As his elder brother was preparing to concede a stunning election loss Tuesday night in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, Chris Cuomo raved that “extremism has taken root among our own people, many of whom are Brown with beards.” The NewsNation host warned, “Democrats – It is time to wake up and see the enemy.” Moments later, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo conceded to his young rival, democratic socialist upstart Zohran Mamdani.
Across the political media, the 33-year-old’s surprise win in the first round of ranked-choice voting has elicited a torrent of bizarre reactions. Critics of Mamdani, an assemblyman from Queens, have labeled the Ugandan-born Muslim “antisemitic” due to his support for the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement in response to Israel’s dealings in Gaza and the West Bank. The shock election of a socialist in a city that notably trended red in the last election comes one year after House members Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri, both progressive supporters of the Palestine solidarity movement, were ousted in Democratic primaries with the help of an avalanche of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) money.
“This is the Chai party taking over the Democrats,” Republican CNN commentator Brad Todd said of Mamdani in an apparent reference to the GOP’s capture by the right-wing Tea Party.
The democratic socialist, whose parents were born in India, has also engendered outrage from the usual defenders of capital. Running on a campaign platform that called for higher taxes on corporations and the ultra-wealthy, raising the city’s minimum wage and “Trump-proofing NYC,” Mamdani essentially shot up out of nowhere to capture the passion and allegiance of the city’s youngest voters.
Only one poll predicted he would best Cuomo in the first round, and it showed Mamdani only slightly ahead.
Mamdani’s meteoric rise to becoming the presumed Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, an office that is both local and national, has made him many enemies in the media.
Mamdani’s meteoric rise to becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, an office that is both local and national, has made him many enemies in the media. “They’re taking Wall Streeters and making them walk out onto the ice in the East River, and, and then they fall through,” said CNBC’s Joe Kernan on Wednesday’s “Squawkbox,” decrying Mamdani’s victory as “a class warfare that’s going on.”
Ahead of the election, the New York Times’ coverage of Mamdani’s campaign included inaccurate assertions that he “continues to embrace left-leaning views that have become less popular with voters in New York.” Preliminary election results show broad support for Mamdani across income levels and the city’s five boroughs. The weekend before Election Day, with early voting in full swing, the Times’ liberal, but not too left-leaning, editorial board dispensed with its pledge, after over 160 years of mayoral endorsements, to stay out of local politics — made after the last candidate they endorsed, Eric Adams, found himself at the center of a corruption scandal. Instead, the board issued what it dubbed an “anti-endorsement” of Mamdani: “We do not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots.”
The newspaper also promoted a joint endorsement from 15 selected New Yorkers — including, curiously, a former executive editor of the right-wing National Review. It’s baffling why the Times felt it appropriate to get input on a Democratic primary from Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute, which the paper describes as “a conservative public policy institution.” Then on Election Day, the Times ran headlines like “Why N.Y.C. Business Leaders Fear Mamdani.”
The reaction on the right to Mamdani’s win is even more unhinged.
“Soon America’s biggest city could have a mayor who is not only a self-proclaimed socialist, I mean radical socialist, but an anti-Israel radical who truly believes in globalizing the intifada,” panicked Fox News’ Sean Hannity while reporting Tuesday’s election results. Conservative commentator John Podhertz claimed that “Mamdani won because of October 7.”
Right-wing YouTube star Benny Johnson circulated an image of the collapsing Twin Towers, accusing Mamdani of being a “Muslim jihadist,” a claim baselessly repeated on Fox News Wednesday by anchor Emily Compagno. Far-right influencer Laura Loomer predicted “another 9/11 in NYC” and that Mamdani “will be to blame,” a sentiment echoed by MAGA superstar Charlie Kirk, who posted on X, “24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11 / Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City”.
A concerted campaign has cropped up seemingly overnight to turn Mamdani’s victory into an opportunity to attack cosmopolitanism. “Less than 25 years after 9/11, New York has been conquered,” lamented The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, noting that “40 percent of New York City’s population is foreign born.”
This anti-immigrant rhetoric is on the rise as Donald Trump’s directive for mass deportations is violently implemented in Democratic-run cities across the country.
Fox News also comically warned of Mamdani’s “socialist promises” like “baby baskets to newborns.” Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer may have had the most extreme reaction, tweeting, “Evacuate New York City now!”
Fleischer’s former colleague in the George W. Bush administration, The Atlantic’s David Frum, similarly griped on Twitter. “Well, at least we can retire that faded and false line, ‘antisemitism has no place in New York City.’”
In comparison, Cuomo’s past allegations of serial sexual harassment and deadly negligence hardly came under media scrutiny during the campaign. Politico, to be fair, ran a helpful feature of Cuomo critics who had previously called for his resignation from the governorship but nonetheless went on to endorse his run for mayor. While I always appreciate a fruitful exercise in accountability, it’s a huge problem that local media like the New York Daily News shamefully gave those matters short shrift to endorse Cuomo.
Such media coverage comes at a great opportunity cost. In favor of fearmongering over Mamdani’s proposals, like a city-run grocery store in each of the city’s boroughs, the Cuomo endorsements almost universally ignored that grocery prices in New York City are around 20 percent higher than pre-pandemic levels, and 25 percent of New Yorkers now live in poverty. Also left underreported was Cuomo’s extensive shared donor base with Donald Trump. Republican donors helped Cuomo’s failed campaign smash spending records. Although the Times, for its part, did not technically endorse Cuomo and once more raised its concern from 2021 that “his treatment of women was part of a larger pattern of bullying, self-serving behavior,” the newspaper promoted him as the candidate with the strongest policy record.
Now that President Trump has weighed in on Mamdani’s win, calling it “a big moment in the History of our Country” and him “‘a 100% Communist Lunatic,” expect a full-court press from Fox News and right-wing media. There will undoubtedly be a billionaire-funded fearmongering onslaught that ramps up the anti-Mamdani discourse — not only to discredit the Democratic Party, but to dehumanize those targeted for government harassment, from over-policing to deportation.
