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The day after the home of Eric Adams’s top fundraiser was raided, the new leaders of the Working Families Party, the coalition of progressive groups and labor unions, sent around invites to a secret meeting in November 2023.
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The left could see a way to beat the mayor they hated. They just needed a plan.
Gathered in the common room of an apartment building in Long Island City: city comptroller Brad Lander, Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso and state senator Jessica Ramos. Zellnor Myrie, another state senator who ended up running, was invited but didn’t come. Also sitting there: Zohran Mamdani.
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They were all surprised to see Mamdani there.
“Zohran? Is Zohran thinking of running?” Working Families Party co-chair Ana Maria Archila, who helped organize the meeting, told CNN as the votes were coming in, recalling the reactions that went around.
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“I was like, ‘I don’t know, but I know he’s thinking about who should run,’” Archila said.
In that first meeting and several that followed, the other potential candidates closer to launching kept their plans close to their vests, but Mamdani was eagerly participating, pitching and proposing ideas.
Over coffees, he kept saying they needed to find some candidate to run on freezing the rent. He built a platform and staff out of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Last summer, Mamdani told Archila he was jumping in. He wanted to combine what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Brooklyn city councilman Chi Osse had done in breaking down traditional politics with compelling social media and a plan to knock on a million doors, he said. He asked when the WFP would announce which candidate it would rank first on its primary slate and told her, “Give me as much time to get there as possible.”
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