Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral election is the moral repudiation of an establishment that mistook political access for virtue and money for merit. Against a torrent of billionaire donations, media scepticism, Islamophobia and the hostility of his own party’s leadership, Mamdani prevailed. His win is a signal that the old arithmetic of wealth and influence no longer guarantees power.
For decades, the Democratic Party’s national elite has wrapped itself in the language of empathy while serving the priorities of financiers and lobbyists. Mamdani’s campaign exposed that contradiction with clarity and courage. He spoke not of abstractions, but of the basic question that defines civic life: Who can afford to live in this city? His answer was simple and moral. He called for publicly built housing, rent protections that give tenants dignity, universal childcare and free city buses. He proposed publicly owned grocery stores to provide affordable food and break the monopoly of private chains that profit from hunger. He pledged to make the wealthy contribute their fair share.
What distinguished Mamdani was not only the content of his programme, but the candour with which he stated its premise: Government should serve those who labour, not those who lobby. He proclaimed that the city belonged to its citizens, not to developers, bankers and donors.
His opponent Andrew Cuomo represented the politics that voters have come to despise. Backed by Wall Street executives and the constellation of donors who have long purchased political access, Cuomo sought redemption from scandal through power. His campaign was a study in arrogance disguised as experience. Yet all the advertising, endorsements and donor money could not conceal what voters already knew: He and his funders embodied the decay of a Democratic Party that rewards service to elites without conscience.
Even more damning was the conduct of the Democratic establishment during the primary. Knowing full well the multiple allegations of sexual impropriety that forced Cuomo from the governorship, many of the party’s leading figures still endorsed him. In doing so, they revealed that their professed concern for integrity is conditional and their moral compass points wherever their donors direct it. Their defence of Cuomo was indistinguishable from the Republican embrace of Donald Trump. Both reflected a politics emptied of values and driven only by power and self-preservation.
During the primary debates, Democratic candidates rushed to declare that Israel would be the first foreign destination they would visit if elected. Mamdani was emphatic that he was running to be the mayor of New York, not an envoy of foreign policy and he had no intention of visiting Israel. His honesty scandalised the pundit class. The Democratic establishment and much of the media portrayed his refusal to pander to the Zionist lobby as a disqualification. Yet the voters thought otherwise. They chose authenticity over pandering and principle over choreography.
When Cuomo’s supporters criticised Mamdani for being a socialist, the old scare tactics fell flat. New York voters recognised that what figures like Trump described as Mamdani’s “communism” was nothing more than a commitment to ensuring that public wealth serves public need.
He was also accused of anti-Semitism for criticising Zionism and condemning Israeli atrocities in Gaza. That accusation, once meant to guard against real prejudice, has been so promiscuously applied that it too has lost moral weight. Voters saw this for what it was and refused to be swayed by it.
In rejecting both accusations, New Yorkers showed that moral clarity and practical compassion are not radical – they are necessary. Cuomo and his allies abandoned subtlety for open racism and Islamophobia. Mamdani’s victory stands as a rebuke to those who tried to weaponise his faith and as a testament to an electorate unmoved by fear and weary of prejudice posing as prudence.
Excerpted: ‘In Mamdani’s win, New York has reclaimed democracy from those who sold it’. Courtesy: Aljazeera.com