Zohran Mamdani and the Total Freak-out of NYC Power Brokers

Within 24 hours of Zohran Mamdani’’s Democratic-primary win, New York City’s ruling class was engaged in a collective freak-out. “The sky is falling, feels like the vibe,” an adviser to one billionaire told me on June 25, as the city awoke to the likely prospect of a 33-year-old socialist mayor. By lunch that day, the Partnership for New York City, a group made up of CEOs, big landlords, and other people who think they own the city, was throwing together an emergency Zoom meeting. With rare uniformity, these interests had coalesced in the primary…