacy media tells us to.
We can ask for so much more. And at COYOTE, we plan to.
Soleil Ho is a cultural critic, cookbook writer, and food journalist who has a nasty habit of founding media projects instead of going to therapy: from the feminist literary magazine Quaint to food podcast Racist Sandwich to our dear COYOTE.
Reo Eveleth is an award-winning reporter and writer who has covered everything from fake tumbleweed farms to million-dollar baccarat heists. Their work has been nominated for a Peabody, an Emmy, and an Eisner Award.
Rahawa Haile is an Eritrean American writer from Miami, Florida. Her work covers arts & culture, borders, and the outdoors. In Open Country, her blended memoir about the Appalachian Trail and the politics of free movement in the US, is forthcoming.
