THE NYC PARTY. The political world is buzzing over the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, unexpectedly won by Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Ugandan-born Muslim socialist who, in the course of his brief career in politics, has advocated defunding the police, freeing criminals, having the city take over grocery stores, and more. Mamdani does not have what one would call deep roots in American politics. His most notable act in college, at Bowdoin, was to found a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. He wanted to vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in 2016 but could not because he was not a U.S. citizen at the time. He became a citizen in 2018, was elected in 2020 to represent Queens in the state assembly, and is now poised to lead the nation’s largest city.
The meteoric rise of a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, running as a Democrat, has caused a nervous breakdown among some in the national party. They’re trying to move Democrats — or the Democratic brand, as the consultants might call it — toward the center, to moderate their left-wing positions on immigration, wokeism, and other issues. And now, one of the most prominent Democrats in America will be a guy who seems connected to every left-wing cause in the country and the world.
One interesting aspect of the rise of Mamdani is what it says about New York City’s dominance of national Democratic politics at this moment. The Democratic leader of the House, Hakeem Jeffries, was born in Brooklyn and today represents a Brooklyn district. The Democratic leader of the Senate, Charles Schumer, was elected statewide but is a lifelong resident of Brooklyn. The party’s ranking superstar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was born in the Bronx and today represents a district that covers part of the Bronx and Queens. The party’s other ranking superstar, Bernie Sanders, while a senator from Vermont, was born and raised in Brooklyn.
The New York contingent essentially is the leadership of the Democratic Party today. Yes, there are the Californians — the aged Nancy Pelosi, the failed former Vice President Kamala Harris, and the ambitious Gov. Gavin Newsom — but in a coastal party, it is the East Coast that is in command.
Of course, you will say, “Wait a minute, the Republican president is from New York, too.” And indeed, Donald Trump was born and raised in Queens. But he couldn’t get elected in his home city. And the rest of the Republican Party represents more geographical diversity — a House speaker from Louisiana, a Senate majority leader from South Dakota, a vice president from Appalachia.
After the 2024 election, Democratic pollster Mark Penn wrote that Trump was elected by “Americans who feel abandoned by the coastal elites and a Democratic Party that moved too far from mainstream America.” Voters, Penn said, “sent a clear message to the coastal elites that it is the working class and middle America that runs this country.”
That’s bad news for a party that is heavily concentrated in a few coastal enclaves. It’s even worse when the biggest coastal enclave shows its values by electing Mamdani. There are probably a lot of things Democrats might do to broaden their appeal beyond the coastal areas, but that is definitely not one of them.