Hot Mayor 2025: It's Time

New Yorkers: let's do this.

Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

For the past month, Discourse Blog has been at the forefront of one of the most important political campaigns of our time: the push to elect a hot mayor for New York City. And guess what? It actually might happen.

Ever since we published Samantha Schuyler’s definitive piece on this matter, the leading candidate for Hot Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has climbed ever-higher in the polls—along with the actual temperature in the city. At the same time, our call to elect a hot mayor has spread far beyond the precincts of our blog. People we do not even know literally put it on flyers!

Before we got involved, Mamdani was lagging. Since we got involved, he’s thriving—even leading in some polls. Was our Hot Mayor 2025 campaign the main cause of Mamdani’s ascension over the past few weeks? Did we predict that his poll numbers would spike right alongside the heat index? Who can say? All we know is that these things happened at the same time.

Now, a true cosmic alignment has occurred. Today, June 24, is the day of the New York City mayoral primary. It’s also quite possibly going to be the hottest day of the year. Temperatures have soared into the triple digits.

That’s right: Democratic primary voters might back a hot mayor on a super-hot day. Peak hotness. Fate. Destiny.

Or….they might back Andrew Cuomo, who is the opposite of hot in every single way. He looks like a melting troll, his voice has roughly the same pitch and tone as the construction on the street that makes you want to scream, and he is a disgusting human being and politician. This hasn’t stopped the cream of the New York establishment from backing him. (“Who do I want, the young nice-seeming guy who people like or the crypt keeper who can’t stop touching women….crypt keeper it is!”) They’ve also tried to paint Mamdani, who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor and who has said things like “I think Palestinians should have the same rights as Israelis,” as the next Hitler. (That is not an exaggeration.)

Rarely has a choice been this obvious. Mamdani will definitely not do everything right if he becomes mayor, but he will do one thing extremely right: he won’t be Andrew Cuomo. So if you’re a New York City resident and you haven’t done so yet, get out there today. It’s time. Time for Hot Mayor. Let’s do this.