Zohran Mamdani’s surprising victory in the Democratic primary last week has prompted national handwringing on both the left and the right. In the frum community in New York City, which faces a very real chance of the anti-Semitic socialist becoming mayor in January, askanim are unnerved, wondering where things went wrong.
“Everyone is shell-shocked. Nobody knows how to respond,” one longtime askan from Williamsburg told me when I called to hear his reaction. “It’s so raw that no one knows how to digest it.”
Republicans have quickly turned Mamdani, a Ugandan-born socialist of Indian descent, into their new bogeyman. At the same time, Democrats, mindful of the 440,000 people who voted for him, are trying to walk a fine line between expressing support for the affordability crisis upon which Mamdani based his campaign and opposition to his anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Mamdani’s win in the primary means that he is the heavy favorite to emerge victorious in the general election in November. He decisively beat Cuomo, a former governor with wide name recognition, top-name endorsers and broad pocketed donors. Under the new ranked choice system, it was expected to take up to a month to find out who the winner was, but Mamdani’s margin was so convincing that Cuomo conceded 90 minutes after the polls closed.
“It’s not our night,” Cuomo acknowledged to his stunned supporters, who had gathered in an upscale hall complete with a bar and entertainment for his expected victory party. Nearly $32 million had been spent on the effort to make him mayor between his political campaign and the super PAC run by a close ally, or about $87 a vote. That is ten times the amount Mamdani spent per vote.
Making matters worse, Mamdani didn’t heed what any third-rate campaign consultant would have advised him: to keep his destroy-Israel beliefs under wraps if he wanted to win in a city that is home to 1.5 million Jews. Instead, he shouted it from the rooftops. Then he dug in his heels after winning, refusing to condemn the phrase “globalize the Intifada,” which literally means to kill Jews everywhere, even after three opportunities were offered on Sunday by a CNN interviewer.
Mamdani’s best performing district was Morningside Heights, where Columbia University, hotbed of the anti-Israel cauldron, is located. Conversely, his main opponent, Andrew Cuomo, had his three best districts in Boro Park, Midwood and nearby Manhattan Beach, all heavily Jewish neighborhoods. However, the percentage of frum turnout in Boro Park, Williamsburg and Crown Heights remained in the same single digits as in elections that were less consequential, while Flatbush inched up a bit.
Here are ten thoughts on what happened:
1: Cuomo ran a horrible campaign
Put simply, he was a terrible candidate. Cuomo announced his campaign in March with a 17-minute video, virtually guaranteeing that nobody would watch it. Always known to be people-averse, he then proceeded to take it to the next level.
“He was a candidate with his nose in the air,” said Leon Goldenberg, a Flatbush askan who was the first in the frum community to endorse Cuomo. “He wasn’t out on the streets. Mamdani, on the other hand, walked through Manhattan and Brooklyn speaking to people.”
Instead, Cuomo spent the bulk of his massive campaign chest on consultants and sufficed with sporadic meetings with leaders in various communities. His support, it turned out, was only skin deep.
“The guy didn’t campaign,” one veteran of citywide campaigns told me. “He hardly met with regular voters and surrounded himself with aides who have lost their touch and act like it’s still 2010. He had no message other than ‘vote for me because the other guy is dangerous.’ You barely saw him on the campaign trail. No ground game. No volunteers. If Zohran Mamdani hadn’t been his main opponent, he wouldn’t have gotten much support in our community at all.”
Another askan who had been instrumental in getting a unified endorsement for Cuomo from mosdos in Boro Park and Williamsburg said the same.
“Cuomo’s campaign was flush with money, but they spent it all on consultants and TV ads. All he had to go on was name recognition. Two weeks before the election we asked him for money to run a get-out-the-vote campaign in Boro Park, but the answer was no. He hated speaking to people. He would promise to come to an event and then never show up.”
Moreover, Cuomo’s much-touted housing plan had mysterious, unintelligible language in it; he later admitted that he had used an AI chatbot to write it.
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