What Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in New York City tell us about our political moment
Republished from The Call.
After decades of defeats for working people and the Left, it almost felt like a dream to witness Zohran Mamdani make history last night. Sometimes the good guys win. As David Hogg wrote last night, “BREAKING: Not everything has to suck.”
Absorbing the key lessons of this campaign is essential for the fights ahead, not just in New York City, but across the United States. Here’s an initial list of the biggest takeaways.
1) Zohran’s victory is a nationwide political earthquake. Huge numbers of voters are sick of the Democratic establishment, and there’s no good reason why his playbook can’t be widely repeated elsewhere. The party’s decrepit old guard is vulnerable, its unpopularity delivered us Trumpism, and it deserves to be displaced everywhere.
2) By stubbornly hammering on proposals to make the city affordable, Zohran was able to break beyond the Left’s college-educated base. He won all across the city, including in neighborhoods like Sunset Park and Woodhaven that swung rightwards towards Trump in 2024. Economic populism is our best weapon to win back working people and to overcome Trumpism. Blame the billionaires, not immigrants or transgender people.
3) We should always ignore the pundits and political hacks who try to convince us that transformative change is impossible — or that the best we can do is chase after a mythical political center, rather than winning the battle of ideas and ambitiously raising voters’ expectations.
4) Billionaires tried to buy this election and they lost badly. It turns out that the oligarchy is not invincible.
5) Pundits will try to spin this as purely the result of Cuomo’s unpopularity or Zohran’s charisma. That’s part of the story, but only part. In addition to the resonance of his policies and crystal-clear message on affordability, there’s no way he could have won without the tireless ground game of 50,000 volunteers and the New York City Democratic Socialists of America and other allied organizations. Knocking 1.5 million doors is an astounding feat.
6) Young people were the heart of this campaign. Last night, tens of thousands of them got to experience the ecstatic feeling of making history through collective organizing. Feeling that even once is enough to make you an organizer for life. This youthful social movement has the energy and ambition to make New York social democratic again.
7) Social media is extremely important for capturing the attention of wide layers of voters, and Zohran’s media team was amazing. But the secret sauce for good comms is not primarily technical — it’s political: you need an authentic messenger armed with a compelling platform. Hack Democrats can’t post themselves back into relevance.
8) It’s a very big deal — with nationwide and international implications — that Cuomo’s cynical smears about anti-Semitism fell flat. It turns out that opposing genocide and acknowledging the humanity of Palestinians is not necessarily an electoral dealbreaker. AIPAC should be very worried.
9) Despite what his opponents claim, Zohran is not a dogmatic extremist, but a radical pragmatist. He could not have gotten this far had he not focused on bread-and-butter economic issues, spoken in a commonsense language, ran as a Democrat, dropped his support for defunding the police, and endorsed Brad Lander. Zohran refused to drop his support for democratic socialism or his opposition to Zionist apartheid, but performative ultra-leftism was anathema to this campaign.
10) It took a liberal-Left alliance to defeat Cuomo. A huge amount of credit is due to Brad Lander for being a man of principle who refused to punch Left. At the same time, Zohran smartly rejected a widespread leftist tendency to treat liberals and liberalism only as ideological competitors to be fought. Look at how he adopted the best parts of the “abundance agenda,” how he cross-endorsed Lander, and how he framed his criticisms of Israel in the language of liberal equal rights. Leftists can’t defeat the old establishment — let alone overcome the Right — on their own. And mutuality cuts both ways: we can’t ally with liberals only when we’re in the lead.
11) Zohran’s inroads within organized labor were crucial steps towards legitimizing his campaign. The unions who took a risk and stood by working people by endorsing Zohran include AFSCME DC 37, UAW Region 9a, Doctors Council SEIU, CIR/SEIU, UNITE HERE Local 100, IATSE Local 161, PSC-CUNY, OPEIU Local 153, and Teamsters Local 804.
Every union that endorsed Cuomo should be embarrassed by their narrow-mindedness. The good news is now they have a chance to make things right by endorsing Zohran in the general election.
