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THE MAMDANI EFFECT: HOW HIS WIN SPURRED MORE THAN 10,000 PROGRESSIVES
TO CONSIDER RUN FOR OFFICE  
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Rachel Leingang
August 5, 2025
The Guardian
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_ Group geared at mobilizing young leftist candidates saw record
sign-up after Mamdani’s NYC victory. Mamdani bump blends excitement
about the candidate, interest in leftist policies and zeal for
shoe-leather campaigning, both on the ground and online. _

Zohran Mamdani gives a victory speech after winning the Democratic
primary at an election night watch party in Long Island City, New
York, on 24 June 2025., Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal/The
Guardian

 

In mid-July, Erik Clemson signed on to a Zoom call from Honolulu,
Hawaii, energized by a mayoral candidate in a city far across the
country, to hear how he could run for office himself.

Clemson, a 39-year-old machinist instructor who has a YouTube channel
where he explains the economy, had long considered a political run
some time in the future, but Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory provided
a push off the sidelines.

“After I saw Mamdani win the primary in NYC, I decided to stop
wasting time and try to learn what I can as soon as I can,” Clemson
said.

Clemson is one of more than 10,000 people with an interest in running
for office who signed up for Run for Something – a progressive
political organization that helps younger candidates learn the ropes
– after Mamdani won the primary. He’s part of a surge in young
progressives who saw Mamdani’s win in June as hope for a different
brand of politics and plan to learn from his example.

Co-founder Amanda Litman called it the group’s biggest organic
candidate recruitment surge ever.

“They saw a young person who took on the establishment against the
odds and was able to center the issues that young people really care
about – cost of living, especially, housing, childcare,
transportation – and talk about it in a way that felt hopeful and
made people feel like maybe better things are possible,” Litman
said.

The Mamdani bump blends together excitement about the candidate,
interest in leftist policies and zeal for shoe-leather campaigning,
both on the ground and online. The organization recognizes that it’s
not that Mamdani’s exact policy ideas should be the focus of
campaigns nationwide, but that campaigns should be tailored to and
inspired by the people they will directly serve.

Clemson said he watched Mamdani in the New York
[[link removed]] Democratic primary
debate, the first time he had watched a debate somewhere other than
where he lives. He earned a degree in international business, and his
career in blue-collar manufacturing led him to create a YouTube
channel called Working Class Economics, where he explains the economy.
He has a nine-year-old son, so he said he may run for a school board
or the city council.

He saw how Mamdani used man-on-the-street social media videos to talk
to voters in a way that didn’t feel concocted by political
consultants. The campaign and its policies didn’t feel tailored to
the donor class – and the fact that Mamdani was running in the home
of Wall Street felt like a rebuke to the system, Clemson said.

“It just seems like he genuinely cares about his city and the people
who live there, and it seems like they like him too, which sounds like
it should be the case for everybody, but it seems like that’s
rare,” Clemson said. “In politics, there seem to be so many people
who have very little connection to the areas they represent.”

Overall, about 10% of the people who sign up with Run for Something at
any given time run for office, usually about a year or so out from
when they sign up, Litman said. Run for Something often sees people
sign up after elections, including after Democrats’ big loss last
November. Fear and despair motivate people, but so does hope, she
said. Mamdani’s win also came at a time of flagging enthusiasm
for Democrats [[link removed]] and
amid soul-searching on the left for a path forward.

“The policies that you campaign on in the New York City mayoral
election and the policies you campaign on for literally anywhere else,
they’re not going to be the same,” Litman said. “I think the
point is that he really ran values-first, voter-first. His campaign
wasn’t really about him. It wasn’t about his personal story, per
se. It was about what it meant to be a New Yorker, what it meant to be
someone who loves this city and wants to make it better, what it meant
to really listen to voters about what they cared about. That is
replicable, no matter where you are.”

Existing campaigns with similarities to Mamdani – younger
candidates, Democratic socialists, economy-focused campaigns – have
benefited from comparisons to the New York mayoral hopeful.

In Minneapolis, a state senator and Democratic socialist candidate for
mayor, Omar Fateh, secured the city’s Democratic party endorsement
in July after Mamdani’s win brought him more attention.

Zara Rahim, a senior adviser to the Mamdani campaign, said the
campaign resonated because it spoke to the “urgent need for leaders
who will fight for working people” during a time when people are
struggling with affordability.

“This campaign showed what’s possible when you meet people where
they are and offer a clear, bold message,” Rahim said. “That’s
why it made history – with Zohran receiving more votes than any
primary candidate in New York’s history – and why it’s inspiring
so many others to imagine themselves in positions of leadership.
We’re thrilled to see that energy spreading, because everyone
deserves a government that truly fights for them.”

Nick Sciretta, a 35-year-old from Valley Stream, New York, is running
for Congress in the state’s fourth district, a long-shot bid to
unseat an incumbent Democrat, representative Laura Gillen. Gillen
has called
[[link removed]] Mamdani
“too extreme” and “the absolute wrong choice for New York”.

Sciretta, who canvassed for Mamdani in south Queens, feels the
opposite. He was planning to run for office in April anyway – and
then he heard about Mamdani’s campaign.

“The first thought I had was, we need more regular guys running for
positions of power,” said Sciretta, a longtime International
Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees crew member. “Ultimately,
he’s doing something beautiful, which is getting the rank and file,
the regular guys, regular New Yorkers, to believe in themselves more
than anything.”

Sciretta had “lost everything” twice, losing work during the
writers’ strike and then the pandemic, and has moved back home. He
is a one-man campaign operation: he’s gathering signatures to
qualify for the ballot, setting up his own website, tabling in public
or sitting in coffee shops with a sign that he’s running for
Congress.

Mamdani, who is a member of the state assembly, still felt like a
regular person who you could sit next to on the bus, Sciretta said.
That appeal helped others see they could run for office, too, because
you didn’t need to be a certain age or pedigree to win.

“The people who are like, ‘Zohran is bad for the city’ …
they’re afraid of guys like me who want to follow in his
footsteps,” Sciretta said. “Because if there are more Zohrans
everywhere in the country, that’s when real change happens.”

_[RACHEL LEINGANG is a democracy reporter focused on misinformation
for Guardian US. She is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Signal
rachelleingang.241 [[link removed]]]_

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