In mid-July, Erik Clemson signed on to a Zoom call from Honolulu, Hawaii, energized by a mayoral candidate in a city far across the country, to hear how he could run for office himself.
Clemson, a 39-year-old machinist instructor who has a YouTube channel where he explains the economy, had long considered a political run some time in the future, but Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory provided a push off the sidelines.
“After I saw Mamdani win the primary in NYC, I decided to stop wasting time and try to learn what I can as soon as I can,” Clemson said.
Clemson is one of more than 10,000 people with an interest in running for office who signed up for Run for Something – a progressive political organization that helps younger candidates learn the ropes – after Mamdani won the primary. He’s part of a surge in young progressives who saw Mamdani’s win in June as hope for a different brand of politics and plan to learn from his example.
Co-founder Amanda Litman called it the group’s biggest organic candidate recruitment surge ever.
“They saw a young person who took on the establishment against the odds and was able to center the issues that young people really care about – cost of living, especially, housing, childcare, transportation – and talk about it in a way that felt hopeful and made people feel like maybe better things are possible,” Litman said.
The Mamdani bump blends together excitement about the candidate, interest in leftist policies and zeal for shoe-leather campaigning, both on the ground and online. The organization recognizes that it’s not that Mamdani’s exact policy ideas should be the focus of campaigns nationwide, but that campaigns should be tailored to and inspired by the people they will directly serve.
Clemson said he watched Mamdani in the New York Democratic primary debate, the first time he had watched a debate somewhere other than where he lives. He earned a degree in international business, and his career in blue-collar manufacturing led him to create a YouTube channel called Working Class Economics, where he explains the economy. He has a 9-year-old son, so he said he may run for a school board or the city council.
He saw how Mamdani used man-on-the-street social media videos to talk to voters in a way that didn’t feel concocted by political consultants. The campaign and its policies didn’t feel tailored to the donor class – and the fact that Mamdani was running in the home of Wall Street felt like a rebuke to the system, Clemson said.
“It just seems like he genuinely cares about his city and the people who live there, and it seems like they like him too, which sounds like it should be the case for everybody, but it seems like that’s rare,” Clemson said. “In politics, there seem to be so many people who have very little connection to the areas they represent.”
Overall, about 10% of the people who sign up with Run for Something at any given time run for office, usually about a year or so out from when they sign up, Litman said. Run for Something often sees people sign up after elections, including after Democrats’ big loss last November. Fear and despair motivate people, but so does hope, she said. Mamdani’s win also came at a time of flagging enthusiasm for Democrats and amid soul-searching on the left for a path forward.
“The policies that you campaign on in the New York City mayoral election and the policies you campaign on for literally anywhere else, they’re not going to be the same,” Litman said. “I think the point is that he really ran values-first, voter-first. His campaign wasn’t really about him. It wasn’t about his personal story, per se. It was about what it meant to be a New Yorker, what it meant to be someone who loves this city and wants to make it better, what it meant to really listen to voters about what they cared about. That is replicable, no matter where you are.”
Existing campaigns with similarities to Mamdani – younger candidates, Democratic socialists, economy-focused campaigns – have benefited from comparisons to the New York mayoral hopeful.
In Minneapolis, a state senator and Democratic socialist candidate for mayor, Omar Fateh, secured the city’s Democratic party endorsement in July after Mamdani’s win brought him more attention.
Zara Rahim, a senior adviser to the Mamdani campaign, said the campaign resonated because it spoke to the “urgent need for leaders who will fight for working people” during a time when people are struggling with affordability.
“His campaign showed what’s possible when you meet people where they are and offer a clear, bold message,” Rahim said. “That’s why it made history – with Zohran receiving more votes than any primary candidate in New York’s history – and why it’s inspiring so many others to imagine themselves in positions of leadership. We’re thrilled to see that energy spreading, because everyone deserves a government that truly fights for them.”
Nick Sciretta, a 35-year-old from Valley Stream, New York, is running for Congress in the state’s fourth district, a longshot bid to unseat an incumbent Democrat, representative Laura Gillen. Gillen has called Mamdani “too extreme” and “the absolute wrong choice for New York”.
Sciretta, who canvassed for Mamdani in south Queens, feels the opposite. He was planning to run for office in April anyway – and then he heard about Mamdani’s campaign.
“The first thought I had was, we need more regular guys running for positions of power,” said Sciretta, a longtime International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees crew member. “Ultimately, he’s doing something beautiful, which is getting the rank and file, the regular guys, regular New Yorkers, to believe in themselves more than anything.”
Sciretta had “lost everything” twice, losing work during the writers’ strike and then the pandemic, and has moved back home. He is a one-man campaign operation: he’s gathering signatures to qualify for the ballot, setting up his own website, tabling in public or sitting in coffee shops with a sign that he’s running for Congress.
Mamdani, who is a member of the state assembly, still felt like a regular person who you could sit next to on the bus, Sciretta said. That appeal helped others see they could run for office, too, because you didn’t need to be a certain age or pedigree to win.
“The people who are like, ‘Zohran is bad for the city’ … they’re afraid of guys like me who want to follow in his footsteps,” Sciretta said. “Because if there are more Zohrans everywhere in the country, that’s when real change happens.”
