Pundits Rush to Explain NYC’s Socialist Mayor and Again Miss the Point
What you will learn from this article:
Why pundits are misreading the political meaning of New York City’s mayoral upset.
How voter behavior in 2025 signals both opportunities and risks for Democrats heading into 2026 and 2028.
What communicators should take from Zohran Mamdani’s win, including the PR advantage of bold messaging over safe, predictable playbooks.
As certain as daylight follows darkness, political pundits will spend the days after this year’s election and the days prior to next year’s congressional elections opining about what the election of a socialist mayor in New York City portends nationwide. The opinionators will include TV personalities and Democratic political advisers whose strategies led to the defeats of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024.
While future election results might differ from past ones, one thing is certain. Despite their disastrous track records, the same pundits are touted as “experts” by TV producers, despite their lackluster performance.
The unvarnished truth is that no one knows what the results of the recent election mean for the 2026 or 2028 elections, not even a PR pundit like me. Just as the weather changes daily, things can shift at a moment’s notice and November 2026 is a long time away. Still, some assumptions can be made, all of which should be taken with a grain of salt, because assumptions are beliefs that things will occur without scientific proof.
As some of you know, my first job in public relations was with a political PR shop, where I worked on campaigns ranging from local assembly races to presidential ones. At Burson-Marsteller, during the days when it was the leading international agency, I worked on projects that touched political matters, meaning that the topics affected the direction of the country and were championed by lobbyists and clients that would benefit from certain legislation. That, in my mind, qualifies me as an expert (???) pundit.
So below are my assumptions of what the results of the Nov. 4 election mean for the future.
In my opinion, there are five main takeaways.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, because he challenged President Trump’s attempt to gerrymander next year’s House of Representatives election and won, vaulted to the top of the list of 2028 presidential candidates.
There was an enormous anti-Trump vote.
Democrats now have a chance of winning control of the Senate as well as the House next year and of winning the presidency in 2028. And they have President Trump to thank for giving them those opportunities.
After analyzing New York City’s vote, while I think it is bad news for the traditional Democratic Party, it is not as disastrous as I thought.
Perhaps the most important takeaway is that Democrats have to find a candidate who can excite voters, as Mr. Mamdani did and Mr. Trump did twice. The last time they had such a candidate was Barack Obama. That means discarding their “wait for your turn” philosophy.
What about Zohran Mamdani, an avid socialist and Muslim winning the New York City mayoralty elections, you may ask?
I am probably an outlier about Mr. Mamdani’s win, but after seeing the vote totals it is my opinion that his election is a historical first that will not have as many national consequences as I feared in a column I wrote on this website on Nov. 5.
Here is why I feel that way.
Despite running against a Republican candidate who got the nomination by default and a disgraced former Democratic governor who had to resign, Mr. Mamdani’s margin of victory was less than one-half percent over the combined Democratic and Republican votes.
As Election Day neared and voters became more interested in the race, many of Mr. Mamdani’s polling leads lessened. In my analysis, that means two things. As voters became more familiar with his policies, they rejected them, and if Democrats had endorsed a stronger candidate in the primary, Mr. Mamdani might not have won. This does not bode well for Mr. Mamdani, who sounded on election night as if he was thinking of running for higher office, perhaps governor of New York. If he could only win in ultra-liberal New York City with 50.4 percent of the vote, chances are he would run far behind that figure in less liberal areas of the state.
Saying that does not denigrate Mr. Mamdani’s accomplishment. His campaign was a master class that should be studied in all political science classes, rivaling Harry Truman’s 1948 victory over Thomas Dewey and Donald Trump’s coming-from-nowhere triumph in the 2016 GOP presidential nomination and subsequent takeover of the Republican Party.
Four other important takeaways emerged.
Black and Latino voters who backed Trump in 2024 in massive numbers voted Democratic this time.
Voters backed candidates who aggressively attacked President Trump.
Mr. Trump’s endorsement of candidates seemed to hurt them, not help them.
Candidates should always campaign as if they are losing, even if internal polling shows them far ahead.
What the election showed is that voters in New York, New Jersey and Virginia gave their votes to candidates who aggressively attacked the president. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who played it safe assuming he would cruise to victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, fell too far behind Mr. Mamdani before he began campaigning aggressively. By the time he did, Mr. Mamdani had too large a lead and the former governor never made up the ground.
Personally, I think that the mayor-elect will not do anything outlandish. I think he will moderate his positions and try to work with more traditional Democrats, just as AOC has done since becoming a member of the Democratic congressional team and Sen. Sanders has done over the years. I feel that way because Mr. Mamdani is a politician, and the main goal of a politician in a democratic country is to get elected again.
Also, thus far his appointments have not been extremists, as many of President Trump’s were. And while I disagree with a large part of his agenda, many of his priorities mirror those of Democratic and Republican mayors of the past, including Mayor Bloomberg, certainly not a proponent of socialism.
Mr. Mamdani must do four things to convince the New York City population that he will govern as a representative of all New Yorkers, not just the far-left socialist fringe.
He must convince business leaders he does not consider them the enemy.
He must convince the wealthy he does not consider them the enemy.
He must convince the Jewish population he is not anti-Semitic.
He must convince the entire city that he will not rule from the far left.
The reason I believe he must moderate his positions, and will, is because approximately 65 percent of the city’s voters are registered Democrats. Many others, who do not register as Democrats, consistently vote for the Democratic candidate. In the past, these voters have elected Republican mayors. They include Michael Bloomberg, who was first elected on the GOP line before becoming an independent; Rudy Giuliani; John Lindsay; and Fiorello La Guardia, who also was initially elected as a Republican. In a city that is so overwhelmingly Democratic, his 50.4 percent victory is not a mandate, no matter how often he says it is. Getting 50.4 percent of the vote means he must govern from the center.
Between 1934 and 1962 there were several Broadway revues titled “New Faces.” The casts included little-known performers, many who went on to become stars. Election Day 2025 catapulted politicians who were not known nationally prior to this election to victory. That is a message Democrats must not forget when they choose candidates for next year’s election. New faces can often excite voters who are tired of hearing the template rhetoric of longtime politicians.
There is an important PR lesson to be learned from the New York City election. To catch the public’s attention, and in our business that means reporters, editors and producers, playing it safe often results in lackluster outcomes. Practitioners should throw away the PR 101 playbook that was written by the fathers of our business during the Proterozoic Eon. Try new approaches when contacting the media. Think outside the box when crafting a program. Mr. Mamdani did, and he was elected mayor of New York City.
As journalist friends have told me, “The majority of pitches we receive look like they come from a cookie-cutter assembly line.” And remember, until a reporter says “call me by my first name,” it is always Mr. and Ms. They are not your enemies, and they are not your friends either. And make sure your press releases and pitches are grammatically correct or they may be automatically tossed, as an editor at the Associated Press told me. “If PR people want my help,” she said, “the least they can do is make sure they take the time to correct spelling and grammar.” That means not relying on spell check. Proof your work yourself.
