Alittle over a year ago, I organized a meeting in New York City between a visiting member of Congress and a handful of local activists from across the Left. Among those present was New York Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani wasn’t the most prominent person in the room, and far from the most senior elected official. But immediately, it was clear that he wasn’t just another earnest progressive in a room full of them. He had something else — something difficult to describe without sounding like a campaign ad. Charisma. A fluid and natural ease with language. An ability to communicate about the issues that morally compelled him. It was obvious that Mamdani wasn’t just an ordinary organizer turned legislator. He was a natural politician, in the best sense of the word.

As Mamdani mounts a surging campaign for New York City mayor, his bid is fast becoming a case study in what the next wave of the American left should aim to replicate, while also illustrating some of the dangers we face in our efforts to build a mass base for our politics.

Generational Talent

Mamdani’s campaign is as fresh in substance as it is in style. He’s framed his mayoral run around the most pressing issue for working-class New Yorkers: the cost of living. He’s not leading with vague invocations of equity — he’s leading with rent relief, housing justice, public transit expansion, and raising the minimum wage. And he’s doing it without cozying up to the city’s entrenched political machines or its constellation of institutional donors.

Mamdani is offering a different and more combative kind of politics than what New Yorkers have come to expect from its large liberal-left network, which elevated an NGO leader and a charter school founder in the 2021 race. His experience as an organizer, his immigrant background, and his theatrical presence (he used to be a rapper, after all) make him a uniquely compelling candidate. But we shouldn’t confuse his appeal with just vibes and videos. It’s political skill — and it’s rare.

Just as movements don’t build themselves, policy programs don’t sell themselves. We need more democratic socialists who can do what Mamdani can do: communicate complex ideas clearly, relate to ordinary people without pandering, and present a vision that feels achievable rather than utopian. That kind of skill isn’t everything, but it matters — and it should shape how we recruit and support future candidates.

Realigning the Class

Even a compelling left-wing candidate with a clear message and momentum faces structural challenges. As recent polling (shown in Data for Progress’s recent survey of likely Democratic voters in NYC) reveals, Mamdani is still trailing former New York governor Andrew Cuomo — a man who resigned in disgrace, whose time in Albany was defined by machine politics, deadly scandals and corporate favoritism, and whose campaign now amounts to, essentially, a bet on name recognition.

In top-line numbers in the Date for Progress survey, on the final round of ranked-choice voting, Mamdani pulls 49 percent to Cuomo’s 51 percent. In a two-person race, that’s within striking distance. But a closer look at the crosstabs tells a more nuanced story that should raise concerns for the Left going forward.

Among college-educated voters, by the final round, Mamdani outpaces Cuomo (64 percent to 36 percent). He’s strong with voters under forty-five, where he garners 78 percent support. Among white voters, he takes 61 percent to Cuomo’s 39 percent. This is a familiar pattern: progressive candidates dominating among younger and more educated constituencies. But Mamdani falls short in some of the demographics that matter most if our project is to root itself firmly in the working class, especially among minorities.

Cuomo takes 72 percent among African American voters and 55 percent among Latinos. These numbers are driven, in part, by name recognition. Cuomo has been a leading figure in New York politics for decades, and many voters still associate him — despite his dismal record — with stability and experience. Mamdani has a +43 net favorability but isn’t known by 28 percent of likely primary voters, while Cuomo has -1 favorability but is universally known. Yet name ID doesn’t explain everything. If our movement is to grow, we can’t settle for dominance among the politically engaged few. We need to convince the politically alienated, the skeptics, the ones whose lives are shaped most by the failures of neoliberal governance but who aren’t yet convinced that we’re offering something different enough — or real enough — to bet on.

The fact that this is set to be a low-turnout primary election might ironically be the saving grace of the populist candidate. The very voters Mamdani is doing best with (young and college-educated) are the ones most likely to turn out in this kind of race. That advantage may be enough to put him over the top this time. But if we want to govern, not just campaign, we need to become more organically connected with the working-class constituency we hope to help organize.

From the Bronx to the Northeast Kingdom

Some of this failure to reach disengaged voters may be related to messaging. But Mamdani’s program is strong and already laser-focused on meeting material needs and naming unpopular villains.

Some of it is about organization. The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America has made incredible inroads in some neighborhoods and has helped fuel Mamdani’s massive canvassing operation. But our ability to build long-term political power depends on sustained, year-round, neighborhood-level work in all parts of the city — not just hyperactivity during election cycles and digital outreach.

And yes, some of it is about the candidate. Mamdani is a rare socialist politician, like Bernie Sanders, who has the power to captivate and move people. But he is a thirty-three-year-old with no record of executive experience. Many working-class people who have the most to lose from poor governance are skeptical for rational reasons.

Still, Sanders’s political trajectory in Vermont offers a useful parallel. In the early days, he had to carve out an audience in a state that was far more conservative than it seems today. He spent years slowly and methodically building trust in working-class communities — from Burlington to the Northeast Kingdom’s economically struggling small towns. His message resonated precisely because he focused relentlessly on the tangible issues facing ordinary Vermonters: jobs, housing, health care, and wages. He built a base of supporters that might have not shared his socialist rhetoric or ideological commitments but that trusted him and saw themselves in his critique of American inequality.

Mamdani’s challenge today mirrors Sanders’s own early struggles: he must continue to take his undeniable charisma and clear-eyed policy platform into communities beyond progressive strongholds, patiently organizing the working-class New Yorkers whose support will ultimately define his — and our movement’s — future.

Mamdani has shown that it’s possible to build a campaign that is simultaneously insurgent and competent. But whether he wins or loses the primary, there will be important lessons to draw after the fact. We’re not building a club. We’re building a movement. And that means figuring out how to reach the full breadth of the working class.

Whatever happens on June 24, we should celebrate a remarkable candidate with a bright future ahead of him. But to revive democratic socialism in America, we should also study the crosstabs.

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