Gavin Newsom said he hadn’t heard of Zohran Mamdani until a few months ago. They communicated for the first time on Election Day.
But that night’s results have suddenly bound the California governor and the New York City mayor-elect together as two of the most prominent figures on the left — two geographic and ideological poles in a party that for months has had no clear national leader.
“Voters are looking for people who represent the exact opposite of what appear to be strategic, thoughtful, overly political, overly insidery approaches,” said Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic strategist and pollster. “Newsom and Mamdani represent a repudiation of the practice of politics that the Democratic Party has become accustomed to.”
The two could hardly be more different. Newsom has been the establishment-sanctioned favorite in every race since he emerged from San Francisco’s centrist ranks, becoming mayor after narrowly defeating a Green Party favorite and antagonizing his party’s left flank at times on issues like homelessness, tech regulation and transgender rights. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, not only came from outside the political hierarchy, but stunned New York kingmakers by riding an affordability platform to victory.
What they share, in their tandem rise, is a savvy for modern campaigning and a return to the antagonistic posture that powered Democrats at the opening of Donald Trump’s first term — when Democrats retook the House in 2018 — and before Trump’s victories across the map in 2024 not only left Democrats in the wilderness, but had them questioning how aggressively to take him on.
Now, Newsom is bashing Trump from the West, Mamdani is doing it from the East, and both are lighting into Democrats who they cast as insufficiently resistant to the president.
“Pathetic. This isn’t a deal. It’s a surrender. Don’t bend the knee!” Newsom’s office wrote Sunday night on X, before eight Democratic senators broke ranks to join with Republicans on a shutdown deal. Mamdani wrote that “it should be rejected, as should any politics willing to compromise on the basic needs of working people.”
In an interview in Brazil, Newsom — who traveled to South America to showcase California’s environmental agenda at a United Nations climate conference — said Mamdani was among nearly 50 people he texted during a banner night for the Democrats.
As two of the off-year cycle’s main characters, Newsom and Mamdani have served as a spark for a party that spent the year after Trump’s election groping for a path back to relevance — but is now showing new life heading into the 2026 midterms. Both punctuated that shift by condemning a shutdown deal blessed by Senate leadership.
“They both represent generational change from the Democratic Party gerontocracy,” said Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster who once worked for Newsom, and more prominently Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. “Newsom being a leader in standing up to Trump and punching Trump in the nose, Mamdani offering a bold, progressive, economic populist message.”
Newsom, who earlier this year offered Trump an “open hand, not a closed fist,” has been at the tip of his party’s spear, pushing fellow Democrats to embrace partisan combat against Trump while working in concert with national Democrats.
Mamdani captivated New Yorkers with a vision of a more affordable and inclusive city, but he did so while functioning as a living antithesis to Trump: a Muslim socialist who enraptured progressives and built the kind of multi-ethnic, multi-generation coalition campaign managers have dreamed of since Barack Obama left office. Mamdani has said he would work with anyone to address the cost of living — including the Republican president — while also calling himself “Trump’s worst nightmare.”
“It shows the breadth of the party that these two people came out of election night as the big winners,” said Katie Merrill, a California-based Democratic consultant, arguing the outcome showcased two different directions for the party: “the Mamdani way,” responding to Trump and MAGA by going as far left as possible, or “the Newsom way,” which is more strategic and establishment-friendly.
Their wins have Democrats salivating over the idea of re-building a big tent. They prevailed on the strength of distinct themes: Newsom hammered an anti-Trump message and embraced a national frame, while Mamdani focused on the kind of cost-of-living issues that drove voters away from the Democratic Party.
But in their victories they both showed an ability to see around the corner — capturing what voters wanted while being initially written off by political insiders. Few Democrats expected a back-bench state assemblymember to become a leading Gotham mayoral candidate. And in California, Newsom’s redistricting push was initially dismissed even by many Democrats as untenable.
