"Mr. Mamdani later told an ally that he had confided in his fiancée, Rama Duwaji, that he didn’t really think he could win."

"The goal was to build a template for the kind of muscular leftist campaign that might one day crack the Democratic establishment’s hold. How that long-shot candidacy caught fire has been amply dissected by political observers here and in Washington. Mr. Mamdani foregrounded the city’s affordability crisis when rivals focused elsewhere, lapped them with viral social media videos and benefited from Democrats’ hunger for generational change.... Forget the New York conjured by political strategists, one future adviser, Zara Rahim, advised him over coffee last summer. Make a campaign about the actual New York City.... The campaign... hosted a series of events — a citywide scavenger hunt, a soccer tournament at Coney Island — that opponents laughed off as gimmicks but attracted thousands of supporters. Many later became part of an unmatched army of volunteers...."

Writes Nicholas Fandos, in "How Zohran Mamdani Beat Back New York’s Elite and Was Elected Mayor/The 34-year-old assemblyman won the Democratic primary by defying the city’s all-powerful establishment. He secured the mayoralty by delicately disarming it" (NYT).

People say Mamdani has never run anything, but remember when Obama was first running for President and they said that about him. Remember his answer? He's run something: He's run the campaign! Memorably hilarious. But wait a minute. Did Obama say that? I've spent the last hour looking for the quote. I've even found multiple examples of it, using 2 different AIs, which were quick to provide long quotes, quotes that didn't exist in the transcripts of the events that were named. My hypothesis at this point is that it's a false memory — an example of the Mandela effect. Obama may have said something that his opponents paraphrased into an argument that felt ludicrous, but he never made the argument that to run your political campaign for an executive position is relevant executive experience.

Anyway, good luck to Zohran Mamdani. He ran a fantastically successful campaign. One must hope he will also be successful running New York City.