Vance: Here’s How Mamdani Won the New York Mayoral Primary

Vice President JD Vance is criticizing New York City Democrat mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, accusing him of building a coalition of what Vance called “downwardly mobile, college-educated people,” and carved-out ethnic blocs by pandering to shared hatreds.

“This is a guy who won high-income and college-educated New Yorkers, and especially both young [and] highly educated New Yorkers, but he was weakest among black voters and those without a college degree,” Vance said of the 33-year-old New York state assemblyman in an acceptance speech Saturday for the Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award in San Diego.

“That’s an interesting coalition. Maybe it works in the New York Democratic primary. I don’t think it works in the United States at large,” the vice president said.

However, Vance expressed sympathy for disaffected wealthy voters.

“I think that we should care about all the people in our country, particularly those downwardly mobile, college-educated people who feel like the American dream is not quite all that it’s cracked up to be. But we have to be honest about where [Mamdani’s] coalition is … It’s about elite disaffection and elite anger.”

Vance noted that the other part of Mamdani’s coalition-building success is exploiting foreign ethnic conflicts that have little to do with American life.

“That base was supplemented by carefully selected ethnic blocs carved out of the electorate using identity politics as the knife,” he said.

“That … explains Mamdani’s bizarre appeals to foreign politics intended to signal to one particular group of New Yorkers or another.”

“Let us ask ourselves: Why is a mayoral candidate in our nation’s biggest city whining about banning [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu? … Why is a New York mayoral candidate attacking Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, as a ‘war criminal’? Why is he talking about ‘globalizing the intifada’? In fact, what the hell does that even mean in Manhattan?”

Vance suggested the answer lies in a weaponization of collective hatred.

“They don’t need a unifying ideology of what they’re for, because they know very well what they’re against,” he said. “What unites Islamists, gender studies majors, socially liberal white urbanites, and Big Pharma lobbyists … it’s hatred.”

Vance concluded his attack on Mamdani by suggesting that the New Yorker represents what separates the modern Democratic Party from the Republican Party.

“The most important part of statesmanship is to be for something. And I think what was so different about President [Donald] Trump’s campaign compared to the 30 years of failed GOP politicians during my lifetime—it wasn’t just that he articulated what was bad … [Trump] was also offering a positive vision that people could get behind.”