zoh run to the polls

thank u baldanndowd for that little pun

On Friday, just a day after receiving multiple death threats to blow up his car and racist, Islamophobic messages, mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's team issued a statement that began: "While Zohran does not own a car..." Of course he doesn't: He lives in New York City, which as much as we complain about its inadequacies and need for improvement, still boasts the country's most robust public transit system. Then, that evening, as temperatures rose and threats loomed, Mamdani walked the roughly 14 mile length of Manhattan. “New Yorkers deserve a mayor that they can see, they can hear, they can even yell at,” he said.

I love this video because it captures what I love about Mamdani’s campaign: It is centered on a deep interest in and love for New York and its people. It is centered on a belief that it is the working class that makes this city, and that our differences are what make this city great, and what can make it better. It is of the people—50,000 volunteers who, as of yesterday, knocked on 1.5 million doors, the largest volunteer turnout in city history—and for the people, not the billionaires, championing rent freezes, affordable groceries, fast and free buses, and universal childcare. In the past few weeks, rather than punch across at his fellow ranked choice candidates, he’s formed coalitions with them, cross-endorsing with Brad Lander and Michael Blake. This morning, he held a sunrise press conference in his district of Astoria at 5:40 a.m. and has a full schedule for the rest of the day. To quote Gianmarco Soresi: “It’s incredible the kind of campaign someone can run when they’re not over 60.”

Meanwhile, disgraced sexual harasser elderly nursing home resident killer MTA fund embezzler Andrew Cuomo has had virtually no field campaign this entire election. (The few paid! canvassers he does have aren’t even voting for him!) Until he claimed his daughter’s former luxury Midtown apartment as his residence in September (he is rarely seen there, as he lives in Westchester), he had not lived in New York City for 30 years. This morning, he made his staffers stand in the 100º heat to hold a parking space for him so he could drive his car a few blocks to his polling place. As of 9 a.m., he has released no public schedule, and has not said where he will be when the polls close this evening. He is funded by Trump’s billionaire backers, has sent countless attack mailers photoshopping Mamdani to appear more “threateningly Muslim” and has run millions of dollars worth of attack ads that do nothing but stoke fear, Islamophobia, and false allegations of anti-semitism. Andrew Cuomo has a long history of hatred for New York City. He does not want to bring this city together; he wants to further separate it.

But even without all that, I keep coming back to the fundamental difference between the two: the ever-presence of Mamdani on the streets, at rallies, at events. The ever-presence of his volunteers. Where is Cuomo? Why should you elect someone who has no interest in being out in the city, no interest in its people, no interest in working for their vote? Think about that: He never believed he had to work for your vote; he thought he could waltz in on name recognition and divine right alone. If he doesn’t want to work for your vote, he will not want to work for you, period. What kind of leader is that?

It’s a hot day, but please get to the polls if you live in New York and haven’t already. A city mayoral primary should not be the turning point for nationwide politics, but it is: Today’s election will send a message to establishment Democrats who have been running an old, lazy, disinterested losing playbook for the past decade. The answer is not to lean into centrism. Centrism is what led us here, and we need a progressive vision to save ourselves. Optimism is hard to come by these days; it even feels dangerous to possess. I try not to place too much faith in a single politician as a savior. I know better than to have too much hope anymore. Hope, as Hanif Abdurraqib wrote in a beautiful recent New Yorker essay, “means both everything and nothing at all, and yet it is always purported to be within reach. Hope is the fluorescent bird. The bird makes no sound. It is in a cage. No one can find the key, and no one has seen the key in a very long time, and they aren’t sure that they’d even free the bird if they found the key. And yet, collectively, people must keep asking for it.”

But this isn’t about a single politician. That single politician is just a vessel for all of us, for our choices, our actions, our values. Our future depends on us. It’s not enough to simply talk about our ideals and the policies we want. We have to actively work for them. We have to make a different choice to get a different result. Polling shows that a Mamdani win is possible. A different option is within reach. We just have to show up and get it. Turn ideas into action, hope into reality. Go rank Zohran Mamdani #1, Brad Lander #2, and the rest of the New York Working Families Party endorsed slate 3-5, and do NOT rank Andrew Cuomo. Let’s go, girls. I believe in us.

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