Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani is the favourite to become New York mayor after winning the party's primary in June. Photo / Shuran Huang, The New York Times
In the days after it became clear Zohran Mamdani had won New York City’s June mayoral primary, much of the Democratic establishment began to panic.
Former United States President Barack Obama, the last Democrat to captivate the party’s base, got on the phone.
In a lengthy call in June, Obama congratulated Mamdani, offered him advice about governing, and discussed the importance of giving people hope in a dark time, according to people with knowledge of the conversation.
Others in Obama’s orbit have also shown a keen interest in Mamdani and his campaign.
Jon Favreau, who served as Obama’s speechwriter, and Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser, have been in communication with Democratic strategist Morris Katz, among Mamdani’s closest aides.
David Axelrod, who served as Obama’s chief campaign strategist and senior adviser, was also curious.
Last month, he stopped by Mamdani’s campaign headquarters, then in the Flatiron neighbourhood of Manhattan, to meet the candidate and his staff, and see things for himself.
“What I found when I went over to that office was a familiar spirit that I hadn’t seen in a while of just determined, upbeat idealism,” Axelrod told me.
“You may not agree with every answer he’s giving, or every idea he has, but he’s certainly asking the right questions, which is how do we make the country work for working people?”
He said Mamdani’s ability to inspire young Americans, who feel economic uncertainty acutely, was critical and something the party at large needed to reckon with.
Axelrod was introduced to Mamdani by Patrick Gaspard, another Obama insider.
Gaspard — Obama’s 2008 national political director, and later the US ambassador to South Africa — has been serving as an informal adviser to Mamdani.
The interest from the closely guarded world of Obama and those around him is the clearest sign yet that Mamdani is likely to be embraced by the Democratic mainstream, whether the party’s leaders and donors like it or not.
It comes at a time of duelling visions among voters, Democratic politicians, and donors over the future of the party.
Some key figures within the Democratic establishment have reacted — at least publicly — to Mamdani with a sense of suspicion or even alarm.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, has yet to endorse the Democratic nominee, even though Brooklyn, which he represents, voted for Mamdani over former Governor Andrew Cuomo by a nearly 20-point margin.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, also of New York, said falsely in a radio interview with WNYC in June that Mamdani had made “references to global jihad”. Gillibrand later apologised for those remarks.
As the New York Times reported, pollster Mark Penn even met President Donald Trump to brief him on polls showing that Cuomo could be competitive in a one-on-one race with Mamdani; one of Penn’s firms has worked for a pro-Cuomo super PAC.
It seems very possible that Obama world views Mamdani differently: not as a threat or a liability, but as a promising figure in a Democratic Party with a pressing need for fresh blood.
A spokesperson for Obama declined to comment.
Obama governed as a liberal-centrist, and the party’s left flank has grown increasingly progressive since he left office.
So too has frustration among some voters with Obama’s post-presidency, in which he has in general kept public statements on politics to a minimum even as the Democratic Party struggles to organise opposition to Trump.
Despite this, Obama remains among the most popular figures within the Democratic Party in a generation.
If Mamdani does ultimately receive public support from the former president, it is likely to help him, especially with some older voters and black voters.
It may also ease the path for other Democrats to accept, if not celebrate, his emerging role in the party.
Obama, if he chooses to do so, could also play an important role by making it clear that the intense focus on affordability Mamdani has championed is not only the purview of the party’s left but should animate the party’s politics at a moment in which inequality is destabilising peoples’ lives and their belief in American democracy.
Reached for comment about the call, Mamdani’s communications director, Jeffrey Lerner, who worked in the Obama White House, drew a comparison between the two men.
“Much like my former boss, Zohran embodies thoughtful leadership, moral courage and a unique ability to inspire hope in those who’ve been left behind by politics as usual.”
Though it has been nearly two decades since Obama’s 2008 victory, the parallels between the two charismatic Democrats are unmistakable.
Both are political outsiders with unconventional biographies.
Obama was the country’s first black president. Mamdani, if elected in November, would be the first Muslim to govern New York City.
Both built campaigns around grassroots organising and formed diverse multiracial coalitions that galvanised younger Americans and attracted voters far beyond the party’s traditional base.
Axelrod said he found the reaction of much of New York’s political establishment dispiriting and outdated.
“‘Scare the hell out of people and maybe we can get them to vote for our deficient politics,’” he said, describing the approach with brutal efficiency.
“That’s not a politics I want to be associated with. That’s not a politics I think prevails.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Mara Gay
Photographs by: Shuran Huang, Jamie Kelter Davis
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