Popularity contest
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 114
POLITICS DEP'T.
Zohran Mamdani Wins by Knockout
IN TECHNICAL, POLITICAL terms, the reason Zohran Mamdani won yesterday's New York City Democratic primary for mayor was that he got the most votes. There were other things involved but as people try to sort it all out, it's good to start with the basics. At the moment, with more than 90 percent of the first-round ranked-choice vote reported, Mamdani has 432,305 votes and Andrew Cuomo has 361,840. Comptroller Brad Lander, Mamdani's most prominent cross-endorser and his de facto anti-Cuomo running mate, has 112,349.
When Eric Adams won the Democratic primary four years ago, he got 289,403 votes in the first round. People who get paid to talk about politics stampeded to name Adams the future of the Democratic Party and a top-tier presidential prospect—based not on the actual figure of Adams (profound weirdo, definite signs of corruption, last known residence in Fort Lee, New Jersey) nor on his 7,197-vote final margin of victory over the sanitation commissioner, but on the belief that his various superficial statuses as a business-friendly Black ex-cop with a culturally conservative voter base all added up to something that could be taken as a meaningful rebuke to, or reversal of, the social movements of 2020. Those 289,403 people who ranked Eric Adams No. 1 were the voice of a public demanding the restoration of a certain kind of order.
This time around, a 33-year-old Muslim who identifies as a democratic socialist got nearly 50 percent more first-place votes than Adams got in 2021. So far, it has not been hailed as a mandate for the Democratic Party to turn toward socialism; the initial coverage mostly marveled at what an incredibly unexpected victory it was. "It was a stunning upset in a race that, until election day, seemed to be an easy victory for Cuomo," a New Yorker newsletter informed me today.
That reading of the results seemed importantly and meaningfully wrong. It was true that when Cuomo jumped into the race—from his apparent home in Purchase, New York, where his Dodge Charger was registered earlier this year—he became the immediate frontrunner in the polls. As a former governor and the former tyrant of the state Democratic Party, he had a familiar name in a crowded field, he had lavish financial backing from the city's plutocracy, and he had politicians statewide cowering in terror of ending up on the wrong side of his comeback. But he never converted those advantages into general public enthusiasm. His polling numbers kept grinding along at the same level, which his campaign tried to present as a sign of inevitable victory.
Mamdani's line on the charts, meanwhile, kept zooming upward. He hit the donor threshold for matching funds so quickly and decisively that he put out a video urging his donors to give to the mayoral campaign of City Council speaker Adrienne Adams instead, to make sure that she qualified for matching funds as well, to strengthen the field against Cuomo. He rounded up an army of volunteers. His people showed up at our apartment twice, and called multiple times, including asking us if we had a specific plan for doing our voting.
I wasn't even one of the 432,305 people who gave him a first-place vote. I filled in the earnest and charming State Assembly member Zellnor Myrie at No. 3, Adrienne Adams at No.4, and the former legislator Michael Blake at No. 5, in honor of Blake's work attacking Cuomo in the first mayoral debate. Then, after staring at the blank spaces for a while, I ranked Lander No. 1 and Mamdani No. 2. Lander had just gotten himself handcuffed trying to stop Immigrations and Customs Enforcement from grabbing someone outside an immigration courtroom, and that seemed worth voting for. I thought there was a chance, maybe, if things got weird, that Lander might even block Cuomo. And I had no real doubts that Mamdani was going to do fine.
People wanted to vote for Mamdani. It was palpable. Even as the giants of business and finance heaped money on Cuomo, trying to claim the power to veto the entire notion of a socialist mayor, it seemed hollow. Cuomo himself didn't appear to want the job, certainly not enough to try to win people over and give them something positive to get out and vote for. Mamdani was notionally proposing free bus service and municipal grocery stores, but the people who howled about the damage free buses would do to the MTA budget or the dangers of communist produce missed the point. What Mamdani was running on was the idea of a mayor who would be willing to try making the buses free or setting up new grocery stores, to see if those policies made life in the city cheaper and easier. He was offering to make things different.
There was a moment very early after the polls closed that I had a qualm about my Lander vote. Mamdani was doing well, extremely well, and it occurred to me that it wasn't impossible for him to win an outright majority in the first round, and that my vote could have counted toward that. Then it became clear that it didn't matter, and that he was racking up such a big plurality that Cuomo couldn't even hang in and hope to catch up in the ranked voting.
It was impressive, but it didn't feel like a surprise. What it most felt like, I decided as I waited for Mamdani's victory speech, was the early part of Mike Tyson's career, when my friends and I would get together at someone's house and watch the young, raw Tyson take on somebody with a more illustrious career, a more impressive number of wins, maybe even one of the scattered championship belts—and utterly destroy them, leaving the more credentialed fighter sprawled helpless on the canvas. We weren't watching a confusing upset; we were witnessing something that looked real because it was real.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, June 24, 2025
★★★★ The leaves of the fig were still spread to feast on the sun but the soil in the pot was dry as ash. Standing out on the balcony long enough to deliver two watering cans' worth of relief made the skull feel like it was being squeezed in a vise. It was too hot to cook and too hot to make someone else deliver food. On the short walk to get takeout, the air dragged at the limbs, under a hazy and dimensionless blue sky. Still, people were out, some pinned to the shade or moving quickly, others just going about the day like usual. The man who sits outside the community garden was at his post, a clouded water bottle sweating in his hand. Even when the sun had moved along and the later-day light poured along the cross street, the air felt like a hair dryer, and the direct sun made it feel like a fireplace. A man lay back on his parked moped, face to the sky, helmet still on. A matched pair of squat, heavy-jawed dogs trailed a man down the block on their leashes, wide tongues lolling, panting so heavily it turned into grunting.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast!
Tom Scocca
HERE IS THE Indignity Morning Podcast archive!
TOM SCOCCA
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Encyclopedia of Cookery; 1001 Recipes, Menus & Rules for Modern, Scientific and Economic Cookery (Vol. 4), by Eugene Christian and Molly Griswold Christian, published by the Corrective Eating Society in 1920, and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
CREAM CHEESE AND NUT SANDWICHES
Place a cream cheese in a small bowl, add to it:
1 small onion grated
Salt and paprika
1 teaspoon chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped walnuts
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Spread between bread, cut in half and serve.
Graham or Boston bread may be used for the above sandwiches.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net .
SELF-SERVING SELF-PROMOTION DEP'T.
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