Zohran Mamdani‘s win was an upset. It broke a system that favored establishment candidates.

But that was in seventh grade, and he was 12.

The Iraq war was in full swing 21 years ago. The 9/11 terrorist attack was a shared lived experience for New York tweens.

I knew Zohran as the kid whose usual look was an oversized Arsenal jersey, basketball shorts, and sneakers, plus a cable-knit sweater in cold weather. He led a system-breaking bid to win a schoolwide U.S. presidential election simulation.

The simulation was an exercise held only on presidential election years. It was carried out over the course of the 2004 fall term at the Bank Street School for Children.

So while Zohran’s victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary shocked the country last week, it was no surprise for many of us who knew him when. “Anyone who was there for that never had a doubt in their mind that Zohran had the gift and the magic to pull something off like this,” Evan Roth Smith said.

I DM’d Evan in March, when Zohran’s campaign first began posting eye-popping fundraising figures and catchy Instagram reels.Evan-now an internationally recognized political consultant-had been Zohran’s running mate in that mock election 21 years ago.

Bank Street is a progressive teaching laboratory. It is indeed a K-8 school housed within an eponymous teachers college, where collaborative class projects and interactive simulations were a staple.

the student body was small and close-knit. Each grade was divided into just two homerooms, or “sections.”

As part of the 2004 mock election, the eighth graders’ two sections were assigned either the Republican or Democratic Party, and each fielded a candidate. Ali McKersie said the simulation’s success hinged on involving all the older kids in the school.

McKersie taught at Bank Street through 2024,and her section was assigned to the “Republican” side at the time. “It was this prospect for eight classrooms across the upper school to bond together around really meaningful learning,” she said.

“It was just learning at its best. It was messy and exciting, grounded in real knowledge.”

For McKersie, the simulation reflects a credo of the school’s founder, Lucy Sprague Mitchell: “A striving to live democratically, in and out of schools, as the best way to advance our concept of democracy.” the lower grades were assigned other civil society roles, like the press and board of elections.

Our grade was told to take on the roles of special interests and lobbies, like the National Rifle Association or the National Organization for Women. Collectively, Grades 5 to 8 made up the electorate.

but my seventh grade class was a peculiar group of preteens-one that debated politics for the fun of it. “There were a lot of sickos in our class,” Evan said of us prepubescent political junkies.

we revolted at the rule that only the eighth graders could field a candidate. Zohran and Evan asked the teachers to let underclassmen run as independents, and they relented.

Any two underclassmen could partner up and gather 30 signatures from fellow students to run. There would be a third-party primary to narrow the field to one ticket, to go up against the “Republicans” and “Democrats” in a general election held at the end of term.

Zohran and Evan recruited john McAuliff to be their mock campaign manager.McAuliff is now running for a GOP-held seat in the state House in Virginia, where he resides.

“He was cooler than me and remains cooler than me,” said John. He added that while his politics aren’t the same as zohran’s today, “we all lived in a time where we were experiencing a lot of frustration, not dissimilar to right now, with the Washington governance making a war of choice in the Middle East.”

They adopted an equal rights, anti-war platform that proposed spending money on education rather than the military. The third-party primary was hard-fought, with a crowded field of newly empowered independents.

The mamdani-Smith ticket prevailed by just one vote, against second-place finisher, fifth grader Serena Kerrigan. Now a social media influencer, Serena was just 10 at the time, but that experience was “seared” into her memory.

The simulation had, at this point, created subterfuge. Serena recalled a rumor that the eighth graders were in fact trying to push voters her way because they feared the prospect of facing Zohran in the general.

And they were right to. Zohran adopted a cow as his autonomous party mascot, leaning into the fact that, for tweenage reasons now lost to time, “cows were a meme in our grade,” my classmate Ema O’connor reminded me.

“He also successfully straddled the two social groups at the school, the more jock types and the freaks,” Ema said. The cow created a graphic identity to contrast with the GOP’s elephant and the Democrats’ donkey-and became the basis for witty electioneering.

Posters that played on the “Got Milk?” ad campaign plastered the bulletin boards in the hallway. After Zohran secured the endorsement of NOW, the slogan graduated to “I Want a COW Right NOW!”

But after winning this bitter primary that had divided the underclassmen, Zohran managed to appeal to a sense of class solidarity, aided by his charisma and smile. His campaign was also bolstered by a polished performance in the debate against his eighth grade adversary.