New Delhi, June 27 -- On the tense final night of New York's Democratic mayoral primary, with polls closing soon, candidate Zohran Mamdani wasn't holed up in a campaign war room. He was scrambling in a Brooklyn park, searching for a ride after sending his own driver to help last-minute voters.

Campaign volunteer Charlie Dulik spotted him, according to an AP report. "He said he'd met some kids in the park who still hadn't voted, so he sent his personal driver to get them to a poll site," Dulik recalled. Mamdani hopped into Dulik's 2007 Toyota Highlander instead. Hanging through the sunroof, he made frantic last-minute appeals to passing pedestrians and cyclists, repeatedly shouting, "It's razor thin!"

That raw energy foreshadowed a seism...