The Case for Zohran Mamdani

A look at the New York Mayoral race, and a conversation with Comptroller candidate Justin Brannan.

On June 24th, 2025, registered Democrats in New York City will effectively decide who will lead their city during Donald Trump’s second term. They will vote in a contest that was never supposed to be important but has rapidly grown to become the highest-stakes political contest since the presidential election last year. On one side, and still favored to win, is Andrew Cuomo: the disgraced former governor of the state who came back from the political dead to utterly dominate the mayoral field until oh-so-recently. Standing against him is the most unlikely of contenders: state assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old self-described democratic socialist who rapidly rose from 40-point deficits to come well within striking distance against Cuomo during the final weeks of the race.

You don’t need me to tell you about the national implications of such a matchup. Instead, just read the words of Jim Clyburn, the 84-year-old former House majority whip, when he endorsed Cuomo last Friday. According to Clyburn, he specifically endorsed Cuomo because of the unique influence the mayor of New York city has among national Democrats. In his eyes, the 67-year-old accused sex pest is someone who should play “an important role in the future of the national Democratic Party”—a role in which he stands not just to save New York, but the nation as a whole.

Clyburn is far from alone using this framing of the mayoral race. For the entire campaign, Cuomo and his allies have sought to shift the question of the race from a local one to a national one, and the way he has done so has subtly changed in recent weeks. When Mamdani first emerged as Cuomo’s chief challenger, they attacked him on the expected lines: that he was too left-wing, too pro-Palestine, or too radical in general. But these hits did not work, in no small part because the Democratic base of today generally agrees with Mamdani’s supposedly unacceptable stances. Because of that, they have spent the final week of the race shifting—and it may actually be in the right direction.

As the contest has come to a close, Cuomo and his allies have hammered in on the anti-Trump question, arguing that Mamdani presents a branding problem for Democrats that only Cuomo can solve. Through this, Cuomo is speaking the language of the Democratic electorate for the first time of the entire race, quite worryingly so for the left. Even if they completely dominate on the issues, it will not be enough to secure victory if the median Democratic voter sees their side as a liability in the broader anti-Trump cause. Given his personal unpopularity, Cuomo’s advantage on this question will have been the reason why he wins if he does.

I stand to argue against these claim on its own terms—to prove that it is Cuomo and his ilk, not Mamdani or those like him, are by far the biggest liability to the anti-Trump cause. In a city and state that have shifted more to the right than practically anywhere else in the country, the former governor stands alone as the culprit, while Mamdani is uniquely positioned to provide a solution. If you or someone you know is trying to decide which candidate or faction to back based on which is the most likely to stop Trumpism, this article is for you, either to change your mind or give you the arguments you need to change the minds of your parents.

So, without further ado, here’s why James Clyburn and the New York Times are wrong in every possible way.