12) The fight has really just begun. Establishment Democrats, Trump, and their billionaire funders are going to do everything possible to prevent Zohran from taking office in November or, if that fails, from implementing his agenda. Expect an unprecedented, billionaire-funded scaremongering onslaught to convince New Yorkers that a Mamdani City Hall will bankrupt the city, unleash crime sprees, and persecute Jews.
13) Faced with claims that his project will lead to urban ruin and chaos, Zohran can lean on the progressive, technocratic competence of Lander’s crew and point to thriving social-democratic cities across Europe as well as strong historical precedents of success in the US. Before they named an airport after him, as Waleed Shahid notes, New York City’s wildly successful socialist mayor Fiorello La Guardia was also first denounced as an impractical radical.
14) The experience of La Guardia, like Milwaukee’s “sewer socialists,” shows that winning office is not enough. When you’re up against such powerful opponents, you need lots of organized grassroots power outside the state to actually implement your agenda. The most challenging obstacle on the road ahead is that Zohran’s electoral success has significantly outpaced the scale of working-class and socialist organization in New York City. Building widespread organization in workplaces and neighborhoods is hard, essential, and urgently needed. So join DSA. Unionize your workplace through EWOC. Reform your union. Salt a strategic company. Or build a tenant union in your building.
15) DSA’s membership is about to surge. And the organization is going to come under intense scrutiny from Fox News, Trump, and the Democratic establishment. It’s time to tighten our ship and to make a concerted nationwide turn away from self-marginalizing leftism. Members should study and emulate NYC DSA’s mass politics orientation. If this campaign didn’t fit all of your ideological priors, maybe those priors are wrong.
16) There are going to be all sorts of major setbacks in the months and years ahead. But after yesterday, it’s so much easier to see — and so much easier to feel — that a better world actually is possible if we fight like hell for it. The future is unwritten. Let’s write it together.
Eric Blanc is the author of Red State Revolt and a member of DSA's Bread & Roses caucus.
The Rage of Billionaires and the Frenzy to
Stop Zohran Mamdani From Becoming New
York’s Mayor
July 1, 2025
Photograph Source: Eden, Janine and Jim – CC BY 2.0
The Supreme Court’s first chief justice, John Jay, would have empathized with the billionaires who’ve been freaking out ever since Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York last Tuesday. “Those who own the country ought to govern it,” Jay insisted. But now, oligarchs accustomed to such governance are furious that the nation’s capital of capitalism is in danger of serving people instead of megaprofits.
Meanwhile, among progressives, euphoria is especially fitting because the Mamdani campaign’s win was truly a people-powered victory, thanks to active efforts of 40,000 volunteers. In a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans six-to-one, the Democratic nomination would ordinarily be a virtual guarantee of winning the general election. But the forces of oligarchy now mobilizing could disprove a claim that “Mamdani’s widespread appeal represents the total collapse of a Democratic Party establishment.”
Such a collapse is very far from certain.
On the surface, Andrew Cuomo’s decision to stay on the fall ballot as an “independent,” while incumbent Mayor Eric Adams does likewise, seems to foreshadow splitting the anti-Mamdani vote. But Cuomo still has a substantial electoral following. And the corrupt Adams – who cut a deal with President Trump to viciously betray immigrants and got his criminal indictment thrown out by Trump’s Justice Department – has no better ethics than the disgraced former governor Cuomo. Bankrolled by wealthy donors, the pair might make some kind of pact, with one of them telling his followers to unify behind the other before voting begins this fall.
In any case, a key context of the upcoming election battle is that hell hath no fury like corporate power scorned.
A social-media screed by hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman (net worth: upward of $9 billion) was damn near apoplectic that activists and voters had so terribly transgressed. Ackman described himself as “a supporter of President Trump” while expressing a fervent desire “to save the Democratic Party from itself.” Mamdani’s policies, Ackman wrote late Wednesday night, “would be disastrous for NYC. Socialism has no place in the economic capital of our country.”
