Bulwark Takes - Zohran Advisor: How We BEAT the Cuomo Machine

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz joins Lauren Egan to discuss how she helped Zohran Mamdani win New York City’s mayoral primary by tapping into voter frustrations with clear, relatable messaging on affordability. Can the Democratic Party learn anything from this? This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Bulwark fans get 10% off their first month at https://betterhelp.com/bulwarktakes

Hey guys, it's Lauren Egan here at The Bulwark. I have Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz here with me today. Rebecca has advised a number of Democratic politicians, including John Fetterman and Ruben Gallego on both of their successful Senate campaigns. And she recently assisted with making ads for Zoran Mamdani's New York City Mayoral Race. Rebecca, how's it going? Hi, how are you? I'm doing well. Thanks for being here with us. I'm excited to chat with you.

Yeah. So you just published a op-ed in the New York Times, and it's all about what you think the Democratic Party should learn from Zoran's win in the primary. So give us the big picture, what you see as the big takeaways for the party from that successful primary campaign. And let me just start by saying what works in a New York City Democratic primary, I am not saying works everywhere. I am saying there are lessons to be learned here. There are lessons about how he got young people engaged.

There are young lessons about how he got Trump voters engaged that I think we should take away from it. And the number one thing is he was relentlessly on message and that message was centered on affordability. And I think this is something that Democrats could do more of. Like, we like to have plans and lists and all these things of all the things we're going to do. And that's great. But sometimes you need to remind voters why they want to vote for you. And with Zora Mondani's race, it was very clear, freeze the rent, fast and free buses, universal childcare,

and of course, making a city you can afford. Those are easy things for everyone to understand. That is not being like a socialist candidate in New York City, that's talking about the voter. That's talking about their struggles. And I think it's something that we can learn from. Yeah. And you mentioned his ability to sort of expand the tent here.

And I think the voter part was something that I was pretty impressed. But that's like mind blowing. To be honest. How he got there. Yeah. Okay. Put that into perspective. Like, what did you make of the young voter portion in particular, and how do you think he was

able to do that? I mean, I think politicians have spent a lot of time crapping on young people and saying, you got, you know, you're going to vote for us, we're not the other guy, and if you don't like it, then you deserve what you get. And we don't spend enough time actually listening and saying, you know, like, how do we make your life better for the future? You have your whole life ahead of you. How do we work to make this better? And I think Zoran's Campy kind of brought a lot of young people in and it was the number one voting black was 18 to 24. The number two voting black was 24 to 35. The number three voting black was 35. Like it just, it was wild.

You have never seen anything like that in any race, maybe ever. You also write in your piece that Democrats, you worry that Democrats won't learn anything from this race because you say the party suffers from a curiosity problem. What do you mean by that? Okay, so let's go back to 2016, right? You know, Hillary Clinton was kind of destined to be the nominee and out of nowhere comes Bernie Sanders, right?

And Bernie Sanders kind of taps into something and people get really excited and he winds up losing. And instead of saying, hey, Bernie, like we wanna like bring your people in, we wanna learn more from you. It was kind of like, ha, we crushed you, goodbye, Right. And I'm saying, why didn't we in 2016, number one, do an audit, figure out like what went wrong, but then looking at the primary, figure out like, what were those voters looking for? And, and I think the voters who voted for 20, who voted for

Bernie in 2016, I think a lot of them voted for Trump in 2024. And if we had actually asked the question, why did Bernie do so well? Why did AOC tap into something? What is happening here? What's going on? We have Pat Ryan in a purple district in New York. We have Chris D'Aluzio out in Pittsburgh. What are they tapping into?

And I want our leaders in Washington to like get curious about them, instead of just saying, this is how you're supposed to do it. Yeah. And I think a lot of Democrats talk about how the party like has just focused too much on shrinking the tent and creating purity tests. But I think they talk about it in the sense of like, we pushed out moderates or we pushed out people

that are in the center. I mean, do you view that as something that kind of cuts in all different directions? I've heard from smart people in the past that, elections are about addition, right? Like, how do we make that tent bigger? And I think that we have told a lot of people they don't belong here.

I mean, you see it happening after the one in New York, like that doesn't represent me. We're not saying you have to vote for the democratic socialist in New York City. Obviously that's not gonna work everywhere. What we were saying is like, keep an open mind. Are there things where we can find common agreement? That is tapped into something with his voters.

