Mamdani Wins!

Last week Zohran Mamdani, New York State Assembly member (Queens) won the NYC mayoral primary, which under normal circumstances would make him a lock for mayor given the political demographics of the city. I first started hearing about Mamdani from Corey Robins, who’d been talking about the 33 year old Democratic Socialist for some time. While the energy, enthusiasm, and charisma he brought to the race was unique, the central issue he ran on—affordability was and was not. 

Let me say a bit more about what I mean. 

In the mid-nineties a few of my friends moved to New York after graduating. They rented a 1600 sq ft loft in Chelsea that required a lot of work—at one point from what I understand they ended up building a wall to make the space manageable. Four of them each paid $450/month. 

I use Zillow.com often as a way to teach students about political economy. When people talk about “gentrification” they tend to focus more on the racial dynamics of population shifts rather than the real estate dynamics arguably at the heart of it. Zillow offers a quick way to get around that. 

I zillowed (I think that’s a verb) my friends’ mid-nineties Chelsea neighborhood. Studios a little bit more than a fifth of the size are renting for 1.75 times more. The best deal I found was a 332 sq ft studio for $3150/month. (I was able to find a similar unit on the same block for sale for $1.6 million.)

What my friends got at that time was more or less normal—when I reached out to one of them he told me that four other friends were able to pay the same amount for almost double the space in the same area. 

This wasn’t the New York City of the late sixties, when CUNY was free, but a lot closer rent-wise than what we have now. Fast forward, and while I know a few people who’ve lucked into rent controlled apartments, most people are struggling to make ends meet. And this is because the city’s ability to provide for the needs of poor and working class citizens has been hollowed out in favor of an approach that focuses laser like on the needs of the wealthiest citizens.  There’s a reason Occupy Wall Street starts in NYC. 

However as important as it is and has been, with exceptions—Bill de Blasio’s mid teens mayoral terms represented a cut at this—the Democratic Party at the local level has ignored it.  de Blasio ran on it, but up until this election he’s more or less alone. Arguably more candidates have run on social control issues than on the inability of most NYC folks to make ends meet.

Now in the wake of the Trump election, some in the Democratic Party have argued that instead of running on saving democracy, the party itself should turn to affordability. But their response to Mamdani’s campaign shows that even if they do believe that affordability is an issue, they’re far more likely to posit “abundance” as the way out rather than the combination of wealth tax and muncipal competition that Mamdani supports.  

I’ve long argued that with a baked in two-party system the best thing we can hope for is a movement that can in effect take over the Democratic Party. The reason Democratic Party elites are doing everything they can to run away from Mamdani is because they realize the threat he poses.  

(As an aside, I don’t consume as much news as I should, but it’s also worth figuring out what segments of Left media/commentary quasi-predicted something like Mamdani, and which ones didn’t.)

Mamdani and the Black Vote

There was at least one attempt I’m aware of to argue that Mamdani won without “the black vote” (to make an argument that Mamdani was somehow black voters on purpose). And the New York Times just ran a story on Mamdani making the “black rounds,” focusing on a Harlem event featuring Mamdani, Al Sharpton, and Spike Lee. Neither Sharpton nor Lee endorsed anyone in the race, but the article posited Mamdani’s visit as one designed to deal with the struggles he’s had with black voters.

There’s no uncomfortable truth here—that’s spin. 

Although I rarely write about “the black vote” or “the black interest” or even “the black agenda” without putting them in quotes, I’d suggest that we can identify a black vote and a black interest at the national level. That black vote is coterminous with democracy. Way to Win worked to conduct a poll with Impact Research. The following is an example of what I mean:

We can extend this finding to other political issues and many forms of political behavior. There’s a reason why the two constituencies who at the national level tend to express the most support for what could be called democratic values are black women and black men. This reason isn’t genetic. It isn’t the equivalent of black magic. It is the result of a combination of historical political, economic and social development. Now we can identify a black vote and interest at the local level….but it becomes a lot more complicated, particularly if we’re looking at a case like NYC.

I’m going to go back to that Chelsea example above. I haven’t asked, but I’m willing to bet that the same people who paid $450 a month in the early nineties were also stopped more than once by the NYPD as Giuliani used a combination of Broken Windows policing and special district creation to move undesirable populations out and transform real estate values in areas like Time Square. Given how black populations were treated by police, arguably there is a black interest there. 

But at the same time, I know a number of folk who were able to either buy homes in that period or have homes passed down to them….and were able to sell those homes and buy in Baltimore and places like it with cash to spare. And then relatedly, I know a number of black people who are first, second, or third generation immigrants who moved to NYC from elsewhere. 

The institutions that have historically worked to develop “the black interest” haven’t quite caught to that level of heterogeneity. In fact, one way to think about Eric Adams’ election is not as the election of a Kwame Kilpatrick like-hip-hop mayor (although that description is accurate), but as the election of a cop who was able to take advantage of the inability of black institutions to produce a candidate capable enough of taking the various and sundry ways black New Yorkers think about what a “black interest” looks like and generating a coherent vision around that. If we don’t include Eric Adams himself (who will be running as an independent) there were three legitimate black candidates in the race (Adrienne Adams, Michael Blake, and Zellnor Myrie) and four total (if you include Paperboy Prince). One of them (Blake) cross-endorsed Mamdani. 

If the black interest in this instance were easily translatable, we wouldn’t have three candidates…we’d either have none (which would mean that Eric Adams would serve as the black nominee) or we’d have one. It isn’t so much that Mamdani ignored the black interest, rather it appears as if he campaigned directly with black voters and then with black politicians he was already aligned with, as opposed to working through brokers like Sharpton.

Here’s a side-by-side figure depicting racial demographics of the city alongside the vote totals.

The New York Times article notes that Cuomo’s votes were concentrated in areas with high black population percentages…but note what “high” means in the NYC case—20%! Without more to go on, it’s a stretch to argue that this means Cuomo received 70% of the black vote in these areas. 

(For more detailed analysis of what Mamdani could mean for black voters check this out.)

More to say, but I wanted to get this out before too much time passed. Particularly given the passage of Trump’s omnibus bill, it’s worth thinking about something….not quite positive, but something that shows us something else is possible.

The Politics of Andor

I finally got around to watching the second season of Andor. It doesn’t disappoint. My friend Sarah Parkinson wrote an article on Andor and insurgency that should be required reading.

More here. (Or, if you don’t have access, here.)

I’m on the board of Polity. I offered my photography for their special issue on racial capitalism and the newest issue just came out. Some of you have seen this picture before. Given the date, I think it’s appropriate to end on this.