On the Trail with Zohran
A Sunday of hope as Mamdani speaks to canvassers in Bed-Stuy ahead of the mayoral election on November 4
Hamilton Nolan
NEW YORK CITY — The day New York City Mayor Eric Adams dropped out of the mayoral race was a beautiful Sunday with the kind of bright and just-warm-enough weather that makes anywhere feel like a nice place to be. At noon on September 28, deep in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, a knot of two dozen mostly young people stood by a table in a playground under the dappled shade of London plane trees. They were being instructed on how to do voter canvassing — and hoping to usher in the future.
A group of reporters loitered on the park’s edge, there because the candidate of the future was on his way. Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist state assembly-member, has built a comfortable double-digit lead in the polls over Andrew Cuomo, the turgid former governor whom Mamdani already whipped in the June primary. After Adams — the bizarre and scandal-wracked current mayor — gave up on his doomed reelection effort, the city’s moneyed establishment was forced to grimly rally around Cuomo, whose power always rested on intimidation more than love or respect. Now the establishment finds itself stuck with a candidate who no longer inspires fear, while Mamdani has inspired more love in the city than anyone since “pizza rat” went viral a decade ago.
At 12: 30 p.m., Mamdani hopped out of a Chevy Suburban and strode briskly up Madison Street to give a pep talk to this small segment of his army of volunteers. As he did, angry urban bees harassed the surrounding reporters; one fled the scene in tears after being stung. It was a reminder that New York is a city of small territorial kingdoms, all fiercely guarded.
Part of Mamdani’s charisma stems from his genuine embrace— rather than loathing — of the city’s inherently chaotic nature. Unlike his opponents, he seems to actually like the city he aspires to lead. He told a story about going to a Wu-Tang Clan concert in Brooklyn this summer, after his primary win made him newly famous, and being asked to pose for pictures in the audience. One man called Mamdani in for a selfie but then, just in time for the photo, extended his middle finger. “To me, that’s also New York City,” Mamdani said, smiling at the memory. “New Yorkers deserve a mayor that they can see, that they can speak to, that they can even shout at.”
If he wins, Mamdani will certainly get his wish. The press gaggle in the park was a small taste of the shouting he stands to receive if he emerges victorious in the November 4 general election. Fox 5 challenged him on public safety; the New York Post tried to get him to “disavow” the positive statement from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) about the late Assata Shakur; a local reporter asked if he was betraying his activist bona fides by not calling for a more rapid closure of the Rikers Island jail. Mamdani has already driven local Republicans to cartoonish, head-spinning levels of rage, and it is likely he will piss off at least a portion of his DSA base as soon as he begins to do the actual business of governing. The tabloids will call him a crazy communist and some socialists will call him a sellout and certain constituents will flip him off at rap concerts. That’s also New York City! You’ve got to love it if you want to lead it.
There will also be pressure from Washington, D.C., where President Donald Trump is vowing to cut off the city’s federal funds if Mamdani wins. Mamdani said a National Guard deployment to New York should be considered an “inevitability.”
“That is Donald Trump’s politics,” Mamdani said. “That is his agenda, to seek to create this crisis in cities across the country.” He pointed to Chicago’s resistance to the federal incursion as a model of what can be done. “It has nothing to do with the question of crime … If there is a real focus on meeting the needs of working people, then they should begin by overturning the legislation that they just passed which will throw those same working people off their health insurance.”
The famous quote from former New York City Mayor John Lindsay, that the post is the “second-toughest job in America,” may be underselling the situation. Mamdani will be expected to deal with potholes and police, snow removal and garbage collection, and an aspiring dictator in the nation’s capital determined to crush him, all while a nationwide movement of leftists places their hopes and dreams on his shoulders. Mamdani’s unexpected rise is — not to put too much pressure on him — perhaps the only non-depressing political story of 2025. The triumphant culmination of that story will depend on whether his 75,000 volunteers are more powerful than $50 million in desperate super PAC spending by panicked rich people.
As Mamdani’s canvassers fanned out, they were walking in the footsteps of Shirley Chisholm, who had risen from that very district to become, in 1972, the first Black woman to run for the presidential nomination on a major ticket. As kids kicked soccer balls and an old man sang along with a speaker blasting Barry White, it was easy to believe our future would indeed be bright. Wu-Tang once said “cash rules everything around me”; Mamdani was out to prove that wrong.
It felt like New York City was, once again, ready to give America something new.
Hamilton Nolan is a labor writer for In These Times. He has spent the past decade writing about labor and politics for Gawker, Splinter, The Guardian, and elsewhere. More of his work is on Substack.
