What the mayoral frontrunner seems to have learned from the insurgents of a half-century ago
When American politics feel venomous and nearly hopeless, Zohran Mamdani’s campaign and million-dollar smile are refreshing. With offbeat ads, clever videos and unconventional events, he is tapping into a lost local tradition and showing that politics, despite the best efforts of most politicians, can actually be fun. The idea might seem simple and frivolous, but it communicates something bigger: in the nation’s biggest media market, a place renowned for its outsized characters and frenetic pace, politics should, like the city itself, never, ever be boring.
A recent social media video featured Mamdani musing that if voters think 33 is too young an age for a potential mayor, he was, fortunately, about to turn 34. His citywide scavenger hunt drew thousands of participants to neighborhoods they might have otherwise never visited. And supporters of the Democratic nominee threw a Mamdani look-alike contest in Prospect Park. The tone and tenor of Mamdani’s effort lie in stark contrast to the lumbering sobriety and narrow vision of former Governor Andrew Cuomo.
It’s easy to dismiss events that don’t look like the traditional rally or press release as “political stunts” — but they have a tried and true history in our politics.
56 years ago, two other colorful New Yorkers brought a zest and mischievousness to the campaign trail far beyond even Mamdani’s. In 1969, author Norman Mailer and journalist Jimmy Breslin ran on a joint ticket in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor and City Council president.
The duo made their bid at the tail end of Mayor John Lindsay’s first term, after Lindsay’s hope of making New York “fun city” collapsed amid political squabbling and rising crime. Many New Yorkers considered late-1960s city life anything but fun. Mailer and Breslin looked to change that.
At the centerpiece of their half-in-jest campaign was an effort to amplify the city’s political power by transforming Gotham into the nation’s 51st state, with each of the five boroughs’ neighborhoods becoming their own quasi-autonomous municipality. The “51st State” candidates barnstormed New York with wicked humor and relentless pugnacity, running a six-week campaign for the ages.
Mamdani has, perhaps unwittingly, channeled the Mailer-Breslin campaign in both style and substance. The mayoral frontrunner recently hosted a soccer tournament in Coney Island. Mailer and Breslin, meanwhile, proposed a neighborhood World Series of stickball held every weekend on Broad Street more than half-a-century ago. The duo pledged to build zoos in every neighborhood, provide free bicycles in public parks and hold faux jousting matches for youth gang members.The 51st State campaign also suggested a “central-city farmer’s markets offering ethnic foods of all varieties,” an annual U.S. Grand Prix in Central Park and an attempt to “return national baseball teams to Brooklyn and Manhattan.”
Mamdani, like the 51st State candidates before him, brings charm and a sense of humor to the trail. Mailer and Breslin, though, were far less diplomatic than Mamdani, and derided their opponents with piercing, often hilarious, witticisms. “The reason we got into politics is that we knew the one thing we could do better than the other politicians is to lie,” Breslin sardonically told reporters. “At least that’s what we thought. But we found out we were hopeless amateurs.”
When asked about Democratic rival Herman Badillo, Breslin likened his opponent’s tenure as housing commissioner under Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. to “being the lookout on the Titanic.” The candidates sported pins that declared “the other guys are the joke.” And, if elected, Mailer promised to “plead with Mario Procaccino,” the paunchy, gaffe-prone comptroller and Democratic frontrunner, “to serve as city greeter.” Not to worry. If victorious, Breslin insisted that he would “demand a recount.”
The comparisons go beyond form to substance. More than five decades before Mamdani proposed a department of community safety to free the New York Police Department from being forced to address social issues, Mailer and Breslin bemoaned the fact that police were “asked to go out and…patch up holes made in forty years of history.”
“The police get all the mistakes of all the people who are supposed to be more important and smarter than us,” Breslin told cadets during a speech at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Derelict politicians had “created the problems” but “turn to…the policemen of the City of New York and say, ‘you go out and handle them.’” Instead, Mailer and Breslin recommended a system of community-based policing determined on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.
While Mamdani has made free and fast bus service a key campaign plank, the proposals of Mailer and Breslin around transportation would make today’s Democratic candidate blush: banning all cars from Manhattan, a monorail ringing that central borough, and a monthly holiday known as Sweet Sunday, which Mailer described as “a day of rest” when “cars will have to stop, the trains will stop, the planes will stop.”
Mamdani’s idea for free and accessible childcare? Mailer and Breslin promised public day care and nurseries in 1969.
At the heart of the Mailer-Breslin campaign was the candidates’ adoration of New York and what Mayor David Dinkins later termed its “beautiful mosaic.” Mailer praised the “extraordinary toughness, and intelligence, and wit, and savvy, and brutal cynicism,” of New Yorkers, contrasting “the best people” with the “worst administration” in the country. Joe Flaherty, the Mailer-Breslin campaign manager, wrote that at the core of their campaign was “a group of men who loved their city and thought they had a set of ideas that might save that city.” Mamdani, too, is clearly enamored of his city and its people, and the grist of his campaign illuminates that passion.
Mailer and Breslin, not unexpectedly, fared poorly in 1969. Mailer finished fourth behind Procaccino, who went on to lose to Lindsay in November. Breslin also lost badly, though he earned more votes than Mailer and beat future Rep. Charlie Rangel. Despite the loss, or perhaps because of it, their candidacy remains one of the most remarkably eccentric forays into local politics in New York City history.
Mamdani has resurrected the boisterous spirit of the 51st State campaign, but unlike Mailer and Breslin, he is the favorite to win the general election next week. If victorious, his mayoralty may mark the return of something to our civic spirit that, amidst corruption, cynicism and apathy, has been absent for too long: fun. All that’s missing is a pledge to make Curtis Sliwa the official city greeter.