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ZOHRAN MAMDANI’S MESSAGING MACHINE IS A MODEL TO EMULATE  
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Liza Featherstone
June 12, 2025
Jacobin
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_ New York City socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has
clearly learned from other effective communicators like Bernie Sanders
how to use online media to spread popular left-wing ideas. Mamdani’s
approach is a model for other insurgent candidate _

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, Photo credit: Kara
McCurdy

 

When people say buses can never be free,” says socialist New York
City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, smiling, “don’t ask them to
take a hike. Ask them to take the ferry.”

The video, with beautiful footage of New York Harbor from the Staten
Island Ferry — “the best way to see the Statue of Liberty,” says
the assemblyman who recently described
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Trump’s worst nightmare” — and the throng of New Yorkers from
all walks of life boarding the ferry, quickly reveals its point: the
iconic and heavily trafficked commuter boat is free and has been since
1997. The video offered an inviting and aesthetic defense of one of
Mamdani’s key campaign promises, fast and free buses — as well as,
almost in passing, an introduction to Mamdani himself and his
worldview.

Socialist senator Bernie Sanders is often credited with changing
American political culture by running for president in 2016 and 2020,
convincing many that we need and can achieve democratic socialism. But
a less-discussed aspect of Sanders’s legacy is his media strategy,
which he sees as a crucial way to spread his pro-worker message and
advance his political program.

In 2018, _New York_ magazine wrote about
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“mini media empire.” By then, the senator was already using his
high profile to make “Bernie TV,” media that could counter
“establishment” media by hosting an interview show, occasionally
turning down media requests in favor of posting his own video
commentary (on, for example, Trump’s first address to Congress), and
streaming town-hall style programs to Facebook Live. His live media
events drew bigger audiences than CNN.

Mamdani’s paean to the Staten Island Ferry is a beautiful and
uplifting video — as well as informative, with archival photos of
the ferry when it cost five cents. It’s also just one example of how
Mamdani’s campaign has clearly learned from and been inspired by
Sanders’s example on media production. The Mamdani campaign releases
videos constantly, on issues from free buses to rent stabilization to
changing your voter registration. He also makes videos speaking the
languages of New York’s many communities, including Spanish and
Hindi.

He goes where people want to be. During the Knicks playoffs,
he interviewed [[link removed]] New
Yorkers in front of Madison Square Garden, about the cost of living.
Candidly admitting that he could not deliver everything people wanted
— the mayor, for example, does not unfortunately have the power to
bring down Knicks playoff ticket prices — he talked about freezing
the rent with young men who admitted they were struggling to afford
their own place, people who love the city but felt the cost of living
“sucks.”

At times, like Bernie TV, the Mamdani campaign goes beyond campaigning
to provide the kind of information and even reporting that is lacking
in the mainstream media. Last November, just after Trump won his
election, there was much Democratic consternation about the
working-class neighborhoods that had swung red that year. But few
journalists actually went to such places and asked people why they
voted for Trump.

Mamdani did that [[link removed]].
He went to Hillside Avenue in Queens and Fordham Avenue in the Bronx,
two areas that saw some of the biggest shifts away from the Democrats.
It’s a powerful and informative video, featuring a diverse group of
New Yorkers of all ages who look nothing like the dominant stereotype
of a Trump voter. Many did so in despair over the war in Gaza.

One man said, “Either side will send bombs from here to kill my
brothers and sisters.” Another agreed, “A lot of people are
dying.” Others had had it with inflation, saying they were
struggling to afford food, gas, rent, and other necessities.

What would the Bernie Sanders media empire look like if the socialist
senator was young, a world citizen and polyglot with a handsome face
and a sense of fun? One answer is Mamdani’s YouTube.

His videos draw tens of thousands of views. The Knicks video was seen
by more than 600,000 people on X/Twitter alone. A video this winter in
which he plunged into the water at Coney Island to dramatize that he
was “freezing . . . the rent,” then talked about his affordable
housing policies, attracted more than 800,000 views across platforms
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a time when no one was paying any attention to any local elections.

