Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in the New York City mayoral primary has been energizing for Democrats desperate for something hopeful. It’s a big deal for San Francisco Dems, too — sort of.
Early reactions were breathless and overwrought: The left has been vindicated! It was indeed a clear and impressive win but not a sign of national realignment. This was a Democratic primary with 33% turnout, in an off year, in a solidly blue city. Mamdani won citywide, but he beat Andrew Cuomo, a disgraced former governor who hadn’t lived in the city for decades and reportedly had ChatGPT draft parts of his policy platform. Even Cuomo’s supporters might call him “complicated” — political code for “a miserable asshole.” And while Mamdani ran on ambitious ideas, few of them have faced the realities of implementation or opposition.
Still, his win says something. The campaign matters because it reflects trends that are reshaping politics in places like San Francisco: the collapse of traditional gatekeepers, the rise of authenticity over ideology, and the power of a clear, compelling vision. These are the three main lessons we should take from the Mamdani Era.
Traditional gatekeepers no longer hold the power they once did.
Until recently, a flood of bad headlines, attack mailers, and insider opposition would be disqualifying. But many voters no longer consume information through traditional channels. In San Francisco, as Daniel Lurie demonstrated, candidates can win mayoral races without labor endorsements or party support.
Mamdani didn’t have media endorsements or institutional backing (quite the opposite). What he had was a message, a ground game, and a digital strategy that met voters where they are. One video topped a million views. A single quote got 17 million impressions. His campaign didn’t just publish content; it understood narrative.
According to the 2025 Reuters Institute Digital News Report, trust in traditional media is near historic lows — especially among young voters. More than half of Americans under 35 rely on social and video networks as their main source of news, surpassing traditional media in reach. Campaigns built around press releases and newspaper columns are speaking to a shrinking and aging audience. And a newspaper endorsement aligns with voters only about one in three times. Many voters don’t care what the editorial board says; they care who shows up in their feed.
Voters reward authenticity more than perfect ideological alignment.
Mamdani didn’t win because voters agreed with him on every issue. He won because he said what he believed, clearly and consistently. His pitch wasn’t “I’m the leftmost candidate,” it was “The rent is too damn high, and I’m going to do something about it.”
He was authentically himself. He didn’t suddenly hold beliefs that differed from those he’d articulated in the past because they were more convenient or politically palatable. He refused to walk back positions on Gaza, challenged his own party’s leadership, and didn’t pivot when it would’ve been easy to do so. He wasn’t the standard Music Man (or monorail salesman) politician, pushing slogans and telling people what he thought they wanted to hear.
That kind of clarity is in short supply in San Francisco politics, where attack ads have been elevated to high art and candidates often campaign on who they aren’t — a closet Republican, a far-left socialist, a City Hall insider — rather than who they are and what they believe. Mamdani didn’t campaign that way. He didn’t spend every moment attacking or trying to be everything to everyone. He tried to be legible. He talked like (and to) people on the street. And that worked.
Authenticity isn’t about tone. It’s about trust. Voters don’t need to agree with you on everything. They need to know you believe what you’re saying.
Candidates need a real vision for what a better tomorrow might look like.
Mamdani didn’t talk about housing, transit, and affordability as isolated issues; he wove them into a story about what kind of city New York could become and how to get there. It wasn’t a list of tweaks. It was a pitch for a different future.
What’s too often missing from Democratic campaigns, even in San Francisco, is a sense of direction. Most sound like administrative memos: “We’ll clean the streets,” “We’ll speed up permitting,” “We’ll fix the buses.” All are fine goals, but none stir the imagination or promise much in the way of short-term improvements in voters’ material well-being. The implicit pitch is, “Vote for us, and the current system might work a little better.”
But voters want more than a slightly improved status quo. They want to know where things are headed. When politicians offer bold visions for the future, like then-Supervisor Scott Wiener did in 2015, when he called for San Francisco to always have a subway under construction, they are often rewarded. He wasn’t just promising faster buses; he was promising something better.
You can be pragmatic and bold at the same time. What’s missing isn’t competence. It’s ambition.
This doesn’t mean California Democrats should copy Mamdani’s campaign wholesale. New York isn’t the Bay Area. But the signals are hard to ignore. Gatekeepers don’t control outcomes anymore. Voters reward honesty over hedging. And a campaign grounded in a clear, compelling vision still beats one offering small tweaks to a system people are already frustrated with.
A better future won’t sell itself. Democrats need to start pitching it again.
Eric Kingsbury is president of the District 2 Democratic Club and a member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee representing Assembly District 19.