The Current - What Zohran Mamdani’s win means for the Democratic Party

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Zohran Mamdani is mayor-elect of New York City. But this win reflects only one part of a wider Democratic Party civil war. New York Magazine writer Simon van Zuylen-Wood believes that the Democratic Party is in the middle of picking a new path — but is it through Mamdani, or is it something else?

I'm Nala Ayyed, host of Ideas, and I'm inviting you to a birthday party, ours, because Ideas is turning 60. So we're having a celebration at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto on the evening of November 11th. Tickets are free, but you must register. Just visit cbc.ca.ca slash ideas. Ideas at 60. That's November 11th at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto. See you there. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands.

Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor. palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns. These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. New York City has a new mayor-elect and Democrat Zoran Mahdani. It is a historic win. He is the first Muslim mayor of the biggest city in the United States. He will be the youngest mayor since 1892, and he got the most votes since the 1960s. A year ago, Mamdani was an obscure 33-year-old New York State Senator. And today, he's one of the most talked-about politicians in the United States. He calls himself a democratic socialist and his left-leaning vision.

has ignited a debate within the broader Democratic Party. Since last November's national election defeat, the party has been soul-searching, trying to find a unified path through competing visions of the party's future to go left, like Mamdani, or stay closer to the center. Simon Van Zylenwood is a features writer

with New York Magazine. Simon, good morning to you. Good morning. So our and Mamdani's name has been on so many people's lips in both good and bad ways over the last several months, but just give us a brief sketch to start out. Who is he? Stron Mandani was a assemblyman, kind of a backbencher, a couple terms in in Albany, relatively anonymous until quite recently in the scope of American politics.

He started hitting the streets a year ago, basically right after Donald Trump's election. Some of your listeners may remember that New York City swung not all the way to Donald Trump. It still voted for Kamala Harris, but much more towards Trump than anyone had predicted. And that was true of many blue areas, especially in the northeast, New Jersey, New York State. Mondana introduced himself in a sense by talking to new voters, and that trademark style he has, that vertical video iPhone sort of style that he cultivated and that made him famous on the internet, asking them what was on their minds. And one of the things they talked about was affordability. Living in New York is really expensive. It's hard to get by.

There's a lack of housing. And ever since then, he's been on a rocket ship to political fame. And part of that was listening to Trump voters, listening to people who are dissatisfied with the democratic status quo. And ever since then, he wrote this highly improbable wave to victory. Everything about him, seeming so improbable. And now here we are. We have a 34-year-old Democratic socialist, Muslim mayor, as the mayor of America's largest city. Did you ever think you'd be saying that in 2025?

Well, I did it for the last five months because in New York City, if you win the primary, which happens in June, you've basically won. The only reason there was any modicum of suspense is because his primary. opponent Andrew Cuomo, one of his primary opponent, Andrew Cuomo, decided to run again on an independent ticket line. All the headlines are screaming in a zillion point font, but you know, we pretty much knew Tehran was going to win for the last few months. The polls were with him all the way, the excitement

was with him, the sheer number of volunteers and small donors that he accumulated compared to Cuomo, about whom, firstly nobody was excited. It was a sort of anti-Mundani vote. So we have been girding ourselves here in the political class and the journalistic class, it was pretty clear that absent something sort of really, really historic, that Mandani was going to win. So the real battle had been fought over the spring, essentially, already. And this last few months for him was about solidifying it. So his victory, as you say, his policies were focused on affordability,

which just like Canadians, Americans are deeply, deeply focused on. But as you also say, look, this came one year. Donald Trump was elected one year ago today, in fact, but it comes one year after the Republicans have been holding power and making a lot of changes. And the Democrats are trying to find themselves again. So do you see the Mamdani victory as a rebuke of Trump, a rebuke of the Democratic class? Like, how are you framing this? There's a lot of temptation. There are ways in which I will try to extrapolate, like, why it matters and what it can matter for the Democratic Party. But there's also ways in which it's so unique to New York City and so unique to Mundani. And we're going to get into, I'm sure, the other elections that

happened last night, which you could draw entirely different conclusions about if you were like, you know, a Democratic Party broker. But with Zoran in particular, look, he is uniquely charismatic, a unique political talent. He has got a unique digital kind of appeal. Everything about him is sort of precision engineer to appeal to the young voters that he galvanized in record number. He also is an anti-establishment candidate, as of course has Donald Trump been. Even though Donald Trump now represents the establishment, he's always successfully. run them in that way. So Zoran did not have to secure the backing of Democratic Party brokers.

