By all the usual measures in American politics, it should never have been close. 

Andrew Cuomo was the Democratic governor of New York for a decade, the son of a man who was elected governor three times. He has been a mainstay of national Democratic politics for three decades, since being a part of the Clinton administration in the 1990s. He is a powerful man with a history of sexual harassment in a country that has refused to punish men for this behaviour, instead granting them even higher offices, including the Presidency.

And then there was the money. Cuomo had a gargantuan financial advantage thanks to being bankrolled by a wide and cross-partisan array of billionaires and big money, from MAGA hedge funder Bill Ackman, to billion dollar app Door Dash, to three-term New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Despite all that, Zohran Mamdani, a New York State Assemblyman with a name many New York voters hadn’t heard even a year ago, didn’t just beat Cuomo. He dog-walked him by a seven per cent margin in the first round of a ranked-choice election.

Consider some of the neighbourhood results: Mamdani won the majority-Hispanic neighbourhood of Washington Heights by 17 per cent and the majority-white East Village (a long-time German, Eastern European, and Jewish enclave of the city) by 39 per cent.

He eeked out a 1.3 per cent win in the working class Staten Island neighbourhood of Port Richmond, which Trump won in three consecutive elections. And he squeezed by in ritzy Greenwich Village by 1.2 per cent.

Mamdani — a candidate who ran on raising the corporate tax rate from 7.25 per cent to 11.5 per cent and a 2 per cent surcharge on those making more than $1 million a year — even won the financial district by a resounding 18 per cent.

The nature of this victory and the shock it delivered to the American political establishment should leave Canadian progressives with quite a few questions to ask, if not outright lessons to learn. 

Here are three very clear, very basic takeaways I have the day after.

Be authentically outside

Zohran Mamdani went everywhere. Just last week, he logged a marathon 20 kilometres canvassing day where he walked the entire length of Manhattan talking to New Yorkers. His 42,000 volunteers knocked on a staggering 1.5 million doors. As a point of comparison, Kamala Harris campaign’s 90,000 volunteers knocked on 3 million doors across seven battleground states in the final days of the most recent presidential election.

Mamdani chose to reach out to people in neighbourhoods that many Democrats wouldn’t have bothered in. While his opponents blanketed the airways with expensive ads, he put his campaign’s energy into talking directly to voters where they lived and worked.

Then he turned that real-world work into joyful, relatable, viral internet content that showed people he was out there on their block. It is no coincidence that the lion’s share of his videos were filmed with real people outside, rather than in the New York State Legislature where he is an Assemblyman.

In the final days, the enthusiasm was palpable. Aunties squeezed him and whispered affirmations to him at the mahjong table. Uncles dapped him up on the street corner. Millennials jumped up from their brunch to grab selfies.

People often ask me how you make a viral video in politics. Sometimes it’s dumb luck — being at the right place and time, having poise when something goes wrong. But more often than not it starts with what Mamdani did every day: go outside, talk to people, show them you care, and then go back again.

Talk about affordability, make it real

Mamdani ran on an unabashedly progressive platform focused on making life more affordable. 

He called for universal childcare, making all city buses free, a rent-freeze on rent-controlled apartments, building publicly-owned affordable housing, and overall more robust public services funded by making the wealthiest among us pay their fair share. Most of his proposals would be right at home in progressive platforms at all levels of government across Canada.

What struck me as unique was how he spoke about these issues with voters. In one social video, Mamdani breaks down why halal chicken over rice, a New York street food staple, has gotten so expensive. In it Mamdani talks to street vendors, identifies a clear contributing problem (the backed up permit process), and then arrives at a clear solution to help the vendors bring the price back down — all between bites of chicken.

Highlighting real, tangible problems rather than talking about big, nebulous things like affordability. Showing people simple ways a policy change can impact their lives. Having that conversation with real people in a real setting, rather than just at a press conference. This is a clear model for how progressives successfully break through on issues like affordability.

Forge real unity

To win, Mamdani didn’t use a wedge issue to divide Cuomo supporters. He didn’t engage in antagonistic politics that wrote off some segments of the population or take shots at voters who disagreed with him. But he also didn’t engage in a false, wishy-washy unity that seeks to hide or paper over substantive differences and disagreements.

A Muslim democratic socialist, Mamdani forged an alliance with progressive Jewish Comptroller Brad Lander that included co-endorsements of one another. Neither of them left their values at the door. Mamdani did not compromise on his support for Palestinians and a Palestinian state, nor did he roll back his characterization of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal, or his criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. Lander remains a liberal Zionist.

Instead, they both found and built common ground on a desire to fight an ascendant wave of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and far-right xenophobia in American communities and governments. They built a coalition rooted in what they both term “the politics of the future” — a shared mission to ditch the myriad failures and betrayals of voter’s trust that politicians like Cuomo represent, and instead build a more fair, just, and affordable New York for all.

Mamdani bet on the fact that voters would be mature, savvy, and hopeful enough to join them. So far, in this primary, he was right. Canadian progressives — from political leaders to nonprofits, think tanks, labour leaders, and beyond — might do well to take notice.

Jared A. Walker is the Executive Director of Canadians for Tax Fairness, a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy group fighting for fair, progressive taxation. He is also the Vice Chair of the Broadbent Institute Board of Directors.