Next year will bring the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and with it an irresistible angle for journalists and commentators: New York’s first Muslim mayor marks anniversary of devastating radical Islamic attack on city.

That mayor will be, of course, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate with a huge lead over a fractured field in the Nov. 4 mayoral election. A series of recent polls suggest that, barring some huge, incredible, world-shaking unforeseen development, Mamdani will be elected mayor less than two months from now.

A new CBS News poll shows Mamdani with a 15-point lead, 43% to 28%, over former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, now running as an independent. Republican Curtis Sliwa is at 15%, 28 points behind Mamdani, and current New York Mayor Eric Adams is at 6%, 37 points behind Mamdani.

Even if Adams were to drop out, and there are reports he will, the basic structure of the race would not change.

Another recent poll, by Emerson, was nearly identical, with Mamdani at 43%, Cuomo at 28%, Sliwa at 10% and Adams at 8%. A Quinnipiac survey has Mamdani at 45%, with Cuomo at 23%, Sliwa at 15% and Adams at 12%. And a New York Times/Siena poll has Mamdani at 46%, Cuomo at 24%, Sliwa at 15% and Adams at 9%. Look at all the polls, and Mamdani’s lead is anywhere from 15 to 22 points.

One measure of how weird this campaign is is that even though Mamdani, the socialist, is running as the Democratic nominee, some top leaders in the Democratic Party cannot bring themselves to endorse their own team’s candidate.

The election is less than two months away, and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) – both of whom live in New York City – have not endorsed Mamdani.

Indeed, only recently, on Sunday, did the Democratic governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, endorse the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City. In an op-ed in the New York Times, Hochul said she had had many talks with Mamdani. She said they talked about public safety, religious tolerance, economic development, taxes and other issues.

Remember that Mamdani has either recently embraced or currently proposed abolishing the police, establishing city-paid child care, imposing a potentially business-crippling $30 minimum wage and sky-high taxes, and other so-called progressive policies. (On the other hand, he has recently stopped advocating “globalizing the intifada.”)

“I did not leave my conversations with Mr. Mamdani aligned with him on every issue,” Hochul diplomatically wrote. “But I am confident that he has the courage, urgency and optimism New York City needs to lead it through the challenges of this moment.”

Perhaps Hochul is confident because she and Mamdani were completely, totally, absolutely on the same page on one issue. “I needed to know the next mayor will not be someone who would surrender one inch to President Trump,” she wrote. “Mr. Mamdani and I will both be fearless in confronting the president’s extreme agenda – with urgency, conviction and the defiance that defines New York.”

What could be more important? Yes, New York has some of the most burdensome housing prices in the country; people are leaving the city because they can’t find an affordable place to live. Yes, everything else is insanely expensive, too. And yes, mentally ill and sometimes violent people make using public transit a risky proposition. And yes, public safety is a worry beyond the subways. And yes, there are lots of other problems. But at least the new mayor and the governor will be fearless in confronting the president of the United States. That’s what’s really matters, isn’t it?

New York has had terrible mayors before. To an outsider, it sometimes appears the city has a tendency to make a bad choice, suffer the consequences, pick a problem solver, such as Rudy Giuliani, to fix things, and then enjoy new life, only to later go off its meds again and restart the cycle. Zohran Mamdani would be a new dimension in bad choices, and New York is about to find out what that means.

This content originally appeared on the Washington Examiner at washingtonexaminer.com/daily-memo/3809761/new-york-on-brink-zohran-mamdani-mayoral-election/.