In Seattle, Katie Wilson, a transit activist, is leading in the polls against the incumbent mayor after touting her history advocating for reduced fares for low-income residents and youths. In Texas, Senate candidate Colin Allred last week unveiled his “A More Affordable Texas” agenda, which included a ban on price-gouging and restoring tax credits to renewable energy companies to lower utility bills. And in New Jersey, congresswoman and gubernatorial front-runner Mikie Sherrill’s first ad took aim at soaring energy costs, promising that “Day 1 as governor, I’m declaring a state of emergency on utility costs using emergency powers to end these rate hikes and drive down your bills.”

This newfound focus on affordability by Democrats has emerged as the animating force behind many of this year’s political campaigns. It coincides with Zohran Mamdani shocking the political world with his 13-point win over former governor Andrew Cuomo in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary. That victory came in a race that began with a focus on crime and public order, with left-leaning candidates disavowing previous progressive stances on policing and quality-of-life concerns. Mamdani tacked the other way, never deleting tweets calling for the defunding of police. Instead, he focused relentlessly on three campaign promises devoted to lowering costs: free buses, free child care, and a rent freeze on regulated apartments. In February, half of the city’s voters told a pollster that crime and quality of life were their top two concerns; by July, a poll by left-leaning Data for Progress found the top issues were affordable housing and lowering costs.

“From the beginning of our thinking about this race we knew that it was time for a politics that was directed to the struggles in people’s lives, a politics where when you set a policy people didn’t need it translated as to what it would mean for them,” Mamdani told me. “Too often it feels as if politics is an act of imposing a vision on voters as opposed to having a vision that is a reflection of the needs of those voters.”

Almost immediately after the primary Mamdani was anointed by both liberals and conservatives as the face of the Democratic Party — by the former because of his charisma and vision for a new kind of activist government and the latter because he is a Ugandan-born 33-year-old with little experience and is an........

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