You know, the two most Democrats, important Democrats in Washington are Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his counterpart in the House of Representatives Hakeem Jeffries. They're both Brooklynites. They're both New Yorkers. Schumer never endorsed Mondani. Hakeem Jeffries technically did, but not really. And all I can say is all that did is help on dining. Nobody sort of is looking towards the Democratic.

Democratic Party brokers for any sort of guidance. And so, in fact, running an anti-establishment campaign was to his favor. And then running a populist campaign and running a campaign that basically said, you know, the fat cats and the power brokers and the establishment, they don't have what's best for you. And so in some sense, it wasn't a rebuke of Trump in that. He didn't really run on Trump. He actually ran on his own sort of positive affirmative vision. And I think that was key because so many other Democrats have not found a message in the last

decade, frankly, other than don't vote for Trump. So, yes, let me stop there. It's a little time to talk about other. They said there were other elections in New Jersey, in Virginia. The Democrats did well there. We'll talk about California just a sec, but did well really across the board last night. So are the Democrats now struggling to, I don't know, harness the mom-dani effect? You wrote a feature with the headline, quote, socialism or abundance, two visions,

fight for the Democratic Party soul as it searches for purpose, direction, and a modicum of popularity. So as I hear that, I think, well, Mamdani did very well. Got more than 50% of the vote. So there's going to be a poll within the party to go more that way. And then there's a more established thing. So how do these two factions duke it out now? Well, if you look at New Jersey and Virginia, both of the candidates, Mikey Schell, who won the Democrat in New Jersey for governor and Abigail Spanberger, who won, she's the Democrat who won in Virginia. They both ran won by about 12, 13 points, I think. They're the opposite of Undani. They're like suburban, moderate, pretty milk-toast candidates. Like, a lot of people

were worried that Cheryl was going to lose in New Jersey because she was running such an uninspiring campaign. Abigail Spanberger sat on a debate stage and basically refused to answer questions from her opponent. Like, it was very awkward. She was kind of staring straight ahead, refused to engage. They ran like the safest campaigns you can possibly imagine, and they still won. And a lot of that is because this is an off year, which means typically in American politics, you know, it's not a presidential election year. It's an odd numbered year. So that means that a lot of galvanized, angry Democrats come out and Republicans, who, you know, who are maybe more complacent because they're in power. They don't. This is a cyclical thing. But, you know, so there's all these reasons why maybe they did so well. But also, they're very moderate. They have nothing to do with Madani. They distance themselves from him. And so there's so many police-specific elections in America. And it's very hard to say, oh, you should go Zoran or you should go Mikey Cheryl. Um, and, but, but what it does is it, it, and by the way, like, you're going to see all these, all these sort of democratic, uh, all these pundits or journalists basically saying like, oh, the Democrats, everybody's up there in trouble. They're doing fine now. Um, you know, keep in mind that New Jersey and Virginia, uh, were blue states, even last November and New York City is a blue city. Um, so I, I, you know, the Democrats are very far from solving their problems. Um, it's, it's, it's great for them that they didn't lose in blue states, but it's sort of a bare minimum expectation in an off your election, not to throw cold water on the party this morning.

But, you know, to your question, yes, like this, this basically gets at exactly the point I was making the piece, which is that there are these two visions. I can explain what abundance is, but as, you know, as a byword, abundance has become this byword for economic moderation. And then socialism or left populism, the sort of Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mondani faction. And they really are a faction at this point with a lot of power and political Jews. That represents another vision, that kind of democratic socialist vision. And so, yes, they both won.

The debate will continue to rage. The headlines never stop, and it's harder than ever to tell what's real, what matters, and what's just noise. That's where POTSafe America comes in. I'm Tommy Vitor, and every week I'm joined by fellow former Obama aides, John Favro, John Lovett, and Dan Pfeiffer to break down the biggest stories, unpack what they mean for the future of our democracy, and add just enough humor to stay sane along the way. You'll also hear honest, in-depth conversations

with big voices in politics, media, and culture like Rachel Maddo, Gavin Newsom, and Mark Cuban, that you won't find anywhere else. New episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday with deep dives every other weekend. Listen wherever you get your podcast, watch on YouTube, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts for ad-free episodes. There is also a debate playing out about tactics. This is after the Republicans redistricted five seats in Texas to make the more favorable to the party, California governor, Gavin Newsom, Democrat, is doing the same. And this has caused divisions within the Democratic Party itself. The redistricting was on the ballot yesterday in California.