But Ackman held out hope that those owning the city of New York could continue to govern it: “Importantly, there are hundreds of million of dollars of capital available to back a competitor to Mamdani that can be put together overnight … so that a great alternative candidate won’t spend any time raising funds. So, if the right candidate would raise his or her hand tomorrow, the funds will pour in. I am sure that Mike Bloomberg will share his how-to-win-the-mayoralty IP [intellectual property] and deliver his entire election apparatus and system to the aspiring candidate so that the candidate can focus all of his or her energy on the campaign.”
Another aggrieved hedge-fund multibillionaire, Daniel Loeb, optedto be concise: “It’s officially hot commie summer.” Many other moguls have also sounded alarms. But beneath all the froth and bombast, extremely wealthy individuals are busy gauging how to prevail against the threat of democracy and social justice.
In the Empire State, there are many ways for the empire to strike back. The constellation of forces now regrouping with a vengeance includes titans of Wall Street, enormous real estate interests, pro-Israel groups, corporate media, the anti-progressive rich and assorted smear artists.
In recent weeks, the completely false charge of antisemitism has escalated against Mamdani. He has taken a principled and consistent stand on behalf of human rights for all – in the process, denouncing Israel’s war on Palestinian civilians in Gaza – while at the same time opposing rapacious corporate power. So, it’s no surprise that New York’s most powerful Democrat, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, has been dodging the question of whether he’ll endorse Mamdani in the general election.
For decades, Schumer’s campaign coffers have bulged while he has been hugely compensated by Wall Street. He has also remained a staunch supporter of Israel, despite its systematic ethnic cleaning and genocide against Palestinian people. A few months ago, Schumer declared: “My job is to keep the left pro-Israel.”
What happened in the state’s second-largest city in 2021 is important to understand. Democratic socialist India Walton was the candidate of a grassroots campaign that stunned the party establishment in the Democratic primary when she defeated Buffalo’s corporate mayor, four-term incumbent Byron Brown. As the Democratic nominee, she seemed set to win the general election in the blue city. But a coalition of furious Democratic power brokers and deep-pocketed Republicans, including racists and vehement haters of the left, aided by much of the city’s mass media, teamed up to smear her and ending up getting Brown elected as a write-in candidate.
Last weekend, I asked India (now a colleague at RootsAction, where she is senior strategist) how she saw the Mamdani campaign. “Watching the New York City mayoral primary from Buffalo last Tuesday gave me a familiar feeling,” she said. “As I watched the results come in, I felt a flutter in my gut and a sense of pensiveness. A feeling of overwhelming joy and a fear that it would be snatched away despite my attempts to cling to it. I imagine that as Zohran watched, he also felt a sense of familiarity. In 2021, Zohran Mamdani supported my run for Buffalo mayor; I was a first-time unknown candidate challenging a 16-year incumbent, and conventional wisdom said it was an impossible race to win. Now, in 2025, Zohran has once again toppled the establishment. I’m starting to think that populist policies that focus on working people are a winning strategy.”
That strategy is now striking fear into the hard hearts of insatiably greedy billionaires.
Youtube screenshot.
People are asking about my reaction to Zohran Mamdani’s spectacular and decisive upset in the Democratic primary victory for Mayor of New York over ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani’s victory was so overwhelming that Cuomo conceded generously, saying that Mamdani ran a “…highly impactful campaign…” “He deserved it. He won.”
Here are my observations:
1. Usually, such a great primary win in overwhelmingly Democratic New York City guarantees a smooth path to a November win against a Republican opponent. Not this time. No sooner than Wednesday, a clutch of wealthy Wall Streeters, real estate giants, and supporters of the genocidal Netanyahu were meeting to plan the strategy to defeat this 33-year-old three-term state Assemblyman in the November general election.
