Recently, the crowd booed Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu at Fenway Park in a public rebuttal of their administrations.
Massachusetts Democrats will try to explain it away; crowds at Fenway skew older and whiter, the right-wing media machine exaggerates these events and 37,000 Sox fans are not representative of Massachusetts voters. However, Fenway is a cross-section of Boston; it includes working people, families and lifelong Democrats who grew up watching Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz. Something is being communicated and Democrats nationwide would do well to listen to it.
It is not that Healey or Wu are unpopular in the traditional sense: both of them consistently poll between 50% and 60%. However, they have increasingly abandoned or quietly dismissed policies or programs they were elected on.
Wu ran as a champion for public transit. Yet, she spent the last year requiring personal sign-off on virtually every street safety project in the city, stalling the agenda voters elected her to deliver. Her new budget cuts the eviction legal aid program she once held up as a model.
Healey is seeking reelection while most Massachusetts voters say she has failed to address the housing crisis or the migrant situation adequately. Her polling numbers are sinking fastest among people with lower incomes — the people her party claims to represent. Her administration spent billions on hotels to serve as shelters for families, closed them all and made it harder to qualify for the remaining shelters.
Then there is Senator Ed Markey, running for reelection at the ripe age of 79. He has served in Congress longer than most voters have been alive. When asked about concerns over his age, he responded, “it’s not your age, it’s the age of your ideas.” When voters were asked to describe him in a single word, the most common answer was “old.” Not corrupt, racist or sexist. Just old.
These are not the crises of villains. These are the crises of politicians who have been disconnected from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. They govern adequately on paper but have lost the very thing that makes politicians successful and is hard to replicate: that feeling that they are on your side.
Over 200 miles south of Fenway, the 34-year-old democratic socialist mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, feels it in abundance.
On his inauguration day, Mamdani rode in a yellow cab driven by Richard Chow, a 67-year-old taxi driver from Myanmar. Chow is no stranger to the mayor, having met Mamdani in 2021 when drivers faced record bankruptcy rates after buying permits to own their cabs. This was not a publicity stunt with a random cab driver; it was a continuation of a years-long relationship born out of mutual support.
The people he shows up for are not abstractions to him; they are people he has been arrested with, walked in marches with, sat for lunch with and so much more. During his victory speech, Mamdani addressed the “Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.” These are the lines of a mayor who is approachable and present for the people of New York City.
One of the keystones of his campaign was free childcare for all New Yorkers, a promise that he has already announced steps to make good on. When public officials follow through on their promises, the people take notice and act accordingly.
Leading up to his hundredth day in office, he ran a bracket tournament for New Yorkers to choose what problems need fixing most. Mamdani has delivered on hot-button issues among New Yorkers, like potholes and snow removal. During the winter blizzards, his efforts to recruit snow shovelers brought in over 7,800 people to assist with snow removal efforts.
With all this in mind, you would expect his approval rating to be much higher than 43%. However, Mamdani’s approval rating doesn’t tell the whole story. Unlike Wu and Healey, who both won opposition, Mamdani won a hotly contested election where his opponents spent over $40 million on smear campaigns.
Another accomplishment that differentiates Mamdani from other Democrats is his relationship with Donald Trump. No other Democrat has walked into a meeting with Trump after previously being called a communist and Islamist, then walked out after securing the release of a detained Columbia student and being called a good man by Trump during the State of the Union.
Mamdani maintains this relationship with the president and even has supporters among MAGA, with the “MAGA for Mamdani” movement emerging during the election. His broad appeal to the working class and his unique approach to governance have propelled him to an improbable campaign and an even more improbable victory.
The Democratic Party needs to study, not distance themselves, from Mamdani’s leadership approach. Three of the top Massachusetts Democrats form a picture of a party that is fine: their approval rating is high and they are politically durable, but they lack an enthusiastic voter base.
A party that cannot generate genuine enthusiasm for its candidates is always just one bad election cycle away from losing big. Massachusetts Democrats have a choice to make before it’s too late. They can either continue to operate within the safety of a blue stronghold or they can learn from the man in the yellow cab.
Dylan Podlinski can be reached at [email protected].
