Published 8 July, 2025
The win has been celebrated by socialists and the broader left around the world, as a spark of hope in an era that has seen the rise of the far right, particularly boosted by the election of Donald Trump last year. DSA member Winnie Marion, who was involved in Mamdani’s mayoral run, spoke with Isaac Nellist for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal, to discuss the campaign victory and its broader implications for US politics.
There have been a lot of theories put forward to explain the success of Mamdani’s campaign. Why do you think it was so successful?
We have been experiencing this rise in far right politics in the US and around the world. In our two party system we have been offered two options: the far right extreme view that puts working class people under the bus to serve the billionaires and, alternatively, people that are unwilling to stand up to that agenda and continue to uphold the status quo.
The Democratic establishment has not been able to present an alternative vision that has inspired or excited people to fight for things that make their lives better. When inflation and rent costs are so high, nobody has any confidence in the political system. That is why Zohran has been successful, because he has presented a vision that inspires people.
A lot of first time voters and younger voters, people who have otherwise not participated in politics in NYC, were excited by a vision for the future they can believe in and that presents an alternative to the right-wing movement. The Trump administration has been attacking our city’s institutions, even on a municipal level. Having somebody who can confidently say they will stand up to Trump and his far-right administration has excited a lot of people.
What can you tell us about your experience being part of the campaign? What kind of campaign infrastructure was established?
It has been amazing on the ground to have so many people supporting the campaign. Alexa Avilés, the DSA city council member I work for, is also running for re-election and having so many people canvass for her was so exciting. We would talk to young people who knew about Zohran’s campaign and older people who knew Alexa, so our previous work helped to reach a broad base.
We have had 50,000 volunteers door knocking 1.5 million doors and making millions of phone calls. It is an extremely energised movement. Structurally, we have field leads, who are generally DSA members or part of other organisations, taking on leadership roles and helping take in new volunteers. It is inspiring to talk to so many people who have never been involved in a political campaign before.
I joined DSA in 2020 through the Bernie Sanders campaign and there was a lot of excitement at the time that, ultimately, was let down when Joe Biden won the nomination. So, a lot of socialists have felt like we are building towards a future campaign.
We have built institutional knowledge and structures over the past five years that all came together for this mayoral campaign. We have nine state and local elected officials in NYC.
It is tied to a moment where people feel such dissatisfaction with politics, particularly with the past year-and-a-half of witnessing a genocide.
So, this all came together to encourage people to join the campaign. Many have also gone on to join DSA.
What role did DSA play in the campaign? What lessons is it drawing from the experience?
The campaign's infrastructure was built on the infrastructure established in previous DSA campaigns. A lot of the same people are involved, and are often in DSA leadership positions. DSA has played a huge role in providing volunteers to canvass and phone bank, and taking on leadership positions.
A coalition of other organisations were also involved in the campaign, but DSA were the main energy behind it. Zohran has been involved with DSA for a long time, and DSA ran his previous campaign in 2020.
There are a lot of lessons to take away from the campaign. One key lesson is that being able to experiment at a time when there is so much dissatisfaction with politics is very important. Trying large-scale campaigns in strategic moments is something we can explore. Also not being afraid to embrace issues that people generally think candidates should avoid, such as using the word “socialist” or supporting Palestinian liberation. People connected with that message.
The other takeaway is the importance of a very clear policy platform with a few key programs that are beneficial and tangible to working-class people. For example free buses, making groceries more affordable by setting up public grocery stores, universal childcare, rent freezes for rent stabilised apartments — programs that connect to people’s daily lives and do not go into technical jargon that disconnects people.
The focus is on what can make your life better this year, or in this mayoral term, and how we can work together to achieve that.
What impact did Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the Palestine solidarity movement have on the campaign?
Zohram’s campaign has elicited a lot of anger from the Zionist lobby. People have been witnessing a genocide for a year-and-a-half and have been completely demoralised.
Last year, we had encampments at universities across the country and university administrations collaborated with militarised police officers to crack down on students exercising their free speech. At Columbia University, in NYC, they sent NYPD police officers to suppress protests.
The corporate media has targeted protesters and aided Trump to deport people involved in the protests and demand colleges give lists of those who participated in protests. He has also threatened to defund colleges that allow protests to continue.
A lot of the young people who voted for Zohran have seen this in person or on social media, or have been following the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained for months by ICE for participating in Palestine solidarity protests. We see daily detentions by ICE and the horrors going on in Gaza and most politicians have been afraid to speak up about it.
