Without Bernie Sanders, there might not be a Zohran Mamdani.
The 33-year-old democratic socialist who triggered a political earthquake by moving toward a decisive win in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary race has called Sanders “the single most influential political figure in my life.”
“Take on the billionaire class, take on oligarchy. That’s how you win elections,” he said in a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO Magazine.
Sanders said the Democratic Party that he has long allied with but never joined should take serious lessons from Mamdani’s victory — but he was skeptical it would. He also weighed in on whether incumbent Democrats should be worried about a Tea Party of the left, Larry Summers’ concerns about Mamdani and what the young socialist can learn from Sanders’ own experience decades ago as mayor.
This interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.
There are a ton of competing narratives about why Mamdani won. Is it his progressivism? Is it his focus on affordability, his age, his messaging tactics? What’s your big takeaway here?
I think it’s his hair, myself. The consultants haven’t figured that out. That’s why I make the big bucks. I think it’s the hairstyle myself. I don’t think there’s much else to be said about it. Good guy. Photogenic. The hair.
Look, he ran a brilliant campaign. And it wasn’t just him. What he understood and understands — campaign’s not over — is that to run a brilliant campaign, you have to run a grassroots campaign. So instead of taking money from billionaires and putting stupid ads on television, which the people increasingly do not pay attention to, you mobilize thousands and thousands of people around the progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of working-class people and you go out and you knock on doors. And if somebody like a Kamala Harris had not listened to her consultants and done that, she would be president of the United States today.