Blue Tuesday

The tide has rolled in on the November 2025 elections — not all the way in, as we await outcomes on the West Coast that are likely to be blue in any event. My quick verdict before I head to bed (and a flight tomorrow that will keep me away from writing for the next few days) is: That sure could have gone better! But not much better, at least not realistically. There was never much reason to expect a good outcome tonight, given the heavily Democratic terrain up for grabs.

But still, it’s an undeniably sour night: Zohran Mamdani is now the mayor-elect of New York City, and that is a problem first and foremost for New Yorkers. Let it never be said that they did not enthusiastically embrace their own downfall! I remember when the city of Chicago narrowly voted to slit its own throat in 2023, electing Brandon Johnson in the narrowest mayoral race in city history on a mere 38 percent turnout. (This has predictably led to . . . recriminations in my town.)

Whatever else you can say about Mamdani — I have been fairly creative myself in recent weeks — he won a majority on Tuesday night, and with higher turnout than the New York City mayoral race has seen in three decades. This suggests many remarkable things about the state of youth politics, some of which I discussed this morning in the Carnival of Fools. But Mamdani is going to run New York for the next four years, and residents are about to find out how well an avowed communist can manage the most complicated city on planet Earth.

As a flex this morning, Mamdani announced that he had cast his vote for himself on the socialist Working Families Party line instead of the Democratic Party line. If you’re seeking for obvious omens of things to come, look no further. The sole redemptive irony is that, as my colleague Noah Rothman said, the national Democratic Party is going to own Zohran Mamdani, even though Mamdani himself clearly has contempt for them. Tonight was more than just an election in New York: It was a shotgun wedding.

In New Jersey, Jack Ciattarelli — a likeable and talented campaigner — has lost to grim functionary Mikie Sherrill in the New Jersey governor’s contest, an unfortunate fate for both the state and for a candidate forced to run uphill in both of his races. But low Latino turnout (and disappointing performance among those who did) suggests that Trump’s unusual strength in the state in 2024 was sui generis to him, and not transferable to other Republican candidates. Maybe in 2029 the stars will properly align to send a sensible Republican to Drumthwacket once again. Until then, New Jerseyans can count on four more years of the same gray misery as the last eight, as they fumble for loose change amidst the couch cushions just to pay the electric bill.

And in Virginia, the colorless Abigail Spanberger predictably defeated Winsome Earle-Sears for governor, with quite the thumping: an eleven-point margin of victory as of this filing. Spanberger’s victory was predicted by all months ago, because it was overdetermined: Republicans hold the presidency, which historically is a death knell for their competitive chances in Virginia even before it began to turn ever-darker shades of blue. Combine that with Trump’s uniquely antagonistic attitude toward the federal government — which long predates the shutdown — and Winsome Earle-Sears’s mismatch for the Virginia political environment, and only the margin of the loss was remotely surprising.

But, alas, Sears’s loss was so sweeping that it doomed Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares as well, who barely lost to the vile Jay Jones in the attorney general’s race. Miyares ran significantly ahead of Sears, but you can only outrun the top of an unpopular ticket by so much, and in the end he fell short by five points. Virginians will now have as their top law enforcement officer a man infamous for fantasizing about slaughtering his political opponents — or maybe their children, to teach them a lesson. And that, apparently, is what they wanted.

Wish America luck. We’ll need it, now more than ever.