tomorrow: M-A-M-D-A-N-I

because we’ve got to get it right

This is a NYC-forward newsletter, given deez times and our little local election that could be decided by 1000 votes or less! Also: I have a letter for paid subscribers coming end of this week feat. notes on reading Edward Said and Sigrid Nunez. Also: in case it’s useful given the east coast heat wave, here’s something I sent around last year. Peep the stuff in there about meds, including SSRIs, which can make you more heat-sensitive.

---

For the past few weeks I’ve been in rural New England, head down, working. The place I’m staying at has almost no cell reception. I go to the library for periodic hits of wifi. It’s been wonderful, monastic, a blessing to me. Over the last few days, as my phone caught sufficient stray bars of reception to receive breaking news alerts, or I checked email, or my Signal group texts lit up, the world crept in. As it does.

One of my closest friends had been courtwatching at New York City’s 26 Federal Plaza, where scenes of chaos and moral grotesquerie have been unfolding as masked ICE agents prowl to kidnap immigrants who went there to comply with their mandated court dates, green card interviews, and citizenship hearings. My friend texted me about accompanying people past ICE agents to try to better protect them, trying to translate for sobbing families terrified of being torn apart, and at one point, realizing that the man on the other side of the person she was accompanying into a courtroom was NYC Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander. I walked past tall trees and clutches of ferns to a wifi connection, and her message swooped in: It’s total fascist chess in here.

Three days later, in the same spot the three of them had crossed together, Lander was arrested by ICE.

He was released hours later; it was a strategic arrest, and we applaud the strategy. His fellow mayoral candidate, Queens assemblyman Zohran Mamdani—who has been incredible and outspoken from day one about ICE and DHS’s fascistic turn—spoke at an emergency press conference at Federal Plaza. Kathleen Hochul got mad enough to use the word bullshit and came down to Federal Plaza to courtwatch. I thought about chess, fascist and otherwise.

The thing I struggle with the most when I play chess is existing mentally both in the present and various gamed-out futures—holding multiple outcomes and the board immediately at hand all in my head.

OKAY, NEW YORKERS READING: huddle time

Let’s talk about the mayoral election tomorrow.

Shocking to anyone who has followed me online over the last year, I know: I’m ranking Zohran Mamdani #1. I’ll say more about why exactly in a minute. Lander, for his capable and progressive record, and for recently reminding many of us that he can play some goddamn ball, got bumped up to #2. I really like Zellnor Myrie, who is a smart and deeply decent candidate with thoughtful policies, great record, and ball-playing abilities; I’ll be ranking him #3. #4 and #5: Adrienne Adams and Michael Blake. My hope, honestly, is that if Zohran wins, he asks Lander to be first deputy mayor and the two of them run on a joint coalition-maximizing slate in the general.

At this eleventh hour I am not really trying so hard to persuade you of my exact slate, unless, of course, you wish to be persuaded by me. 😘 But I want to share a few thoughts in case they are useful for your eleventh-hour persuasions, which I hope you’ll engage in, if you haven’t yet. Most of all I am writing because I want to do any tiny thing I can to try to persuade every single person I can reach to not rank or vote for Andrew Cuomo, in an election that could go any way, but likely will be nail-biter close.

The argument that many prominent people seem to be making is that Mario Cuomo’s son is a bad person but a good executive.

I understand that amnesia is very in and chic these days. But this is crazy to me.

I’ll keep it as short as I can. Andrew Cuomo is an enemy of tenants, a real estate enabler who helped give us soaring rents, rampant speculation, and a hollowed-out affordable housing landscape. He oversaw massive MTA decline, treating the MTA as political pawn, not public infrastructure. As governor he created a toxic, retaliatory workplace and also used his office to silence and punish critics and political enemies, and so good people are not exactly queuing up to work for his City Hall. His COVID nursing home mismanagement alone killed literal thousands of elderly New Yorkers, and then he lied about it and abused taxpayer funds in the cover up. He has not actually lived in the city he wishes to be mayor of for about as long as I’ve been alive.

And yes, he sexually harassed a horrific array of women, then went after them on a taxpayer-funded legal revenge quest once they spoke in public about it. If elected, his various court dramas would follow him into the mayorship.

