Sometimes history is as stubborn as a teenager. He persists in writing with invisible ink and only when he feels like it, when no one is looking, he lets the letters emerge like in those spy books that fascinated us as children.
This Tuesday, in New York, the story turned 34, easy smile, director mother, Marxist father.
Zohran Mamdani entered the Democratic primary as a complete unknown and ended up defeating Andrew Cuomo with 50.4% of the vote to the former governor’s 41.6%. But numbers, as you know, are bad storytellers. What the numbers don’t say is that their communications chief is 27 years old, has never run a campaign before, and yet has engineered the best political campaign in the city’s recent history. What they don’t tell you is that more than 100,000 volunteers have turned their viral videos into real conversations on New York portals.
Young people look at it as if it were an antidote. Against what, exactly, they don’t quite know yet. Perhaps against cynicism. Against the feeling that your vote is like throwing a stone into a very deep well where you never hear the sound of water. Lea Ash, 24, says Mamdani “has been the only bright spot” for her this year. You can feel the desperation in that “one”. An entire generation clinging to a bright spot. At New York University, where I teach right now, you just hear about it. With enthusiasm and with hope.
And then there’s Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo, the school bully turned governor. The Republican candidate called him a “disgraced governor”, recalling his resignation over allegations of sexual harassment. But Cuomo is one of those who never goes away, who remains glued like rubber to the sole of politics’ shoes. Trump supported him against Mamdani, saying Cuomo was a “bad Democrat” but better than a “communist.” What a time these are when a former president calls you a bad Democrat and it’s a compliment.
And Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate. Trump called it “not exactly world class.” His radio boss also asked him to drop out of the race. Zero charisma, fourteen cats and a red cap. Sometimes I think New York Republicans are like those wanted posters in the Wild West: You know they exist, but you rarely actually encounter them.
Then there are the fears. The fears are always there. Mamdani spent three years in the State Assembly. He will be New York’s youngest mayor in more than a century. Her mother is Mira Nair, the director of Massala of Mississippi. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a Marxist scholar at Columbia who studies colonialism and postcolonialism. They gave him his middle name Kwame in honor of Kwame Nkrumah, the African leader so admired by the Soviets. You can imagine the conservative headlines.
But there’s something else. Something no one expected in the city of “God Bless America” embroidered on every baseball cap. Mamdani will be the first Muslim mayor of New York. And several columnists have already written about the transition from “God Bless America” to “Allah Bless America.” It’s not just a change of mayor. It is the country that looks in the mirror and does not fully recognize itself.
Three in ten voters in New York say their vote is to oppose Trump. Voting for Mamdani became an act of resistance. Not against boredom or municipal corruption (the current mayor of New York, Eric Adams, is accused of this). Against something bigger and darker that has to do with the word that no one wants to say, but that everyone thinks: fascism. Fascism with the MAGA hat and the Verità Social account.
How will Trump react? He has already threatened to withdraw federal funding from the city if Mamdani is elected. Trump, who is from Queens, grew up on these streets, acting as if New York were an enemy country. The irony hurts so much it’s almost ridiculous.
At five in the afternoon on November 4, four hours before polling stations closed, the city waited. More than 675,000 registered Democrats had voted early. Somewhere in Queens, Mamdani was with his wife, Rama Duwaji, who he met on a dating app. In Manhattan, Cuomo was calculating. Sliwa, with her cats.
And history, stubborn as ever, was written in its invisible ink.
Sometimes, when all seems lost, when cynicism takes over at every corner, when monsters seem to win every battle, along comes a 34-year-old talking about free buses and a rent freeze and young people say, “What if…?”
And with that “What if…” bigger revolutions were won.
Or at least it’s been tried.
Isabel Coixet She is a director. He spends long periods in the United States and currently teaches a course at New York University, from where he followed the campaign.
