What Centrist Democrats Need to Learn From Zohran Mamdani

I covered New York City politics for quite a few years in my younger days, but instead of instilling in me a continuing passion about the city, it generally left me feeling as if I’d paid that check, as it were. New York politics hasn’t interested me deeply for many years. This is partly because New York Democrats, once a mighty machine that set the direction for and helped transform the national Democratic Party, are a shadow of their old selves. The city once produced mayors who were, per the old cliché, larger than life. The last couple have been smaller than life.

So Zohran Mamdani is the first interesting thing to happen in New York City politics for a long time. He’s fresh, he’s energetic, and he has swagger. I’ve been thinking a lot about that last word—swagger—because the national Democrats have none of it whatsoever. They have anti-swagger. They’re as exciting as a knitting society. Mamdani makes for a breathtaking contrast with them collectively.

I have some reservations about Mamdani, the assemblyman who topped Andrew Cuomo among many others in last week’s Democratic primary for mayor. Questions about his lack of experience are entirely legitimate. I don’t know how large a staff he has; I did see another New York assemblyman’s website listing that that fellow has a staff of seven people. The mayor of New York runs a bureaucracy of more than 300,000. The mayor is also properly thought of as the CEO of several multibillion-dollar public corporations or trusts: one running housing, another schools, another colleges and universities, another hospitals, and a few (depending on how you categorize them) dispensing contracts and social services.

If Mamdani wins this fall’s general election—a contest that will include Mayor Eric Adams and possibly Cuomo, again—and becomes mayor, he’s going to need to appoint highly competent and knowledgeable (more than ideological) people to run these operations, and he’s going to have to be ruthless in ensuring that they do their jobs well. People see a mayor as the day-to-day manager of the city. Between now and November, Mamdani should be asked to speak in detail about these matters.