How Zohran Mamdani can win in November and start governing on Day 1
The 1972 film “The Candidate” ends with newly elected senator Bill McKay (Robert Redford) asking his campaign manager, “What do we do now?”
Zohran Mamdani has defied the odds and nearly every poll to win the Democratic primary. But he hasn’t won City Hall yet. He faces what could be a competitive election in November. A pre-primary general election poll showed him trailing Andrew Cuomo, who may still choose to run on a third-party line, as his father did in 1977. (Mario Cuomo lost to Ed Koch in that year’s Democratic primary and the runoff, ran in the general on the Liberal Party line — and lost to him again.) The November ballot will also include Mayor Eric Adams and independent Jim Walden.
With the youthful enthusiasm of Mamdani’s candidacy comes real worry about his lack of experience and his democratic socialist agenda. While Mamdani won many Jewish votes — either as the first- or second-ranked candidate — large segments of the community have expressed concerns about his positions.
There is a long time between now and November, giving Mamdani the time to better position himself to win in November and start governing on January 1.
Here are some ideas that would help him to do both.
Candidate Mamdani needs to demonstrate that he can govern as Mayor Mamdani. The transition from serving in a legislative role representing a single district to leading a big city isn’t easy. Ask Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who saw his property tax proposal unanimously rejected by the City Council. Ask New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell, who currently has a 27% approval rating.
There are big differences between being a policy advocate and a CEO. While Mamdani cannot be seen as measuring the drapes at City Hall, he can take steps to show that he can make the transition successfully. During the first mayoral debate and elsewhere, he has cited Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, another young progressive who won the big job, as a model. He should spend a day with her in Boston so that he can talk specifically about lessons learned from her successes and failures. He wouldn’t be the first mayor to look outside of New York for lessons learned. In 1993, during his transition, Rudy Giuliani met with then-Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell.
Mamdani should be strategic about who he is talking to about — and potentially bringing into — his administration. He has already said that he would consider keeping Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. Even if he doesn’t commit to that, he should emphasize what he is looking for in a police commissioner and a schools chancellor.
Candidate Mamdani should also consider identifying who he would pick for one or more deputy mayor slots. Again, there is some precedent here. In 1977, Ed Koch strongly hinted that Edward Costikyan would be one of his deputy mayors as a means of reassuring the business community — though when he proposed an appointment other than first deputy mayor, Costikyan withdrew.
People who think that budgets are about numbers don’t really understand budgets. Budgets are the most important policy document for most local governments, and they are fundamentally about choices. As many have pointed out, vision without resources is a form of hallucination.
One of the great reforms to emerge from the 1970s fiscal crisis is the requirement for multi-year financial planning. Team Mamdani needs to convene budget advisors starting now to think through just how to find the funding for his priorities — especially with uncertainty around the national economy and federal funding. The benefit of multi-year financial planning is that it allows a new mayor to align their policy plan with their budget over more than just a fiscal year.
While affordability seems to have been the main issue in the primary, depending upon what events transpire between now and November, public safety could be the leading issue in the general election. The reality is that many in law enforcement agree with one recurring Mamdani theme — the notion that police have been asked to do too much for too long when it comes to preventing crime.
Policing, prosecution and punishment are essential to public safety, but in many ways prevention is preeminent. Mamdani’s idea to create a Department of Community Safety is interesting — I worked on a similar proposal in Providence, Rhode Island — but it needs more flesh on the bones. Candidate Mamdani can surround himself with national law enforcement experts, police and prosecutors alike, along with local law-enforcement allies such as Attorney General Tish James, to talk through just how the concept might work to reduce crime and increase public safety in New York.
The City’s Department of Investigation has been nothing short of heroic in its independent role in investigating Mayor Adams. But the role and focus of DOI has not changed much in the century since it was first created as the Office of the Commissioner of Accounts. President Trump’s attack on federal IGs demands a local response that reinvents the role of local watchdogs — including oversight of the impact of federal corruption on locally delivered programs. Candidate Mamdani can lay the groundwork for making DOI a national model.
The enthusiasm generated by Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy creates the opportunity to attract talented young people into city government. It can also help make New York a magnet for talent made available due to the Trump administration’s war on federal workers. While the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development isn’t the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, laying out a plan for attracting and keeping talent would send an important signal to voters and to potential future staff.
Mamdani ran a classic field campaign with extraordinary outreach to various communities. He needs to build on that. Recent reports indicate that he has spent little time as a candidate visiting Black churches. It is time to become a Sunday regular.
For a mayor, city workers are an essential constituency. Candidate Mamdani should spend time with them in off-the-record settings without press, learning more about the day-to-day workings of city government from teachers, cops, firefighters, sanitation workers and others.
A candidate’s religion should be irrelevant in any election — and their positions on foreign policy would seem to have no bearing on how they would govern a city. Except in New York, which has been called the only U.S. city with a history of having its own foreign policy. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia railed against Hitler in the 1930s. In 1977, Candidate Ed Koch — not yet the mayor — confronted President Jimmy Carter with a hand-delivered letter on U.S. policy toward Israel. In the 1990s, Nelson Mandela came to New York because of the role that the city played in combating apartheid through pension fund divestment and restrictions on City contracts with firms doing business in South Africa.
Some of the concerns about Mamdani are unjustified and unfair, undoubtedly stemming from his faith. But some of his own statements — like his unwillingness to condemn the term “globalize the intifada” — have fueled the fire.
In 1960, John Kennedy gave a speech to a group of ministers in Houston to address questions about his Catholicism. (Even Martin Luther King Sr. had concerns about supporting the first Catholic president.) And again, in 2008, Barack Obama addressed anti-American comments by his pastor in a campaign speech on race.
Whether a similar speech from Mamdani would help or hurt him with Jewish voters, he should redouble his consistent statements that he will do everything in his power to protect Jewish New Yorkers from antisemitism. In addition to a speech, he should also consider spending part of Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur at a synagogue — not to speak, but to show solidarity with a religious minority that is increasingly being targeted for violence.
Of course, it’s possible that Candidate Mamdani can win without doing any of these things. After all, he ran a brilliant primary campaign. But none of these ideas require him to abandon the issues that he ran on, and all of them can help him get through a very ambitious agenda.