The fact that Zohran has spoken up about the crisis in Gaza, and that our taxpayers dollars are funding this militarsation and genocide, instead of addressing the affordability crisis in the US, has boosted his campaign.
Additionally, the campaign is working to address racism and hate crimes in a broad and systemic way. However, Zohran has been the target of Islamophobia, including from elected representatives.
What impact will Mamdani’s win in this primary race — and potential win in the mayoral election in November — have on politics in Trump’s US?
It is hard to predict how Trump will react. Everyday I am shocked by how horrible and heartless his political agenda is, especially on immigration issues.
People are being forced to grapple with the fact that the Democratic Party has not presented a vision that excites people for many years. This has led to a rising class consciousness, as working-class people see themselves connecting to a socialist campaign.
I think a lot of establishment progressive campaigns will try to adopt a lot of the language and messaging that Zohran used to attract votes, but they are not accountable to the movement like Zohran and other DSA candidates are. We will have to work to differentiate between that style of faux progressivism and socialist politics tied to a movement.
The right will attempt to use Zohran to advance their political agenda. Historically, there has been collaboration between the federal government and the mayor of NYC — it will be interesting to see how that plays out. Eric Adams, the current NYC mayor who is running as an independent in November, has been aligning himself with Trump’s interests. The City Council has filed a lawsuit against Adams over his plan to support Trump’s deportation drive in the city by setting up ICE on Rikers Island [which houses NYC’s largest jail].
It is in Trump’s interests for Adams to defeat Zohran. He will try to make NYC an example for other cities in the US. We will have to set up a front [to defend] our city’s infrastructure, politics and movements to combat this increasingly fascistic agenda.
What does the Mamdani campaign reveal about the strengths and weaknesses of socialists engaging in electoral politics?
A lot of working class people only connect to politics during elections, and do not yet see themselves as people who can participate in politics in everyday life. It is important that we use the ballot box to mobilise and excite people towards socialist politics. Running campaigns that speak about socialism unabashedly and are excited about our movement, as Zohran has done, is really important for us.
We use elections to organise people, show them a better vision for the future and build class consciousness. Electoral politics are a helpful tool to talk to people about socialist politics, to build power, pass legislation and stand up to the far-right. We should use these platforms to talk with people about what it means to have socialist politics and to present a vision for the future beyond voting for “the lesser of two evils”.
At the same time, we acknowledge that Zohran cannot implement everything on his own. The funding for his opponents does not stop after the election, and it will be very hard to implement his policy platform. He will be getting attacks from all angles for what he is doing.
So, we should see this as a first step in building a movement that supports what the campaign stood for.
Lessons From the Mamdani Campaign
What should we make of Mamdani’s stunning victory? Much of the commentary —regardless of vantage point— is grandiose, highly speculative, and without context. So let’s ground ourselves in the broader politics, available evidence, and, above all, history. Then maybe we can figure out what to do.
To The Organizers Go The Victories
Mamdani won the NYC primary because his campaign put together an impressive ground game. This is the first, most important takeaway. The credit goes to the DSA, Working Families Party, and many others who knocked on doors and lit up the phone lines. There are no victories of any kind — electoral or movement-building — without basic organizing.
The ground game was all the more important because unions — who have run and staffed the Democrats’ GOTV operation for decades — split between Cuomo and Mamdani, but gave the lion’s share of support to Cuomo.
UAW Region 9A and IATSE Local 161 ranked Mamdani No. 1. District Council 37, Unite HERE Local 100, and Teamster 804 ranked him No. 2. The influential Professional Staff Congress made the kind of endorsements only possible through Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). They advised their members to rank Mamdani as 1, 2, or 3 alongside Landers and Adrienne Adams as they saw fit. They understood that their members would benefit from economic reforms and recognized how RCV was altering the political landscape.
Among the unions for Cuomo were: 32BJ SEIU, 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, Teamsters Local 237, IBEW Local 3, NYC Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, NYC Coalition of the International Union of the Operating Engineers, FDNY EMS Local 2507 and Uniformed EMS Officers Union Local 3621, NYS Iron Workers District Council, Teamsters Joint Council 16, Uniformed Firefighters Association, Uniformed Firefighters Officers Association, Uniformed Fire Alarm Dispatchers Benevolent Association, the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York.
Mamdani’s working-class-oriented “affordability” platform certainly won many votes. Why wasn’t it enough to win the unions? 32BJ SEIU has already moved to Mamdani. Will the rest follow?
