The Lego Mirror - Politics

Three-ish takeaways from Zohran's win

2025-11-21T06:20:00+00:00

There have been a lot of Zohran Mamdani thinkpieces since November 4th, and I've read most of them! But I want to add three takeaways that I really haven't seen discussed elsewhere in detail.

In the past few weeks people have talked a lot about how Obama's volunteer army fell apart after he was elected and how Mamdani campaign leaders are trying to prevent that from happening by launching "Our Time", a separate entity that can organize former campaign volunteers and keep them politically activated.

But more immediately, I think it's worth understanding that there was a specific effort to prevent a repeat of Buffalo's 2021 mayoral election in which a socialist (India Walton) upset the incumbent mayor (Byron Brown) in the Democratic primary, so Brown launched an independent campaign for the general, rallied the Democratic establishment to support him and not Walton (the Democratic nominee), winning the general by 20 points.

With that context, it made perfect sense that immediately after the primary we saw Zohran moving to consolidate the establishment behind him, including labor and elected officials. It mostly worked, just about everyone backed him except Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. Oh and Jay Jacobs, the chair of the state Democratic party, who refused to endorse Zohran just like he refused to endorse Walton, except at least this time he didn't compare the socialist upstart to David Duke!

On primary day, Hell Gate interviewed Walton and afterwards City & State NY interviewed her too.

But I have yet to see any reporting on how many volunteers came down from Buffalo to support the Zohran campaign in the final stretch. I met a decent amount of people who were very open about why they had come to the city: to prevent a repeat of what happened in 2021.

Because of the natural-born-citizen clause in the U.S. Constitution, Zohran is ineligible to run for U.S. president. Meanwhile it was incredibly obvious that Andrew Cuomo was running for mayor to relaunch his political career so he could run for president in 2028. That would follow the recent trend of NYC mayors running for president, including Bill de Blasio (2020), Michael Bloomberg (also 2020) and Rudy Giuliani (2008).

And of course, way too many people touted Eric Adams as the "future of the Democratic party" and a future presidential candiate. Oops, should've listened to Andrew Yang.

I think it's underrated that Zohran can't run, and so after the primary win, there was no endless dicussion of whether he'd run in 2028 or some made up hypotheticals of him vs. AOC as to who should be the left's standard bearer, etc. And, it's much easier to convey and convince people that Zohran was genuinely interested in improving the lives of New Yorkers as the mayor and not just using it as a stepping stone to higher office.

In 2024, it very much felt that Indians were moving right, with Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy rising in the Republican ranks and Kamala Harris losing. Polling indicated Asians broadly shifted right (though I didn't find anything about Indians specifically). Not to mention the backdrop of Modi's right-wing government rising in India, which undoubtedly affects the views of the diaspora.

Anecdotally, the WhatsApp forwards were getting worse.

Zohran is easily the most high-profile Indian American politician in the U.S., but more importantly, his campaign was backed by incredibly strong South Asian turnout across the board, with Indian turnout rising from 18% to 45%. To quote: "South Asians and Muslims account for just 7 percent of the city’s registered voters, yet they cast an estimated 15 percent of all ballots in the general election." The aunties are activated.

Not to mention, Ro Khanna is now a legitimate 2028 presidential contender who also campaigned with Zohran in the final stretch while Ramaswamy is possibly starting to collapse.

Regardless of how that turns out, it's clear that it's far from inevitable that Indians will move right, and more importantly, we can move them left.

People keep repeating how this mayoral election was like none other, and I geniunely have no idea what they mean. This was my first mayoral election as a New York City resident so it's also my baseline. I expect things to only go up from here, starting with the special election for my assemblymember and then the open primary for my U.S. House district.

In support of Zohran Mamdani

2025-06-22T06:00:00+00:00

Unfortunately I don't have 8.3 million dollars to spend in support of a political candidate, but I do have my blog.

In the ongoing New York City mayor's race (specifically the Democratic primary), I'm supporting, canvassing and voting for my assembly member, Zohran Mamdani. His entire platform is centered around making NYC more affordable, specifically:

freezing the rent for rent-stabilized tenants (previously done by de Blasio)
making buses fast and free (he won a 1-year pilot on this, it was reasonably successful)
free childcare (I didn't have a parenthetical for this)

This is not to mention his various plans to build more housing, both creating new public housing and speeding up construction of private housing.

And he has a plan to create a "Department of Community Safety", which will task dedicated professionals and mental health experts on helping people with homelessness and other crisis response. And that will let police do actual police things.

