A political drama for the ages, opening soon in New York City

Asquadron of door-knocking volunteers eager to spread the word for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign assembled at a playground on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on a sunny Saturday afternoon in mid-October. Helen Rosenthal, a former city councilwoman, offered notes on how to canvass. Don’t argue with doormen. If you encounter a hostile voter—and in this partially Jewish neighbourhood, it would not be surprising, given Mr Mamdani’s outspoken support for Palestinians—don’t escalate. “It’s not your job to change their mind,” Ms Rosenthal advised. “It’s your job to leave them thinking that Zohran’s people are classy.”

Meeting sceptics with smiles is a luxury Mr Mamdani appears able to afford. Polls and betting markets suggest he will very likely be elected mayor of New York City on November 4th. His nearest challenger, Andrew Cuomo, a former governor running as an independent, would have to defy a persistent double-digit polling deficit. If it is Mr Mamdani, voters will deliver one of the most stunning results in the city’s history. A 34-year-old Democratic Socialist with an eye-catching (and eye-wateringly expensive) progressive agenda, but no executive experience, would take charge of America’s largest city, with a workforce of about 300,000 and a budget of $116bn.

Asquadron of door-knocking volunteers eager to spread the word for Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign assembled at a playground on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on a sunny Saturday afternoon in mid-October. Helen Rosenthal, a former city councilwoman, offered notes on how to canvass. Don’t argue with doormen. If you encounter a hostile voter—and in this partially Jewish neighbourhood, it would not be surprising, given Mr Mamdani’s outspoken support for Palestinians—don’t escalate. “It’s not your job to change their mind,” Ms Rosenthal advised. “It’s your job to leave them thinking that Zohran’s people are classy.”

Meeting sceptics with smiles is a luxury Mr Mamdani appears able to afford. Polls and betting markets suggest he will very likely be elected mayor of New York City on November 4th. His nearest challenger, Andrew Cuomo, a former governor running as an independent, would have to defy a persistent double-digit polling deficit. If it is Mr Mamdani, voters will deliver one of the most stunning results in the city’s history. A 34-year-old Democratic Socialist with an eye-catching (and eye-wateringly expensive) progressive agenda, but no executive experience, would take charge of America’s largest city, with a workforce of about 300,000 and a budget of $116bn.

How did New York get here? To call Mr Mamdani “charismatic” understates the appeal he exerts on his supporters, many of them young and ethnically diverse. Mr Mamdani’s gifts as a made-for-TikTok video auteur are well-known, but his campaign’s message discipline has been as impressive. He has made his affordability platform—rent freezes, housing investment, free child care, free buses—the main story of the election, while avoiding culture-war traps and shouting matches with Donald Trump, who calls him a communist. “What his campaign did so well was to celebrate the city,” says Eli Northrup, an ally who is running for the state legislature next year. “It’s joyful. It’s positive.”

Several other factors have lifted Mr Mamdani. The most obvious is his weak opposition. The incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, a Democratic centrist, sought re-election despite being indicted for corruption. What little credibility Mr Adams retained after the criminal charges evaporated in April when Mr Trump agreed to drop his case in exchange for help on illegal immigration. Yet Mr Adams hung on in the race until September, complicating the path for Mr Cuomo, 67, another centrist, who is himself tainted by his resignation as governor in 2021 amid allegations of sexual harassment, which he denies.

Mr Mamdani has also benefited from the city’s grumpy mood. Barely a third of New Yorkers rate their quality of life as good or excellent, down from just over half eight years ago, according to a survey by the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), a think-tank. Only 27% think well of government services, down from 44%. This helps explain why some of the city’s financial bosses are moving jobs elsewhere or decamping altogether.

