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By Jennifer Steinhauer
Ms. Steinhauer previously served as City Hall bureau chief for The Times.
Some attacks on Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign have focused on his plans to create city-owned grocery stores, make bus rides free, offer baby baskets of diapers to new parents and freeze rent for over two million New Yorkers. One of the stranger and more personal attacks focused on his summer scavenger hunt. Mr. Mamdani, who is 33 and a State Assembly member, went from one little-known nook of New York to another — and was promptly denounced as unfit for office.
A member of The New York Post’s editorial board called his base “adult-kickball-league D.S.A.-nerd Mamdani cultists” in a jeremiad against the scavenger hunt. Mayor Eric Adams suggested on social media, before leaving the race last week, that the scavenger hunt was nefarious. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running against Mr. Mamdani for the mayoralty, sneered at it. The ability of a simple scavenger hunt to rile Mr. Mamdani’s detractors showcased a panic that seemingly unites many in the political old guard, even if they didn’t name it: The youngest Americans are taking over American life.
