New York
CNN
—
The moment Andrew Cuomo said he had called Zohran Mamdani to concede the race, Kal Penn stopped mid-sentence. The actor and activist is also a family friend who has known Mamdani since he was 14, and he was speechless.
The crowd at Mamdani’s Election Night party wasn’t. The shot of Cuomo waving goodbye as he left the stage had everyone in the room screaming as loud as they could — in disbelief, in victory, in schadenfreude.
Cuomo, a 67-year-old titan of state and local politics, had just conceded the Democratic primary for New York City mayor to Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist running his first major campaign. Mamdani is poised to win the primary pending ranked-choice vote allocation.
There were many race-specific factors that made an upset possible: Cuomo is still reviled by many progressives four years after his resignation as governor, and for all his pining for redemption, Cuomo took Tuesday so much for granted that he didn’t even campaign on the final day beyond casting a vote for himself.
But a look inside Mamdani’s sweat-soaked outdoor party on the roof deck of a craft brewery offered hints of the Democratic Party’s direction as it works to regroup after President Donald Trump’s second victory. Mamdani supporters mingled for hours near a waiting podium topped by a hand-painted “Afford to Live & Afford to Dream” banner, complete with a custom-inked “paid for by zohranfornyc” at the bottom.
In the crowd were well-known Cuomo enemies like Cynthia Nixon, the “Sex and the City” actress who ran against him in the 2018 Democratic primary for governor. The then-governor touted his large win as confirmation that New Yorkers agreed with him more than the left wing of the party. On Tuesday, Nixon walked in with her wife and immediately was grabbing other supporters in deep, long hugs.
“What are we going to do when we don’t have Cuomo to fight?” one joked to her.
Nixon told CNN the feeling of watching the results was overwhelming.
“I have never simultaneously been so excited for anyone, and vote against anyone,” Nixon said. “Usually it’s one or the other, but this was like a meeting of heaven and hell.”
Soon Nixon was in a tight circle with Chi Ossé, a queer city councilman elected from Brooklyn four years ago at age 23, who has been busting through city politics with viral videos of his own and who was an early and avid Mamdani backer, as well as Ella Emhoff, the artist stepdaughter of former Vice President Kamala Harris who has become a Brooklyn fixture. Emhoff had a blue-and-yellow Mamdani bandana tied in her hair above her round glasses.
Mamdani’s primary night party, just like his whole campaign, did not necessarily anticipate the candidate would end up doing this well. There wasn’t enough space, enough water or enough air conditioning. It was in a spot usually for beers with a backdrop of the Manhattan skyline in the rapidly gentrifying area of Long Island City, Queens. The next big event being advertised there is a candle-making class this weekend.
Mamdani’s mostly young staffers were still rushing to get the venue set up half an hour after the polls closed but that didn’t matter much as the results became clear and politicians across the city started packing in.
Some told CNN that they hadn’t been Mamdani supporters initially and hadn’t even ranked him first on their ballots. Brad Lander, the city comptroller who had been the race’s early progressive favorite but couldn’t compete with Mamdani’s charisma and eventually became his cross-endorsing validator, arrived to the second-biggest cheers of the night and responded with an awkward “raise the roof” motion.
Afterward, speaking to CNN, Lander tried to explain the excitement for Mamdani.
“I don’t think the line is so much between progressives and moderates, it’s between fighters and fakers,” Lander said. “What Zohran is showing is that it’s worth putting up big bold ideas for change, standing up and fighting for them, and that’s pretty hopeful. Yes, he’s a democratic socialist, but he had a bold vision for the future of the city and that excited people.”
By the time Mamdani was ready to take the stage, former Rep. Jamaal Bowman had grabbed Penn in a bear hug so big he lifted the actor off the ground.
David Hogg, whose brief time as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee blew up earlier this month over his pushing of younger challengers to incumbents, found a spot to the side of the rooftop, pleased that his PAC had endorsed Mamdani last week in the primary and that he didn’t have to clear it through the party structure.
Mamdani’s campaign manager, Elle Bisgaard-Church, started her introductory speech by thanking the Democratic Socialists of America, with the crowd chanting “DSA! DSA!”
The campaign, she said, “has been run by the left and organized to win.”
New York Rep. Nydia Velázquez, who was one of Mamdani’s early endorsers, told the crowd the “campaign has shocked the world — but everyone in this room knew we were going to do it.”
Left unmentioned were the many people in the room who just a few weeks before had been resigned to a Cuomo win, and just a few hours before had been bracing for a rocky few days of ranked-choice tabulation and legal challenges.
Some supporters were also already telling CNN that they believe Mamdani’s campaign must quickly get even more ambitious and develop a stronger management structure as he goes before a citywide electorate that in November will choose between Mamdani, current Mayor Eric Adams, locally famous Republican Curtis Sliwa, an independent candidate Jim Walden and possibly Cuomo if he decides to keep running on the separate ballot line he already secured.
“We have to build out the tent, and they’re prepared to do that – but it needs to be in a more aggressive way,” said Murad Awawdeh, the president of the New York Immigration Coalition, who said he believes Mamdani’s 40,000 volunteers could have hit millions more voters if organized differently. “The campaign needs to think about that (as) they continue moving forward in hitting the ground running as if we’re still at the same level as yesterday.”
Bowman told New York State Rep. Khaleel Anderson that he figured moneyed interests in the city “will do anything” to stop Mamdani, even spending $100 million and try to recruit someone like Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson as a candidate. (There’s no evidence that the Rock is running.)
In an interview on the streets of Brooklyn last month, Mamdani told CNN that the proof he is ready to run a city of 8 million with a $112 billion budget is the campaign he put together. At the microphone, Mamdani spoke about his campaign as a model for the Democratic Party and the New York City he wants to lead as a model for the country.
Outside taking pictures, he had only one word for how it felt: “Incredible,” he told CNN. “But I’m excited to meet every single voter now.”
