Zohran Mamdani is an impressive guy.

By Dmitryshein, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=176121128

This piece was originally meant to be some sort of political analysis on why it’s so impressive and how cool it is to have a brown man as Mayor of New York.

But you know all of that already.

And if you don’t, there’s a million op-eds in newspapers around the world that will gladly give column inches to making that point.

Instead though, I want to focus on a couple of things that I’ve noticed observing Mr. Mamdani that I think have been particularly interesting.



The first is how much he sticks to his guns. This is clearly a man who sat down at the start of this campaign, worked out what he believes in and why, and has stuck to those beliefs throughout everything.

It sounds basic, but this level of planning gives him the self-assuredness to defend his position on basically anything, at any time, even when it’s difficult.

Now you may disagree with some of the views he holds (I know I do), but the fact that he’s firm in his beliefs inspires a confidence and respect that I find is so often lacking in our political system.



The second is how he managed to pivot to some aspect of his core message throughout the entire campaign. Every time any journalist asks him a question, he has a remarkable political ability to frankly not answer it and start talking about how big a problem affordability is.

This is obviously great when he doesn’t want to answer a question (e.g. how are you going to pay for free buses? Well I think what New Yorkers care about is being able to get across their city in an affordable manner and free buses are a way to do that etc etc).

But it also means that every time anyone hears him, which a lot of people do because he never turns down a media opportunity, they’re only ever hearing his key campaign messages.



And finally, he’s such a personable guy, something that made a huge difference for Trump as well. Meeting someone you like on the campaign trail does wonders for how much you want to vote for them, even if you disagree with some of what they say.

It helps that his social media videos showed him as a fairly normal bloke living a fairly normal life. I know about his parents, that he met his wife on Hinge, that he supports Arsenal and that he loves those prototypical NYC food trucks.

After all, there’s a reason so many people think about whether they’d want to have a pint with their elected officials!



All of this was on show when he went to visit the White House over the weekend. I actually thought it was quite impressive how he managed to get Trump onside and how grown-up the whole conversation felt.

In what’s often a comparatively dark world, it’s pleasant to have a shining light suggesting that maybe, just maybe, things won’t be that bad.