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New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s insurgent campaign has driven a surge of younger Democratic candidates running for office and provided a roadmap for a new generation of politicians.
Since last Tuesday, over 4,000 people inquired about running for office through Run for Something, Ally Boguhn, its senior communications and marketing director, told The Hill. She credited Mamdani’s win with driving up registrations.
“When polls closed in New York, and they started calling that race, we saw another spike,” she said.
Candidates inspired by Mamdani and already running for office know they won’t exactly replicate his campaign, whether due to volunteer and financial limitations or regional political differences. But they’re still hoping to adapt his strategies to win their own races.
“I really think that me and all of the other progressives that are running, especially the Gen Z’s that are running, we are all up against titans within our own races,” Courtney McClain, a 24-year-old running to unseat Rep. William Timmons (R) in a deeply-red South Carolina district, said. “Seeing Mamdani’s victory, we know we can also slay those titans.”
Mamdani faced off against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent after losing in the June Democratic primary. Mamdani outperformed Cuomo then and maintained this energy to win the general election, bolstering historic voter turnout in the city’s mayoral race.
Boguhn said his Tuesday victory wasn’t the first surge of interested political candidates Mamdani had sent Run for Something’s way. Over 10,000 signed up to run for office with the organization in the two weeks following Mamdani’s June primary victory, which the organization called the largest “organic surge of candidate recruitment” it had ever seen.
“Whenever there’s a younger person who runs and gets elected, younger people decide that they want to jump on board,” Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross said. “That’s not necessarily new to Mamdani or something that’s novel to him at all.”
But she conceded there were aspects of his campaign that inspired other candidates running for office.
Social media star Kat Abughazaleh, who is facing off against Evanston mayor Daniel Biss in a high-profile race for retiring Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s (D-Ill.) seat, cited Mamdani’s mayoral bid as inspiration for her own campaign. Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson, who knew Mamdani in college, said he was “completely inspired” by Mamdani’s campaign as he runs against 69-year-old Rep. Steve Cohen (D).
“The volunteer strategy was phenomenal,” Pearson said. “I believe in people power movements to create change, and he helped create and curate a people power campaign that I think was absolutely inspiring for people in New York and outside of New York.”
Pearson added that Mamdani’s race allowed people across the country to get involved in a race where they could exert influence, which offered hope to “people who live in states where they feel their influence may not exist in the same ways that they wish for it to.”
For others, it’s Mamdani’s upset that was so inspiring. Mamdani was polling at 1 percent in February. On Tuesday, he was elected mayor with over half the city’s vote.
“I know he was counted out,” McClain, the South Carolina House candidate, said. “And being a young Black woman in the South, in a district that has been red for over 30 years, a lot of people are also counting us out here.”
Like Mamdani, McClain hopes to strengthen voter turnout. Mamdani’s campaign focused on boosting voter registration among demographics that typically turned out to the polls in lesser numbers as well as first-time voters.
“I really want to tackle rural areas and knock on those doors and speak to people who have never been spoken to before, especially within South Carolina,” McClain said. She plans on meeting voters “where they’re at” so she can build a campaign where “organized people beat organized money.”
But Olivia Julianna, a youth Democratic strategist, warned that people seeking to replicate Mamdani’s campaign may find his strategies ineffective. She praised Mamdani’s social media strategy — which netted him millions of views across platforms like TikTok, X, and Instagram, but questioned whether others could maintain the momentum.
“I think that we’ll see more campaigns and more elected officials using those strategies in the future, but it’s not something that you can just copy and paste,” she said.
Julianna instead pointed to how Mamdani’s campaign messaging closely informed his social media strategy, including the mayor-elect talking to voters in New York City and posting videos of the interactions online.
“I think that if candidates and campaigns are going to try to replicate the style of video that he was producing and posting online, they also have to replicate the substance of going and talking to voters and getting their perspectives…because I think the style of the substance of the campaign that Zohran ran in New York is effective,” Julianna said.
Other candidates could use this formula, but they would have to tailor their platforms to local issues faced by voters, Julianna added. She said voters weren’t just interested in Democrats fighting President Trump and his agenda— they wanted candidates who ran on platforms that would tangibly improve their lives.
“Zohran is not necessarily the kind of candidate that you’re going to have running for a city council seat in South Carolina, because the issues are different,” she said. “The issues are different, the candidates are different, but the formula has to be the same.”
Royce Mann, a Gen Z candidate running for a school board in Atlanta, Georgia, said observing Mamdani’s campaign on social media taught him to put forward specific policies to appeal to voters.
Though Mamdani’s campaign broadly focused on affordability, he ran on several key promises to voters: that he would freeze the rent, fund free buses, and operate city-owned grocery stores.
“I think that influenced our decision to really zero in on a few issues,” Mann said. “I have a broad platform that talks about my values across the board and my priorities across the board, but zero in on some tangible priorities that are a bit more accessible for the average voter, because these policies are very clear in what they would achieve.”
His platform includes doubling the number of counselors in schools and providing free transportation vouchers to Atlanta students.
The defeat of democratic socialist Omar Fateh in the Minneapolis mayoral race also underscored how regional differences could affect races. Fateh earned comparison to Mamdani over their similar policy proposals and his race against an establishment-backed incumbent Jacob Frey (D).
While Tuesday ended in a landslide victory for Mamdani, Fateh lost his election amid record turnout among Minneapolis voters, who instead supported Frey’s more moderate platform.
Differences in local political engagement can also affect election outcomes. Mamdani’s campaign knocked on over 3 million — a scale made possible by the sheer size of his volunteer team, which surpassed 50,000 people over the summer.
His volunteer team was able to reach that size in part because of the already-strong presence of New York City’s Democratic Socialists for America chapter, which helped Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) win an election against an incumbent Democrat during Trump’s first presidency.
Other cities don’t have the same political institutions. Pearson, the Tennessee state representative, said he has a strong volunteer coalition due to his involvement with community organizations.
“We’re really fortunate to have people over the years who have volunteered with our campaign,” he said.
Cameron Kasky, a gun violence prevention activist, has had a front-row seat to Mamdani’s mayoral run as a New York resident. A few weeks ago, he filed to run for retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler’s (D) seat.
He said Mamdani’s mayoral win showed a way forward for other young progressive candidates.
“You have to run against Donald Trump in every race, but you also need to tell people, ‘We are going to propose new solutions. We are going to try new things to make your life better, and there is a future we can obtain where the world works better for people,’” Kasky said.
