Conversations around the effort to defeat insurgent mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani have often started with a seemingly unrelated question: “Do you summer in the city?” At least they did for much of this past summer, when the ruling class of New York City still believed that a well-funded unified campaign to defeat the democratic socialist was on the table. Now, as Election Day draws near and a sense of fatalism sets in, the highest echelons of wealth and power in Gotham are panicking as a bungled attempt to reassert an old order enters its final push and becomes a desperate scramble, not only in the city but also within the Democratic Party at large. The stakes are much higher than one mayoral election. It’s about whether or not the rich and powerful can still command politics in the bea

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