What San Francisco Can Learn from Zohran Mamdani

Progessive San Francisco should not look for their own Zohran Mamdani, but they can learn a lot from his approach to rethinking progressive coalitions.

In the aftermath of Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in the New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary last week, it is natural, at least in San Francisco to ask what this city can learn from Mamdani. The answer is not that San Francisco should try to find its own Zohran Mandani. Mamdani is an extraordinary political talent, but he is also very much a New Yorker who has a distinctly New York story. In San Francisco a progressive coalition should be led by a San Franciscan with a great San Francisco story. Similarly, because of the demographic economic and other differences between the two cities Mamdani’s coalition cannot simply be replicated or rebuilt here in San Francisco.

Nonetheless, there is much that San Francisco progressives can learn from the New York primary. One of the most significant things that Mamdani did throughout his successful campaign was to reimagine what a progressive coalition in New York might look like. Since at least the 1970s it has been axiomatic that African American voters, Latinos, LGBT voters and liberal Jews are essential to progressive citywide coalitions, but Mamdani lost the African American and Jewish vote and did not do particularly well with either of those other groups.

The only two successful progressive mayoral campaigns in San Francisco's history relied on a coalition similar to the one that sent David Dinkins to office in 1989 and Bill de Blasio in 2013 in New York and elected Harold Washington mayor of Chicago in 1983. Before Dinkins or Washington, in 1975 George Moscone crafted an historic coalition in San Francisco that relied on a huge African American vote and substantial majorities of the Latino and gay vote as the backbone of the coalition. Moscone then expanded that coalition through the support of progressive neighborhoods and renters as well as labor unions. Twelve years later Art Agnos won an election for mayor with a very similar coalition.

It is now apparent that the Moscone coalition, which was recreated by Agnos in 1987, is no longer the winning progressivecoalition in San Francisco. The rather obvious evidence of that is that no progressive has won an election for mayor since Agnos who lost his bid for reelection in 1991. Similarly, trying to recreate the Dinkins coalition would not have been a winning strategy for a New York progressive this year.

The particularities of Mamdani’s coalition may have been only possible in New York. Bringing together voters under forty, many of whom were white and had college degrees and were deeply concerned about affordability with limousine liberals, other white progressives and South Asian immigrants as well as some Latino voters was an extraordinary political accomplishment, but it is unlikely to be the precise winning coalition in other cities such as San Francisco.

Therefore, rather than replicate the details of the Mamdani coalition, the focus for San Francisco progressives should be on replicating the approach. In other words, thinking deeply about, or reimagining, what a progressive winning coalition could look like is of the utmost importance.

In San Francisco, the key to a winning progressive coalition, as opposed to one that might feel good on paper, is to recognize that a big part of the vote for any progressive citywide candidate must come not only from working class people and new immigrants but from ideological leftists, many of whom are doing okay economically, but still concerned about affordability. This also includes more affluent people for whom rent control might be a principle that they support but not something that affects their everyday lives and therefore not all that important to them.

Many of these progressive voters may believe in living wage legislation or social programs for young people, but they don't work those jobs and their children don't participate in those programs. This is the reality of the affluent San Francisco that exists now compared to the working class city that sent Moscone to City Hall in 1975, and was still working class enough to send Agnos there in 1987.

For Mamdani the key to reaching those ideological progressives was both his strong outspoken criticism of Donald Trump, including his willingness to use the word fascism, as well as his unapologetic criticism of the state of Israel and his alignment with the more radical elements of the Free Gaza movement. The former spoke to older ideological liberals. The latter spoke to younger ones, while also pushing away an important part of the older 20^th century progressive urban coalition.

Again, the point here is not that a candidate in San Francisco must do the same thing as Mamdani, but they must think about how to reach ideological progressives as well as different segments of poor and working class San Francisco in order to build a new winning coalition. For example, for many ideological progressives in San Francisco a hugely important issue is climate change, yet that issue, which will have an enormous impact on the city in the coming years and decades, often goes completely ignored in campaigns and political discussions. A candidate who could galvanize progressives around climate change could mobilize an important building block of a future progressive coalition.

Mamdani also excelled at reaching voters, particularly younger voters, through the platforms and media where they live. That is also an essential lesson progressives can learn from New York. It may not be possible to have a candidate as charismatic and mediagenic as Mamdani, but a strong social media game combined with a huge field operation is the right strategy to defeat very well-funded candidates like Andrew Cuomo in New York, or whoever right-wing tech money gets behind in San Francisco.

The challenge in San Francisco is the same puzzle Mamdani’s campaign solved so brilliantly in New York-first to recognize the old coalition isn’t working and then to determine how to marry ideological leftists and progressives to at least some segment of the working class and lower income population. The details of the answer will not, and should not, be the same in San Francisco, but the approach must be.