The first video I ever saw of New York City’s mayor-elect was one that was a bit hard to swallow.
He stood on the street corner in New York just days after the 2024 election, mic in hand, asking voters to talk to him about why they voted the way they voted.
People — many who looked like me, workers with the memory of immigration still visible in their rearview mirror, abuelas with accents — came up to him and told him that they had voted for Donald Trump because they lost faith.
These voters spoke of a system that ignored their issues, that took them for granted and that has failed to deliver on affordability. One woman said the people were “not really feeling (the Democrats’ message) in their pocket.”
Another said he would vote for a Democrat who paid attention to “the regular Americans and their economic needs.”
And over the next year, that is exactly what Zohran Mamdani did. You don’t have to agree with Mamdani to respect the campaign he just ran. Mamdani won last week for a simple reason: He directly and relentlessly delivered a consistent, disciplined message that was tailored to what the voters in his city were telling him. Food is too expensive. The cost of housing is too high. Child care is unattainable.
Put the labels of his much-fearmongered politics aside and listen.
You’ll see a politician who listened to his voters and then honed in on an economic message that directly addressed the concerns they had in a way that felt personal, engaged and present.
The president calls it communism. Mamdani calls it democratic socialism. I call it people-first politics.
Be present. Listen. Be bold enough to be willing to try things to address the voters’ core needs.
That same formula will work anywhere in America, and it will certainly work here in Kansas City, where voters want better public transit, fear creeping housing costs and being displaced from the neighborhoods they made special, and see their grocery bills climbing faster than their wages.
The solutions and tools may look different, but the theme is the same. Voters care that tax incentives are going to projects run by contractors who don’t hire our local union workforce. Voters care that their sidewalks are in disrepair or, sometimes, not there at all. Voters care that corporations are buying up the housing stock in their neighborhood.
Voters care. They want to see politicians who do, too.
At the end of the day, most voters just want to see politicians who hear them and will work with them to make the city better every day. They want a message of hope and politics that understands their pain.
It’s true in union halls. It’s true at neighborhood association meetings, and it’s just as true north of the river as it is south.
It’s true in New York. It’s true in Virginia, and it’s true in Kansas City.
