What Zohran Can Teach the Centrists

Moderate Democrats were left panicky over last night’s New York City mayoral primary. But some saw clear lessons for modern campaigning.

Jun 25, 2025

(Composite by Hannah Yoest / Photos: GettyImages / Shutterstock)

Big questions from the Big Apple

THE POLITICAL RIPPLE EFFECTS OF Zohran Mamdani’s shock win in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary Tuesday night will be felt in many directions over the course of many months. But for moderate-minded Democrats, they hit immediately, causing abject concern that their brand of politics does not translate to modern campaigns.

Moderate Democrats at organizations such as Third Way and Welcome PAC moved swiftly to downplay the significance of a 33-year-old self-described democratic socialist and Bowdoin College graduate suddenly becoming the favorite to run the biggest city in the country.

Other moderate Democrats, advisers, and groups argued that the party should not embrace Mamdani’s policy positions, while some privately suggested that elected Dems would be wise to publicly create distance from him. They stressed that democratic socialists have not flipped any seats in the Trump era, and that the path to winning back the Senate and the House will require elevating candidates with more centrist sensibilities, like Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, the party’s gubernatorial nominees in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively.

And yet that quick rush of spin did little to calm a larger worry that the politics of moderation—inherently more cautious in policy and approach—doesn’t translate to primaries, where voters see bombast and nonconformity as a form of authenticity.

“I think the lesson here is people are looking for more outspoken Democrats, willing to take on the president but address some of these issues as well,” former Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) told The Bulwark.

Fewer people have a better understanding of the circumstances that led to Mamdani’s win over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo last night than Crowley. Seven years ago, he was defeated in his primary campaign by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a race that was similarly heralded as a changing of the political guard. “For Andrew, much like me when I was running, it is hard to motivate folks unless you have a cause,” Crowley reflected.

Among those centrist and establishment Democrats who were left concerned by Mamdani’s win, there was near-universal admission that he ran a tactically impressive campaign. His relentless focus on the cost of living and affordability resonated with voters. His energy and conviction came across online and in person. He took risks, put himself in front of voters, and made sure those moments were captured for social media.

As the Democratic party struggles to figure out its identity in the second Trump administration, even the centrists seem to agree that Mamdani’s victory is a sign that the old playbook for campaigning no longer works.

“It wasn’t what he was selling that the Democrats should emulate—it’s how he was doing it,” said Matt Bennett, a vice president at the center-left group Third Way. “We’ve got to be careful to nominate people that are bold. But bold is not a synonym for liberal. Bold means willing to engage.”

For this cohort, however, there are a number of reasons Democrats should be wary of drawing lessons from the mayoral primary—and not just because they believe the liberal politics of New York City Democratic circles won’t translate nationally. For starters, Cuomo was a deeply flawed candidate who adopted a hypercautious approach—racking up endorsements from union leaders and party officials, flooding the television airwaves with campaign ads, and sticking to traditional media interviews. (Full disclosure: The Bulwark, which interviewed Mamdani twice, reached out to Cuomo on four separate occasions for an interview and never received a reply.) Beyond that, the primary wins by Spanberger and Sherill indicated that more moderate candidates could prevail in these contests. (Spanberger ran unopposed in her primary.)

But others argued that the moderate members of the party would be unwise to discount Mamdani’s win, which could provide valuable lessons for their wing of the party.

“There’s a personality hurdle” for moderate candidates, said Adam Frisch, a former Colorado congressional candidate and director of electoral programs at Welcome PAC. “You have to let people know the times are really challenging and you are emotionally engaged. Centrists have the burden to show that because we don’t naturally grab the pitch forks.”

Ken Baer, a Democratic consultant and the founder of Crosscut Strategies, put it differently, referring to a late-’90s film in which the Democratic senator from California gives up platitudes and starts offending everyone—and suddenly turns popular: “We are all living in the Bulworth era of politics.”

Baer noted that Trump was the avatar of the era, in which “heterodox people” are the ones “who are breaking through.” He also noted myriad examples of candidates being too cautious and pain-intolerant for their own good.

Former Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb said that during his Senate primary race against John Fetterman, he held countless town hall events, took dozens of questions, and often lingered for hours in auditoriums and coffee shops talking to voters about issues that mattered most to them. In the moment, it felt like he was doing everything right. But Lamb said he learned the hard way that a lot of that didn’t matter “if it wasn’t being narrated and shown in a compelling way over social media.”

“It’s not so much risk aversion with respect to policy, but maybe it’s more risk aversion with respect to image. Because frankly, I know for me, making videos, your natural reaction as a more calculated politician is ‘What if I look stupid?’” said Lamb.

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“I have seen a lot of the younger, more progressive politicians, they just don’t—they’re just not afraid of anything like that. They just put themselves out there [and] don’t worry how it looks. You get the feeling like they’re being honest, and people are responding to that.”

Certainly, Mamdani’s approach revolved around putting himself “out there.” He did interviews with seemingly every outlet, showed up everywhere, and posted straight-to-camera videos all the time. The Friday before the election, he walked the length of Manhattan, interacting with New Yorkers along the way. His subsequent video on that experience was a powerful campaign elixir—one New Yorker told us that they had never even heard of Mamdani before seeing it and subsequently decided to cast a ballot for him.

But the relationship was also built in the opposite direction: providing Mamdani insights into voters he never could have gleaned by just sitting in front of TV cameras. Ten days after the 2024 election, Mamdani made a little-noticed (at the time) trek into working-class neighborhoods in Queens and the Bronx to ask voters there what had motivated them either to back Donald Trump or vote at all. The video that came out of that placed Mamdani in a unique role for a politician: conducting his own focus groups. It also may have given him a roadmap for the mayoral run ahead. Toward the end of the video, the voters Mamdani was interviewing made clear that there was a singular issue that they wanted to see politicians focus on: costs of living. Mamdani clearly took heed.

While some centrists may be a bit frightened by it all, Cuomo’s campaign—or, at least, part of it—was impressed. Neal Kwatra, an adviser to Cuomo, said that Mamdani “exuded authentic empathy, toughness and true solidarity in ways most people just talk about.”

“His victory will herald a new era of generational challenges to sclerotic Democratic leadership all over the country.”

–Sam Stein contributed reporting.

🫏 Donkey Business:

— Ahead of the release of her new memoir, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has been doing the media rounds and has on more than one occasion hinted at the idea that she could leave her party. In an interview with Semafor’s Burgess Everett, Murkowski said that she’s thought about caucusing with Democrats mostly because she’s been asked the question. And in another interview with journalist Galen Druke, Murkowski said she would be open to becoming an independent and caucusing with the Democrats if they pick up three Senate seats in the midterms (which would be just one shy of the majority).

“There may be that possibility,” Murkowski said. “There is some openness to exploring something different than the status quo.”

Murkowski is in a uniquely flexible position. She comes from an Alaska political dynasty and has won as a Republican nominee, a write-in candidate, and in a ranked-choice voting system. And as she noted in the interview, Druke’s question was hypothetical. Democrats still don’t seem to have any plan for picking up three Senate seats.