Ben Shapiro

Branding.

How to present radical ideas wrapped in the language of authenticity and youth.

and movement and the streets.

He wasn't very good at it as a rapper, but he got considerably better at it as a politician.

After his inability to deliver in the private sector, Mamdani fell back on what he knew best, activism, advocacy, and politics.

In 2018, he pivoted to a role as a foreclosure prevention and housing counselor at Chaya Community Development Corporation in Queens, assisting low-income immigrant homeowners.

This gave him the street cred he was looking for in order to claim that his policy proposals

were born directly out of struggles of the working class.

He then ran for office and won a seat in the New York State Assembly representing District 36 in Queens.

But let's pause here because what is equally important to answer, aside from who is Zorin Mamdani, is why did New York City vote for him?

This has as much to do with the man and the system he was brought up in as it does the context and climate of New York City itself.

The current problems of New York City only got this bad under decades of poor democratic governance.

So how did it go from this

to this.

The city doesn't need to look at Venezuela or China or Cuba to understand where socialism leads.

They need only look back into their past.

From Mayor Robert Wagner Jr.

in the 50s and 60s, responsible for unionizing the public sector, to John Lindsay, who despite his conservative ties, governed like a liberal, expanding welfare rules, pouring borrowed money into housing.

Then came Ed Koch,

and David Dinkins, who, while balancing the budget, refused to touch rent control.