2. Mamdani won with one repeated pledge – “affordability” to live in the nation’s largest city. That meant 1) freezing rent on 1 million rent-stabilized apartments; 2) free bus fares; 3) free, universal childcare; 4) “city-owned grocery stores,” 5) a higher minimum wage and higher taxes on the super-rich and higher corporate taxes.
Mamdani has other options at the ready that he did not even mention. Such as ending costly property tax abatements for large commercial buildings and ending the daily rebate of a tiny sales tax of $15 to 20 billion a year on stock transactions, transferred by Wall St. brokers to NY state. Those revenues can be shared with New York City. (See: greedvsneed.org). To expand affordable housing, Mamdani can tap into the National Cooperative Bank in Washington, D.C., which has long provided loans to construct cooperative housing projects – that is, housing owned by its residents.
3. With 993,546 votes counted, Mamdani beat Cuomo by 71,000 votes. The primary voter turnout was almost one million voters. In the general election turnout will be many more of the 7 million eligible voters. Therein lies a possible vulnerability in November. Mamdani got his vote out with 50,000 volunteers, including a surge of younger voters. In November, millions more voters may turn out who were not excited enough this month to turn out for this young “Democratic Socialist.” These additional voters might be a much tougher sell.
4. Mamdani’s agenda is no more socialist than that of FDR. In conservative New Hampshire, all liquor stores are owned by the State. In the red state of North Dakota, there is a thriving, prominent State Bank. The Tennessee Valley Authority and scores of city electric companies are owned by public authorities. And the list goes on. Reality will not stop the burgeoning campaign of slander, fakery, and bigotry underway against this charismatic American Muslim. Fascist Greedhound Donald Trump called him a “communist lunatic.”
Many millions of dollars are ready to redefine Mamdani falsely. He is an excellent and credible responder. That skill and veracity apply to his stand against Netanyahu’s mass murdering in Gaza and his position on equal rights for everyone. AIPAC will find him a more difficult candidate to defeat than Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY). He needs to forcefully counter AIPAC, a domestic agent of Netanyahu.
5. For his part, Mamdani has not yet adopted many of the progressive agenda planks ready for use in all campaigns, including local ones, along with new ways to get out the vote. Unlike most Democrats, Mamdani does not contract out his campaign to corporate-conflicted political consultants who have sabotaged Democratic voters for years. He speaks and acts for himself, from his mind and heart. He can make use of our report“Crushing the GOP, 2022” (still very relevant), featuring the political wisdom of 24 civic leaders for waging successful progressive campaigns (See: winningamerica.net). He can use the geographically specific database showing corporate subsidies by local governments (See goodjobsfirst.org). He can make use of the corporate crime trackers to make his case for cracking down on corporate crooks eating away at New York City’s consumer dollars and savings.
6. Finally, Mamdani’s access to the mass media should encourage him to embrace other progressive democratic primary challengers facing the decaying Democratic Party’s establishment that never learns from their losses to the worst, most corrupt, cruel GOP in the Party’s history.
Can Democratic Socialist Mamdani become Mayor of New York?
Sunday 29 June 2025, by Dan La Botz
The election campaign and stunning victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s Democratic Party mayoral primary election on June 24 is having an enormous impact on American politics. Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim immigrant, state representative, and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), defeated Andrew Cuomo, a powerful 67-year-old politician who ran a multi-million-dollar election campaign.
Cuomo had to resign from the office of governor after accusations by 13 women that he had sexually harassed them. Nevertheless, he had the backing of many major unions and financial and real estate interests. Mamdani, on the other hand, ran on a campaign platform that called for a rent freeze, for free buses, and free childcare, all to be paid for by taxing rich New Yorkers and corporations, and he criticized Israel’s genocide in Gaza. His message inspired young people and brought thousands of new voters to the polls. He could win the general election on November 4.
The New York mayoral election is important deciding the future of the largest city in the country with 8.26 million inhabitants, and a metropolitan area of 22 million. It is a port of entry for immigrants and one of the most diverse cities in the country. It is the home of the New York Stock Exchange and many of the most important banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, making it the country’s financial capital. It is the seat of the United Nations. And with its theaters, museum, galleries, and concert halls it is also the country’s cultural capital. The mayor of New York has a political profile and weight comparable to a governor.