“They both deserve credit for shaping the water they were swimming in a little bit,” said Lauren Hitt, a Democratic operative who has worked for candidates across the country. “Right off the bat neither of their prospects looked great. They both had a good pulse on where voters were even if the headlines and the political insiders were in a different place.”
And they have both embraced a message of unity against Trumpism. Newsom said in an interview with Telemundo that Mamdani was “very good for the party” by pursuing an energetic campaign that brought more voters into the fold. Mamdani used his victory speech to rally his party against the White House, telling Trump directly that “To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.”
On Monday, the incoming mayor praised Newsom’s redistricting measure while taking a swipe at Democrats elsewhere for not being as bold.
“It’s critically important that we understand that in a time where Republicans have an unlimitless sense of imagination to enact their agenda and Democrats seem to be constructing an ever lowering ceiling of possibility, it must come to an end,” Mamdani told reporters at a news conference. “And I think that is an important thing that we have to seek across the country.”
They were not the only Democrats elevated by last week’s blue sweep. Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, by preaching a brand of pragmatism focused on quality-of-life issues like the cost of living. That proved to be a winning strategy in states that were blue-tinted but still in play for Republicans.
Newsom and Mamdani faced fewer constraints on their solidly Democratic turf. They both fit into a lineage of Democratic leaders from New York and San Francisco — cities that both have tentpole industries, deep pools of Democratic voters, and competitive political cultures that function as AAA teams for future leaders. Newsom powered Proposition 50 to victory by leaning into California’s heavily Democratic tilt.
“If you’re a Democrat from the Central Valley of California or from upstate New York, you have to stay in the center lane,” said Darry Sragow, a California-based political consultant. “In New York and San Francisco that’s not necessary.”
In the country’s more conservative reaches, and in Washington, Republicans are eagerly skewering both men as out-of-touch coastal elites. The GOP has spent years lambasting Newsom, accusing him of pursuing his own ambition while failing to address festering issues like homelessness in his home state. Mamdani, meanwhile, has become the villain of the moment — Trump mocked Mamdani as “my liddle communist” — with GOP campaign operatives working to yoke him to every frontline Democrat in the country.
But their ascent is not just about ideology. Newsom and Mamdani also savvily navigated a modern media ecosystem to reach out to voters. Newsom, who has for years warned that Republicans are dominating the new attention economy, said last month that Mamdani’s success showed Democrats “how to build a brand” and “communicate in this new world.”
Newsom enlisted left-wing influencers for campaign events while tweaking Trump on social media with AI-inflected snark and facetious X posts imitating Trump’s distinctive style. Mamdani caught fire with snappy, shareable videos that showed he was fluent in Internet and unbound to earlier and more expensive modes of communication.
Polling suggests voters nationally are far more likely to see Newsom as the party’s leader than Mamdani. And there remains skepticism among Mamdani supporters about Newsom — an establishment Democrat who has been in the public eye for a generation. Newsom’s Trump antagonism can only go so far, they argue.
“He’s playing the old anti-Trump card, albeit deftly, but what’s more interesting is how Mamdani is, with his laser focus on affordability and energizing new constituencies is actually charting a winning course forward,” said Bill Lipton, the former director of the New York Working Families Party, a left-leaning ballot line.
For Mamdani, that’s translated into global celebrity — an unusual spot for a municipal leader who will be leading a city government that employs some 300,000 people. His supporters want to seize on the energy generated by his victory — a volunteer army that helped him turn out a new multicultural coalition — to achieve left-flank policies like hiking rich peoples’ taxes.
“He is a world icon,” said Democratic state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, an early Mamdani supporter. “I would hope the rest of the Democratic Party would recognize what the hell it is and lean into what he’s offering. He’s energizing not only Democrats who have been on the sidelines for a long time, but a whole host of new voters.”
The mayor-elect, though, insists he does not want to become a national figure — a careful posture as he prepares to lead City Hall.
“I view myself as the mayor-elect of New York City,” Mamdani said. “And I try to keep my horizons akin to that New Yorker cover where the world ends in New Jersey.”
Jeff Coltin contributed to this report.
