Lessons from Buffalo for Zohran Mamdani
A look at the parallels between India Walton's 2021 run and the current NYC election
A political heavyweight tries to strut through a primary. Democratic Party leaders are split on embracing the upstart – Gov. Kathy Hochul won’t make an endorsement – and deep-pocketed developers and business leaders pour money behind an incumbent running without a major party line.
While it may sound like the setup for New York City’s current mayoral contest, this is actually a description of the 2021 race for mayor of Buffalo. India Walton, a first-time candidate, upset four-term incumbent Byron Brown in the Democratic Primary, garnering national attention as pundits wondered if a major city would elect a socialist mayor. Brown mounted a longshot write-in campaign during the general election – and won.
The same conversation is happening again with the rise of Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani. The 33-year-old socialist shocked the political establishment when he defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic primary last month.
The Buffalo election has many parallels to New York’s current mayoral race, and people involved in that contest say it offers lessons for Mamdani and the candidates who are trying to stop him.
“That was the most bizarre election I've ever covered anywhere, and it was because it was just so unanticipated,” said Bob McCarthy, a political analyst for WKBW who spent 30 years as a political reporter for the Buffalo News. “ It's very similar, but there's so many differences.”
Click here to read my entire Gothamist article about the election. It was partly informed by a reporting trip I took in 2021 to the Queens City, when I filed this report for The Wall Street Journal about how gentrifying neighborhoods propelled Walton’s rise.
You can also listen below to my interview on WNYC about this reporting.
Here are the big lessons:
You’ve got to campaign. Both Cuomo and Brown assumed they were shoe-ins, and were caught off guard.
The backlash is real. Developers and other business people have opened their wallets to stop Democratic socialists.
“Like in Buffalo, we’ve seen a handful of wealthy CEOs and special interests try to upend the primary results,” said Ravi Mangla, the national press secretary for the Working Families Party, who worked with both the Walton and Mamdani campaigns. “But what Zohran has built will be hard to beat, especially by an incumbent in Eric Adams who has aligned himself with Donald Trump.”
You’ve got to expand your base, and Mangla argued that Mamdani has. Walton wasn’t successful here.
“I think that a part of what wound up being the ultimate demise of the campaign is that we were just woefully unprepared. We didn't think about what was going to happen between June and November ahead of time,” she told me. “And when primary day got here, it was like, ‘Holy crap, we actually did it.’”
It’s easier to win head-to-head. That’s not currently the situation in New York City, where Mamdani faces Cuomo, Republican Curtis Sliwa, incumbent Eric Adams and lawyer Jim Walden.
“It's a different dynamic [in New York City] because you've got people on the ballot, on independent lines, and, and the anti-Mamdani vote is going to be split,” McCarthy said. It’s not clear whether Cuomo and Adams will be able to consolidate that block, he said, though they are trying.
Buffalo ain’t New York City! (Nuff said.)
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THE LAST ANSWER: Thanks to everyone who took the time to read and respond. I got lots of great advice, and a few people even said they would try out a few decade goals. Here’s one bit that I think is worth sharing … for any age:
Always distinguish the difference between what may be urgent and what is important in life. There is a huge difference between the two.
We live in an age, and you work in a profession, where there are constant demands on your time, many cloaked in the wrappings of urgency. We race to meet deadlines and each new crisis or situation seems to be so critical and important at the time. Chances are, it's not. Of course, you are a professional, and certain deadlines must be met, but don't let yourself get swept up in a constant sea of urgency, chasing down one thing after another at the expense of your spouse, family, friends and most of all, yourself. In other words, always try to not let what may be simply urgent get in the way of what is truly important in your life. When the two clash, choose to follow the path of what is important; you'll never regret it.