Andrew Cuomo’s attempt at a comeback served as a case study in civic fragility, hypocrisy, party loyalty, and political amnesia. 

Aside from the credible allegations that once had the establishment calling for him to step down, Cuomo ensured the maintenance of structures for political re-entry, channelled pandemic funds for personal gain, and facilitated a GOP-led state senate through backroom deals. Further, he joined the legal team defending  Benjamin Netanyahu against genocide charges, a catastrophic error.

While many  union members and elected officials may be quietly ashamed of their recent self-serving endorsements, Cuomo’s entire calculus was based on a cynical reliance on strategic soft power in the locale. His re-emergence wasn’t based on a political comeback per se; it was more of a revealed assumption that New Yorkers would accept a “ race to the bottom” that trumped (ahem) our civic expectations.

Cuomo thought of himself as a formidable incumbent of sorts and had a campaign powered by  Super PACs,  landlord money, and the strategic use of name recognition. Cuomo also perceived that many voters, worn down and disengaged, would simply vote along party lines. Insurgents like  Zohran Kwame Mamdani, who stood for justice and equity, initially struggled for visibility while Cuomo enjoyed disproportionate support in a race he’d lose even more convincingly, if based on a democracy instead of a  polyarchy. All throughout the primary season, Cuomo enjoyed a high number of African American and women potential voters, despite his record. His campaign in my opinion, however, was not based on a return to leadership, but rather a cynical power grab rooted in his own knowledge of the structural elements of the  Democratic Party machine, still designed to dismiss any past transgressions.

In an era where global conflict, migration patterns, and economic interdependence impacts local politics, the assertion that “ all politics is global” has rarely felt more accurate. Mamdani’s bid for New York City mayor exemplified how international solidarity, racial identity, and transnational justice can energise a municipal campaign in direct confrontation with Cuomo’s establishment-backed approach. Operating simultaneously at the city, state, national and global levels of analysis, Mamdani’s insurgency showed how local governance has become an important place for world politics.

Levels of analysis

Mamdani’s identity as a Ugandan-born, Indian, and Muslim-American enhanced his appeal within New York City’s diverse electorate. As one of the first South Asians in the New York State Assembly, Mamdani, a visible Muslim leader, used his experiences of migration, racialisation, and diasporic belonging to connect with voters. Born in 1991 in  Kampala, and naturalised in the United States in 2018, Mamdani successfully integrated his racial and religious identity openly into his own form of political messaging. He rather famously stated that  politics shouldn’t require translation and emphasised the need for authentic representation of communities historically marginalised by traditional power structures. In this sense, Mamdani was not merely a liberal or idealist candidate, but a realistic representative of global citizenship rooted in local struggle against the forces of Blue MAGA.

Mamdani also demonstrated a strong commitment to frontline economic justice. He notably championed the rights of  New York City’s taxi drivers during their fight to preserve their medallions. Recognising the system’s failure as a symbol of the ever-increasing economic precariat, he organised and supported strikes that highlighted the drivers’ struggles against predatory lending and regulatory neglect, according to the  Institute for Policy Studies. This leadership extended beyond local issues. In 2023, Mamdani led a high-profile  hunger strike demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, acting on a readiness to join local and global politics with urgent human rights concerns. As a New York State Assembly member, Mamdani earned praise for his effective budget management, notably tackling debt responsibly while prioritising community investments. He proved that progressive governance can be both principled and fiscally sound.

At the individual level, Mamdani’s personal story and moral clarity were in rather stark contrast to Cuomo’s gold-plated and shallow establishment Trump-Berlusconi type persona. Mamdani stood out. His background as a  foreclosure counselor allowed him to work intimately with immigrant communities. He often spoke  Hindi and Urdu. His resume reflected his background in crisis resolution with stakeholders rather than political pedigree and stockholders. His principled international solidarity was something rarely seen in local campaigning efforts. Zohran’s  first-name recognition, combined with impressive small-donor fundraising, helped raise upwards of $3.8 million early on, and he surpassed  $8 million in total.  Liza Featherstone wrote about the Mamdani model and how it revealed a grassroots resonance capable of dwarfing Cuomo’s dependence on donor-lobbyist networks. The victorious campaign (an ongoing one to go well beyond June) shows signs of being the most impressive ground game for a progressive in New York since  Julia Salazar in 2018.  Nathan Robinson also noticed Mamdani’s high-quality, relatable messaging, suggesting it was an inspiration amidst organised cynicism.

In effect, Mamdani’s campaign operated as a co-ordinated economic populist movement from the left, built on community resilience. He introduced legislation like Assembly Bill A6943A: the “Not on Our Dime” Act, intended to revoke tax exemptions from nonprofits complicit in funding  Israeli settlements. His  ambitious housing and transit proposals, rent freezes (that affect more than two million residents), free buses across all boroughs, city-owned grocery stores, universal childcare, and a  $30 minimum wage, indicated his infrastructure-first focused economic model rather than trickle-down and incremental reforms. In another  Featherstone article/study, where she combined bottom-up journalism and election ethnography, a closer look at canvassing operations helped her uncover that Mamdani attracted an unprecedented scale of volunteers; one that activated thousands to conduct door knocking and phone banking.

