Eric Lach writes:

To walk through New York with Mamdani this spring and summer has been to watch a star being born, a process that is as spectacular and gaseous on earth as it is in Heaven. On the morning of the primary, in June, Mamdani crisscrossed the city as fast as his new security detail could drive him. Giddy commuters on a subway platform in Jackson Heights missed their trains just to show him their “I Voted” stickers. Aboveground, he dispatched an aide to a nearby Indian restaurant, to pick him up paan, a betel-leaf wrap, which he chewed daintily, careful not to spill any of the filling on the dark suit and tie that he has adopted as his political uniform. In Inwood, even a pair of volunteers for Cuomo sheepishly stopped him for selfies.

At a moment when the country is consumed with nativist fervor and New York appears a nest of cynical cronyism—eight months ago, Mayor Eric Adams agreed to go along with President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation program, to save himself from corruption charges—Mamdani is running a campaign that embraces the city as a beacon for immigrants like him. His win in the primary was a shock to the political establishment, and the powerful began to slink in his direction. Barack Obama gave him a call the next day. After a chilly summer courtship, Governor Kathy Hochul, a hypercautious moderate, warmly endorsed him. The Reverend Al Sharpton, who has not endorsed Mamdani or any other candidate, recently told me, “He has had the best entry into citywide politics of any candidate I have seen, probably, in my life.”

In certain ideological precincts, Mamdani’s name has become totemic—shorthand for everything wrong with New York, which itself is shorthand for everything wrong with America. Trump has called him a “100% Communist Lunatic” on Truth Social. Jeff Blau, the C.E.O. of the real-estate giant Related Companies, and his wife, the investor Lisa Blau, recently called for an emergency breakfast meeting of the wealthy. “If we fail to mobilize, the financial capital of the world risks being handed over to a socialist this November,” the invitation read. A real-estate lobbyist told me that he does not know anyone who is leaving the city because of Mamdani, though he does know “several who may pied-à-terre.” John Catsimatidis, a supermarket mogul and a Trump confidant, said, “Fidel Castro had the same smile.”

Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries have held off on endorsing Mamdani, reportedly in part because of his criticism of Israel. Meanwhile, much of the rest of the city’s political class is jostling for position around him. Kathryn Wylde, the longtime head of the Partnership for New York City—a lobby group representing the city’s business leaders—brokered meetings this summer between Mamdani and her members; many remained skeptical, but some left with a strange new respect for the kid. “After I did the meetings with, say, three hundred executives, somebody asked me, ‘How would you rate their reactions on a scale of one to ten?’ ” Wylde told me. “I said, ‘One to ten.’ ” Patrick Gaspard, an Obama Administration official and the former president of the Center for American Progress, has been quietly advising Mamdani since last fall. He describes Mamdani as a prototype for a new generation of American politicians, forged in the Palestinian-rights movement. “He’s the first to arrive on the shore, but, just over the horizon, you can see more ships coming in,” Gaspard said. [Continue reading…]