Chronicle Editorial: Why Zohran Mamdani won and what it might mean for Croton.

The winning alliance between a Muslim and a Jew in New York City is a wakeup call for Democrats everywhere, including in our local community.

Many in Croton will have seen at least part of Stephen Colbert’s interview with Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander, but perhaps not the entire thing. So we have posted it above. It goes a long way towards explaining why Mamdani took the Democratic Party primary for NYC mayor with an “upset” victory so convincing that Andrew Cuomo actually conceded last night. While it is still possible that Cuomo will run an independent campaign for mayor, the smart money is already betting against it.

(Cuomo’s concession statement was particularly gracious, not a trait he often shows in public discourse.)

The day before Donald Trump took office as President of the United States, the Chronicle published a commentary entitled “Croton-on-Hudson in the Age of Trump.” Among the numerous topics discussed back then was “Are Democrats blaming everyone but themselves for Trump’s win?” Here is part of it:

“While we have seen a lot of mourning here in Croton over Kamala Harris’s loss, so far we have seen few or no signs here of serious public discussion about the reasons for it. Perhaps that will come in time, but it is not entirely surprising. While we do have some serious political activists in the village, the majority of Democratic voters here are liberals, not leftists or radicals, and their affiliations and voting patterns appear to be as much a reflection of tribal and cultural behavior as serious and committed conviction.

In that way, Croton politics fits hand and glove with national Democratic Party politics. While there are as many shades of opinion about why Trump won as there are pundits and analysts discussing it—and the commenters cannot agree about whether Democrats tacked too far left or too far right—there is nevertheless wide agreement about two major factors that greatly influenced the outcome: The failure of Democrats to convince key segments of the working class to vote for them, and the Biden administration’s full blown support of Israel’s war in Gaza.”

Since that post, many in Croton have mobilized, in various ways, to oppose the Trump administration. That is to be expected, because the overwhelming majority of Croton voters are Democrats. It is still not clear, however, how much self-reflection local Democrats have engaged in about why Trump won.

You don’t have to be a pundit or a seer to understand that Mamdani’s victory has overturned a lot of what passes for political wisdom in and around the Democratic Party, although many pundits are certainly saying that this morning. It is also clear that Mamdani’s clearly stated, morally-based opposition to Israel’s well documented war crimes in Gaza did him no harm in the primary election; if anything, his refusal to be put on the defensive for taking that moral stand won him even more support. As the interview posted above demonstrates clearly, accusations of antisemitism against Mamdani were false and failed to sway New York’s sophisticated voters.

Here in Croton, a group of activists has begun circulating a petition calling upon our Board of Trustees to endorse a ceasefire in Gaza. Earlier this week, we published a Guest Editorial by one of the petition organizers explaining why it had been launched. We can imagine all kinds of excuses that our trustees might come up with to resist doing this. We hope that Mamdani’s victory will demonstrate that taking a firm moral stand is not necessarily “divisive,” but can bring people together around a just cause.

There are also lessons in electoral strategy that our mayor and trustees might take away from last night’s historic events. This coming November, the mayoralty and two trustee seats will be up for grabs in a contested election pitting Croton Democrats against the Voice of Croton. This has come about because many in the village, including many Democrats, do not feel they have been listened to about various concerns they have about the future of our community. They feel that local Democrats, who have governed Croton as an uncontested block for eight years now, have used the power of their political monopoly to ride roughshod over those concerns.

We shall see how Mamdani’s victory influences the national conversation as well as the local conversation here in Croton. One thing is sure: The old conventional wisdom has taken a big hit. We think that is a good thing.

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