Mamdani and the DSA organized an army of 50,000 volunteers who knocked on the doors of one million New Yorkers. Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez endorsed him. In New York, 68% of voters are Democrats and only 30% Republicans, so the winner of the Democratic primary usually wins the election. This time, the situation is more complicated.
Andrew Cuomo, despite his defeat in the primary, plans to run as an independent, and he will have the backing of finance and real estate again, though some of the unions have abandoned him for Mamdani.
The sitting mayor Eric Adams, will also be a candidate. He ran for office as a Democrat on a conservative, law-and-order program and filled city positions with friends and family. When Joe Biden was president, in September 2024, the U.S. Justice Department indicted Adams on charges of bribery, conspiracy, fraud, and two counts of soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations, and he was set to go to trial. But after the election of Donald Trump, the Justice Department dismissed the charges, allegedly because of Adams’ promise to let Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) free rein in the city. Adams’ deal with Trump turned many Democrats against him. Like Cuomo, however, he has the backing of many in the worlds of finance and real estate. Cuomo or Adams could build a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republican voters.
The Republican candidate for mayor, Curtis Silwa, head of the Guardian Angeles, a volunteer, unarmed police organization, has been asked by some in his party to drop out to help Adams. But he says he’s staying in the race.
Mamdani is a Muslim, so there’s the question of the Jewish vote. Jews make up only 2.4% of the U.S. population, but they are 18% of New York City’s. Mamdani is anti-Zionist, but Jewish organizations and leaders attack him as anti-Semitic. The Jewish vote was divided with many younger Jews voting for Mamdani. Republicans accuse him of being linked to 9/11, to Hamas, to terrorism. Republican Congressman Andy Ogles, called for Mamdani’s deportation.
Mamdani’s campaign, platform, and victory point a possible new direction for the Democrats and for the left. But it will be hard to beat the billionaires.
28 June 2025
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Dan La Botz was a founding member of Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). He is the author of Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (1991). He is also a co-editor of New Politics and editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis.
International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.
Mamdani Upsets Big Apple’s Political Cart
JUNE 29, 2025
George Binette reports on the shock win of Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic mayoral primary in New York.
Amidst baking mid-summer heat thousands of New Yorkers queued to cast votes in the 24th June Democratic Party primary for its candidate to contest the general election for mayor of the USA’s biggest city. With early voting already underway the previous weekend, credible opinion polling had suggested a major upset just might be on the cards.
Zohran Mamdani, a Ugandan-born Muslim and self-proclaimed democratic socialist who came to the US via South Africa aged seven, had launched his mayoral campaign last autumn with little name recognition citywide and polling figures in low single digits. By the early hours of 25th June, it was clear that Mamdani had won a substantial plurality of first preference votes and the heavily favoured establishment candidate, former New York state governor Andrew Cuomo had conceded defeat.
With 93% of just over a million votes counted, Mamdani had 43.5% of the total, a commanding lead of nearly seven percentage points over the second-placed Cuomo. A member of the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) had scored winning margins in three of New York’s five boroughs – Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens (where Mamdani’s New York State Assembly seat is located) – with Cuomo the biggest vote winner in the Bronx and on Staten Island.
Unusually for the US, New York’s mayoral primary allows for ranked voting, and it seems all but certain that second preferences will put Mamdani above the required 50% threshold when counting concludes early next week. The third-placed candidate with 11.3% of the poll, City Comptroller Brad Lander, had expressed sympathy with much of Mamdani’s agenda and urged his supporters to give their second preferences to Mamdani.
Lander, a liberal with principles, who is himself Jewish in a city with a Jewish population estimated at 960,000, has aided Mamdani in refuting charges of anti-Semitism. These have inevitably dogged Mamdani’s campaign as a Muslim with pro-Palestinian sympathies, who has not only denounced the war criminals of the Netanyahu government, but criticised the state of Israel itself, publicly supporting the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. In contrast to the increasingly cautious Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who did endorse his campaign, Mamdani was also to the fore in demanding the release of Columbia University Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil.
