Earlier this month, Payday Report sat down for a special members’ event with Ted Hamm, author of Run Zohran Run!: Inside Zohran Mamdani's Sensational Campaign to Become New York City's First Democratic Socialist Mayor, recently out from OR Books.
The book is a stunning examination of the long-term grassroots, multiracial organizing that made Mamdani’s unlikely victory possible. There are many valuable lessons for us all to learn from this book. I hope everyone buys it from OR Books here.
Here are a few select excerpts from the interview:
How UAW Helped Mamdani When Other Unions Walked Away;
The unions were not really on board. The only union backing it was UAW Region 9, which is graduate students, essentially, right? So that's a tiny group, but a radical group and very committed, right? That helped to provide volunteers.
Unions Abandoning Cuomo Helped Mamdani
Mamdani didn't have the leadership of the UFT on board and didn't have the nurses’ union [SEIU] on board…. They weren't on board with Cuomo, but they were just sort of neutral. But then there were a couple of unions that were on board with Cuomo, the Hotel (& Gaming) Trades Council, HTC, and 32 BJ, building service workers, so they then switched after the primary (to) Mamdani, and that was a blow to Cuomo. And is one of the reasons that he was able to prevail, I think, is he got all the things (unions) that I mentioned that sat it out, and the big ones, and then he got the ones that had supported Cuomo switched to him.
How Mamdani Combined Class-Based Organizing with Cultural Appeal
"Bernie tends to be more…. He only, really, only wants to talk about class issues, right? And you know, anybody does influence how Mamdani discusses issues. He's talking about universal, essentially universal proposals, right? And but he's not, he's not shying away from talking up identity and in defense of trans and other targeted (groups like) immigrants.
It was really, it was only 6,600 back in October of 2024 which is pretty staggering to think that this group, with only 6,600 members, drove this campaign that ended up getting nearly 500,000 votes in the primary and then over a million votes in the general election, obviously, that they had other partners in that process, but you know that that's a pretty, pretty impressive achievement".
How Mamdani Created a Culture of Fun in His Campaign
"They're creating a culture of fun. They're really trying to create a culture of involvement, right? And sort of, I think they're going to get a lot of…. I mean, obviously, they already have a lot of volunteers, but I think they'll get a lot of people willing to participate in stuff after he's in office. Based on that, because they're, they're making friends, romance, whatever, you know, and doing something positive for the City, right? They certainly could do a lot with parks. I think that would be one of the wisest moves".
Watch the full interview here.
