NEW YORK (TNS) — Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist assemblyman from Queens, is in prime position to be elected the next mayor of New York City.

Read that again: the financial capital of the world could elect a democratic socialist to lead it.

The titanic shift that that would represent cannot be overstated. Then again, it wasn’t the Wall Street types who supported Mamdani. They bet their money on former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

And Cuomo up until a couple of days ago looked to be on a glide path to the Democratic nomination for mayor. At least, nobody thought he’d be conceding the race to Mamdani on primary night.

But it’s not like Cuomo came without baggage. He left office amid a flurry of sexual harassment accusations. Cuomo has steadfastly denied the allegations, but voters, women in particular, have not forgotten.

Cuomo faced criticism for his handling of nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. Others slammed him for his support of congestion pricing and criminal justice reform measures.

To his supporters, Cuomo was hard-driving. To those who felt his lash, he was a bully.

But the establishment backed him anyway, thinking that Cuomo’s huge name recognition and experience, coupled with a pile of money and a slew of institutional endorsements, would be enough to vault him into City Hall.

It wasn’t. And it exposed just how out of touch the city’s political and monied elite are with voters.

The Mamdani vote is a stark message to that elite. It’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 congressional win over machine pol Rep. Joe Crowley writ large.

Mayor Eric Adams also has to shoulder blame for alienating voters. How low has Adams’ stock fallen? He didn’t even take part in the Democratic primary, rightly figuring that he had no shot.

Adams has been an elusive presence in the city over the last four years. His administration has been engulfed in scandal. He cozied up to President Donald Trump and, lo and behold, the Trump Justice Department dismissed a corruption case against the mayor.

Not a recipe for success in New York City, even though Adams remains on the November ballot as an independent.

And then we have Trump, who has been the most galvanizing and disruptive political figure that many of us have ever seen. Trump energizes his own followers to great heights but also inspires fierce opposition.

The Mamdani vote is also an anti-Trump vote. Mamdani voters, many of them young, want big change, radical change. They don’t want to shake up the status quo. They want to tear it down.

It’s been a long time coming, ever since the 2008 financial crash helped give birth to the Occupy movement, but those voters are now very close to getting their chance to show what they’ve got.

Of course, we can’t dismiss Mamdani’s ability to touch that nerve, his ability to reach those voters, to communicate with them, to organize them. To send them to the polls in droves in the middle of a heat wave.

Mamdani hadn’t even spoken to supporters on primary night and the TV talking heads were already comparing him to Barack Obama.

And, yes, like Obama, the elites dismissed Mamdani and paid the price.

Like Trump, the political pros never thought people would actually vote for somebody so extreme. Mamdani proved them wrong, too.

But now Mamdani will be under the spotlight.

He’ll have to explain how he plans to pay for government-run grocery stores. How you provide free transit. How to build affordable housing that’s actually, you know, affordable. How to freeze rents.

Pie in the sky always looks great until it comes crashing down to earth and the bills come due.

I can’t wait to see what Mamdani’s version of “City of Yes” looks like.