Since the primary result, veteran Congressional representative Jerry Nadler endorsed and US Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer congratulated Mamdani ahead of the general election in November. Both are Jewish and in their own words “committed Zionists.” Whether Schumer, in particular, sees which way the wind is blowing and hopes to increase his leverage with a future Mamdani administration would be a question on the minds of many of the campaign’s core activists.
Campaign Blends Old and New
The 33-year-old Mamdani brought experience as a rap music producer as well as a tenants’ advocate to his campaign. Though outspent by Cuomo’s camp by a ten-to-one factor, Mamdani’s savvy use of TikTok videos combined effectively with an old school effort that pounded the city’s pavements and knocked on tens of thousands of doors.
Soon after Donald Trump’s November 2024 victory, which saw his vote share rise above 30% in the Big Apple, Mamdani shot videos with potential voters who had either abstained or in many cases had switched from Joe Biden in 2020 to Trump last year. In contrast to New Labour’s tightly controlled focus groups, this method of directly engaging with the public went viral on social media. This may help explain why Mamdani performed strongly in neighbourhoods such as Sunset Park (Brooklyn) and Woodhaven (Queens), which had swung towards Trump last November.
Obituaries for the flagging DSA, which had surged during the 2016 Sanders’ presidential campaign, suddenly seemed premature with thousands and thousands signing up to volunteer for Mamdani’s campaign. Canvassing figures suggest Mamdani’s enthused troops contacted some 45,000 households in a single May week. The blend of contemporary digital and traditional methods managed to sell a comparatively radical programme (especially by recent US standards), which the Democratic establishment had sought to brand as unaffordable and even utopian.
European Social Democracy Comes to NYC
So, what features in the programme that according to the Financial Times has left Wall Street reeling? There are certainly some echoes of the 2017 and 2019 Labour Party manifestoes as well as the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone’s leadership. Against the backdrop of an undeniable affordability crisis, Mamdani proposed an across the board rent freeze as opposed to the city’s current complex rent regulations, which have failed to stem the relentless rise in housing costs. Alongside rent control, Mamdani promised a large-scale housebuilding drive that would entail the construction of 20,000 units of “affordable housing” a year for a decade, with a doubling of the maintenance budget for what remains of the city’s public housing stock.
His platform also featured a call for free bus travel, complemented by the extension of dedicated bus lanes to reduce congestion and travel times. He has also backed a significant increase in funding of the city’s subway system, which Andrew Cuomo has pointedly refused to use.
Mamdani pledged free child-care for all from six weeks to five years of age along with “baby baskets” for infants that would include educational resources and such practical items as diapers, baby wipes and swaddles. He is keen on creating school streets, particularly near elementary (primary) schools. In terms of the higher education sector, a Mamdani administration would aim to make the City University of New York tuition-free.
His policies include the creation of several city-owned grocery stores with the aim of supplying more affordable, good-quality food. This apparently surprising proposal is actually similar to municipally-run retail operations in such mid-western states as Kansas and Wisconsin.
Of course, there are costs attached to implementing such a programme and the Mamdani platform provided answers to questions about funding such significant reforms. In addition to increasing the city’s corporation tax to 11.5% in line with the neighbouring state of New Jersey, Mamdani has pledged to introduce a 2% surtax on top of the basic 3.9% rate for those with annual earnings exceeding $1,000,000, which is actually more modest than the “fair share” tax approved by Massachusetts voters in a state-wide referendum four years ago.
The Opposition: Alleged Abuse and Corruption
Aside from the remarkably effective campaign Mamdani waged, his success also owed something to the staggering weaknesses of his principal opponents. Incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who is African-American and a former senior police officer, easily defeated Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels vigilante group and the Republican candidate in 2021. Sliwa will again be the Republican standard-bearer in November. Adams, meanwhile, dropped out of the Democratic primary and announced his intention to run as an independent in the November election.
