Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani sweeps New York mayoral primary

Zohran Mamdani’s June 24 victory in the Democratic Party primary to become the party’s nominee for the New York mayor’s election in November sent the political establishment and economic elite into a tizzy.

Democratic socialist Mamdani vanquished the former three-time governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo’s $25 million war chest—filled by billionaire former mayor Michael Bloomberg, real estate interests and Wall Street titans—couldn’t defeat someone who was a virtual unknown only a few months before.

When the city tallied all the votes in New York’s ranked choice voting system, the result wasn’t even close. Mamdani won 56 percent of the vote.

Cuomo and current Mayor Eric Adams, who sat out the primary because he is running as an independent, attacked Mamdani as a dreamer, a neophyte, and most disgracefully, an antisemite. Not to be outdone, President Trump called Mamdami, a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a “Communist Lunatic” and, more outrageously, threatened to deport the naturalized U.S. citizen.

The good news was that despite all that the establishment Democrats and Wall Street threw at Mamdani, voters didn’t buy it. In a time when the bipartisan establishment is criminalizing criticism of Zionism and the state of Israel, Mamdani did not back away from his support for Palestinians and his condemnation of Israel’s war in Gaza. If nothing else, Mamdani’s win showed that the U.S. isn’t inexorably moving rightward, even in New York City, where Trump made large gains amidst anemic Democratic turnout in the 2024 presidential election.

Mamdani focused his campaign on a simple set of promises stemming from the increasingly unaffordable cost of living for ordinary working people in New York City. These included pledges to freeze rents, make buses free to ride and to open city-owned grocery stores.

Mamdani’s message resonated widely especially among younger and immigrant voters in New York. Mamdani won with almost 470,000 votes out of more than a million cast. In contrast, in the 2021 primary election that Adams won, Adams won 289,000 out of about 801,000 votes cast. Mamdani managed to increase the electorate by bringing in a higher number of younger voters than many thought possible. Compared to Cuomo, Mamdani swept in the most multiracial areas of the city.

Since winning the election, Mamdani has secured commitments from labor unions that had backed Cuomo. And Black voters, a major part of the Democratic Party base in which Mamdani underperformed, are moving towards him now. Given that he is the Democratic Party nominee in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, he is the favorite to win in November.

Not that his opponents will stand down. Cuomo joined Adams in launching an independent bid, and the perennial Republican candidate, former Guardian Angels leader Curtis Sliwa, is also in the race. The anti-Mamdani forces will have millions in Wall Street, landlord, and pro-Israel money at their disposal. But they have no positive agenda. And they have a collective action problem. Each of them thinks they are the most formidable opponent to Mamdani and will stay in the race to prove it. As a result, they will split the anti-Mamdani vote and likely all end up as losers. Good riddance to them.

If Mamdani wins, what can we expect from his administration? JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon called Mamdani a “Marxist” “pushing the same ideological mush that means nothing in the real world.” Despite all this ridiculous rhetoric branding him as a dangerous radical, Mamdani’s proposals are modest. Mamdani and his supporters in DSA openly embrace the early 1900s’ model of “sewer socialism.” This moniker originated as a put-down of Socialist Party city officials who eschewed radical politics in favor of humdrum provision of city services.

But the reformers who implemented it—especially in Milwaukee, Wis., the bastion of some of the most conservative Socialists—chose to embrace “sewer socialism.” To them, “socialism” meant running “clean” (not corrupt) governments that delivered public services. This type of city administration is clearly preferable to corrupt cronyism, but it’s hardly the stuff of the transition to socialism.

The Wall Street Journal even found some millionaires and business owners to go on the record supporting Mamdani. They recognize that income inequality and affordability has hurt their ability to recruit talented employees to work in the city. They argue that paying fractionally higher taxes can improve the quality of life in the city—and will enhance the amenities that so many of their anti-Mamdani cohort like about the city too.

Moreover, Mamdani endorsed policies, like loosening regulations on small businesses and land use, that dovetail with so-called “abundance” agenda that is all the rage with “centrist” neoliberal Democrats. Last September—before he announced his run for mayor—he met with Kathy Wylde, a leader of the city’s business elite. Wylde told the Wall Street Journal that “[Mamdani] said, ‘Look, I’m not in favor of government taking over your business.” . . . “He made clear that he’s not anticapitalist in that sense.”