Mr Mamdani already appears to be in governing mode, using the home stretch of his campaign to court a nervous Democratic Party and business establishment that is still trying to decide what to make of him. On October 14th he turned up at a tattered gymnasium in Astoria, the neighbourhood in Queens that he represents in the state assembly. Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, and a bevy of local politicians joined him. After noting that she had promoted affordability and child-friendly policies before Mr Mamdani made them cool, Ms Hochul announced a $5m state investment in Astoria’s largest Boys and Girls Club, along with 200 units of below-market housing.

The political favour-trading on the dais went undisguised. Mr Mamdani would almost certainly need help from the state to pay for his free child-care scheme, estimated to cost up to $6bn annually. Ms Hochul, who faces re-election next year, might invest state funds or consider a tax rise if she can get some credit with Mr Mamdani’s ardent following. She said she had talked with Mr Mamdani “about how we can get to universal child care”, adding, “I believe we can.” When Mr Mamdani stepped forward, he cited a machine politician’s adage: “Queens get the money.”

Bidding for favours in Albany might be off-brand for Mr Mamdani, but it will be essential if he becomes mayor. Free buses and the city-run grocery stores he has also touted would not be too costly, but transformational investments in child care and affordable housing are beyond the city’s means on its own. The next mayor will immediately encounter an operating budget deficit of $6bn to $8bn, reckons the CBC.

The medium-term fiscal picture is also strained. Cuts to Medicaid and other programmes contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress last summer will cost New York state about $10bn annually, reckons the Fiscal Policy Institute, a progressive think-tank. Those losses will narrow Ms Hochul’s choices and will eventually hit New York City’s public hospital system. On top of all that is the possibility that Mr Trump will go to war with New York City if Mr Mamdani is mayor, as the president has done in Chicago and Los Angeles, among other cities.

If Mr Trump goes hostile, he will have leverage. The city’s current budget relies on $7.4bn in federal funds, or 6.4% of the total. That aid is heavily concentrated in areas such as housing and education. Mr Mamdani could find himself pinched both financially and politically. “Protecting the city’s funding from the vicissitudes of Trump is something [Mr Mamdani] has to do,” says Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a think-tank. “But to spend a lot of time excoriating Trump, I think people will lose patience with that pretty quickly.”

To fulfil even some of his promises, Mr Mamdani would need a savvy team at City Hall. New York’s mayor wields considerable power through appointments but cannot adjust income taxes, a state prerogative, and must cut through a thicket of vested interests, from trade unions to property tycoons to NIMBY activists. Mr Mamdani’s advantage is the same as his deficiency: he has no history with the city’s power-brokers.

His recent comments on the stump sound pragmatic. He name-checks Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire former mayor, and has said that he would appoint “the best and the brightest…more akin to a ‘Team of Rivals’ approach”. He says he recognises that he can’t achieve his affordable housing goals without heavy private investment. He would like to retain Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner and no favourite of progressives.

None of these moderating instincts is likely to keep Mr Trump’s boot off his neck, however. At a minimum, if Mr Mamdani is elected, the White House will probably make a midterms-focused spectacle of the mayor’s unabashed socialism, to undermine suburban New York Democrats running for closely contested seats in the House of Representatives next year, races that may help decide whether Democrats regain control of the lower house of Congress.

Yet if Mr Trump freezes more federal funds (he has already “terminated” a $16bn tunnel project linking New York and New Jersey) or if he sends soldiers and border-control agents to his former hometown, he would be taking on his own political risks. Badly disrupting the country’s largest city could have knock-on effects in the national economy. New York’s police (33,000 officers strong) and Democratic prosecutors will not take kindly to interlopers tear-gassing city neighbourhoods. And Mr Mamdani has proved that he is no slouch at the attention-grabbing arts of modern strategic communication. “Donald Trump is not prepared or experienced in dealing with someone like Zohran Mamdani,” says Mitchell Moss, an urban policy scholar at New York University.

That may be so, but it is unlikely to stop the president. If New Yorkers choose Mr Mamdani on November 4th, they will not only vote in a bold but inexperienced reformer, with uncertain consequences for the city’s trajectory; they may also raise the curtain on a political drama for the ages.