Bonus Episode: NYC Mayor Primary Shocker

Hi, everyone. I'm Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout the 2025 Virginia Elections. This is a special bonus episode looking at some pretty shocking results in the New York City mayor primary.00:12.72Sam ShiraziAnd you might think this is a podcast about Virginia elections. Why am I talking about a primary for a local office in New York City? Well, the reason why is there was a pretty shocking result in the primary. Now, we don't have the final, final result, but Basically, all of the first round votes are in. New York City uses ranked choice voting for the mayor primary.00:34.47Sam ShiraziAnd in the first round, it looks like Zohran Mandani got the most votes. And pretty much everyone expects that he is going to be the Democratic nominee.00:46.84Sam ShiraziThere still needs to be some ranked choice voting reallocation. But he is at about 43% of the vote. The closest challenger, Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York, has basically conceded. He understands that he is almost certainly not going to win when the votes are reallocated during ranked choice vote voting reallocation.01:08.66Sam ShiraziAnd so this is a huge political earthquake. A few weeks ago, I don't think anyone really expected this to happen. you know I would say it's similar to what happened in 2018.01:20.16Sam Shiraziwhen AOC was able to defeat an incumbent Democratic congressman and eventually become congresswoman in in her own right. And it's just like a really big political moment because it's it's the first moment, I think, in this Trump 2.0 era where a young, certainly more progressive candidate has defeated the Democratic establishment, essentially. And, um you know, a little bit about Mamdani, he is considered... He calls himself a01:54.24Sam Shirazidemocratic socialists, very much close to Bernie Sanders, very much close to AOC. And obviously that wing of the party has had its ups and downs, but I think in this Trump 2.0 era feels like it is at a place where it can come back into power.02:10.08Sam ShiraziAnd there were a lot of things going on in this campaign. I don't want to dwell on you know everything, but I mean, part of it was Andrew Cuomo for the establishment candidate was a pretty weak candidate, had a lot of baggage.02:21.05Sam ShiraziSo I don't want to say that this is some um huge result that shows the entire Democratic Party is changing, but I do think it shows a different direction and a desire for change within the Democratic Party.02:33.21Sam ShiraziAnd you know one thing I should note is there will be a general election. So he he is almost certainly going to be the Democratic nominee, but Under New02:44.94Sam ShiraziThere's no sore loser provision. And so in theory, Andrew Cuomo can run. The current incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, is running. There's a Republican candidate. So this isn't necessarily a done deal.02:56.06Sam ShiraziBut it still is a really big election result in New York. And I wanted to just talk a little bit about how it might impact Virginia and compare and contrast a little bit.03:06.75Sam ShiraziSo I think the most direct impact on Virginia is the fact that this is probably going to be used by Republicans at some point to say, oh, look, the Democrats are all socialists. Look, the Democrats are going hard left.03:20.04Sam Shirazithink they will try to paint the Democrats in Virginia and try to tie them to him in New York City. And I think that's a little bit of a challenge given who the Democratic nominee for governor is. But I do think the Republicans are going to do that. That's kind of a familiar playbook for them.03:37.81Sam ShiraziBut I also wanted to kind of compare and contrast both the Democratic nominees in Virginia and in New Jersey compared to New York. So both Virginia and New Jersey, I would say the Democrats nominated pretty centrist, mainstream voters.03:52.20Sam ShiraziDemocrats to be their candidates. However, i do think they're a little bit different than what people typically think of the establishment. So someone like Andrew Cuomo obviously has been in office for a long time, had a lot of baggage, and you know just was not a compelling candidate in this primary, didn't really excite anyone. And even the people who voted for him, I think it was more because they didn't want his opponent to win I will say, you know, both in New Jersey and Virginia, and I'll talk more about Virginia because I'm obviously more familiar with Virginia.04:22.83Sam ShiraziI do think Abigail Spanberger, while she is certainly a different political ideology, much more to the middle, much less ideological, much more pragmatic.04:33.42Sam ShiraziI do think part of her appeal is she does run on this kind of idea of anti-corruption, bringing a new generation of leadership. She's she's pretty young for a politician.04:44.89Sam Shiraziwhile she was in Congress, she was trying to pass a bill to ban members of Congress from trading stocks. And if you saw, you know, for example, in the last week or so, she has done this bus tour when she's going around different parts of Virginia, meeting with voters, and she's posting on social media videos of her doing all that. and And I do think she's kind of reaching voters in a different way than maybe Democrats have in other races.05:09.20Sam ShiraziAnd I do think in New York, part of the secret of success that Zohran had was that he was really, you know, he was out there a lot. He was meeting the voters. He was campaigning with with them.05:21.40Sam ShiraziHe was posting a lot on social media, had slick videos. And ultimately, you know the media likes to focus on the ideological nature of these races. I know he's a democratic socialist and he's left wing and all that stuff. And obviously that's part of his message. But I do think part of it too was just offering a different style of politics, different vision for the Democratic Party, different vision for the city.05:43.69Sam ShiraziNow you