It is never foolish to be hopeful

Very quick thoughts on the mayoral

It surprises people when I tell them I’m an optimist.

But here’s the thing: I have to be to do what I do for a living.

In the Run for Something feel-good updates I sent the day after the November 2024 election, I wrote:

I say this to myself as much as to you: It is okay — good, even — to have been hopeful yesterday, even as we are devastated today. Optimism is never foolish. Working in politics depends on it: To get up and do the work, we have to believe change is possible.

To think that if we fight for it, the future can be bright even as the present is so bleak requires believing that a better future is possible in the first place, and that we can make it happen.

Mariame Kaba notably says hope is a discipline. You do not simply feel it; you practice it. You are rigorous about it. I try to hold on to that, but even I, ever the professional and personal optimist, have found it hard lately.

I am usually pretty good at compartmentalizing — I only consume the poison I have the antidote for, in the form of news that affects my work or my home life — and let everything else go.

The NYC mayoral election is, alas, the perfect intersection of that. (It’s why I wrote about it twice in the last few months.)

So while I tried to stay hopeful, yesterday I was in peak anxious election day mode. I’m in DC for a work trip and spent my time between meetings and calls anxiously refreshing my social media feeds, furiously ranting about Andrew Cuomo to anyone I talked to (including at a man at an event who told me he ranked him — to which I point-blank responded: So you’re okay with the sexual assault then?)

As the results came in after 9:00 p.m., I felt nearly speechless.

Zohran Mamdani, a 33 year old millennial Democratic Socialist who’d started out polling at basically 0% has handily beat Andrew Cuomo, who had decades of (terrible) experience, name ID, and $30 million in super PAC on his side.

There will be lots of discourse written in the days to come about what this means for the Democratic Party, for candidates, for New York City, for November. I will consume it all voraciously (and will likely contribute to a lot of it).

But today, I just want to sit with the feelings that kept me up until past 1am, getting weepy at my social media feeds.

I feel hopeful, knowing I’ll be raising my daughters in a city led by a mayor who so clearly loves it the way that I do, and who shares my deep belief that the past does not have to dictate the future, that a better way is possible — who wants to make it a place families can afford to live, stay, and thrive.

I feel grateful for the two thirds of NYC who soundly rejected Cuomo, his way of leadership, and his history of corruption and assault (and probably more, as RCV tabulation comes out next week!)

Sorry not sorry but I feel so damn right, as I have spent the last 8 years working my ass off to recruit and support young diverse millennials and gen Z for local office, working off a theory that if we give people candidates to get excited about — candidates who can genuinely and authentically communicate their values and vision in a way that connects to people — then voters would show the fuck up for them, and prove that the establishment is not unbeatable, only unchallenged.

If we have candidates who make it about why voters should want them to win, not why they the candidate want to win, voters will hear that. They’ll get in the fight, too.

And even more directly, I’ve spent the last two years thinking about how a generational shift in power is coming, to the point that I wrote a whole damn book (that is deeply optimistic!!) about what it will feel and look like when millennials and gen Z take over and lead differently. That this feels so timely isn’t luck — it’s just facts.

Finally, I feel such deep affection and delight and pure happiness for the tens of thousands of young people who got off their asses and knocked doors, made calls, and did the hard thing of talking to their neighbors about why it mattered to get involved in this election. They earned this win — the way they (and we) are all feeling today is the kind of victory that can sustain the work in the hard days, and there will be many more hard days.

More thoughts to come. More feelings, I’m sure. (Among many: What a mensch Brad Lander is! What a joy to see solidarity in action! What a thrill to see the worst people feel bad!)

But I woke up as excited as I felt when I finally crashed, and wanted to get it out before the day got away from me.

Yes, as the expressions goes, joy must always be tempered.

But sometimes, also, maybe, we can just enjoy it.