Even Mamdani’s enemies grudgingly acknowledge his game in this area.
State senator Jessica Ramos, one of his rivals in the mayoral primary
who has run as a progressive but recently endorsed disgraced former
governor Andrew Cuomo
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bitterly in a recent Democratic mayoral candidates’ debate that she
didn’t run in 2022 but, taking a jab at Mamdani, said, “I thought
I needed more experience. But turns out you just need to make
good videos
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Cuomo sang a similarly bitter tune in the most recent mayoral debate:
“Mr Mamdani is very good on Twitter
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with videos,” he grumbled before going on to denigrate his rival’s
supposedly short list of legislative achievements. This is the kind of
public whining that two public figures who know they’re getting
beaten on a certain front tend to engage in.

Finding ways to circumvent traditional media and bring information
directly to the public becomes even more important when in office.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes frequent Instagram Live videos,
with an intimacy that is different from Mamdani’ or Sanders. She
invites constituents, virtually, to make macaroni and cheese with her
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Shirley Chisholm, or to get updates on student loan
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processes emotional national issues like climate doomerism
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Biden’s age [[link removed]] — or
weighs in on matters of urgent political strategy, like “what you
can do to save Medicaid
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Like Mamdani, AOC has the looks and charisma for this platform, and
also the right instincts, chatting about her plant as people log on,
greeting arrivals warmly as if they’ve come over to her house. Also
like Mamdani, AOC is not always of interest to a mainstream media that
doesn’t share her politics, but she’s found a way to welcome
people aboard while controlling the narrative.

Another good model is Mexican leftist president Claudia Sheinbaum, who
faces a hostile media ecosystem despite her massive popularity. She
holds a press conference every day, first thing in the morning,
allowing her version of events to dominate the news cycle and refute
false stories. This practice results in constant press coverage, with
her point of view — whether on Immigration and Customs Enforcement
raids in the United States, the Los Angeles protests, Trump’s
tariffs, the assassination last month of two of her staff members, the
“Gulf of America,” or Mexico’s declining homicide rate —
prominently reported.

Mamdani has also acknowledged learning from Chi Ossé, a New York
City councilman who is also a skilled communicator who has drawn
attention
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York_ magazine. He made, among many others, a series of videos called
“Why Shit Not Working,” covering the city’s lack of public
bathrooms [[link removed]],
how to address the infestation of rats
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more. These mini-documentaries draw tens of thousands of views (the
bathroom video surpassed 100,000 on TikTok alone), extraordinary
numbers for a city councilman who is not running for any higher
office.

There’s been a lot of liberal hand-wringing on how to break through
to people given the right-wing media ecosystem, “disinformation,”
and the capture of social media. Of particular concern are young men,
a group that has been moving to the right, thanks in part to the
right-wing influencers in what’s known as the “manosphere.”
Democrats have been having some cringe conversations
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the mainstream Democrats remain mired in misandry and alienation from
this group, their problem is being solved capably by some on the Left.

Sanders enjoyed so much support among young men that “Bernie Bro”
became a term of derision. Mamdani and AOC also have support among
this group. A recent Data for Progress poll
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that Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Zohran Mamdani all enjoyed “very
favorable” impressions among men, actually more than among women
(AOC’s is a ten-point advantage). In one poll, men favored Mamdani
by 53 percent, young voters favored him by 61 percent, and young men
by even more. And he dominates the mayoral race among the notoriously
Trump-pilled young white male demographic.

Obviously, the dynamics of age and gender are complicated. But it
seems clear that young people, especially men, are heavily influenced
by what information and conversations they find online, making online
media especially important in reaching this group.

Of course, there’s more to winning elections and rebuilding the Left
than media. If Mamdani wins, his personality, platform
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and field operations
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have played an even bigger role than his videos — and he’ll need
much more than all of those things to govern effectively and
transformatively. But as Bernie Sanders
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York_ magazine in 2018, speaking of his own media operation, this
sort of media reach is something that everyone left of center should
be watching.

At the time, he was “a bit incredulous” that more people weren’t
emulating it. “I would think any serious political person would be
thinking about this,” he said, “Why would you not?” It seems
clear that Zohran Mamdani is.

_Liza Featherstone is a columnist for Jacobin, a freelance
journalist, and the author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark
Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart._

* Zohran Mamdani
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* socialist movement
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* social media campaigns
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