Human rights and development

A fundamental and defining difference between Mamdani and Cuomo was seen in their opposing conceptions of development. Cuomo’s development framework aligned closely with  neoliberal orthodoxies that equated progress with the expansion of capital, real estate development, and finance. His approach relied on technocrats and the maintenance of elite networks, seen in figures like Bill Clinton and  Michael Bloomberg. While these endorsements were meant to convey power and legitimacy, I suggest the opposite. Relying heavily on establishment backing indicates insecurity and weak grassroots connections. Cuomo’s reliance on power acknowledged it as his race to lose, not to win, and at some point (especially in 2028), all Democrats will be called on to respond to fractures emerging within the Party.

Mamdani’s vision of development, on the other hand, was one with much more promise in the long run than Cuomo’s. It was more or less rooted in the capabilities approach championed by  Amartya Sen and elaborated by  Susan Marks and  Andrew Clapham in their  _International Human Rights Lexicon_. It was Sen and scholars like  Arturo Escobar who famously asserted that true development was “the expansion of real freedoms that people enjoy”, extending beyond mere economic indicators to include education, health, political participation and dignity. Human rights are not a luxury, but the foundation for sustainable development, and Mamdani’s platform exemplified this principle. Unlike Cuomo, politicians like AOC, Tiffany Caban, and Salazar before him, Mamdani did not treat development as a byproduct of capital but as an active expansion of human capability. Local leaders, more often, can create space in addressing the  failures of capitalism. Mamdani’s human rights-centred development was also seen in his push to address historic racial and economic injustices.

These two distinctions between development, one as capital accumulation (Cuomo) versus two, expanded human rights and freedoms (Mamdani), will be critical features and binaries for potential candidates moving forward, suffering through the Trump era of fascism. Cuomo’s approach brazenly reinforced  a predictable status quo, while Mamdani fostered a more participatory, rights-based, and  identity-conscious vision of development. He prioritised local governance and public virtue (not private vices) despite the current uphill battle with POC voting blocs wedded to longstanding political traditions. It was all, admittedly, very complicated, but Cuomo’s reliance on the establishment revealed his inability to fight fairly on the terrain of democracy. He managed to hold onto enough soft power and forms of influence that traditionally legitimised political authority found in capital, but at the expense of citizen control. The Cuomo industrial complex, however, showed great signs of weakness in the past two weeks, especially after AOC’s role in king-making. Dozens of “ amnesia endorsements” compiled Cuomo’s main strategy of political reconstruction along with the people that depended on them, thereby showing a lack of true structural integration. This fragility was demonstrated by the advent of “Frankenstein PACs” such as  #DREAM, which started the “ Don’t Rank Evil Andrew” campaign, splintering a once unified front.

Mamdani’s legitimacy, by contrast, began with the grassroots, leftist identity politics and a commitment to fairness. His alliance included young voters, ( 52% are under the age of 45), as well as immigrants, working-class families, Muslims, and South Asians, and bypassed traditional Democratic gatekeeping.

Epilogue

On election eve, the savvy political analyst  Michael Kinnucan reflected on the remarkable progress of socialist politics in New York, noting how far the movement has come since the early campaigns of  Julia Salazar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He acknowledged the emotional stakes of Mamdani’s race. Still, he emphasised that, win or lose, the campaign represented a decisive rejection of establishment centrism and an inspiring outpouring of subsequent political energy. Mamdani, likely to win on 1 July, and certified as the Democratic candidate in mid-July, reshaped City politics, using identity as a foundation, not as a  technology of the self, while blending global solidarity around peace with local grassroots organising. He exposed the fragility of Cuomo’s establishment-backed soft power and emphasised the importance of human rights and social movements in defining real development, the  capability to live the life you value, and legitimacy, a group or community’s local recognition. Aside from the Mamdani miracle,  Alexa Aviles kept her city council seat and progressive  Shahana Hanif was also victorious. It was a good night for the left.

Moving forward, newer candidates must reclaim political language from distortion. Phrases like “ from the river to the sea” and “ globalise the intifada” have been deliberately weaponised. Politicians need to reframe these as calls for secular democracy and equal rights across historic Palestine and transnational resistance to colonialism through civil action. As Stephen Zunes once noted to me, misinformation only breeds fear, clarity disarms it, and if you don’t clarify these statements, they are indeed very problematic.

It is also vital that Mamdani continues to skilfully redefine what “existence” means in local/global politics to avoid rhetorical traps. When asked if Israel has a right to exist, progressives should never hesitate to say yes. But even further, as UN Special Rapporteur  Francesca Albanese stated, the issue is not just existence (for Israel already exists, as does Italy or Denmark), but whether any state has the right to exist as a settler-colonial apartheid regime.

Just as  Kinnucan suggested, one of Mamdani’s great achievements was forcing the establishment to show its hand. Cuomo’s comeback, powered by billionaire donors and political nostalgia, revealed the fragility of establishment politics, and everyone witnessed it happen.  Mamdani’s rise, backed by people, showed how justice-oriented legitimacy can displace monied legitimacy. Democrats also need to be ready to always push  beyond the ballot line. Cuomo’s capital-centric approach exposed the limits of traditional power in an era where insurgent localism forges global interconnectedness. Mamdani’s campaign very powerfully illustrates the premise that  all politics is global.

Republished from CounterPunch, 25 June 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.