Two of his proposals—appointing members of the city’s Rent Stabilization Board committed to his pledge to freeze rents and fare-free buses—are within his power to implement as mayor. In fact, the previous liberal Democratic Mayor Bill deBlasio implemented similar rent-stabilization policies. His plan for city-owned groceries is a pilot project aimed at providing one store in each borough as a “proof of concept.” In a city of more than eight million, this is hardly a threat to the retail grocery sector.

His more ambitious proposals, such as universal pre-K education, will require approval from New York state for the taxes to fund them. But as JW Mason points out, in a sympathetic and well-informed look at Mamdani’s proposals:

But it’s worth noting here that the substantive goals of Mamdani’s proposals are, at least notionally, shared by the Democratic mainstream. The recently passed city budget includes money for a pilot program for universal childcare, and Governor Kathy Hochul has her own taskforce studying the issue. Everyone agrees that housing is a major problem, and that addressing affordability will require a mix of land use reforms and public money.

What distinguishes the socialist position, in this context, is not its aims. It’s the willingness to take seriously the problem of how to get there—meaning how to mobilize mass support, but also how to pay for it, by raising taxes if necessary.

But here’s where Mamdani’s agenda will run up against other forces in the Democratic Party determined to co-opt him or to break him. He has picked up endorsements from mainstream Democrats like Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who had earlier endorsed Cuomo. But other high-profile Democrats like New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries—who would be in line to become Speaker of the House if the Democrats win the House in the 2026 midterm elections—haven’t endorsed Mamdani. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has shown no willingness to further Mamdani’s plans with higher taxes.

In his runs for office, Mamdani has always run as a Democrat. As this DSA-insider account of the predicates for Mamdani’s victory argues, running in the closed Democratic primary is a crucial aspect of DSA strategy. This may provide DSA-backed candidates with a more ready-made electorate, but it also makes them captive inside a capitalist party. Not wanting to be ostracized from people who hold influence over their agenda or their advancement leads candidates to make concessions to the mainstream that undercut their independence or even their ability to deliver for their supporters. This process helps to turn nominal socialists into “regular old Democrats.”

We’ve already seen that process taking shape with Mamdani. Social democrat Eric Blanc may consider Mamdani’s rejection of “defunding the police” (a goal that Blanc called “performative ultraleftism”) as a brilliant stroke to avoid having to answer multiple “gotchas” from reporters and pro-cop trolls. But it’s not going to help him deal with the NYPD, a resource-sucking army that will declare war on him the minute he tries to take any action to curtail its abuses. In a meeting with executives in the Partnership for New York, the city’s de facto chamber of commerce, he said he was open to retaining the current police commissioner, Jessica Tisch (daughter of Leow’s billionaire CEO James Tisch).

At the same meeting, he also pledged to discourage activists from using the slogan “globalize the intifada,” a phrase which has been the pretense for multiple attacks on him, even though he has said repeatedly that he doesn’t use it.

What will hold Mamdani to fulfill his promises to working-class supporters, especially when he faces opposition from Wall Street, the police or establishment political forces? His supporters look to the 50,000 canvassers his campaign claimed to mobilize. As Liza Featherstone put it, “the mass movement that elected him must be prepared to help him succeed, as the ruling class (especially the real estate industry), the Trump administration, and the police make every effort to make his mayoralty a failure.”

While this is theoretically possible, it has almost never happened. There are too many differences between the mechanics of an electoral campaign and a social movement needed to win reforms. Marxists have long contended that elections are the “lowest form” of politics that don’t require the type of political commitment or mobilization that a true social movement entails.

There’s also the compromised position that someone like Mamdani, as chief executive officer of a city and boss of hundreds of thousands of city workers, will face. First, he will have to staff an administration, undoubtedly pulling many grassroots activists into the government. That means many who could be pressuring the government from the “outside” will be on the “inside,” defending the mayor’s agenda instead.

Will the nominal boss of the NYPD use his office to mobilize protests when the police brutalize or murder someone on his watch? Will the CEO and employer of teachers and other city workers support them if they strike against austerity? To ask these questions is to be clear-eyed about developments that could do more to discredit the “electoral road to socialism” than to promote it.