I know for sure that he can deliver on the first part of his platform, freezing the rent, since the mayor appoints all the members of the rent control board. The rest requires collaboration from the city council and most likely Albany.

It's not a guarantee that it's possible, but if he wins, there will be a public mandate for it, and suddenly, it'll be realistic.

Ultimately I want a mayor who is willing to try new ideas instead of constantly being stuck doing what is "safe" and continuing old policies that have gotten us here. Zohran is that person and my #1 vote.

The more I learn about Brad Lander, the more I like him. Out of all the candidates (including Zohran), I think he is best suited to hitting the ground running as mayor on day one. He seems to have the best grasp on the NYC bureaucracy and has incredibly detailed and technical plans on how to address, well, everything.

I ranked him #2 (in line with Zohran's cross endorsement), but respect and support anyone who ranks him #1 and Zohran #2. If Zohran ends up winning, I hope he gives Brad Lander a significant role in his administration.

I never actually lived in New York during Andrew Cuomo's tenure, but I've read enough from the time and everything that's come out since. The fact that he was governor for 10 years, and HUD secretary for another 4 means that he had the opportunity to fix it in the past, but didn't. It's time for new leadership.

I think this is a perfect example showing that letting people voluntarily resign under pressure is a bad idea; if he had been impeached and removed from office, there wouldn't have been a comeback.

Zohran has been a great representative for me, and I am looking forward to sharing him with the rest of the city.

I told someone once that I'm supporting Zohran because as my assembly member, he's the first elected official to represent me that I'm not embarrassed by. I don't mean that we agree on everything (we mostly do, but not 100%) — rather I think he has a good set of core guiding principles, and sticks by them in ways that are understandable and justifiable.

After having an incredibly embarrassing mayor for the past 4 years, I'm looking forward to one I respect and appreciate. I hope you'll rank Zohran #1 (and Lander #2).

Voting is open today, June 22 (9am-5pm), and then again for the last time on June 24 (6am-9pm).

Subscribing to independent media

2025-03-01T22:33:00+00:00

I broadly support economic boycotts when companies do things we don't like, and participate in plenty of them myself. And I've seen enough people cancelling their subscriptions to The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times after their billionaires owners interferred at the papers.

But in media specifically, cancelling your subscription just exacerbates the funding problem journalists face. If individual subscribers walk away, publications are even more dependent upon the good will of billionaires.

The solution to this is easy though: just invest whatever you were previously spending on WaPo, LA Times, etc. into independent media that isn't billionaire-controlled. If you really want to stick it to them, double or triple your investment. And yes, supporting independent media really is an investment, not just another subscription.

We need more outlets that are accountable to the communities they cover and serve instead of giant conglomerates and corporate boards. More local papers and less news deserts.

I try to put my money where my mouth is, so here's an alphabetic, non-exhaustive list of the various publications I financially support:

404media: technology focused
Drop Site News: politics and war reporting
Heated: climate crisis coverage
Hell Gate: NYC news with excellent writing that doesn't pull punches
Migrant Insider: Washington D.C. immigration reporting, by immigrants
San José Spotlight: San José and South Bay news, especially about local politics
- small disclaimer: Spotlight employs some of my friends
Silver Bulletin (Nate Silver): elections, politics, statistics, sports
Streetsblog: transit news

You are of course welcome to support all of the same publications as me, but I also believe we need a diverse set of independent media organizations and not just a few big ones; so I'd encourage backing other outlets that I haven't listed here too.

SCOTUS and the facts

2023-07-07T00:48:10+00:00

Last week The New Republic published an article by Melissa Gira Grant titled, "The Mysterious Case of the Fake Gay Marriage Website, the Real Straight Man, and the Supreme Court" about how the request for a gay wedding website underpinning the 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis case was supposedly fake.

TNR followed it up with "The Supreme Court Doesn’t Care That the Gay Wedding Website Case Is Based on Fiction", which really gets to the heart of the matter in the opening line: "If the Supreme Court persists in making rulings based on fiction, how can we take any ruling seriously?"

But this is far from a new issue. We can look at the landmark 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision for another example of a ruling based on incredibly questionable "facts". In that case, Lawrence, Garner and Eubanks (all gay), were at Lawrence's apartment. Eubanks, who had supposedly been drinking, became jealous that Lawrence and Garner were flirting. Eubanks left the apartment to go to a vending machine and called the police, falsely reporting that there was a black man with a gun at Lawrence's apartment.

