By Tom Goldstein
Zohran Mamdani’s speech, in which he credited the working people of New York for his smashing victory in the mayor’s race, amounted to a prolonged shout-out. It was not subtle. He was not at all gracious to his opponents.
Liberal cable television commentators have been a reliable chorus of cheerleaders for the Mayor-elect. But they did not like this speech. They thought Mamdani was abrasive and missed an opportunity to begin a healing process.
Of course he wasn’t conciliatory. That is not his style. He did it his way. Out with the old, in with the new. Or, as one New York Times guest columnist put it: “The Old Order is Dead. Do Not Resuscitate”. One indication of change: His campaign received more than 400 RSVP’s from reporters for his victory party, many from media outlets I had never heard of. The place that, a century ago, was labelled “The City of Ambition” by photographer Alfred Stieglitz now has a new overlord.
Against the odds (“It is dirty!” “It is expensive!” “It is dangerous!” “It is choked in traffic!”), New York retains an enduring appeal. It is a magnet for the young, the talented, the different. My daughter graduated from Yale last spring. It seems like at least half her class wound up in New York this fall, echoing the 1970s hit song, ‘New York, New York’. The challenge of New York is encapsulated by the lyrics: “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” New York continues to welcome people of starkly different backgrounds. At 34, Mamdani viscerally understood this in a way that a grizzled, veteran politician like Andrew Cuomo, his principal opponent and a former New York state governor, could not. “I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life,” the mayor-elect said dismissively, “but let tonight be the final time I utter his name as we turn the page on a politics that abandoned the many and answers only to the few”.
Besides its sheer size (more than 8 million residents), New York stands apart from any other city because, in the words of Kurt Andersen, the author and editor, it is “the undisputed national epicentre of no fewer than seven glamour businesses — finance, news media, advertising, book publishing, theatre, fashion and fine art”.
I have a more than passing interest in what happens in New York. I was not born there, but I spent large chunks of my adult life there, including in the early 1980s when I served as press secretary to then-mayor Edward Koch. Ed adored the press, and he lived his life as a Broadway play, with the pliant press corps serving as reviewers of his every utterance and decision. I was 34 years old, on the old side for Koch aides, and the hardest part of the job was keeping up with him.
He did it his way, and he was mostly successful, at least at the start of his three terms. Koch was tireless and candid and funny, three traits Mamdani seems to possess in abundance.
Mamdani’s success at the ballot box can be viewed through many different lenses. Perhaps the simplest — and most accurate interpretation — rests on voter turnout. The New York mayor’s race drew more than 2 million voters, almost double the 1.1 million people who voted four years ago and the highest in more than 50 years.
With characteristic hyperbole, the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid, evaluated Mamdani’s victory differently: “Zohran Mamdani owes his spectacular political rise to one New York City demographic above all others: South Asians… And while they make up only 5 per cent of the city’s population, this rapidly growing ethnic group is making itself heard.” That sweeping claim must await further analysis, as Mamdani turns from the challenges of campaigning to the trials of governing.
It is hard to prove, but I think voters like Mamdani more for his personality than they identify with his left-wing politics. Time will tell.
But ‘New York, New York’ is no longer the unofficial anthem of the city. At the end of his victory speech, Mamdani walked off the stage with a Bollywood hit song, ‘Dhoom Machale’ playing in the background. It translates to “have a blast”.
The writer is former dean of the journalism schools at Columbia University, the University of California at Berkeley and OP Jindal Global University
