Being the native New Yorker that I am I couldn’t help but get a little swept up in the torrent of stories that emerged from the New York primaries that were held earlier this week that gleefully announced what was being sold as a blue tsunami. Just about every national news outlet based in New York City, from the NEW YORK TIMES to the entire news operation of NBC–not even including its now semi-orphaned corporate cousin MSNOW–touted the victories achieved by several Democratic socialists in their primaries in higher-profile New York City neighborhoods. And it didn’t just stop at there as THE HILL’s Ashleigh Fields grudgingly noted:
Democratic socialists racked up wins in New York state Legislature primary elections on Tuesday with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) sparking the blue wave with his political endorsements…Aber Kawas, a Palestinian-American, triumphed in the state Senate Democratic primary for District 12, while state Sen. Jabari Brisport (D) secured more than 78 percent of the vote to win another term for his seat in District 25, with the GOP primary in that district canceled. Democratic socialist candidate Jessica González-Rojas is leading her primary in District 13, according to DDHQ, although the results have not yet been finalized.
Even ostensibly more objective and less downstate-centric observers such as WGRZ-TV Buffalo’s Dave McKinley shared their own June surprises:
Political pundits are still unraveling Tuesday night’s upset victory by Jon Rivera in the Democratic primary for New York State Senate in the 61st district. Rivera was a 10-percentage point victor over Jeremy Zellner, the four-month incumbent who is also the Erie County Democrat Party chairman and was the party’s endorsed candidate.
All this in the wake of the like-minded Nithya Raman emerging as the de facto challenger to the regime of my dear beloved homewrecker Karen Bass–who somehow chose to enlist the strategist behind the Biden and Harris campaigns of 2024 as her secret weapon to stave off her challenger–here in La-La Land and the reminder that the DSA wing has already claimed the leadership of Chicago and Seattle. It all but annointed New York mayor Zohran Mamdani as the new face of the Democratic party and now officially joining AOC as the wet Dream Team of the kampucha and Ryze-addicted supporters of snarky nerds like the Young Turks’ John Iadarola, who has finally stopped obsessing over daily blips in wastewater statistics to now devote his life to whining, obsessing and literally shrieking at every single stupid thing that the fat fool in Washington and his band of merry men do. Not to mention a whole bunch of personal friends who are otherwise decent and intelligent folk who vehemently defend their “need to vent” to join him and celebrate these victories in a manner akin to V-J Day.
I’m not about to reduce myself to debating how spot on or delusional their newly ignited feverish prayers are or aren’t. I’ll leave those battles to the likes of USA TODAY’s Amethyst Martinez who noted that not every resident of the Big Apple has shifted their giddiness from Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns to Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez:
Multiple Democrats have come out against not only Mamdani for endorsing them, but the candidates themselves. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who supported Mamdani during his own campaign, said of the mayor on CNN: “All of us are a little frustrated with the Democratic Party. But you don’t blow it up. That’s what MAGA has done.”… Minority Speaker Hakeem Jeffries also expressed frustration with Mamdani after the key wins in three New York districts. “The mayor and I agree to strongly disagree about some of his endorsements,” he said of Mamdani not supporting incumbents. “He’s got work to do in terms of the conversations that he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward.
But I will point to my own experience in getting out of one’s bubble to suggest that it might be a tad premature to think that what can work in New York can be seen as a template for success all over the country.
My first week with FX was spent not in my cozy little corner office furnished with an oversized set piece from a failed game show but conducting focus groups in a Peterbilt plant and a strip club in Peoria, Illinois. The network was very much in transition–pretty much the reason I was seen as a fit–at that point, having begun production on the freshmanic comedy spoof SON OF THE BEACH that Howard Stern was an executive producer on that many of my colleagues and industry observers saw as the definitive statement that the failed strategy of building a network around live talk shows eminating from a Madison Avenue loft was history. Especially since the stated goal was to finally achieve carriage on Time Warner’s signature New York City cable system that it had been denied to that point. Stern’s non-stop shilling of both his show and our network was being hailed as our seminal strategy.
But my boss Peter Liguori, all too often a self-admitted “glass half empty” believer, was astute enough to know our long-term success would need to be found well beyond the New York City he also was a native of. So the same week I and a couple of other recent hires were finally in place we all took off to the home of Bradley University to interact with the aforementioned rank and file of those other venues–not to mention the patrons of the local Walmart and Steak n’ Shake. I was tasked with adding a research veneer to it all to justify the expense, particularly the tips we gave the strippers for their –ahem– participation.
What we learned was in spite of the bullsh-t we were propogating to our management and indeed ourselves the fine denizens of central Illinois couldn’t care less about Howard Stern and looked in disdain at anything they found to be too New York-focused. They were indeed quite happy that anyone had come from a big city to bother to ask them what they thought about TV at all–I’ll admit Peoria wasn’t high of my list of preferred test markets. They did express a strong desire to see shows where people were being put in a position to do the right thing by their families and co-workers in spite of whatever actual laws might have been on the books to complicate it. When the original pitch for what was then known as THE BARN came in a couple of months later that learning drove Liguori’s decision to put it into development. That ultimately evolved into what you might know was THE SHIELD, and you know the rest of that story.
Maybe to you this should have all been self-evident. At the time it wasn’t. Once our team schlepped out to the heartland of America in person only then did they finally grasp that concept–one I was one of the few to already know since that was my job and mission at my previous career stops. I acknowledge the Mamdani generation and those that identify as such are far too arrogant, lazy and paranoid to do that. But I’d at least urge them, as I am doing with increasing impatience to the TDSers in my world, to perhaps pay a shred more attention to otherwise unknown and perhaps more significant potential winners cropping up in the flyover states that deserve some additional amplification. At least one other prominent hero in their world did take such note last week, as THE ADVOCATE’s Desiree Guerrero wrote:
Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is in Little Rock, Arkansas, today to add his official endorsement to Democrat Chris Jones’ Congressional campaign, according to the Arkansas Times…Jones, an accomplished scholar with degrees in math, physics, and nuclear engineering, is throwing his hat in the political ring for a second time, after coming in 2nd to Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the race for governor in 2022. The outcome was not extremely surprising in the state that has remained red in its elections since the 1960s; however, progressive Democrats are pushing to turn that tide in the South.
I’ve been honestly surprised how unaware my otherwise decent friends were of Jones versus the more polarizing likes of Valdez and Avila Chevalier–or, for that matter, Mr. and Ms. DSA themselves. I really, really wish they might spend a tad more time sharing the exploits of candidates like Jones rather than yet another nitpicking of whether or not a mystery Aquaman carved a 350-foot gash in the lining of the Deflecting Pool in front of the Arc de Trum–er, Lincoln Memorial.
One can do that online rather easily. Or one could go to Peoria and ask a few questions of one’s own. I’ll even make it a little easier for you than it was for me. Start with Peoria, Arizona.
Until next time…