Ranked Choice Voting Makes A Difference.
RCV allowed a different electoral landscape to emerge, where candidates more easily formed alliances. “Cross endorsement” cannot exist under the dominant winner-takes-all, plurality system. Yes, Brad Landon was a real mensch to cross-endorse Mamdani, but that would have been impossible without electoral reform. RCV allowed voters to act more in accordance with their values by undermining the lesser evil voting strategy.
Now, will the Mamdani campaign or DSA advocate for RCV or other reforms, such as proportional representation, in every election?
The Peace Movement Prepared The Way For Mamdani
Mamdani did not win the election despite being Muslim and pro-Palestine, but because of it. Public attitudes have shifted. Zionism and the Democratic machine are on the wrong side of history.
While Jewish Voice for Peace endorsed Mamdani, the influence of the peace movement ran much deeper. With an urgency and militancy far exceeding the glacial pace of electoral compromise, peace activists plowed the field that Mamdani harvested.
All those students and protesters who were arrested, surveilled, punished, beaten, even kidnapped, changed the climate of opinion and cleared the way for voting against genocide. Their “outside” position made this “inside’ victory possible.
Consider this perceptive appeal by Miriam Markowitz:
“To all the people who are anti-genocide but remain too afraid to say it: Signaling support for the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, even if you don’t live there, is a good way to pop into the conversation without having to say the word “Gaza” or issue a mea culpa….[T]his is your very easy onboarding to the ethical issue of our time as well as the locus of the fight for democracy, such that it exists.”
Risky activism for some made “easy onboarding” for others. It’s ok: welcome aboard! In organizing, we look for an easy first step.
The question is: what is the next step? Palestinian solidarity cannot afford to wait for elections, because the answer can only be found somewhere in the wild weeds of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial resistance, in the building of mass movements, and in forcing actual constraints — political and material — on the war machine.
Mamdani and the Burden of History
He ain’t the mayor yet. The hits are already coming on hot and heavy from both ruling parties. They are about to prove again that the top priority for ruling parties is to maintain control here on the home front. The Democrats specialize in stopping threats from the left, but this time they will get plenty of help from the Republicans. Mamdani’s economic proposals are seen as a challenge to Big Money.
Consider what happened when India Walton, a Black working-class socialist, won the 2021 Democratic mayoral nomination in Buffalo. The city’s Democrats and Republicans joined forces against her. India’s defeat in the general is a cautionary tale that the ruling class doesn’t just roll over and play dead.
Even if Mamdani prevails, he will still face an ambush not unlike the one Sanders might have faced in 2016 and 2020 had he won. Sanders dared not defy the big guns of empire, capital, and the Democratic machine. He chose surrender and appeasement.
The machine will do everything to box Mamdani in. Will he disappoint the soaring expectations of the “hot takes?” Can he resist the forces of assimilation that drew in Sanders and the Squad? Tlaib remains an outlier on Palestine; maybe Mamdani will be one too. Time will tell.
History offers us a real solution to Mamdani’s power paradox, but we have yet to build it.
Mayor La Guardia and the New Deal
Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (1934-1946) could well be seen as a forerunner to Mamdani, but the history of his reign contains the seeds of either victory or defeat.
La Guardia was a product of the New Deal, which was driven by the activism of millions of workers, farmers, and Blacks, often led by socialists and communists. Third parties held seats in Congress, and populists found a broad audience. Without similar deep roots and varied branches, Mamdani is, and will remain, out on a limb. Evidence? Mamdani’s weak showing among sectors of Black voters and the poorest New Yorkers shows that, without a powerful opposition movement, the Democratic machine is able to dominate politics just as it did with many labor unions.
His maverick campaign benefited from an electoral reform called “fusion,” which allowed candidates to run on multiple party tickets. We don’t hear much about fusion today; the Democrats largely dismantled it. La Guardia took refuge from the Democratic machine in the Republican Party, but he was a New Deal Republican.
The beating heart of the New Deal was the “United Front.” Even though La Guardia ultimately betrayed the United Front, he could never have come to power without it; with it, Mamdani has a chance at greatness.
