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People hear the name \u201cMorris Katz\u201d<\/strong> and picture a balding, 75-year-old accountant. \u201cI get that quite frequently,\u201d he says with a laugh. Instead, Katz is a curly-haired, baby-faced, high-energy 28-year-old political strategist and one of the masterminds of Zohran Mamdani<\/strong>\u2019s surprising victory<\/a> in June\u2019s Democratic New York City mayoral primary.<\/p>\n To become the city\u2019s youngest mayor since 1889, the 33-year-old Mamdani needs to win again in November\u2019s general election, where he\u2019s the favorite<\/a> but will probably be facing three opponents and an onslaught of attacks funded<\/a> by billionaires<\/a>. No matter who wins, though, this year is likely to be remembered in New York politics as the Gen-Z election\u2014as in Z for Zohran<\/a>, but also because of the outsized role that younger operatives and voters are playing in shaping the race.<\/p>\n Curtis Sliwa,<\/strong> the 71-year-old red-bereted Republican candidate, has put his bid in the hands of 25-year-old campaign manager Rusat Ramgopal,<\/strong> who in 2023 ran unsuccessfully for a Queens city council seat. \u201cMamdani isn\u2019t the only one with young staffers,\u201d Ramgopal says after accompanying Sliwa to a campaign event at a Chinese church in Flushing. Indeed, those staffers include 21-year-old college senior Ashwin Prabaharan,<\/strong> Sliwa\u2019s director of youth engagement and volunteer coordinator. \u201cIn a typical campaign, I think a candidate of Curtis\u2019s age would have been sidelined trying to relate to people my age,\u201d Prabaharan says. \u201cBut he\u2019s put young people front and center ever since he started his work with the Guardian Angels. So he understands exactly what affordability and public safety are supposed to be about for kids my age. And inside the campaign, we\u2019re not just manning the phones. Kids like me have real responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Partly that\u2019s because the eccentric Sliwa is a longshot in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by roughly six to one. But it\u2019s also because the candidate thinks younger voters will determine the election. \u201cThe only way to stop [Mamdani\u2019s] momentum,\u201d Sliwa has said, \u201cis go in the neighborhoods where he clobbered [Andrew] Cuomo<\/strong> and recruit millennials and Gen Z\u2019ers to my point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, the primary race was defined by the striking contrast between Cuomo, the 67-year-old former governor, who held a minimal number of events and rode around in his Dodge Charger, and Mamdani, who literally dashed around city streets while making high-energy social media videos. Cuomo and the 64-year-old incumbent mayor, Eric Adams,<\/strong> are both planning to be on the ballot this fall as independents, and both men can point to millennials among their top advisers\u2014including Melissa DeRosa,<\/strong> 42, on Cuomo\u2019s team and Eugene Noh,<\/strong> Adams\u2019s campaign manager, who is in his early thirties.<\/p>\n Yet the age of those staffers is less significant than the fact that most of them have spent their professional lives working in conventional, establishment New York politics\u2014and that the personalities of their candidates are still moored to the 1980s and 1990s. Cuomo, for instance, has brought on a new social media team for the general election and has tried to convey a looser, hipper image, with sometimes awkward results, including breaking out his skills<\/a> as a former tow truck driver to jump-start a stranger\u2019s car. \u201cOh, I have been enjoying Cuomo\u2019s TikTok presence,\u201d Katz says, \u201cbut probably not for the reasons they would like someone to be enjoying it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not going to be able to out-Mamdani Mamdani on social media, but we\u2019ve upped our game there too,\u201d says Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi,<\/strong> though he declined to name the new members of the Cuomo social media team. \u201cIf [Mamdani] wins and, as suspected, he\u2019s not able to achieve what he promised, all it\u2019s going to do is disillusion this generation for a generation.\u201d<\/p>\n The leadership of Mamdani\u2019s campaign, while not purely composed of political outsiders, is steeped in the internet culture and populist politics of the past two decades. Andrew Epstein,<\/strong> 38, created the breakthrough<\/a> videos<\/a> with Mamdani. Speechwriting director Julian Gerson,<\/strong> 28, suggested that Mamdani walk the length of Manhattan days before the primary vote. Elle Bisgaard-Church,<\/strong> his 34-year-old primary campaign manager, \u201cshares a brain\u201d with Mamdani, says a senior campaign operative, and constructed a volunteer army of 50,000 people<\/a>. Senior adviser Zara Rahim,<\/strong> 34, prioritized Mamdani\u2019s outreach to Muslim and South Asian communities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n