Already notorious for its hard-line crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University, Adams’ administration has faced multiple corruption allegations with accusations of the mayor himself accepting bribes from figures linked to the Turkish state, leading to a federal indictment last autumn. Adams has since cosied up to Donald Trump and the Department of Justice dropped the charges against him in early spring.
Uncertainty currently remains about the future intentions of Mamdani’s chief opponent, 67-year-old Andrew Cuomo. The heir to something of a political dynasty and a ‘big beast’ in the Democratic establishment, Cuomo had been governor of New York state with a population of nearly 20 million until he suffered a dramatic fall from grace. Serious allegations of sexual harassment emerged late in 2020 from more than a dozen women. Cuomo’s “#MeToo” moment eventually led to his resignation in April 2021 after nearly a decade atop the Empire State’s politics.
The scandal did not, however, put an end to his political career and Cuomo’s coffers swelled with donations from the likes of ardent supporters of Israel such as hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman – now a Trump donor – and Palantir CEO Alex Karp as well as New York’s ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg. The estimated $25 million in contributions to Cuomo’s campaign along with some notable union endorsements (nine union locals backed Mamdani and two more have endorsed him since the primary win) proved far from sufficient to secure his widely expected victory. He failed to secure the still coveted backing of the New York Times editorial board, which failed to endorse any candidate even as it reserved most of its fire for Mamdani.
Cuomo, incidentally, didn’t hesitate to play the anti-Semitism card against Mamdani during the campaign. Last year he volunteered his services to the legal team defending Binyamin Netanyahu against the indictment issued by the International Criminal Court.
Between Now and November
Andrew Cuomo has just announced he will run independently in November. In any case, the path ahead for Mamdani is hardly smooth. Opponents in the Democratic Party itself and across much of mainstream media will continue to hurl allegations of anti-Semitism. A common narrative, pushed by the likes of hard right Boston Globe columnist Carine Hajjar, derides Mamdani as a “Nepo baby” (his mother is the noted film director Mira Nair and his father a university academic) who can happily hold ‘luxury beliefs’.
According to a piece in Forbes, Bill Ackman and other ultra-rich figures from the finance and tech sectors remain committed to defeating Mamdani in the general election. They are actively seeking a candidate, presumably with less baggage than Adams or Cuomo to mount a challenge and are supposedly prepared to invest “hundreds of millions.” An unattributed quote from one of Ackman’s outriders makes the pitch to potential candidates: “The risk/reward of running for mayor over the next 132 days is extremely compelling as the cost in time and energy is small and the upside is enormous.”
Whether the Mamdani campaign can sustain its current momentum through the November general election in the face of shameless mud-slinging and opponents with far greater financial resources remains to be seen. Should he win in November there are further formidable obstacles to implementing his programme. He is likely to face significant opposition from within the city council despite the vast majority of 51 councillors being Democrats. In addition, New York state’s government has a final say over the city’s tax rates and Mario Cuomo’s successor, Kathy Hochul, is adamantly opposed to the proposed surtax.
In some otherwise cock-a-hoop commentary on the Jacobin website following Mamdani’s shock win, left academic and activist Eric Blanc offered a sobering observation: “The most challenging obstacle on the road ahead is that Zohran’s electoral success has significantly outpaced the scale of working-class and socialist organization in New York City.”
A sustained popular mobilisation on a scale not witnessed in decades will surely be required to enable a Mamdani administration to weather the wrath of Donald Trump, who has already branded him a “Communist lunatic”, and outmanoeuvre much of the Democratic Party’s national leadership, which will seek to frustrate the implementation of much of his current programme.
George Binette, a Massachusetts native, is a retired union activist, vice-chair of Camden Trades Council and former Trade Union Liaison Officer of Hackney North & Stoke Newington CLP.
Image: Zohran Mamdani. Author: Bingjiefu He, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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