After the Victory: The Hard Part Begins
Zohran Mamdani’s stunning win is only the beginning. Soon may come the challenge of governing.
Zohran Mamdani won a significant victory on Tuesday, and it has major implications for the issues we care about at Civic Pulse. Below, we examine how Mamdani beat Andrew Cuomo and why what comes next could be challenging.
The Obama of Steinway Street?
Some people don’t love comparing Barack Obama and Mamdani, but it is fitting in several ways. On the streets of New York, the energy emanating from his campaign felt similar to 2008. Zohran’s volunteers were everywhere, in every neighborhood, ready to elect their candidate. His campaign knocked on almost every door in my apartment building—more than once.
In 2012, I spent 6 months in Nevada organizing to keep Obama in the White House. Yesterday, as polls closed, I ran into one of my former bosses in Astoria. He was out campaigning for Zohran in 95 degree heat. There was something poetic about bumping into him on this night.
It felt like a passing of the torch. A fitting coda to a night that ended with Mamdani doing the unthinkable—picking up votes in places long considered hostile territory for leftist candidates. Mamdani won votes in Corona, Bensonhurst, and Floral Park, territory that had been off limits to progressives. He carried Asian voters by 15 points. He ran up the score in white, high turnout, highly educated precincts, merging his new coalition into something real. That’s huge.
New York Times precinct-level data shows Mamdani’s strength in majority Asian neighborhoods.
He managed this even while losing Black voters by 18 points and low-income voters by 13 points, a sobering gap for a campaign centered on uplifting the working class. That raises big questions about the durability of his coalition and his ability to govern effectively, especially when it comes to swaying the city council or Albany. Still, he enters November with something very real: momentum, a reenergized electorate, and voters deeply committed to his project.
Like Obama in 2008, Mamdani won by expanding the voter universe. The moment I knew Cuomo might lose was when I read that one in four early voters hadn’t voted in 2013 or 2021; they were entirely new voters.
That’s the playbook for reshaping the electorate. Many thought that Mamdani’s early vote lead would exhaust his base. But instead, his campaign expanded the voter universe. They brought in new voters—exactly what we were trained to do on the Obama campaign in 2012: identify, register, and turn out voters who had never been in the system.
Mamdani did that. Cuomo did not.
New York Times precinct-level data showing Mamdani’s struggle in majority-Black voting precincts.
But Now, It Gets Harder
Assuming Mamdani wins November’s general election, the campaign will cease, and the governing will begin January 1st. He will have to deliver.
New York City has more than 300,000 municipal employees—more than the entire population of Pittsburgh. In the era of resurgent Trumpism, federal funding is tightening, pressuring blue states’ budgets. Governor Hochul has pronounced Mamdani’s proposed tax increases dead on arrival. The City Council is divided. And Mamdani faces a Democratic Party that is split between establishment and insurgent factions.
New York’s systemic failures aren’t going to go away quickly; they are entrenched and embedded. On election night, I experienced this firsthand. En route to attend a victory party for another candidate, it took me 90 minutes to reach Manhattan from Queens—the NRW and G trains were all inexplicably shut down due to a “power outage”. Cuomo had just conceded, and while others were watching returns, I was stuck on a stalled subway car for 40 minutes. And that’s just a typical MTA subway debacle. And we haven’t even touched housing issues. My own non-stabilized lease is up next month, like many renters, I’m one increase away from having to move.
These systemic failures that Mamdani campaigned against? They will soon belong to him. Rents that keep skyrocketing? Groceries that are too expensive? Broken bureaucracy? He is about to inherit it all.
Promises vs. Power
Here are a few of Mamdani’s headline promises:
Free & fast bus service – Requires $800 million yearly from the state-run MTA, an agency controlled by Governor Kathy Hochul. No new funding has been identified.
Universal childcare – Mamdani wants to pay for this by increasing state taxes. These have been dismissed by the governor as non-starters.
City-run grocery stores- Also tied to the rejected tax proposals.
200,000 units of social housing via increasing NYC’s debt limits – This would require a change to the state constitution.
$30/hr minimum wage by 2030-This needs approval from both Governor Hochul and Legislature.
Mamdani was unable to get traction on these issues as a state legislator (he passed three bills during his 4 year tenure). As mayor, he has more visibility and a huge platform—but not necessarily more authority. This dynamic isn’t new. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio struggled mightily in his battle for 3 K with Andrew Cuomo. However, Mamdani brings a suite of strengths to this fight.
Will he be able to leverage his impressive campaign apparatus to pressure Albany—a legislature known for stopping change—into action? Can he use his media savvy to rally the public to succeed where other mayors have failed? Does the DSA have the organizational and advocacy muscle to support its mayor?
Whether Mamdani delivers for the city will depend on how he answers these questions.
The Test of Governance
So here are the questions we’ll be asking(and you should too) if Mamdani assumes office in January:
Will the city build those 200,000 units of social housing? And when?
Will buses become fast & free across the five boroughs?
Will we see a rent freeze that benefits those in stabilized apartments?
Will affordability improve, or will working-class New Yorkers continue to be pushed out?
Will we get universal childcare, or just another press release?
Will a $30 minimum wage become law?
A year from now, will rents still be climbing? Will transit commutes still be as painful?
Mamdani’s future—and perhaps the future of New York’s progressive movement—may depend on how we answer those questions. These issues aren’t just about Mamdani or New York; they’re about whether we can build cities and states that reflect our values. New York has risen to the occasion in the past, from the construction of the subway to the Mitchell-Lama housing program, the Empire State has seen a government that built.
We can be that New York again; we don’t have to settle for the New York of broken trains and Abu Dhabi levels of inequality. The labor rights movement started here, the queer rights movement took hold in the Village. 20th-century New York was the launching pad for innovation, for civil rights, for a public sector that is expansive and imaginative. Mamdani’s agenda matches much of what we fight for here at Civic Pulse: world-class transit, affordability, and good governance. It is an agenda worth fighting for. Here’s to hoping he gets it done.