Most politicians who emerge victorious on election night don’t have their victory speech introduced by their field director. But most campaigns aren’t run like Zohran Mamdani’s, which saw an astronomical 100,000 volunteers knock on three million doors to deliver him victory in the New York City mayoral race. On stage that election night, it was Zohran’s field director, Tascha Van Auken, who spoke before bringing out the socialist mayor-elect.

Much about Mamdani’s campaign is worth studying. From its message discipline to its communication strategy to its successful building of a winning working-class voter coalition. But its massive field operation, led by Van Auken, has sometimes gotten short shrift in mainstream media accounts of the campaign’s success. That operation didn’t come out of nowhere. Tascha is a key architect of the broader New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) field operation, and of its entire electoral strategy. Her work as a leader in NYC-DSA goes back to 2017, when socialists in New York City first started plotting out what it would take to run socialists for office and then win. Nearly a decade later, a socialist is taking office as mayor of New York City.

For the Jacobin Radio podcast The Dig, Van Auken spoke with Jacobin editor Micah Uetricht. You can listen to the conversation here. The transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.