may not agree with that vision. and You might think he's coming at things from a wrong perspective. You don't like his politics. You know, that's obviously, you know, not everyone's going to agree with that. But I do think following his campaign, it was interesting to see how he was able to reach voters. And clearly he did persuade most voters, at least Democratic primary voters in New York to vote for him. And i think there's a lot of important lessons that Democrats can get from this election.06:11.56Sam ShiraziOne of them is just you have to meet voters both online and in person, and you really have to kind of flood the zone. And and what I mean by that is he had a lot of content. i mean, it wasn't all super anti-negative Andrew Cuomo stuff, or it wasn't super inflammatory stuff. He just had a lot of content.06:27.64Sam Shirazilot of it was positive. I think that did reach voters, and they responded positively to that. And he also talked a lot ah lot about the cost of living issue. I think he wasn't out there necessarily drumming up all these... you know left-wing ideological issues. He was talking a lot about the practical concerns about cost of living and all those things.06:45.91Sam ShiraziAnd so it's interesting that he was able to pull this off. I do think you know in Virginia, the Republicans will try to paint the Democrats as socialists and left-wing, and this proves that the Democratic Party can't can' be trusted and all these things that you know Republicans typically talk about.07:02.91Sam ShiraziIt will be interesting to see because I do think with the Democratic ticket, they are kind of presenting a different version of Virginia because they're all coming at this from a perspective that's not super...07:18.62Sam ShiraziI guess another way of putting it is none of them have been around politics that long. So they they are in Virginia kind of a fresh face for the Virginia Democratic Party. So Abigail Spanberger, she first ran in 2018. She's been in politics less than 10 years, even though she's been a member of Congress for six years.07:34.79Sam ShiraziShe hasn't been around a whole lot in politics. Ghazal Hashmi, she won her first election in 2018. eighteen And so she's been around politics for less than 10 years.07:45.30Sam ShiraziAnd then Jay Jones, he was first elected to the House of Delegates in 2017. And so, again, he's been around for less than 10 years and he's he's the youngest person on the ticket. So I think all these candidates, they bring a different style of politics. there They're younger.08:01.97Sam Shirazithey There is this theme of change within the Democratic Party. And I think that is being... being ah that That is being shown in Virginia this year. And I think there's a possibility that Democrats, because of that, do well. And if you think about 2021, part of the reason they didn't do well was you had Terry McAuliffe, who was already a governor. He'd been in politics a long time. And it just seemed like maybe his time had passed and it was time for someone else. And then you had someone like Glenn Youngkin come in who was not a politician.08:30.28Sam ShiraziThis was his first run. And he did well in that election campaign. I think by now, after four years being governor, people have kind of shines worn off a little bit for Governor Yunkin, but he still, when he ran in 2021, had a different energy to him.08:44.84Sam ShiraziAnd I think that paid off for him. So all that's to say is I think the Democratic Party is entering this new era in the Trump 2.0 era where people are starting to move on from the old politics. They want something new. They want something different.08:56.55Sam Shiraziand We clearly saw that paying off in the New York City primary. I09:00.51Sam Shiraziit'll be interesting to see, you know, I've talked a lot about the New Jersey election. I haven't talked a lot about the New York City mayor election, but I think it's going to get a lot of attention this year and in the political world and maybe take some of the attention away from Virginia.09:14.14Sam ShiraziAnd I do think there's a scenario where you see these kind of contrasting visions of the Democratic Party winning in november So in Virginia, you'll have Abigail Spanberger winning as more of a kind of centrist, moderate type Democrat.09:28.54Sam ShiraziAnd then in New York City, you could see Zohran Mamdadi winning as more of a leftist, progressive Democrat. And while there's obviously a lot of political differences, a lot of ideological differences between the two of them, the the the substance is very different. and09:43.07Sam ShiraziBut I do think there's a place where you can see the Democratic Party is changing. and I don't think these two wings of the party are have to be at war with each other. I think it's less about left and right or left and middle within the Democratic Party. And I think it's more about establishment versus maybe a fresher style of politics, a different style of politics, offering more change. even if And again, I think most voters are not super ideological. I think it's more about, does the candidate inspire you?10:12.36Sam ShiraziAnd i think in New York City, that was what we saw where this candidate inspired people, even if not everyone agreed with every single issue. And I think in Virginia, there's also with these slate of Democrats, there's a possibility that voters get excited, even if maybe Spanberger for some Democrats is not as progressive as they'd like her to be. I think she still kind of can inspire them given her where she comes from and this type of campaigning that she does. So anyways, lots going on. I will mainly be sticking to Virginia, but I did want to kind of give you my quick thoughts on what happened in New York City.10:46.62Sam ShiraziAnd I'll be back Saturday with a regular podcast, but just wanted to give you this special bonus. So for now, that's Federal Fallout and I'll join you next time. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samshirazi.substack.com