‘I’m jealous.’ For Wu fans, a mounting case of Mamdani envy
NEW YORK — The air was thick with horns, chants, and the pungent aroma of summer in Manhattan as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stepped up to a microphone strategically positioned under the claws of a giant inflatable rat.
Some 300 hospitality workers had gathered outside the Port Authority bus terminal, picketing for a union contract at the Four Points by Sheraton hotel in Times Square. New York City was in the grip of a heat emergency the first week of July, and it was sweltering. But Mamdani looked unflappable and untouched by the heat (not to mention the rat) after a day spent security planning for the tall ships’ arrival, ongoing World Cup matches, Fourth of July festivities, and the wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden.
No sweat, all smiles.
“How we doing? How we feeling?” Mamdaniasked, before winding into a speech that worked the crowd into a frenzy and hit upon all the key tenets of his political ascent: Housing, affordability, and working people’s rights.
“No one who works full time should have to choose between making rent and filling a prescription,” he shouted. “I come here as your mayor to tell you that City Hall will have your back every step of the way.”
The hotel staffers erupted as Mamdani started a cheer: “Get up, get down. New York is a union town.”
“That’s why he’s our mayor!” one shouted.
And that’s a common refrain among New Yorkers right now. Midtown resident Wanda Salas said the vibes in New York have shifted since he took office in January, with young people more excited and the city’s working class voters feeling heard. She voted for someone else, but so far, she’s happy with Mamdani.
“He’s everywhere,” Salas said. “I’m glad he won.”
A year earlier, when Mamdani was a mere state assemblyman throwing his hat in the mayoral ring, he cited a somewhat surprising political role model, considering he’s a New Yorker: Michelle Wu.
At the time, Boston’s mayor was coming off a remarkable stint in the national spotlight. She’d had an impressive turn in Washington defending Boston’s “sanctuary city” policies before Congress. With ashes on her forehead and her baby at her side, she adeptly dispatched her conservative foes. She was profiled in major magazines and cruising toward a landslide reelection.
Mamdani would soon be mayor himself. And now, just seven months in, he’s launched so much, so fast, that it’s actually making some progressive Bostonians a little envious.
Mamdani and Wu have much in common, said Katherine Levine Einstein, a Boston University political science professor who co-leads the Menino Survey of Mayors. They’re dyed-in-the-wool progressives with growing national profiles. Both harnessed social media to build their political capital and won big-city mayor jobs while in their mid-30s. (Wu was 36 when she took office; Mamdani is 34.)
But as both campaigned last year, Einstein said, just one candidate captured the imagination of her BU students: Mamdani.
“They were so energized,” she said. Students from across the country — not just New York — were deeply invested and “aware of this local election.”
Of course, Einstein noted, Boston is not New York. The Big Apple affords its mayor a spotlight like no other. And Mamdani’s a fresh face, still in his honeymoon era, while Wu has been in office for nearly five years now, which has given her, as Einstein put it “more opportunity to disappoint her progressive constituencies.”
Still, comparisons are inevitable, even if — Wu’s allies argue — they’re not necessarily fair.
“It’s not apples and oranges. It’s apples and chain saws,” said Matt O’Malley, a former Boston city councilor and longtime Wu confidant. ”New York celebrates the spectacle of governing. I think Boston values the substance of governing, and that’s what Michelle Wu’s done.”
Tapping ‘bing bong’ energy
As a city councilor during the 2010s heyday of Twitter, Wu used the platform to rise to prominence. She’d share videos, on her personal @Wutrain handle, of her kids and daily struggles with the Orange Line, communicating an image as a relatable Boston everywoman. She’d rally support there too, when needed, for various political fights. By the time Wu became mayor in 2021, @Wutrain had over 150,000 followers, far more than her official mayoral account, which hovered at 65,000.
Twitter, of course, is not what it was, and by early 2023, Wu basically left the service, saying it had gotten “more and more toxic” since Elon Musk took over. And while the mayor’s office still posts on to Instagram and TikTok, Wu’s advisers say she has intentionally pulled back on social media.
Mamdani, in contrast, is everywhere, especially on the video-first platforms that have come to define how so many Americans — particularly young people — get their news. Mamdani is just a few years younger than Wu, notes Daniel Schlozman, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and Wu’s friend and consultant. But he’s a native of today’s attention economy.
“There’s a microgenerational difference,” Schlozman said. “This is a politician who just exists on video” as a natural state of being.
In a roundabout way, Boston played a role in Mamdani’s remarkable rise. It started with a raucous 56-second video, shot in the street outside Madison Square Garden after a Knicks win over the Celtics in October 2021. Rowdy orange-and-blue-clad fans mugged for the camera, mocked Tom Brady and Boston generally, and unleashed an expletive-laden tirade that was crass, exuberant, and unabashedly New York.
