A new coalition rises in New York — and will soon be tested.
When David Dinkins narrowly defeated Rudy Giuliani in 1989 to become New York City’s first Black mayor, his victory was both historic and fragile. Thirty-six years later, Zohran Mamdani’s triumph — the first by a democratic socialist, Muslim, and South Asian candidate — carries an entirely different tone: confident, youthful, and emblematic of a shifting political city. Yet both moments mark inflection points in how New Yorkers imagine leadership.
I was a 17-year-old Cornell University freshman in the fall of 1989, too young to vote but old enough to feel the electric current of politics. Leaving the Bronx to study four hours north of New York seemed like a welcome respite from a city teetering between possibility and despair after a spate of racial incidents and a crime epidemic that seemed out of control. But the morning after the 1989 election my friend Andy and I walked to the student union to find a news ribbon scrolling: David Dinkins elected the first Black mayor of New York City. Andy looked at me, grinning, and said, “Look what we did.” The “we” didn’t make literal sense — neither of us was old enough to vote — but it was a proxy for a kind of joyful ownership of a new direction for the city.
Dinkins’ campaign was built on the idea of a “gorgeous mosaic,” his phrase for the city’s multiethnic, multigenerational population. After years of racial division punctuated by Howard Beach, the killing of Yusef Hawkins and the Central Park Five, Dinkins embodied the hope of racial healing. Just as important, his victory carried the feeling of arrival for the city’s black population, which had previously been treated as invisible or dangerous
The Dinkins win, however, was razor-thin — revealing that many white Democrats were swayed by negative campaigning over Dinkins’ personal finances and, more subtly, by discomfort with a Black candidate. Nearly 9 in 10 Black voters supported him, along with roughly 7 in 10 Hispanic voters. His appeal was sharply limited among white voters — only about 30% backed him, and he lost white Catholic and Jewish neighborhoods by wide margins. Dinkins may have gained as many votes from voters prioritizing racial harmony as he lost from those resistant to a Black mayor.
Mamdani’s 2025 win, by contrast, was decisive — though not a landslide. With roughly 50.4% of the vote and a nine-point margin over Andrew Cuomo, the mayor-elect built a coalition that expanded from the progressive base of his primary victory to include initially skeptical Democrats.
Ignore the shallow caricatures of the Mamdani voter as a young overeducated white transplant who can’t find a real job. According to the New York Times’s precinct analysis, Mamdani performed strongly across most racial groups — winning 57% of Black votes, 52 percent of Latino votes, and 62% of Asian votes. His weakest showing was among majority-white precincts, where he yielded 45% of white voters compared to 46% for Cuomo. Unlike Dinkins, Mamdani’s support was not defined primarily by race. Age, income and ideology were far more predictive: He dominated precincts where the median voter was under 45, and he won handily in low- and middle-income areas. In essence, Mamdani replaced Dinkins’ racial coalition with a generational and class-based one.
The price of victory
So what happens now? From his first day in office, Dinkins faced relentless opposition, primarily from his defeated Republican opponent, Rudy Giuliani, who refused to fade into the background. Yet through all the noise, Dinkins governed. He worked with the federal government to add thousands of police officers to the force — a move that began to bend the city’s violent crime downward. He launched the Beacon Schools program, turning public schools into community centers open at night and on weekends for tutoring, recreation and family support. Conservatives mocked the idea as “midnight basketball,” but for the families who used those spaces, it was a lifeline.
Still, his coalition frayed under pressure. Economic recession, racial unrest and the ever-present tabloid drumbeat about crime sapped his popularity. The infamous Crown Heights riots of 1991 became a symbolic rupture — the image of a Black mayor unable, in the eyes of many, to control racial violence. By the time he faced Giuliani again in 1993, the mood had turned. Giuliani won by nearly the same slim margin that he had lost four years earlier. Staten Island’s secession vote that year brought out a surge of anti-Dinkins turnout, sealing his fate.
Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York’s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor carries a different kind of historical resonance, but the underlying dynamics feel eerily familiar. Once again, the city is divided — not by the crime crisis of the early 90s, but by affordability, inequality and a growing generational chasm.
The question this time isn’t whether New York will survive violence, but whether it can remain livable for the many. The coalition that carried him to victory is as complex — and fragile — as Dinkins’ once was. Mamdani’s support skews younger and more diverse. He won big among voters under forty and among immigrant communities in Queens and Brooklyn. But in parts of Staten Island, southern Brooklyn and even among some older Black and Latino voters, his margins were thin. A record turnout — the highest since 9/11 — revealed not only enthusiasm for change but also deep resistance to it.
The final days of the campaign made that clear. A super PAC supporting Cuomo ran ads showing Mamdani eating rice with his hands, followed by footage of a Black man robbing a store. Another spot featured a racially ambiguous man in a fur coat, sneering like a caricatured “pimp.” The ads were so blatantly racist and Islamophobic that Cuomo’s team eventually pulled them, though the damage was done. In his concession speech, Cuomo thanked his supporters not for serving the city, but for their loyalty to him personally, calling them “New York patriots” — a phrase that sounded lifted from a Trump rally. The implication was clear: Mamdani’s supporters were somehow un-New York.
It was a reminder that Dinkins, too, had faced a post-defeat antagonist in Giuliani. And just as Giuliani built a political career on defining himself against Dinkins’ vision, Cuomo seems poised to play a similar role for Mamdani. The echoes are unmistakable.
Mamdani’s first task is to maintain the coalition that elected him. That means showing progress early, even symbolically: freezing rents as promised, piloting fare-free bus routes, launching visible community initiatives that make people feel their vote mattered. It also means keeping the lines open to the grassroots — to the young volunteers, immigrant groups and activists who powered his campaign. If they feel ignored or sidelined, their enthusiasm could turn to disillusionment faster than City Hall can draft a budget.
The second task is to expand the coalition. Mamdani can’t govern a city of 8.5 million people by leaning only on the left-most edge of his base. He’ll need to reach out to moderate Democrats, to unions divided over his policies, to small-business owners wary of change. He doesn’t need to win everyone over, but he does need to avoid governing against them.
And then there’s the hardest part: learning to use the machinery of government. Dinkins, for all his moral clarity, was often faulted for being a poor manager. Mamdani will have to be both visionary and technocrat. The policies he champions will test not just his ideals but his administrative skill. Can he navigate Albany’s budget process, balance ambitious spending with fiscal realities and deliver concrete results without alienating the very bureaucracy he needs to make it happen?
History’s echo
Dinkins left office with his moral compass intact but his coalition fractured. Yet his story didn’t end there. Decades later, when Amadou Diallo was killed by police in 1999, Dinkins quietly reached out to Giuliani — the same man who had taunted him outside City Hall — urging him to meet with community leaders to ease the tension. Giuliani refused. Dinkins’ offer of dialogue, rebuffed, stands as a small emblem of what real leadership looks like.
Mamdani, too, will face moments when dialogue seems impossible — when opposition hardens, when headlines turn sour, when parts of his coalition feel betrayed. How he handles those moments will define his mayoralty more than any policy paper ever could.
African-American voters represented some of Mamdani’s biggest support. Ironically, his victory comes at the cost of Eric Adams, only the second Black mayor in the city’s history. Some may reasonably worry that the importance of Black voices will be reduced in the city’s political hierarchy once Adams leaves.
But Mamdani’s win symbolizes a different kind of revolution — not one of representation alone, but of ideology. If Dinkins’ election was about breaking a color barrier, Mamdani’s may mark the breaking of a political one.