There are no risk-free political bets in this race, or most races. but if Temu-Donald-Trump-but-Democrat-ass Andrew Cuomo is your “experience candidate” then many people will need to look for other kinds of experience.

zohrankmamdani

A post shared by @zohrankmamdani

things that matter to me about Zohran, and may matter to you:

• Zohran Mamdani has a record of organizing hard and well, with savvy and morals, on behalf of ordinary people. His primary experience outside of being a legislator was in community organizing, which was also true of, you know, Barack Obama. He was a foreclosure counselor with Chhaya CDC and a housing advocate working with Housing Justice For All. He played a key role in securing meaningful debt relief for New York City taxi drivers, going on and organizing hunger strikes alongside the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which pressured the city into a historic debt relief deal in 2021. He helped secure over $100 million in state funding for subway service expansions and launched a fare‑free bus pilot in Queens

• To see how he might govern, look at his radiant, authentic, canny campaign. Mamdani has won a wealth of key endorsements, hired outstanding staff, and turned an underdog municipal campaign into both movement and national political story. Many of his key policies are compelling and aimed at producing relief and security for people who need it sorely. A swath of economists just came out in support of them, calling his plan a “practical blueprint to tackle some of New York City’s most pressing problems.”

• He is an intelligent, pragmatic, deeply likable, and morally decent communicator and organizer who can connect with young people and make people feel heard and cared for, in his anger for them and his hopes for them. We need more of these so badly. Truthfully I worry for Zohran’s safety and his family’s, given rampant anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and anti-left sentiment right now. He’s already faced death threats and hate towards his family. In him I see someone taking on actual personal risk to stand with us, to be in solidarity with tenants and workers and the vast majority of us who are struggling against an unaffordable city.

• He is the only candidate who appears positioned to have more than a snowball’s chance in a heatwave of defeating Cuomo.

• Furthermore, he can compete for attention and win in our Trumpian attention economy. He’s a little bit of a stunt queen, in the best way.

It would be a political earthquake if Zohran won. City Hall is intensely complex and high-wire, no joke at all to run, having known and loved multiple people who’ve worked there. The post-quake shockwaves will force parts of the New York left to manage and wield real power—with all its considerations, demographic inconveniences, math, and tradeoffs—rather than primarily spectate, organize against, or critique it.

Enough pessimism of the intellect, it is time for my new best friend: optimism of the will. The stakes feel very high. But I have faith, drawn from what I’ve seen so far. At his best, and with quality deputies and staff executing, Mamdani has the potential to be a truly great mayor of this city, in the mold of Fiorello LaGuardia, and a national political figure for the left at a crucial time.

Truly who knows what will happen, but the final major independent poll before Primary Day just came out. It’s the only poll, I think, to have captured the impact of Lander and Mamdani cross-endorsing each other. It shows Mamdani passing Cuomo in the last round of a ranked-choice voting simulation.

Which is to say, it shows Mamdani winning in the final round, 52%, to Cuomo’s 48%.

C.O.B. and optimism of the will

If you live in New York and feel the way I do about these candidates, I’m urging you to resist the temptation to lean too hard into either speculating about this or spectating this, for the next 28-odd hours, and instead tap into what I refer to as C.O.B.: community organizer behavior.

C.O.B can take many forms…

C.O.B. Some people have it in spades, but it lives in almost all of us. I don’t care for most politicians, but this is the fundamental thing I recognize in both Mamdani and Lander. C.O.B., in a vast range of people, meted out humbly and competently, with imagination and vision: this is what might save us in the years to come.

It’s the final stretch of runway now. Polls and Polymarket be damned. I hope you text your friends and family and elders about their voting plans for tomorrow in these final hours; this is an impactful GOTV practice called ‘vote tripling’. I hope you walk your own block and check whether your neighbors know their polling place, explain why you’re not ranking Cuomo and hope they’ll join you in this. I hope you canvass or phonebank, as I did this morning, if you have an hour of time to spare; there are slots today and tomorrow.

None of us who are not pundits or pollsters or oracles are called upon to be pundits or pollsters or oracles. What we’re called to do—each of us, in our own small way—is to organize victory.

In the words of my friend Kishori: “Movements like Zohran’s don’t just challenge power. They embarrass it. Political talent like Mamdani’s is rare. He is sharp, grounded, magnetic. That charisma matters. Especially now, when attention is brittle and intelligence is mocked. I’ve lived in New York for 21 years. This is the first time in a long time I’ve felt that old romantic thing stir again—the hope that this place could become more fun, more alive, more ours.”

For a city we can afford, for a city that’s more ours, for better knights and queens on this gameboard of fascist chess, for our futures, for a different way. It’s M-A-M-D-A-N-I, baby. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.