Four officers respond, one claimed they saw Lawrence and Garner having anal sex, another said they were having oral sex and the other two didn't make any mention of it in their reports.

They were arrested and charged with having "deviate sex", specifically anal sex. They would eventually be represented by Lambda Legal and win in a 6-3 United States Supreme Court ruling that struck down all remaining sodomy laws and reaffirmed the unenumerated right to privacy.

Except...the facts of this case were also a lie. Lawrence and Garner weren't having sex, they weren't even in the same room when the police entered!

This would be first revealed in the 2012 book Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas by law professor Dale Carpenter.

Dahlia Lithwick wrote a good summary of the book for The New Yorker, explaining that Lambda Legal needed to find actual plaintiffs who had been charged under a sodomy law to challenge their constitutionality. But being convicted of such a charge had significant consequences, so attorneys wanted clients with "with little to lose". Enter Lawrence and Garner.

Here's how Lithwick described it:

The legal opportunity depended, however, upon persuading the defendants to go along with an unusual strategy. High-powered lawyers would represent Lawrence and Garner, as long as they agreed to stop saying they weren’t guilty and instead entered a “no contest” plea. By doing so, the two were promised relative personal privacy, and given a chance to become a part of gay-civil-rights history. The cause was greater than the facts themselves. Lawrence and Garner understood that they were being asked to keep the dirty secret that there was no dirty secret.

That’s the punch line: the case that affirmed the right of gay couples to have consensual sex in private spaces seems to have involved two men who were neither a couple nor having sex. In order to appeal to the conservative Justices on the high court, the story of a booze-soaked quarrel was repackaged as a love story. Nobody had to know that the gay-rights case of the century was actually about three or four men getting drunk in front of a television in a Harris County apartment decorated with bad James Dean erotica.

They pled no contest to the charges and largely stayed out of the limelight while their attorneys took the lead and won a landmark victory. (Lithwick has a parenthetical stating, "Carpenter is careful throughout to show that none of the civil-rights lawyers lied or misrepresented the facts.")

You could presumably write a similar article titled, "The Supreme Court Doesn't Care That the Anal Sex Case Is Based on Fiction" (consider this to be the alternative title for this blog post). It is entirely believable that a cop in Texas in 1998 would falsely accuse two gay men of having sex so they could be arrested for something after responding to a false report.

It's not hard to find other cases where the Court relied on faulty facts, take a look at the dissent in last year's Kennedy v. Bremerton School District for example.

It's certainly worth asking whether this even matters. Dareh Gregorian wrote a piece for NBC News this week titled, "'Sham' website customer likely didn't affect Supreme Court ruling on same-sex weddings, experts say". Good to know, but this doesn't address the opening question: "If the Supreme Court persists in making rulings based on fiction, how can we take any ruling seriously?"

To put it another way, in Lithwick's New Yorker piece, she pointed out, "Since the days of Brown v. Board of Education, and right up to District of Columbia v. Heller, the 2008 handgun-ban case, major test cases, [attorneys] knew, have turned as much on selecting the perfect plaintiffs as on the law being challenged."

And if you can't find them, just make them up.

Working the polls: reflection

2016-11-10T02:44:00+00:00

As I said earlier, I worked the polls from 6 a.m. to roughly 9:20 p.m. We had one voter come in at the nick of time at 7:59 p.m.

I was glad to see that we had a lot of first time voters, as well as some who just filled out one issue on the three(!) page ballot, and then left. Overall, I've come to the conclusion that everyone is just like me and votes just to get a sticker. We had quite a few people who voted by mail and stopped by just to get their "I voted!" sticker.

I should get paid $145 for working, which I shall be donating to https://riseup.net/. And I plan to be helping out during the next election!

Working the polls

2016-10-19T21:21:00+00:00

After being generally frustrated by this election cycle and wanting to contribute to make it less so, I decided to sign up to work at the polls this year, and help facilitate the election. Yesterday, we had election officer training by the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voter's office. It was pretty fascinating to me given that I've only ever voted by mail, and haven't been inside a physical polling place in years. But the biggest takeaway I had, was that California goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure that everyone can vote. There's basically no situation in which someone who claims they are eligible to vote is denied being able to vote. Sure, they end up voting provisionally, but I think that is significantly better than turning them away and telling them they can't vote.

The Lego Mirror - Politics

Three-ish takeaways from Zohran's win

No repeats of Buffalo#

Being ineligible for president can be a boon#

Indians can move left#

Final thoughts#