The Zohran Mamdani Machine
Can he actually build one?
In April, Colossus, my new novel, will appear. I encourage you to pre-order now. You won’t be disappointed. Here’s National Book Award nominee Dana Spiotta on why you should read Colossus: “The slick, rich, right-wing pastor Teddy Starr is a charismatic confidence man in the American vein (part Elmer Gantry, part Jay Gatsby, part Donald Trump). As fast talking as he is, as amoral as he is, Barkan gives him a fascinating, complex inner life. This thrilling novel skewers the cynicism of our current moment, but it also strikingly renders the human drama of fathers and sons, the tension between legacy and possibility.”
Zohran Mamdani, naturally, has referred repeatedly to the legacies of Franklin Roosevelt and Fiorello LaGuardia as he attempts to implement his vision of social democracy in New York City. Roosevelt, along with Lyndon Johnson, built the American welfare state, and LaGuardia was the popular mayor who benefited greatly from New Deal largesse. LaGuardia was a machine-busting man of the people, half Italian, half Jewish, and any progressive mayor would wise to nod to his legacy as much as possible.
There is another great populist power of the 1920s and 1930s who will, understandably, not be invoked by Mamdani as he takes office on January 1st. I certainly wouldn’t advise my old campaign manager to say his name. But since I’m a writer and do not have to take any political considerations into account, I can say that the history Mamdani should be studying most closely is not in New York at all. There was, once, a thirty-five-year-old insurgent Democrat who won a shock election, throttling the power elite of his state. The combined might of the Democratic establishment and the business class wanted this Democrat dead—politically, at least, and maybe literally. They did everything they could to stop him. The trouble for them was that this Democrat was young, dynamic, and knew how to exploit the new technology of his age. The problem, too, was that the working class and poor genuinely loved him. He was a mesmerizing public speaker; no one could look away from him for very long. He made grand promises to the underclass. He was going to, he vowed, make their lives better in a very short amount of time. He was going to free them, as much as he could, from ignorance and despair.
Remarkably, he nearly did. Even his bitterest critics could concede that.
Huey Pierce Long Jr. delivered for the people of Louisiana.
Long is mostly vilified today, remembered as Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren’s popular and overrated novel, All the King’s Men, and for serving as a model in a better, if unflattering, novel by Sinclair Lewis that was revived in the Trump age, It Can’t Happen Here. Historians on the left and right routinely portray Long as the American demagogue, the homegrown fascist, interchangeable with Father Charles Coughlin in the rogue’s gallery of 30s antagonists who could have brought full-blown autocracy to America if they ever got the chance. Long was plotting to run against FDR from the left, and he was assassinated before he could do so; most liberals and conservatives sigh with relief, just a bit, when they recount this turn of events. When Donald Trump first rose to power, the ghost of Long was paraded around again. There was no shortage of think pieces that sought to link the two men.
And there is reason to declare Long, at least, a strongman. As the popularly-elected governor and senator from Louisiana—Long, unlike actual fascists, believed in continually winning votes, and could do this very well—he dominated his state like no other politician before him. He routinely intimidated and browbeat legislators. His ironclad grip on the state police shielded him from legal scrutiny. He was accused, like many machine bosses, of committing voter fraud. He built a vast patronage network and fired those who rose against him. He derided the “lying” press and even created his own newspaper to counteract them. When he became a senator, he was still the de facto governor, and ensured only an absolute loyalist would sit in the executive mansion as he went off to Washington D.C. to promote his “Share Our Wealth” program. He meddled extensively in the affairs of Louisiana State University, getting students expelled who criticized him in the school newspaper. He was known to even try to devise his own plays for the football team.
All of this, however, must be put up against the actual record. In less than eight years—four as governor, the rest in the Senate—Long accomplished more for his state than any single executive, perhaps, in American history. The Kingfish oversaw the construction of a staggering amount of roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, and state buildings. He founded the LSU Medical School and aggressively boosted funding for the flagship university. He established night schools that taught 100,000 adults to read and established a famous free textbook program that boosted public school enrollment by 20 percent. He modernized mental health facilities. He was, for a Southern Democrat, notably not a race-baiter, and tussled with the Ku Klux Klan. Even as he himself lived lavishly—Long built a Pharaonic governor’s mansion and favored expensive suits—he fought for the poor against the rich, especially Standard Oil, the single succubus corporation that had dominated the pre-Long political scene. On the campaign trail, he promised to lower utility costs and understood, once elected, he’d have to follow through. He summoned the utility monopolies together and told them to lower their prices or he would have the state take over their companies. “A deck has 52 cards,” he explained. “And in Baton Rouge I hold all 52 of them and can shuffle and deal as I please.”
The Lousiania he found, upon his election in 1928, was desperately poor. Thousands had no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and could not read. What little income they drummed up was often dependent on the next harvest, and there was no easily accessible scheme of crop insurance to protect small farmers from disaster. Public services were mostly nonexistent because the political class simply refused to provide them. An aristocratic planter class, along with corporate interests in New Orleans, controlled the state Democratic Party, which held absolute power. The “Old Regulars” were Louisiana’s version of Tammany Hall and unlike its New York counterpart, there was only patronage and graft with little in the way that trickled down to ordinary people. Voters, largely, knew they were being cheated and oppressed, but no one until Long was able to organize them. He could, unlike other politicians, name his enemies: Standard Oil, the Old Regulars, anyone who was actually getting rich at the expense of the impoverished masses. He traveled the state with a sound truck, which had not been done before, and delivered speeches at a breakneck pace. On Election Day, the Old Regulars were startled to find out Long had led a genuine populist revolution and defeated them.
Mamdani, as mayor of New York City, won’t enjoy the same power Long, as a governor, could wield in his own state. He needs to answer to a governor and a state legislature. But unlike every other mayor-elect who came before him, Mamdani arrives with an actual base of mass support. Like Long, he is a mid-30s leftist insurgent who defeated the Democratic establishment. Within one term, Long had completely subjugated the Old Regulars and built his own machine in its stead. Mamdani, so far, has taken the more accommodationist tact, defending Hakeem Jeffries, the likely next House speaker, even as Jeffries only offered a tepid endorsement and could move to damage him if he ever felt it benefited his own political prospects. Mamdani has taken meetings with the real estate and Wall Street elites, and sought to work with them, as much as he can, as long as he can further his agenda. Mamdani is, by nature, friendly, and he wants to coalition-build. These are good instincts.
But at some point, Mamdani will have to wield sticks as well as carrots.