Tell us what happened there. I'm not a California guy. I want you to call it a smarter person about California, but they won. They did it. I'll just tell you that. Yeah, and there's a whole other debate about that. Like, should you try to persuade or should you just try to play hardball and, you know, engineer politics so that, you know, you're going to have more of a majority.

That's a separate, it's like a, it's like a completely separate debate happening, as you say, on a tactical axis. I don't think the solution for the Democrats is instead of persuading voters to just, like, redraw their lines. I think it's kind of a cheat code and it will not work in the long run. But if voters, on the other hand, if voters are looking for signals that, you know, XYZ politicians are going to play hardball, well, maybe they like that. And wouldn't you know, Gavin Newsom is definitely running for president.

So I'm sure he also has an. ulterior motive of signaling, I'm a fighter because Democrats say they want a fighter right now. You talk about the two factions within the Democratic Party, and it's early days. And as you say, look, there is signs from last night that can kind of feed the abundance faction and can kind of feed the Mamdani faction in terms of where this party is going to go. It has been, though, a year of very deep soul-searching. Is this party any further ahead and figure out what direction it's going to go leading up to the midterms next year? Yes and no. I mean, no in the sense that I'm not, I mean, I remember 2022 to

Democrats won the midterms and Biden was in office and everybody, there was a real complacency and people were really kind of gobsmacked by what happened in 2024. But if you're looking at demographic patterns from 2016 to 2018 all the way to 2022 and then eventually into 2024, they were subtly losing their grip on the multiracial working class. And these midterm elections didn't really change that calculus for them because they were basically getting highly educated, mobilized white voters to come out and just boost the party enough. There are some signs in this election that they actually have regained with Latino voters in particular, it's looking like, which would be a huge boon for the party since Latino voters swung so hard to Trump in 2024 as part of a kind of decade-long

migration away from Democrats. But in terms of how they found themselves, I would say it's very unclear to me, like, until we see how they do in swing and redder areas. And I think the one thing that Mondani has shown is, or let me answer it this way, is that one, so there are these two factions, abundance and socialism. And again, I can unpack those terms as I mean them in the piece, because I'm using them very, very broadly. But one thing, and it's been a very bitter fight that's been happening in Bernie Sanders' 's fight oligarchy rallies, which he's been having all over the country. It's been happening on social media and substack and the media all the time.

These two factions, which is kind of also an extension of the famous kind of Hillary versus Bernie Bro faction dating back to 2016, have been at each other's throats. What's underrated about the battle of how much they agree on. And what the Democratic Party has kind of come together on is the politics of addressing affordability. They have very, very, very swiftly jettison the cultural politics and the focus on progressive identity politics that kind of consumed the party. and has consumed, you know, politics in Western Europe and in Canada as well over the last decade. Sort of the identity first progressivism of the Democratic Party is like it's been totally like memory hold. It's like it never happened. All these candidates have just decided like that stuff didn't work for us.

Oh, and by the way, like talking about the environment, that stuff didn't work for us either. And talking about all these other sort of big ticket progressive items didn't work. The stuff that galvanized the Women's March and Me Too and Black Lives Matter and George Floyd. And all that stuff, it's like, it's very, it's very interesting to observe because it's like that everybody decided, okay, we went too far. We're just going to focus on pocketbook issues. And so that is one place where they found a message, whether that's enough of a message to kind of reach people at every aspect of their lives, whether they can inspire people just by talking about, you know, your bills. I'm not sure. And Rondani is able to do it because he's so charismatic.

He's such a unique figure. And he's also authentically stands for something beyond just that. He didn't, you know, crucially, you know, the politics of Israel, Palestine are a little different down here. Traditionally, the electorate is more reflexively pro-Israel. And it seemed like a real risk for Mandani to not back down from his pro-Palestine stance over the course of the year. But as the war against Gaza went on, like Americans on both sides of the aisle came to be more and more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and more and more suspicious of Netanyahu's Israel. And it paid off, it paid off mightily, I think, for Mandani that he seemed authentically. to stand for something that the rest of the Democratic Party was kind of poll testing, putting their

finger to the wind. So the politics of authenticity and populism certainly is something that people will try to take away, but you can't, you can't manufacture it either. Mondani's just himself. I mean, they're these figures like, he's very different from Obama politically. Obama was much more moderate than he is. We will see, you know, it's hard to get elected. Yeah, it's hard to get elected once you get in office, harder challenges yet. We'll see how it all goes. Simon, appreciate your time. Absolutely. Van Zylen Wood is a features writer with New York Magazine.

This has been the current podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio 1 at 8.30 a.m. at all time zones. You can also listen online at cbc.ca.ca slash the current or on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.