“Bing bong!!!!” one fan screamed at the top of his lungs, echoing the distinct chime of a subway door closing.The catchphrase went viral, and became synonymous with New York City swagger.
Mamdani’s communications team showed him that clip as they began to map out campaign strategy. The goal: Mamdani, already comfortable in the spotlight thanks to a stint moonlighting as a hip-hop artist, would channel bing bong energy all the way to the mayor’s office.
To be clear, Mamdani wasn’t bashing Bostonon the campaign trail; indeed in one debate he called Wu the most effective Democratic politician in the nation. And many of his priorities — from more affordable housing and child care tofree public transit — were straight from her playbook.
It worked. He won. And now Mamdani’s mashup of bing bong energy and progressive policy is the talk of New York and Democratic politics alike.
“His charm reaches through the television,” said Frances Malarkey, a longtime renter who works as a server in one of the Museum of Modern Art’s restaurants. Mamdani’s upcoming rent freeze on one- and two-year leases that starts after Oct. 1means her East Village studio will stay affordable, she said. “I think he’s the most adroit politician on the scene right now.”
“He’s getting things done,” she said.
In the first half of this year, Mamdani’s administration has filled 100,000 potholes, launched a citywide snow-shoveling campaign, cut red tape for small businesses, and passed a pied-a-terre tax that could bring in $500 million in annual revenue. Working closely with New York Governor Kathy Hochul, he secured billions in additional aid dollars for the city, a move that closedthe city’s budget gap.
Like Wu, Mamdani has prioritized making the city more affordable for families. His plan to roll out universal free child care citywide got a major boost last month, when Hochul committed $73 million to provide free child care for 2,000 2-year-olds, on top of $1 billion more in child care investment overall this year. And he signals that parents have needs too, launching a citywide Parents’ Night Out initiative to help caregivers “enjoy a little free time.”
Mamdani’s political acumen extends to Washington, no small feat for a progressive politician right now: In February, he charmed President Trump in hopes of getting $21 billion to build housing, though that has yet to materialize. (Wu shrugged off their “bromance.”) And increasingly, Mamdani is being viewed as a kingmaker in New York, after helping a slate of hand-picked congressional candidates win Democratic primaries last month.
Mamdani’s social media team has documented every win — seemingly every minute of the mayor’s time in office — with videos that put his charming, goofypersonality center stage. Some of it is just the New York sensibility: the things Mamdani talks about aren’t all that sexy or different from municipal matters anywhere, they’re just being presented with a bit more verve.
Those videos spread wide, including to Boston. And now, some local progressives — and even one Boston city councilor — are looking at our longtime rivals to the south with a bit of Mamdani envy.
“I’ve felt it so badly,” said Benjamin Siegel, a 41-year-old father of two from Jamaica Plain. Siegel’s a transit-oriented voter who volunteered for Wu’s first mayoral run and contributed to her campaign. But he’s increasingly disenchanted with what he callsher “regression” on transportation issues, so much so that he left his ballot blank for last year’s mayoral election. When Mamdani recently announced expanded bus and bike lanes in New York, Siegel called a friend there and admitted he was jealous.
“It is wild for me to see someone go kind of full steam ahead and to exercise power in ways that seem to deliver value to New Yorkers,” he said. “Our mayor has moved into a model that’s an an anemic vision of leadership.”
It’s a sentiment that’s bubbling in housing circles too. While Wu has talked for years about loosening zoning to spur sluggish construction, Mamdani in May set a bold target: 200,000 new affordable homes over a decade.
“I’m jealous,” said Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts. “I would love Mayor Wu to be more visionary and aggressive.”
And every time Mamdani puts out a video, it’s a little reminder of the difference. Eliza Parad hears it all the time. The longtime community organizer is now leading Boston’s Better Budget Alliance, which is pushing back on cuts to the city’s budget. Members, she said, keep forwarding her videos of Mamdani, who seems able to balance New York’s books while also pushing new policies to help working people.
Their message, she said, is clear: “Look at what Mamdani is doing with the budget in New York City. How come we can’t have nice things in Boston?”
“She’s not going to go out clubbing.”
The obvious, of course, should be stated: Boston and New York are very different cities.And the differences are not just in style, but substance.
Mamdani runs a city with more residents than all of Massachusetts, and it’s the nation’s media capital, giving himplenty of ways to get face time.
He’s also not bound by home rule policies that have left some of Wu’s more ambitious initiatives — rent control, property tax shifts — to flounder on Beacon Hill, and has worked closely with Governor Hochul, who herself benefits from Mamdani’s halo of good will.
“In New York City, you have a state government and a governor who have been real partners to Mayor Mamdani,” said Hessann Farooqi, executive director of the Boston Climate Action Network. “We have a state government that consistently gets in the way of cities like Boston.”