The Rise and Fall of the New Deal: From United Front to Popular Front
The New Deal rose and fell in stages. The “United Front” strategy of the early years showed us the way forward, while the later “Popular Front” led to defeat. The final deathblow was delivered by Cold War/Anticommunism, through purges within and beyond the labor movement. The defeat was codified in law and still sets limits on our “common sense” of what is politically possible.[1 ]
But, for a time, militant class and racial struggles, political independence, the emergence of third parties, union organizing, and efforts among the unemployed made the United Front a force to be reckoned with. Issues of race were inseparable from class. Support for the Scottsboro Boys was a pivotal move in the making of the United Front.[2]
The United Front is one of the most underappreciated developments in 20th-century US history — everyday people actually built an effective opposition of mass movements and revolutionary political parties. Hundreds of thousands came to see their self-interest and class interests as contrary to those of the bosses and bankers. United Front leadership was a quarrelsome but functioning counter-hegemonic bloc of radicals, anarchists, unionists, activists, and socialists, with the Communist Party its largest and most coherent force.
The United Front is the history that proves the oppositional politics we so desperately need today are possible.
But, the “United Front” was abandoned for the “Popular Front” in the late 1930s and 1940s. The Communists made a pragmatic alliance with the US ruling class in the hopes of defending the Soviet Union and defeating Fascism.
Crucially, the Communist Party, politicians, and union leaders sought to maintain the class peace they thought necessary for the war by enforcing a deeply divisive “no-strike pledge.”[3]
They sacrificed hard-won solidarity with the workers who were the grassroots leaders of the United Front — just as workers were leading a historic strike wave. La Guardia, it must be remembered, joined with the Communist Party and union officials in punishing and smearing striking workers.
As John Munro summarized it: “The Popular Front…meant quieting critiques of state repression, capitalist exploitation, and racial oppression.”[4]
The no-strike pledge was one-sided political surrender.
As World War II quickly morphed into the Cold War, the Communist Party, like the Soviet Union, became the new existential threat. Big money, anticommunist unions, and the ruling parties turned against their now-weakened former allies. They were purged from labor and smeared as political pariahs. Unions were also punished — despite their enforcement of the no-strike pledge — with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which has hobbled unions ever since.
The Popular Front was a disaster that the working class and the left have never recovered from.
So forgotten is this history that what is often presented as a united front against fascism or Trump is little more than “fall in line” behind the Democrats and a return to the failed Popular Front of the 1940s.
Social Movements Save The Day
But all is not lost. The brightest lights found a way forward out of the dark days of Cold War. The social movements led by the Civil Rights and Black Power struggles reclaimed and legitimized dissent after the purges. The Peace movement, Women’s movement, Environmental Movement, LGBT movement, Community Organizing, rank-and-file union caucuses, and all their many descendants continue to be the “left” we actually have and the one that matters most.
The Burden of History We All Bear
Most of the self-described left still hold the position bequeathed to them by the Cold War. When they support Democrats based on “pragmatism” or “reality,” the Popular Front is the reality they have internalized and repeat.
The DSA has engaged in a lengthy debate about whether to break with the Democrats. The debate remains unresolved, and it’s too early to tell how Mamdani’s victory will impact it. On the other hand, the oppositional left is showing signs of revival, but remains small and scattered, without a significant national role in the unions or the community. But, no part of the left — or even the sum of all its parts — has roots in the working class anywhere near the scale of the United Front of the 30’s.
Mamdani and the DSA have the potential to start building a united front, and we desperately need that.
History is a guide, but current models do exist. Kshama Sawant and Workers Strike Back’s campaign for Congress — with its fusion of electoral and social movement activism, political independence, opposition to genocide, as well as its crystal-clear socialist politics — is the best example that truly aligns with the history of the United Front.
We lack massive movements, but the day will surely come when many millions take to the streets again, as they did during Occupy or the George Floyd protests. Right now, the present-day civil rights movement confronting ICE and the burgeoning police state, and today’s peace movement in solidarity with Palestine, are the best steps forward. Any party or political formation that can join them, serve them, lead them, become their architect, or electoral wing, will be well-positioned to help us — Mamdani and all — shoulder the burdens of history and build the United Front we need.
Notes.
1. In his article “The Popular Front Didn’t Work” Charlie Post sets out the history of the United Front and Popular Front with far more detail than my short summary. It’s an indispensable read.
2. In his insightful new book, Class War in America, Jon Jeter demonstrates how the campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys served as a catalyst for working-class resistance.
3. See Martin Glaberman, “Wartime strikes: The struggle against the no-strike pledge in the UAW during World War II.”
4. John Munro, ” A Tool for Our Times: Legacies of Black Radicalism and Communism” in Black Perspectives.