Does it work with voters around the country? And why are we so afraid to ask the question? Now that he's Cuomo conceded, the democratic establishment has, you know, been a little bit chilly towards, towards getting behind Zoran. I know Schumer and Jefferies who both happen to be New Yorkers have said that they're going to meet with him, but haven't endorsed him yet. Does that surprise you? Do you think that the party should get behind him?

I think that there are things that, if I'm a party leader, I can say, you can distance yourself from some of his beliefs, but you can also say affordability is a problem. We're campaigning on it in 2024. We saw it's a problem. It's still a problem. He tapped into that.

He had good messaging. Maybe there is something we can learn from that. Like it's just like it is they are so afraid to to come near him. And I think there's there's pieces that they can get. And by the way, Zoran won Hakeem Jeffries district by a lot. You know, so I think I think they should get curious. I understand they're balancing a lot, right? But one of the things we noticed about these attack ads in New York City was that they were on, when I tell you the Cuomo Super,

like they were just going at Zoran like 24 seven, you turn on the news and it, or anything, actually you just turn on the TV and it's just like, Zoran Mamdani is a terrorist, basically was the message from them, right? Or he's an anti-Sami or whatever it was. And it was just like going atan Momdani is a terrorist, basically was the message from them, right? Or he's an anti-Semitic or whatever it was. And it was just like going at you and it didn't work. It was, you know, 25, $30 million in negative attacks and it didn't work.

And I think voters want something a little bit different. I understand why leaders are afraid to come near him for whatever reason. But because Republicans have been using such hyperbolic language for so long, it's different now. Like, Zoran Mondani is everything they said Barack Obama was. He wasn't born here. He's a Muslim. He's a socialist. They went for years saying Barack Obama is all those things. And now when they're trying to make the argument out and so on, it doesn't it doesn't stick the same way. Do you know what I mean? Because they've already said it about everybody else. And they're like, it's almost the the like, narrative on that is like almost cheapened because they've said it's right. I mean, Republicans are like the boy who cried wolf here in terms of like making Democrats sound scarier and scarier. And I think voters voters, at least in New York City aren't buying that.

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slash bulwark takes. That's better. H E L P dot com slash bulwark takes. What do you think a Zoran style campaign looks like in like the Iowa Senate race, for example, you're saying, you know, that like a DSA type candidate, someone who's going to call themselves a democratic socialist probably should not be the person that's running in the Iowa Senate race. But like, what do you think that looks like?

I think first of all, it's not being approachable, right? And you and it doesn't like whether you're at the Iowa State Fair, or you're at like, you're in New York State, like it, you can, you can still be approachable, right? And I think that we should have elected officials and candidates who are representative of the electorate they're trying to represent, right? And I think that the more that we have people who can communicate on a level that is, I would just say normal and just like speak to people and like not soundbites or talking points, but just like

as human beings to human beings, I think that's worth a lot. I think it's just about trying to get voters engaged and understanding what their problems are. We spend a lot of time without saying I and not enough time saying you. And I think the affordability message works across the board. Yeah. And on his campaign, he, some of the videos that I thought were most effective was when he was just doing like man on the street interviews and almost like flipping the script and how you talk about politics, where he was interviewing people about issues that they cared about and kind of taking that and then going forth in his campaign. Why do you think that Democrats struggle so much with that? Because it sounds like such a basic piece of politics to show up and talk to voters.

Why is that so hard and a thing? I mean, I don't really have all the answers here. I will say that I'm lucky enough to have worked for some people that do understand it. I did work for Ruben Gallego last cycle. Ruben Gallego is running in Arizona, which was a much different race. He's much more to the right than Zora Momodani, but he understood the electorate. And a story I like to tell during his election was he

was filming an ad about costs. And it was his first issue ad. And he was like laser focused on that. But he changed the script of it. He said, I want he added in the line, I want you to know it's not your fault. Right. That like, you know, people were struggling. Everything was expensive and they tried as best they could. And they still couldn't pay their bills. And it wasn't their fault. It was that the system wasn't set up for them to succeed. Right. And that was Ruben Gallego in Arizona that had nothing to do with New York City. But he was talking to like on a personal level, he understood what they were going through. How much of this is like things that a candidate can learn versus just being innate? Like Zoran just seems, you know, super comfortable in front of a camera. He seems super comfortable talking to voters. And, you know, can you learn that? Don't you think we need candidates who are comfortable in front of the camera and comfortable? Probably, if you want to win, probably.

