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A Zohran Mamdani victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary would give progressives much-needed energy as they try to keep the party’s center of gravity from shifting to the right.
And the nervous Democratic establishment is acting accordingly to make sure he doesn’t survive Tuesday’s ranked-choice vote.
Mamdani, a progressive state assemblyman, is running as a 180-degree turn from scandal-laden incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who declared himself “the future” of his party just four years ago. The 33-year-old Muslim has promised New Yorkers free buses, rent freezes, and disinvestment from Israel — and he could become one of the most prominent Democratic figures in the US, should he win the nomination to take on Adams, a centrist who’s now running on the independent line.
He’ll have to beat back a broad alliance of opponents, many of whom dislike his criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza and some of whom are openly supporting his primary rival, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The Democratic Majority For Israel rebuked Mamdani for his “long-standing enmity towards Israel” and urged New York Democrats to reject him; the center-left group Third Way called his potential victory “a devastating blow in the fight to defeat Trumpism.”
Whitney Tilson, a mayoral candidate and former hedge fund manager who helped start Teach for America, has campaigned extensively against Mamdani. He echoed the pointed criticism he has faced for his amid the war in Gaza.
“I think he’s a particular threat to both the Jewish community and the business community, with his radical socialism and hatred of Israel,” Tilson told Semafor, after stopping at a Ukrainian festival in Brooklyn where he talked about sending aid to defend the country from Russia.
A defeat for Cuomo, whose lead stretched as high as 32 points when he entered the race, would be a remarkable upset — and prevent a comeback that many city leaders had made peace with.
“Eight months after being at 1%, we now stand just a few points away from toppling a political dynasty,” Mamdani told supporters on Sunday, at one of his final pre-vote rallies.
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New York Democrats are filling out ranked-choice ballots that allow them to pick up to five candidates, out of 11, using the same electoral system that narrowly gave Adams his 2021 victory.
That’s loomed as a challenge for Cuomo. Universally known by voters, he’s consistently led the field; more than a third of New York Democrats are calling him their first-choice candidate, dominating the expected vote in the Bronx and Staten Island.
But Cuomo entered the race with the highest negative ratings of any Democratic candidate and his own scandal-marked record. His many enemies, including progressives who fumbled their 2021 campaign to stop Adams, had more time to plan.
In February, before Adams quit the race and Cuomo entered, a group of progressives launched “Don’t Rank Eric Adams for Mayor,” or DREAM, to advertise their strategy. When Cuomo tagged in, the acronym was changed to Don’t Rank Evil Andrew. Mamdani’s campaign surged ahead of every Cuomo alternative, despite some liberal worries about whether he could build a winning coalition.
By early June, they had accepted reality: The Working Families Party put Mamdani at the top of its slate, as did Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., as Comptroller Brad Lander cross-endorsed Mamdani and Bernie Sanders announced his own support for him.
In the final days of the race, as public polling showed Mamdani with a real chance to win, Cuomo picked up endorsements from centrist Democrats who describe him as the most experienced candidate.
But early voting was higher in the neighborhoods where Mamdani has run the strongest — and where his campaign has concentrated its volunteers. On Monday, centrist Democrats fretted that the 33-year old could beat Cuomo, with a combination of lower Election Day turnout during a heat wave, solidarity from most of the anti-Cuomo candidates, and an unapologetically progressive campaign that made no mistakes.
The New York Times, which declined to endorse in the race, instead published an editorial (that would immediately be quoted in a Cuomo ad) labeling Mamdani’s agenda “uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges.” A Mamdani victory, argued Matt Bennett, senior vice president for public affairs at Third Way, would put Democratic Socialists for America under the spotlight at a weak moment for the anti-Trump opposition.
“The stuff in the DSA platform is insane,” Bennett said. Third Way, which usually ignores mayoral contests, weighed in against Mamdani because they saw his membership in DSA as an enormous optics problem.
“Open the prisons and shut ’em down? Open the borders and make everything free? It’s like a 9th-grader’s idea of what a Marxist fantasy would be. It’s packed with ideas that could be weaponized by Republicans,” Bennett said.
David’s view
The one sure thing about this race is that it won’t be over on Tuesday night. It will take some time to count ballots until one candidate has crossed the 50% win threshold; polling suggested that this could take five rounds of ranked-choiced math, or more.
If Cuomo wins, there will be pressure on the Working Families Party to give Mamdani its ballot line for November, and to elect him in a contest with Cuomo as the Democratic nominee, Adams as an independent, businessman Jim Walden as another independent, and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa as a Republican.
The late angst about a Mamdani win suggests another possible five-way contest: Mamdani as the Democratic nominee, and Cuomo as the nominee of his Fight and Deliver Party. (Cuomo’s father Mario, who lost the 1977 Democratic mayoral primary, lost again in November as the defunct Liberal Party’s nominee.)
The bigger question is what it means for the Democratic Party’s brand. Outside New York, Cuomo’s comeback looked inevitable until the last couple of weeks. Before that, Mamdani’s rise as his chief rival gave pro-Cuomo Democrats hope.
Surely, they thought, a less left-wing candidate like Lander or City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams would be more formidable. They viewed the choice the way Jeb Bush’s campaign viewed Donald Trump’s rise 10 years ago — a distraction that would get the anti-establishment bug out of voters’ systems, preventing a challenger who might be able to win. Surely, a socialist who refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a “Jewish state” or condemn the slogan “globalize the Intifada” would punch himself out before anybody voted.
He didn’t punch himself out. National Democrats have barely started to consider what it would mean if Mamdani can secure the nomination in New York — for their party’s internal politics, for how their voters want to fight Trump, or for how ready they might be to throw off old leaders.
Notable
- In Politico, Jonathan Martin profiled a Mamdani campaign that made “affordability” its “heartbeat” and became more robust than Cuomo et al expected.
- In New York, Errol Louis takes stock of the mistakes the city’s Democratic elites made on the way to the primary.
- Earlier this month, I looked at the lessons Mamdani was taking from Bernie Sanders, in campaigning and in governing.