Zohran Mamdani’s eve-of-poll speech in Astoria, Queens

AT the Democratic Socialists of America party in a bar in Tribeca, supporters punch the air and chant “Zohran, Zohran, Zohran” as the result is announced: one of their own is Mayor of New York City.

For them, having a politician who has unapologetically put forward a socialist agenda claim victory once seemed nigh-on impossible when every day they see the autocratic hand of the Trump administration extend ever further.

Indeed, Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral election on Tuesday night has been described by some as the most significant win for progressive politics in America ever.

But the win – of which pollsters were 90 per cent sure on the eve of the election – was all but certain. Eighteen months ago, no one really knew the 34-year-old’s name.

Five days before voters headed to the ballot box, however, his face was plastered in the windows of bodegas, on orange and blue pins, even on restaurant table numbers. Kids lean out of cars to shout “Go Zohran” at his canvassers and strangers stop to say thank-you to the doorknockers.

Mamdani’s campaign message has been simple: let’s make New York affordable again. Switch the city with any other, and the promise would be appealing. Free buses, universal childcare, rent freezes – those pledges would strike a chord with Londoners grappling with the same problems of having to get by with less money in their pockets.

How will he pay for these policies? Well, he says he is going to do the thing that seems so simple and yet is frequently characterised as an impossibility: he’s going to tax the rich.

His main opponent, meanwhile, disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo who has faced 11 accusations of sexual harassment, had the rich on his side.

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg donated heavily to his campaign, and Elon Musk endorsed him on the eve of the election.

The fight, as Mamdani portrays it, is black and white. Are you for the billionaires or are you with us?

It’s not a new message. Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn has made the argument about the absurdity of having billionaires and food banks, but the way Mamdani has evangelised it is fresh, and it’s exciting for the millions of New Yorkers who have felt left behind.

Canvassers Katie Harris and Kathryn Brooks were among a team who knocked on three million doors

With only two days left before the election, Mamdani’s team urged supporters to canvass as much as possible, trying to set a record for the most doors knocked in one day – 200,000.

“You’re not just breaking a record, you’re part of a movement”, the field organiser tells the crowd gathered in a small park in Brooklyn, clad in Zohran4Mayor caps. “If the person at the door has already voted, you say ‘would you like to volunteer and help us make history?’ ”

The operation is slick. Celebrities and activists spring up at sessions across the five boroughs, and canvassing is done in several shifts across the day. In total, one hundred thousand volunteers have knocked on three million doors. “This is different because it’s grassroots, there’s a lot of excitement,” Dave Taylor, a committed canvasser for the Mamdani campaign, tells the Tribune. “Even in the primaries there were 50,000 volunteers. There’s no Super PAC, no corporate money.

“They made this campaign extremely accessible. There’s no barrier to entrance, anybody can just show up, sign up.”

As democracy is continually eroded in the US by monied interests and huge donations, Americans often feel that they are repeatedly asked to simply confirm a pre-determined outcome when they mark an X on the ballot sheets. This felt different for them, because this time they felt invited in.

On Monday evening, Mamdani addressed supporters in Astoria, Queens, where he first became a politician.

“I want you all to raise your hands for me one last time,” he asked. “If every person who is here to canvass can put their hands in the air, because these are the hands that will decide this election. These are the hands that will cast votes, these are the hands that will knock on doors, these are the hands that will call your neighbours, and these are the hands that have brought us to this point, of making history in this city.”

This is not a small affair. Film crews clamber on the children’s playground trying to get a good shot and the press scrum, which includes reporters from Italy, France, and the UK, chases him through three crossings before he is finally bundled away into a black car.

Why all the interest? Well, not only does Mamdani stand for all the things Americans are now supposed to eschew – but he has felt bold and daring particularly to younger voters.

The bags under Mamdani’s eyes tell the story of weeks and months of running around the city making sure he gets seen. From bar crawls to sunrise walks over the Brooklyn bridge to organising a five-a-side football tournament on Coney Island.

The Mamdani effect has become not only a political movement, but a cultural one too.

You can’t buy the much-sought-after merch, you have to go to an event or a canvassing session to get it. People get stopped in the street and asked where their Zohran T-shirt is from and how a fellow New Yorker can get one.

Dave Taylor and his friend Carly

Non-affiliated groups have sprung up from sub-communities which are organising within: Hot­Girls4Zohran, Runners­forZohran, NYCbio­diversityforZohran.

Cait Camelia, co-founder of HotGirls4Zohran, whose T-shirts have been worn by the likes of model and actress Emily Ratajkowski, said that groups like hers had been integral to creating the grassroots network needed for the boots-on-the-ground campaigning.

She said: “So much of this campaign is community building. They’re going to these events, they’re meeting people with similar interests, they’re making friends, and those friends that they met at a Zohran event are holding them accountable to come back, and to come canvass.”

Mamdani’s success in garnering such support and devotion is making those who want to preserve their power mad. Trump has threatened to withdraw federal funding now Mamdani is mayor, and send in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

And billionaires who don’t want to pay the extra 2 per cent on earnings over $1million are also mad, hence why so many have donated to his opponents or launched discriminatory and racist ad campaigns that try to scare voters by pointing out that Mamdani is a Muslim.

Naomi Klein, the Canadian writer and activist, says at the start of a canvassing session in Prospect Park, Brooklyn: “Here’s what I want us to understand. Those billionaires are not scared of Zohran, they are scared of us. They are scared of what happens when people find their collective power.”

The UK is having its own reckoning for what is next for the Left. It seems the tables have turned since a decade ago, when DSA members were desperately jealous of the British political scene. Left-wing politicians on our side of the pond know that Mamdani brings fresh hope and they are keen to benefit from the peripheral glow of his rising star.

The Tribune’s Isabel Loubser in New York City

Watch parties were being hosted in London in the early hours of Tuesday.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski retweets posts where he is compared to Mamdani, and argues that the Greens can create the same type of hope.

Corbyn was phone-banking for the new mayor of New York just days before the election (a move which some critics were keen to paint as foreign electoral interference).

The chaotic beginnings of Your Party can give the sense that the old guard is still desperately trying to hold on to the reins. Corbyn has galvanised a generation past, but there is a question over whether he is the right person to galvanise the next.

Of course, Mamdani has the backing of those figures of the American left who carry clout – he has stood hand in hand with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – but they are letting him be centre stage.

Gone are the days when plastic chairs in community centres will suffice. People in their 20s and 30s want a movement that connects them to each other as much as it stands for their values.

They still want the rousing speeches and the rhetoric, but it also needs to be fun, and it needs to be cool.

The merch and the parties and the football tournaments may seem superficial, but it creates the shared identity that means the victory speech is not the finish line.

Those in the Mamdani movement have shown the world a new way of campaigning and a new way of doing politics – but who here will sit up and take note?