There’s also the reality that Wu and Mamdani are simply different. His brand is charisma and cracking jokes, hers is policy smarts and cerebral. He’s bing bong. She talks up Boston’s AAA bond rating. And they’re at different stages in life: Mamdani’s 34, with seemingly untapped energy. Wu, now 40, has three young kids, including a toddler.
“She’s a second-term mayor. She’s Harvard-educated lawyer. She’s proved her bona fides. She’s not going to go out clubbing,” said O’Malley. “She’s going to do the job that she was elected to do. And by the way, that’s precisely why she was reelected.”
If anything, Wu won a far more commanding mandate in last fall’s elections. She drove her main challenger, Josh Kraft, out of the race before we even made it to Election Day, while Mamdani took just over half of the vote in a three-way race, and continues to contend with powerful constituencies that seek to undermine his success. But Mamdani’s early wins — and his talent for getting young people fired up — beg a larger question: Should Wu be borrowing from Mamdani’s playbook?
Parad says yes, particularly when it comes to marshaling political power. She pointed to how the Mamdani administration used its powerful get-out-the-vote coalition to galvanize support for his agenda in Albany.
“The biggest lesson that Mayor Wu could learn from Mayor Mamdani is engaging community members who care,” she said. “We need to be part of the strategy and part of the solutions.”
Others noted that Mamdani’s success is happening precisely because he’s still using Wu’s playbook; it’s just getting more attention because he’s in the national spotlight.
Many of Mamdani’s wins, Farooqi noted, are policies that Wu has already “taken leadership on and delivered in some way here in Boston.” She’s expanded access to early education, launched three free bus lines, and funded a wave of new affordable housing during her time in office.
But that’s exactly what bothers some longstanding Wu supporters, like Keegan Dougherty of Jamaica Plain. Mamdani’s delivering more loudly, while Wu seems to be pulling back in her second term, which Dougherty described as a “huge letdown” so far.
“Wu has these incredible approval ratings. But rather than capitalizing on this massive primary win and cruising through this next term she’s done the opposite,” Dougherty said. “She’s in retreat whereas Mamdani is on the march.”
Wu is facing an inflection point with her core constituents, said Boston political strategist Wilnelia Rivera, one that has only been heightened in the wake of the recent death of transportation advocate Louisa Gag.
Rivera, who has worked for Wu, described herself as “disenchanted,” and said she hopes that Wu can reignite the Wutrain energy and tap back into whatexcited people about her to begin with.
“There are always forces larger than one elected official can control,” Rivera said. “But what Mamdani shows is you do what you can with what you can control.”
A mayor, unleashed?
Wu, for her part, said she’s heartened to see Mamdani — and the minutiae of city government in general — arrive in the national spotlight. And in a recent interview in her office she acknowledged that many of the “big swings” of her first term were helped along by federal COVID funds that have since run out.
“This first year of a second term is vastly different from the first year of a first term, largely because of the wider world and where we are,” Wu said. The city faces different challenges, too, not least including a federal government that has turned expresslyhostile to much of what makes it thrive, including research and higher education sectors, and the international population.
“We are under attack daily for the community we are, and the diversity we represent,” she said. “Boston has been in the crosshairs, and our larger economy is in a very different place as well.”
Wu said Mamdani’s relationship with Albany also “carries a different dynamic” than hers with Beacon Hill, and the political math just isn’t the same. Getting “a billion dollar investment from the state goes a long way” toward creating universal child care, she noted wryly.
But Boston has had a good summer; Mamdani wasn’t the only mayor managing an influx of soccer fans, tall ships, and Fourth of July revelers. And Wu hoped the events of the last six weekscan set the tone for future city-state partnerships, ones that can help keep her agenda chugging forward. More collaboration, she said, would allow “Boston to be fully unleashed.”
There have been some glimpses of what a more unleashed Wu — and Boston — might look like.
Last month, she got 1.5 million views on a TikTok video announcing plans for a sister city partnership with Glasgow, home of the Tartan Army. She’s pushing to extend the 3 a.m. closing times at bars and public drinking zones to extend beyond the summer. She’s putting political muscle behind challengers to two Boston state senators who have at times thwarted her agenda. And in a major move last week, she announced a slate of proposals to improve street safety and memorialize Gag’s contributions to transit advocacy.
Carlos Aramayo, president of the powerful Unite Here Local 26 hospitality workers union, said that instead of comparing mayors, Bostonians should be celebrating how progressive agendas in New York and Boston can feed off one another.
“I think it’s amazing that we’re in a situation where these two great American cities have these forward-thinking progressive-minded mayors who are trying to figure out these really, really big problems,” he said.
And for once, some aren’t seeing the cities as rivals.
”I hate to say it as a Bostonian,“ said Farooqi, ”but I’m cheering on Mamdani just as I’m cheering on Mayor Wu.”
Read more Miami picked as preseason ACC football favorite; Bill Belichick’s North Carolina 15th and BC 16th
Post Comment