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Did Zohran Mamdani follow the Hope Springs approach to winning over Voters? [1]
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Date: 2025-07-07
As some may remember, Hope Springs from Field PAC [dated website, to be updated after Labor Day when we are knocking on doors in fewer states] was involved in the special election in NY-03 last year. Our remit was to attack (or canvass/GOTV) the more Republican areas of the district, especially where the Vaunted Nassau Co. GOP Machine had exercised great control of elections there. Over our six weeks on Long Island, 3,277 volunteers came out in the cold to knock on doors for Tom Suozzi in Republican strongholds.
Here’s the thing. Even though we started small (as, quite frankly, we do everywhere in the beginning), our Voter Contact (some called it Engagement) in these GOP dominant areas not only won over voters but volunteers eager to employ this approach — voter-led discussion the led into GOTV (get out the vote). By the end, for Election Day GOTV, we were exporting volunteers to much more Democratic precincts.
Until last month, i would have said the greatest impact we’d had was importing our Ohio (2023) knowledge to used (hunter-like) heated vests to canvass in the cold (and our warming vehicles to oversee those canvassers). But since (and, really, even before) Zohran Mamdani won the NYC mayoral primary, others have asserted that this was the Mamdani campaign adoption of listening to voters as their central organizing strategy which these volunteers attributed to Hope Springs’ involvement in NY-03.
I’ve been involved in political campaigns for decades, something more typical on the Republican side than on our side. My own assessment was that Mamdani’s campaign tactics had more in common with the Obama’s campaign in 2007 than anything else. But i can understand why our New York volunteers feel this way. The Mamdani campaign “felt familiar” to some of them. The emphasis on listening to voters — and, especially, on not correcting voters when they knew better — seemed to them to be lifted straight from our pre-canvass trainings.
But Mamdani’s pivot from what voters told his volunteers to persuasion came straight out of Iowa and the Obama approach in 2007. The “use your personal story” part is more remembered, perhaps, but it was all keyed off what voters were telling us was their issue or concern.
Several volunteers forwarded me the Lydia Polgreen column from the NYTimes as proof that Mamdani had adopted Hope Springs tactics to win. In it, she argues:
Mamdani’s win was a rebuke of the strategy, such as it is, that many leading Democrats have advocated in the face of Trump’s shock-and-awe attempt to remake the presidency and the country in his dark image. Haplessly veering between not “getting distracted” by Trump’s lawless actions and signaling their moderation in the face of Trumpian antics as their base marches in the streets, Democrats are missing the core political reality of our time. [...] Mamdani’s approach in both that video and his campaign — not shaming anyone for supporting Trump but actually listening to what these voters were seeking, then championing those things — is a blueprint for Democrats everywhere
I keep coming back to the fact that Hope Springs was conceived out of the belief that our (Democrats’) decision to forego canvassing at the height of the COVID pandemic meant that we could lose a whole generation of leaders who understood the importance and impact of Voter Contact at voter’s doors — and, thus, a whole decade (or more) to Republican electoral resurgence. We weren’t reinventing Voter Contact — we were employing best practices as they existed before COVID, the things we wanted to insure got based down to the next election cycles leaders in field organizing.
So what we did in NY-03 wasn’t innovative in the same way as Mamdani’s TikTok strategy. It may have been new to Long Island Democrats (who knows? remember, we were knocking on doors in the Republican-dominant areas, not the Democratic strongholds), but it certainly wasn’t unknown before 2020. And, to be honest, Mamdani’s TikTok feel incorporating enthusiasm and curiosity is all his. It might have seemed similar to our training of “Smile: no one will ever remember what you said but they will remember the impression you leave behind” to our 2024 volunteers but i see it as an evolutionary improvement over that bit in our pre-canvass training spiel. Both are aimed at making voters feel better about Democratic candidates, but they aren’t exactly the same, are they?
I’m of the belief that we have a lot to learn from the Zohran Mamdani victory. Yes, we already knew that
No one wants to be taken for granted or have their politics or values assumed because of their inherited identities. It is political folly to assume that vast categories of modern Americans — young people, women, immigrants and their descendants, Black people — experience their lives as anything but complex and individual rather than conforming to a group program.
There are elements of the Mamdani strategy that i hope we can incorporate in Hope Springs Voter Contact. But here’s the thing that some Democrats may have forgotten: asking voters what they think and what their issues and concerns are is not new, not even in New York. This was central to the Democratic machine in olden days, when voters were much more concerned about getting a job, whether in local government or their neighborhood. Voter concerns may have changed (but have they really?), but they certainly haven’t changed as much as the way Democrats have normally interacted with them. Mamdani is as much old school as he is new school.
Having considered this, i personally think that Lydia Polgreen has just as important a point to emphasize: “to win in this strange and fractious new era of American politics, there are two key questions that leaders everywhere will face from voters: Are you listening? Can I trust you to look out for me?”
We Democrats would do well to remember this. Young, old, incumbent or new candidate, voters have a right to know. A right to expect. And a right to see this from the Democrats we elect to public office.
If you are able to support Hope Springs from Field’s Voter Contact strategy of listening to voters, our efforts to protect Democratic voters, especially in minority communities, expand the electorate, and believe in grassroots efforts to increase voter participation and election protection, we would appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization
If you would rather send a check, you can follow that link for our mailing address at the bottom of the page. Thank you for your support. This work depends upon you!
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[1] Url:
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