Never Zohran is looking a lot like Never Trump

Why New York City is probably screwed

An insurgent outsider surges to the front of the pack to defeat, among others, the scion of a political dynasty. In doing so, he takes positions considered unthinkable to many in the party’s traditional voting base. He is considered so anathema that many in his own party vow never to support him, organizing desperate bid after desperate bid to organize a viable third party challenge in November.

The situation might describe the current predicament facing New York City with the nomination of Zohran Mamdani (of “globalize the intifada,” “seize the means of production”, defund the police, abolish prison fame), but readers will recognize it as a not-too-thinly veiled reference to Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party in 2016 and the failed efforts to stop him after the primaries.

The anti-Zohran forces of today bear a lot of resemblance to the Never Trump movement of 2016, and without a decisive attempt to unify behind a single candidate, are likely to suffer the same fate.

Unlike in 2016, there are serious third party challenges coming from Mamdani’s own party: former primary rivals Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams. Rounding out the field are the Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and the independent candidacy of financier Jim Walden.

The dynamics more closely resemble the typical primary than they do a general election. And unlike in the real primary, there is no ranked choice voting to ensure the ultimate winner is at least theoretically acceptable to a majority of voters. A simple plurality is enough to win.

The few polls that have been released since the primary show a clear path to a Mamdani plurality win, with the Democratic nominee securing 36-41% support, well enough to beat a split field.

We’re now seeing rising demands that the field consolidate behind a single candidate who can beat Mamdani head-to-head. We see it in this statement from former Governor David Paterson (a Cuomo supporter) and even candidate Walden, who is calling for a poll to ascertain who the strongest opponent would be.

At the moment, the winner of that poll would be Cuomo, hence why we're seeing the Cuomo forces expressing the most openness to the idea.

Consolidation would make a lot of sense, but virtually all the incentives are for it not to happen. And there are good reasons it usually doesn’t happen.

Let’s take a trip back to 2016

Around the New Hampshire primary in 2016 is when it first dawned on the Republican establishment that, absent some serious intervention, Donald Trump was on a glide path to the GOP nomination.

Trump was polling and winning primaries in the 30s, theoretically enough for all the non-Trump candidates to beat him if all but one dropped out.

But the question was who? The candidates remaining had distinct regional advantages, and each could stake a claim to be able to rack up significant numbers of delegates on Super Tuesday, useful to blocking Trump at a brokered convention. So nobody dropped out.

With a few exceptions, Trump mostly ran the table from there on out. The theory that none of the supporters of the dropped-out establishment candidates would flow his way was proven false. Trump was easily able to get to a majority once he established a foothold as the clear frontrunner.

In theory, the consolidation would have needed to happen pre-Super Tuesday for the anti-Trump strategy to have a chance of working. But the remaining candidates — Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio — were too evenly matched to have a decisive claim to be the one single alternative. And each had home state primaries coming up where they were hopeful of scoring large delegate hauls.

While the polling is clearer now than then Cuomo is polling strongest, his disastrous performance against Mamdani in the primary casts doubt that this will remain the case in October, or if the collapse will occur even later, as it did in the primary, on Election Day.

If you’re Eric Adams, why would you have any confidence entrusting the future of the city to Cuomo? He blew a thirty point lead in the primary!

The trouble for Adams is that his candidacy likely is dead on arrival. He was indicted by Joe Biden’s DOJ and then subsequently bailed out by the Trump DOJ. His unfavorables are through the roof.

In the poll that his own team released, Adams was running well behind Cuomo and a majority said they would never vote for him, the only candidate for whom that was true.

Candidates run to win, not to stop other candidates

Campaigns exist for a reason. They are a good way to suss out who is strong and who is weak.

Kamala Harris may have appeared strong immediately upon entering the race, but not so much 107 days of campaigning days later.

If you’re a candidate, you don’t just fold up your tent if early polling suggests you can’t win. You campaign and work to build support. Only if that doesn’t work—or if your funding completely dries up—do you reassess.

And from the point of view of Eric Adams, Cuomo is likely to choke again. The primary was a pretty strong indicator of his campaigning skills against the same opponent he’d be facing in the general election.

Maybe this is just motivated reasoning by the Adams camp, but they probably figure that with a couple of months of spirited campaigning they can flip the numbers with Cuomo and stake a claim to be the Mamdani alternative. At that point, voters will bandwagon to whomever can establish themselves as that alternative. In a fluid multi-candidate race, it is too early to rule out that scenario entirely.

Again, the big issue is that Adams is hardly a blank slate. There are good reasons to think that his liabilities as a candidate are even greater than Cuomo’s.

But a clinical analysis of the race in July—just take a poll!—ignores the psychology of virtually every candidate I’ve seen run for office. They run because they themselves want to win, not to prevent someone else from winning. If they see any plausible path at all, they see no reason to drop out.

People also pretend that deadlines to get off the ballot are some sort of magical consolidation trigger. They aren’t. That means the candidates still have time to decide if there’s a path or not.

RFK Jr. dropped out of the 2024 election and endorsed Trump while remaining on some state ballots. He received very few votes. When candidates remain on ballots after dropping out of primaries, their support immediately collapses. Voters, it turns out, are well informed about who is running and who isn’t, and aren’t keen on casting a wasted vote.

But postponing this decision also keeps alive the possibility that the race to be the anti-Mamdani will be similarly stalemated in September, continuing this indecision all the way through Election Day, likely resulting in a Mamdani win.

Some level of postponement may be fine, but not too much. Candidates will need to make the decision to drop out believing fully that they can still win.

A live look at the non-Mamdani candidates in New York City

Anti-Mamdani forces will need to get specific about what they want the candidates to do

Right now, there’s no cost to calling on the field to winnow. But these calls are mostly useless without clearly stating who they would want to have drop out in favor of whom.

Mitt Romney gave a big speech against Trump in February 2016 which was viewed as a call to arms for the Never Trump forces. But the speech didn’t clearly endorse anyone, so the strategy ultimately went nowhere. There may have been good reasons for him not to: anti-Trump forces were clearly too divided on who would be the best candidate to coalesce behind anyone. But that in and of itself was clearly a tell that no one was strong enough to actually beat Trump. Democratic voters in 2008 had no problem sorting out an alternative to Hillary Clinton despite a large field early in the contest.

The desire to beat someone, and the availability of a majority coalition of voters committed to beating them, is not in and of itself a guarantee that they will be beaten. In a situation like this, you need the cooperation of candidates with large egos who have spent years yearning for the office. Basic math suggesting that someone can be beaten head-to-head ultimately ignores the entire psychology of candidates and campaigns.

Only by getting very specific about who you want to have drop out and imposing some fundraising and reputational costs on candidates who don’t does the strategy have any chance of working.