Good guy of the year? Yup, my vote is for Zohran Mamdani.
Mayor Mamdani was sworn in at midnight New Year's Eve in the old subway station beneath City Hall in New York.
But it's his campaign that brought joy and hope not only to New Yorkers, but to the whole country.
The Mamdani for Mayor campaign had great Democratic messaging. Free buses, a rent freeze, affordable housing, a public grocery store in each of the five boroughs, and childcare.
It's not complicated.
And Mamdani did something else that I believe made him win: he celebrated the city he and his voters call home.
The summertime scavenger hunt brought all the boys and girls to the yard, and, I think, healed a lot of the desperation we were clinging to after Covid.
And his attitude toward government is the real revolution we've all been waiting for. Mamdani has communicated better than anyone in decades that government is there to serve regular people, and regular people are the government. As Corey Robin notes in The New York Review of Books:
Since the 1970s, Democrats have largely ceded this [anti-government] rhetorical ground to the right. Instead of offering an alternative vision of excellence or mounting a robust case for different values, they have adopted the private sector as the gold standard of performance. Like Republicans, they have promised to run the government as if it were a business or corporation or bragged that they already have.
Mamdani is not the first Democrat to want to toss aside that playbook. He is the first to act as if it’s already been trashed. As he made clear on election night and in the composition of his transitional committees, his perspective is populated by workers, commuters, tenants, organizers, civil servants, and elected leaders. They are the people who get things done. All capitalism does is build oligarchy and crap. The lords of enshittification shouldn’t set the standard of society. Politics and government must supply the agents and the actions, the expectations and criteria for the excellence that Mamdani promises.
We look forward to what we can accomplish together. Thanks for pointing the way, Mister Mayor. And enjoy your good guy Crookie Award:
