In just a few months, Mamdani, a 34-year-old state assemblyman and Democratic Socialist, has gone from a long-shot fringe candidate to a national figure — securing an upset win in the June primary, where voters 18-29 had the highest turnout of any age group.
Now, on the cusp of Election Day — where polls show him the clear frontrunner over his closest rival, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — Mamdani is counting on that youth coalition to show up again. But his pledge to address rising costs appears to be resonating with young people far outside of the five boroughs. It’s a message that many Gen Z and millennials say speaks to their most pressing concerns at a time when many feel hopeless about their leaders and yearn for new voices willing to break with political norms.
“When a candidate is able to speak to the concerns of the populace and validate those concerns … I think that that has a big impact, especially when it comes to young people,” said Ruby Belle Booth, who studies young voters for the nonpartisan research organization CIRCLE.
One man doesn’t have to do everything. He is making space for those things to happen. Rent freezes and free transportation are at least cousins to mutual aid by my estimation, and they help free up resources in the community for members to do more. Again, one man, one role. Activists don’t make very effective politicians, and visa versa.
He’s not just one man. There’s an entire team of people behind him and an army of volunteers, and they all seem to be solely focused on the election. What I want to see is for him to focus on his role as merely the electoral front of that larger organized effort, he focuses on the election and the rest of the people around him have plans that extend beyond and outside of elections. That’s not what I’m seeing.
My expectation is, once the election is over, they’re going to go home and forget about politics.
We’ll see.
Sounds like armchair quarterbacking to me honestly, and you have no idea what else those people have going on.
Is it a fucking secret? Why would any of this be happening behind the scenes? We should have an idea what else they have going on! It would be the height of stupidity if they were engaged beyond electoralism but they kept it in the dark so no one could find out.
I’m not saying it’s a secret, but it’s not exactly stuff the media is gonna be covering now, is it?