On the cusp of electoral victory, New York mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani marched over the Brooklyn Bridge on Monday and arrived at City Hall, where he greeted cheering supporters with a promise.
“We stand on the verge of ushering in a new day for our city,” he said. Their conviction would “be the light that our city and our nation so desperately need.”
Put differently: His importance won’t stop at the shores of the Hudson.
If public polls are accurate, on Tuesday, Mamdani will be elected mayor of America’s largest city, his national prominence guaranteed. To do that, he will have to beat Andrew Cuomo, the former governor turned mayoral candidate who has tried to paint Mamdani as inexperienced and ineffective. He must also defeat Republican Curtis Sliwa, who has turned heads with his acerbic quips and omnipresent red beret.
For the progressive left, it will be a signal achievement — the highest executive office ever held by a self-identified democratic socialist in the United States. After a decade that began with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) insurgent presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton — continuing with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s improbable 2018 congressional win, the formation of the “Squad” of lefty lawmakers and the pulling of the entire party to the left — Mamdani’s victory would be the capstone of a 10-year ideological project, and give democratic socialists an enormously powerful bully pulpit for the next four years.
Shortly before midnight on the eve of the election, Mamdani offered a glimpse of what could come next. “There are many who say that a democratic socialist vision of governance for New York is impossible,” Mamdani said in a video posted to his campaign’s Instagram account. “To them, I say: We need look only at our past for proof of how socialism can shape our future.”
In New York, his supporters are lapping it up.
“He has the best campaign I’ve ever seen, especially on the social media side,” Mark Gilbert, a 30-year-old Brooklyn voter, told MSNBC. “He speaks to the younger demographic which is so necessary and more than anything — I can’t speak to the man personally because I don’t know him, but he’s appearing to lead with kindness.”
In Washington, the mood among Democrats is less celebratory.
“Mamdani has run a joyful campaign that has offered many tactical lessons for Democrats,” Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist, told MSNBC. “But it would be a grave mistake to think you could run somebody with these policy positions anywhere outside of America’s most liberal city.”
A Mamdani victory is a serious political problem for those in the party who believe, as we do, that our primary focus must be on flipping red and purple seats blue
Third way’s Matt bennett
“A Mamdani victory is a serious political problem for those in the party who believe, as we do, that our primary focus must be on flipping red and purple seats blue, expanding the map for Democrats, and creating a path back to Congress and the White House,” Matt Bennett, executive vice president of center-left think tank Third Way, told MSNBC. “The [Democratic Socialists of America] platform — which Mamdani has not repudiated — hands a potent set of weapons to Republican ad makers eager to tie Mamdani-style politics to Democrats running in much tougher places than deep blue New York.”
Nearly one year after Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris and relegated Democrats to the wilderness, many in the party are fearful that, given the New York mayor’s outsized role in national politics, Republicans will make Democrats throughout the country answer for Mamdani’s every utterance, seeking to use him as a bogeyman not unlike how Nancy Pelosi was deployed for the last decade-plus.
“It is clear to anyone with a glimmer of intellectual honesty that we have to rebuild our brand and move to the center if we ever hope to win red and purple seats ever again,” Legacki said.
In that, Mamdani’s prominence may prove a hurdle.
Already, Democratic officials in New York’s suburbs have sought to distance themselves from Mamdani. Rep. Laura Gillen, a Long Island Democrat, has called Mamdani “a threat to my constituents.” Last week, Rep. Tom Suozzi, a fellow Long Islander, made an 11th-hour endorsement of Cuomo, despite the former governor continuing to lag behind Mamdani in polls. “I’m a Democratic Capitalist, not a Democratic Socialist,” Suozzi said in a post on X. “I can not back a declared socialist with a thin resume to run the most complex city in America.”
Even some prominent Democrats from the city itself have kept him at arm’s length. Jay Jacobs, the chair of the New York Democratic Party, has withheld his endorsement even as Mamdani secured the party’s nomination. Rep. Dan Goldman recently said he is “very concerned” with some of Mamdani’s rhetoric. After months of pressure, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries endorsed Mamdani, on Oct. 24; on Sunday, Jeffries said that he didn’t think Mamdani was the “future of the Democratic Party.” And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Brooklyn native, has declined to endorse Mamdani — deflecting last week when asked by reporters if he plans to vote for Mamdani. “Look, the bottom line is very simple,” Schumer said. “I have a good relationship with him, and we’re continuing to talk.”
For Mamdani’s allies, all of this is inexplicable. They see a Democratic Party sandbagged by low approval ratings, the lack of a clear message and still reeling from a presidential loss that has divided the party. And they see Mamdani as a model of success: Even if his specific policy proposals are too far left to play in much of the country, Democrats could gain from adopting his narrow focus on affordability, his ability to dominate the attention economy and a social media presence that has, for months, delivered a consistent stream of viral videos.
Republicans on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, are watching it all and rejoicing at the opportunity.
“We’re going to have a Marxist — a communist — running [America’s] largest city,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said on Monday, incorrectly describing Mamdani’s political identification, though that nuance is unlikely to matter to voters.
Even so, there are legitimate reasons to think that the tie-them-to-Mamdani gambit may be easier said than done.
First is that Mamdani is charismatic, quick on his feet and seems to genuinely enjoy being around people. He’s a happy warrior, and that appears to have mattered on the campaign trail. (“Bugs Bunny always beats Daffy Duck,” as political analyst Jeff Greenfield has long maintained. “That is, the candidate who exudes the cool, savvy confidence of Bugs beats the one who projects Daffy’s tightly wound anger.”)
Second is that at this dyspeptic moment in American politics, voters have shown they are quite warm to outsider candidates of all types who promise to substantially rattle the system and deliver change — whether that candidate is on the Sanders left or the Trump right.
Mamdani’s march on Monday may have literally stopped at City Hall. But should he win on Tuesday, that figurative march is likely to continue well past the borders of the city.
In October, speaking at a rally in Washington Heights, Mamdani cast his insurgent campaign as a “movement that won the battle over the soul of the Democratic Party.”
“That’s absurd,” Third Way’s Bennett told MSNBC. “The fight not only has not ended, it has not yet begun.”
