It may not have garnered a lot of attention in Canada, but America’s largest city and global financial centre appears set on choosing its very own version of Justin Trudeau as its next mayor.

Zohran Mamdani is a man with a

brand

, a New Yorker with a remarkably similar look, sound and feel to Canada’s ex-prime minister. Handsome as all get-out, in a particularly boyish, non-threatening sort of way, he’s young, hip, well-coiffed and strategically-attired, his

wardrobe

carefully selected to suit the setting and deliver the message he’s chosen to project that day. Born in Uganda to a pair of glam

parents

— his father a professor of post-colonial studies, his mother an Oscar-nominated filmmaker — he fizzes with energy, has an excellent smile, is absolute murder at selfies.

At 33, Mamdani is made for magazine covers. He excites the young, is thoroughly left wing, thinks

billionaires

shouldn’t exist and promises a cornucopia of popular

goodies

for the city’s struggling middle- and working-classes should he be elected New York mayor as expected in November. Free buses. Frozen rents. City-owned grocery stores stocked with lower-priced offerings, paid for by higher corporate taxes and levies on the wealthy.

What could go wrong? Not much, as far as the coalition of youth, migrants and educated leftists who pushed Mamdani to a stunning victory in the Democratic mayoral primary — and thus the favourite in the fall election — are concerned. His meteoric rise to political stardom — a year ago he was a little-known member of the state assembly — carries broad echoes of the dramatic burst of popularity that carried Trudeau to the prime ministership in 2015. His meticulously calculated social media strategy, online presence, branding, logo, videos and even the wild colours of his campaign materials — dreamed up by a pair of Philadelphia designers — blew the competition away. It didn’t hurt that the “competition” came in the form of the stodgy, discredited, 67-year-old former governor Andrew

Cuomo

.

If anything should have been clear to Democrats following their disastrous presidential defeats of 2016 and 2024, it’s that chaining themselves to tattered scions of outdated family dynasties is anything but a formula for political triumph in the current state of U.S. politics. But no, after watching Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris crash and burn, establishment Democrats went ahead and bet their fate on Cuomo, son of another former governor, just four years after he

resigned

when investigators concluded he’d sexually harassed at least 11 women since being elected to the state’s highest office.

While Canadians may not see New York’s choice in mayors as particularly relevant, even with the city’s US$116-billion

budget

and a population bigger than all but two provinces, Mamdani’s rise signals that U.S. Democrats are nowhere near sorting out the dilemma of Donald Trump and the never-ending diet of disruption he represents well beyond U.S. borders.

Clinton, Biden and Cuomo were all dyed-in-the-wool representatives of a moderate, centrist, middle-of-the-road sort of politics that looks to be dead and buried among Republicans and increasingly feeble within America’s only other major party. A successful takeover of Democratic leadership by its more radical representatives would all but guarantee an escalation of today’s ruthless partisanship to levels hitherto unimagined.

Among mainstream Americans, and in dozens of foreign capitals, a hope has persisted that some day the Trump presidency would end, the spark of the MAGA movement would fade and the world could return to something resembling “normal.” But a headstrong and energized U.S. left bent on battle with the hardened forces of Trumpism would all but guarantee normality had nothing to do with the political future.

The Democratic establishment was in turmoil well

before

the Mamdani

surprise

came along. Former vice-president Harris’s loss to Trump in November left it in disarray, with no clear successor and no obvious plan. The New York Times reported its national committee was “in chaos … plagued by infighting and a drop in big donations.” The party is so busy battling within itself it had little energy to spare for Republicans.

The few signs of life have belonged to its most extreme elements. Firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders have headlined a series of well-attended rallies targeting the rich and old guard. Mamdani, like Sanders, identifies himself as a democratic socialist, and

overcame

Cuomo’s once-healthy lead despite Cuomo’s overwhelming support among the party’s senior figures.

Current New York Governor Kathy Hochul, head of the state’s Democrat apparatus,

withheld

her endorsement and repeatedly mispronounced Mamdani’s name. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who ran for the presidential nomination as a Democrat, gave US$8.3 million in Cuomo’s support. City developers were said to be “gripped by hysteria” at Mamdani’s plan to freeze some rents, while Wall Street was reported as

seized

by

panic

at the

prospect

of a socialist running the city.

Given he would be the city’s first Muslim mayor, Mamdani faced predictable anti-Islam

attacks

and allegations of antisemitism. Though he

supports

the Palestinian movement and has harshly

criticized

Israel, accusing it of war crimes, he denies being antisemitic and received support from a number of Jewish leaders. That in itself reflects the fissures troubling Democrats as the party’s traditional sympathy for Israel comes under strain over its actions in Gaza.

Mamdani still has to win the election, but as the Democratic nominee in the heavily Democratic city he would need to suffer a monumental collapse to lose. Cuomo is keeping his

name

on the ballot even without official sanction. Current mayor Eric Adams is running again, but as an independent after his backing collapsed amid a series of scandals. The Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, is a radio talk-show host and paramilitary

enthusiast

who

twice

tried unsuccessfully to launch a citizen-based anti-crime

squad

in Toronto. Not much competition there.

It’s difficult to believe a detour into glitz, glamour and left-wing economics is the route to a better and more stable U.S. It certainly didn’t work for Canada, and there’s no sign that a quorum of Americans is open to socialist theorems that have failed again and again elsewhere. A credible opponent offering a menu of common decency, civility and shared purpose would seem a better antidote to Trumpist exhibitionism and greed. But America as yet doesn’t seem to have such a person, and New York isn’t America.

National Post

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