Mr NYC Ahead of His Time

The 2025 NYC Democratic Mayoral primary will end on June 24th and it will go down in history as one of the most befuddling in our fair city. The leading candidates are a former NY State governor (Andrew Cuomo) who resigned in disgrace four years ago and a Muslim Socialist Assemblyman (Zohran Mamdani). 

Once upon a time -- let's say, ten years ago -- the idea that either person could win a primary and maybe get elected mayor seemed unthinkable. Yet here we are. Of course once upon a time we never imagined that a bankrupt conman convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who was twice impeached and tried to violently destroy democracy could be elected -- and re-elected -- President. Yet here we are. 

Dark times. Weird times. Take your pick.

But staying closer to home, one really has to wonder how Cuomo and Mandami became the mayoral frontrunners. This article posits that it's due to the withering of the political clubs in NYC. Tammany Hall is long gone, and the remaining clubs no longer have the power to "deliver" votes that carry mayors to victory. Instead, individualized campaigns took over from the clubs, public financing meant that clubs couldn't throw around money in quite the same way. Clubs can canvas and help turn out voters but they don't have the patronage power of jobs that they used to, they don't have the neighborhood-to-neighborhood power that they used to. And obviously television and social media and outright fame can deliver vastly more voters than a party boss.  

The article also revives the memory of a mayor that I blogged about in 2007: Vincent Impelliteri (called Impy) who was handpicked by Tammany Hall to run for City Council President in 1945 because he was an Italian from Manhattan ;they needed to balance the citywide slate (Mayor, William O'Dwyer; Comptroller, Lazarus Joseph; City Council, Impelliteri) with an Irishman, a Jew, and an Italian. When O'Dywer resigned in 1950 Impy became mayor. This is held up as an example of how clubs, the political "machines", made mayors back then.

But one thing the article gets somewhat wrong is that while the political clubs and machines can't "make mayors" these days, they can still make members of the city council, State Assembly and State Senate. No, they can't make another Impy -- or Robert Wagner or (going even farther back) Jimmy Walker, but the clubs/machines still wield a lot of power in NYC under the radar. 

So here we are, less than a week before the primary, and the most likely winners are a guy running on huge name-recognition and another on social media savvy. 

Tammany Hall could never have imagined that.

If you want to know more about where Zohran came from, read this article by three-time Mr NYC interviewee Ross Barkan about Zohran when Ross ran for State Senate in 2018 and Zohran worked for him. It's interesting to see where this possibly transformative political figure came from and who he is.

And remember, I was blogging about all of these people -- Cuomo, Zohran, Ross, even  Impy! -- several YEARS before this current moment. 

And yet again Mr NYC is ahead of his time while the rest of NYC is catching up!