The Work Between Elections
In 1949, my grandfather, J. Lawrence O’Toole, ran for mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He was a bricklayer from Black Rock and a labor organizer who came into politics the slow way: through union meetings, community debates, and the kind of civic life that doesn’t announce itself as such. He challenged Jasper McLevy, the socialist who had governed the city for years and built a reputation for frugality and municipal steadiness.
My grandfather lost that election. For a long time, that loss was something my family referred to now and then, as if its meaning were already fixed. Yet as I watched Zohran Mamdani win the New York City mayoral race this week, that story opened back up. Mamdani, a democratic socialist shaped by tenant organizing and neighborhood mutual aid networks, did not win because of a sudden surge of ideology. He won because civic participation had already been happening — patiently, consistently, out of public view — long before Election Day.
This is the part of politics we rarely describe honestly. Campaigns are not really about speeches, slogans, or personality. They are about whether neighbors talk to one another; whether communities build institutions that last; whether people believe that participating in public life is worth their time. Elections are not causes. They are outcomes of civic work already done.
My grandfather belonged to a version of civic participation grounded in labor. Workplaces were where political life began. The union hall was a form of local government long before City Hall entered the conversation. Bargaining was not abstract; it was a daily negotiation over safety, wages, and dignity. To run for office as a labor leader was simply to extend the logic: if working people live with the consequences of municipal decisions, they should help make them.
McLevy’s supporters saw civic responsibility differently. Their version of public life emphasized stewardship — careful budgets, transparent management, and insulation from corruption. They believed that participation meant oversight and accountability. These were not opposing social classes. They were two different theories of how people should work together to govern themselves.
What connects 1949 Bridgeport to 2025 New York City is not the ideology of socialism. It is the recognition that civic participation is a process, not a performance. Mamdani’s win was not spontaneous. It was the product of tenant organizers knocking on doors year after year, of neighborhood groups coordinating across blocks, of residents building trust in one another long before they were asked to build trust in a candidate. The election did not create that civic infrastructure. It revealed it.
And this matters because of what comes next. Winning elections has a way of disguising how fragile civic participation can be. When a movement gains power, the work changes. Governing requires translation, compromise, patience, and the willingness to hold together coalitions that are not as unified as they once appeared. The meetings get longer. The disagreements get sharper. The stakes get more real. The romance fades and the work begins again.
This is where my grandfather’s story remains useful. His loss did not erase the civic networks he helped build. The labor movement in Bridgeport did not end with that election. It shifted, reconfigured, and continued to shape how working people engaged in public life. Losing did not mean disappearing. Losing meant the work moved into another form.
And winning will require the same perseverance. The civic networks that carried Mamdani to office will need to stay intact, not for celebration but for governance. If they become symbolic instead of practical, the victory will be temporary. If they remain functional — if participation continues when the cameras are gone — then something more durable will have been achieved.
The easy story would be to say that democracy spoke clearly last night. But democracy does not speak clearly. It speaks in fragments, in efforts, in partial agreements, in structures people build piece by piece. It speaks through the slow work of organizing, showing up, listening, arguing, and returning to the same room the next week.
If there is a lesson that connects my grandfather’s loss to Mamdani’s win, it is this: Democracy is not what happens on Election Day. Democracy is the work that makes Election Day matter.
The vote is not the end of participation. It is the evidence that participation happened.
And it has to keep happening.
The work is not the victory. The work is the participation. And the work continues.
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