But, whatever, like, I think those days are over. Like, I think people want to talk to candidates who understand what they're going through, right? Does that change, then, how you even go about recruiting candidates? Because I feel like even a few years ago, the playbook was you find someone who could give a pretty decent scripted speech. You look at the rollerbacks, you look at how much money can they raise? How many TV ads can they buy? And now that's just like

almost like Cuomo dominated the TV airwaves. And now it's just like, okay, that doesn't get you that far. I mean, getting people engaged and like giving them something to believe in is important. We've spent so long saying like, the our people like how scary the other side is and the other side like is scary, right? It really is. But I think people also want something to vote for Trump lied about a lot, right? He like about what he said, but he made what he was saying easy to understand, whether it's make America great again, or no tax on tips, or whatever it was, it like, it was easy to know. And Zoran's campaign message, easy to know. I

think it's trickier. Like, you know, the Harris campaign had a lot more joy than the Biden campaign. But I still think it's like it wasn't, you know, broken down into like, what does she stand for? Do you think she could have talked about, I mean, yeah, it's a hard test case obviously, but should she have- It wasn't hard on her. I mean, she only had a hundred days, that's hard. Like I think, and it's hard to be the change agent

when you're literally the vice president, right? And I think people want to change. Yeah, I mean, do you think that the past few democratic presidential candidates then in the past few cycles, like, should have focused on an economic message more? Or like, what does that actually look like in practice in a national race? I think every year we take the lessons of, like, Bill Clinton triangulation without taking the more recent lessons of economic populism from the Obama campaign. Like Obama really had a blueprint there. And for whatever reason, we didn't really ever like

take that page and run with it. Do you know what I mean? Like it's been odd to me. Like we always go back to making sure, you know, all of our like corporate donors are happy when we should be trying to figure out how do we bring more people in? Yeah. And you know and we are talking right now

as Congress is debating Trump's spending bill, also known as the big, beautiful bill. Which is also a Trumpism, right? It's a horrible, horrible, horrible bill that does terrible, terrible things. And because they called it a big, beautiful bill, that's what he, that's what people are calling it. And it's what we're all calling it.

The other side of that is that Biden, when he was when the Democrats pushed through a bill, if they still call it the bipartisan infrastructure plan, like bipartisan, which I think speaks to some of the Democrats messaging struggle here. Right. And that's what I want to ask you about, because there was this new poll that came out today. It was a priorities USA poll. It said that nearly half of Americans haven't heard anything about the big, beautiful bill.

And only 8% of all Americans named Medicaid cuts as a detail that they have heard about, which is astonishing to me. And I think just like a massive wake up call for Democrats. What do you think? I think that with Republicans in charge of everything and all of these terrible things about to happen, there's still a way for Republicans to say this is the Democrats' fault. And that is malpractice.

Like there's no reason why the Democrats have not done a better job of getting out there. And I'm not talking about meet the press. I'm not talking about like political. I am talking about finding people where they are, all the different kinds of platforms, like, and talking to them. Right? Right. Because it seems like there is an acknowledgement in the party that they need to be more creative, that they need to do better things. But then it's like, okay, well, what is that? And why are you still on Meet the Press? You know, I worked in the Senate. I'm old. Okay. I worked in the Senate 20 years ago, and I feel like we are doing the same kind of

playbook from 20 years ago that we're doing today. So why do you think this is so, is it just like growing pains? Like it's just going to take some more, I mean, you know, it's the end of June, it's almost July. I think part of it is also we need younger elected officials, because I don't think older folks understand how people get their news. Right? Like there is a real disconnect there and they are they are not native to it and they do not understand it. Democrats win with New York Times readers, right? But guess what? There's a whole swath of the electorate, like many, that we are missing and we are like, I don't know, sometimes there's like an influencer strategy or this like are like, I don't know, sometimes there's like an influencer strategy or this, like they don't really get it, right?

They don't understand, like we need people directly talking to the voters and we don't have that many. Yeah, like do you think you have to be native to these platforms or at least like on them, like on TikTok, on Instagram? I think I would like more of our elected officials to use the platforms that more Americans are getting their news from. Like, do you think, how many people in the Senate do you think are on, like, look at YouTube shorts? Let's just take that. We're like, I mean, I know Ruben Gallego is,

but I don't know how many others are, right? And I think that's part of the problem too, that they don't understand how, in this fractured media environment, how people get their news. Yeah, well, you know, Chuck Schumer's still got the flip phone, so which is endearing to some but can't get TikTok on that thing. Well, Rebecca, thanks for joining us. Come back anytime and really appreciate it. Okay, take care. Bye.