Learning the Wrong Lesson from Mamdani

As they say, sincerity is the main thing; if you can fake that, you’ve got it made. I can’t tell if this guy is faking it or not, so he’s probably got it made.

For the past few weeks, there has been a small national freakout about the decisive victory of Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City—a place so dominated by Democrats that the primary usually makes the general election a foregone conclusion.

I have never lived anywhere near New York, so this is not my circus, and these are definitely not my monkeys. But the contest was interesting for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is the adoption of “ranked choice voting,” in which New Yorkers voted for a candidate, then ranked their second, third, fourth, and fifth choices. The idea is that if no one wins an outright majority, the ranked choices are factored in until someone does get a majority. In Mamdani’s case, this turned a plurality of 43.5% of the vote into a majority of 56%—meaning that an additional 11.5% of people who voted for other candidates listed Mamdani as their second choice.

The really interesting part of the ranked-choice system is that it encourages a weird kind of cooperation between ideologically aligned rivals. Mamdani and several other candidates cross-endorsed each other, particularly third-place finisher Brad Lander. This helped unite the rest of the field against the early frontrunner Andrew Cuomo, the digraced former governor of New York (and the son of former governor Mario Cuomo). Normally, Cuomo might have been able to ride his name recognition to a victory by splitting the other candidates against one another. But let’s just say that not a lot of people were likely rank Cuomo second.

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He May Be an SOB, But He’s Our SOB

That leads me to the other reason this election was interesting, because it tested a certain style of New York politics, a style that has gone on to characterize our national politics.