Yesterday, I wrote about a thirty-something New Yorker with little political experience who ran for a seat on the New York State Assembly. Her name was Eunice Hunton Carter, and her 1934 campaign was ultimately unsuccessful.
Today, Zohran Mamdani, already a member of the New York State Assembly from Queens, is New York City’s Mayor Elect. And in addition to his success, Democratic candidates across the country won decisive victories.
In the governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia, both women candidates, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger were more moderate than Mamdani, who unapologetically identifies as a democratic socialist. He has promised to make New York more affordable by freezing the rent on rent-stabilized apartments, by providing universal child care, and by making buses free.
In his book, Invisible, Stephen L. Carter’s biography of his grandmother Eunice, he describes her 1934 election platform as “long on promises and short on the practical means for attaining them.” She pledged to ease qualifications for old-age pensions in the days before Social Security existed. She wanted to lower electric, gas and telephone rates and improve unemployment insurance.
“Familiar goals all,” Stephen Carter wrote, “yet Eunice was able to make people believe she could pull them off.”
I lived in New York for a brief six years, and left the city decades ago, but it continues to have a hold on me, as I believe it had on my father, even after he made Pittsburgh his home.
So, I, like Eunice’s supporters, was electrified by Mamdani’s campaign even from 3,000 miles away. And I am hopeful that as Mayor he has the practical skills and the talented administration necessary to attain at least some of his goals.
The swath of Tuesday’s election outcomes suggests that the Democratic Party is not one-size-fits-all and that it should continue to embrace a wide tent. May the momentum of these victories and the coalitions that made them possible help smooth even the rockiest political roads ahead.
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