The secret to winning New York City elections is actually liking New York City

On Tuesday night, at our election watch party at Honey’s, Dave saw a shocking skeet on his phone and ran to grab the microphone. The DJ cut the music as Dave yelled, his hand cutting horizontally across the air: “It’s Cuover!” Andrew Cuomo had actually conceded the race, hours — days even — before anyone thought we’d have a result. Immediately, there was light chaos.

A glass broke, people shouted at the screen, people shouted at Dave to cite his sources, a throng of people descended from the roof deck to find out if the news was actually real. Someone bought a round of shots. People screamed. People looked stunned. For the rest of the night, people wandered about dazed, unsure how to process news that actually felt good to them for once. It was cathartic for many people to be in a room together; it was, in essence, everything our “Get Off the Internet” mandate is supposed to be: banding together with fellow New Yorkers in real spaces to talk about real issues. 

Getting off the internet is also in a lot of ways what this whole election has been about. The national election in 2024 was labeled the podcast election, spurred on by dipshits with microphones and no editors, and bolstered by memes from all sides; but 2025’s New York City primary seems to have been less about the internet and more about actually getting out there and talking to real people. Zohran Mamdani did it; Andrew Cuomo did not; Brad Lander did it and realized that people wanted what Mamdani had to offer this year, so he got behind him too.

Mamdani rode the trains and walked the length of Manhattan, Cuomo drove his car through stop signs and never appeared at the main candidate forums. The defining images of this election were ones from the real world, whether it was Lander and Mamdani bromancing out on Citi Bikes, Lander getting arrested by ICE agents, Mamdani’s deep bench of volunteers fanning out across the boroughs or the candidate’s seemingly endless energy for meeting people on the streets, including, it turned out, at least a few who were wearing Cuomo shirts. 

Tens of thousands of regular New Yorkers joined up to connect with each other IRL over a campaign that not only defeated billionaire-backed Andrew Cuomo — noted ghoul, sex pest, and longtime enemy of the city he professed to want to run — but kept the focus on day-to-day issues that affect all but the richest among us. Rents, grocery prices, child care, transportation. People want these things to be better for themselves, sure, but also for their eight million neighbors.

It’s all too easy to forget that better things are possible, and in fact, a lot of them used to exist already. (One of the bigger points of the excellent new doc, Drop Dead City, about the 1975 fiscal crisis, was that New York City used to offer free CUNY tuition across the board, and robust health and social services that laid the groundwork for working and middle class families to actually thrive.)

As far as the candidate at the center of this whole thing, let’s look at what he actually said to New Yorkers following Cuomo’s surprise concession Tuesday night. Every good campaign victory speech is a neat summation of the campaign’s themes, a narrative to explain how the person on the mic did the damn thing. (Source: Dave, a political communication expert whose only “A” grade in college came in a political speechwriting and public speaking class). Zohran Mamdani’s speech on Tuesday night was no exception to this tradition, with paeans to solidarity, Bangladeshi aunties and unwavering faith in a brighter future just over the horizon.

The standout moment of the speech though was when Mamdani went over his walk down the length of Broadway on the Friday before Election Day, something that he no doubt thought of doing after reading The New York Groove’s guide on how to survive the walk. It was only 185 words out of the 1,300 total that made up the speech, but in that moment, the candidate who made his bones by showing up on Subway Takes, showing up for Brad Lander, showing up at candidate forums and even showing up at a McCarren Park softball game on Tuesday night before polls closed (this really happened) connected his love for the city with his campaign’s message of fighting for the city’s working people:

And above all, dreaming demands work. Last Friday night, as the sun began to drop in the sky, I set off on a 13-mile walk from the northernmost tip of Manhattan to the base of the island. We began in Inwood, where music played and neighbors set out dominoes on the sidewalk. It was 7pm. The weekend had arrived. For most people, the time for work was over. But this is New York, where the work never ends. Waiters carried plates on 181st Street, conductors drove the subways that rattled high above 125th, and world-class musicians tuned instruments as we passed Lincoln Center.

By the time we made it downtown, a crowd marched behind us—a living embodiment of the energy and purpose that defines this campaign. Still, long past midnight, New York worked. Garbage trucks weaved through empty streets. Fishmongers carried in tomorrow’s wares. And when we finally arrived at the Battery at 2:20 in the morning, the workers who run the Staten Island Ferry were on the job too, just as they are every hour of the day, every day of the week.

It’s just a piece of the speech. But in that piece lies Mamdani’s central appeal: after one mayor who seemed to mostly just love his neighborhood, a mayor who could never quite explain if he even lived here and a campaign against a rival who hadn’t lived here in decades, this was someone who lived for the city.

Yes, you need to be preternaturally charismatic to ensure that when you describe a TikTok trend as a stirring ode to the city’s working people it doesn’t come off as incredibly corny. Yes, any time someone talks about “fishmongers” it can conjure up Barton Fink’s hamfisted blue collar dramas. But Mamdani is preternaturally charismatic, so he overcame both of these obstacles easily. 

He’ll need to keep leaning on that charisma and keep convincing New Yorkers he wants to run the city because he loves the city, since New York’s People of Plutocratic Experience are getting together to try to buy the general election. At the very least, New York deserves a mayor who actually seems to like living here.