On Wednesday, following the abduction of Palestine solidarity activist and New York City resident Mahmoud Khalil, almost 3 million people watched NYC-DSA mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani confront Tom Homan, the country’s new border czar. Mamdani’s courage in the face of the latest disturbing escalation by Donald Trump’s administration was all the more admirable given the tepid response by the race’s other candidates.
It was only the latest reminder that this year’s mayoral race will be one of the most dramatic in recent memory. Eric Adams, the indicted, deeply unpopular sitting mayor, is holding on for dear life with an increasing number of sharks circling below. Hopes that he would resign or be removed from office before the June primary have been dashed, sending the city’s moderate donor class into a panic. In response, two of the highest profile establishment candidates entered the race in the last two weeks: alleged sexual harasser/former governor Andrew Cuomo and City Council speaker Adrienne Adams. They join comptroller Brad Lander, former comptroller Scott Stringer, two state senators — Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie — and DSA assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.
In this crowded field, the political clarity of DSA’s messaging is propelling the Mamdani campaign to the top of the pack. While Cuomo currently leads in all polls, Zohran now consistently places in second or third. His star may rise further. “Mr. Cardamom” — as Mamdani was known in his rap days — consistently manufactures viral moments and will continue to benefit from the rest of the field’s congenital lack of charisma. His media-savvy campaign is laser-focused on the city’s cost of living crisis, and the campaign platform’s three initial planks — freeze the rent, fast and free buses, and no cost childcare — have become an immediately recognizable and effective “subway platform” pitch.
Zohran’s campaign is easily the most energetic and ambitious in the field. Beyond media, the campaign also plans to knock a million doors and could raise upwards of eight million dollars through the city’s generous public financing system. Both are achievable goals. NYC-DSA’s canvassing operation is off to a remarkable start and Mamdani has already developed an incredible small-dollar fundraising operation — the breadth of which, when mapped onto the city, calls to mind Bernie’s reach in 2020. The excitement is even leading mainstream outlets to start talking about a “Mamdani moment.” The fractured field benefits Zohran’s campaign, but ranked-choice voting will prevent any candidate from winning with just a plurality victory. While it’s still too early to tell if Zohran has the juice to build an outright majority, DSA is rapidly expanding its reach in municipal politics and creating exciting opportunities for agitation and organizing during the dire early days of the new Trump era, all while the Democratic Party is out to lunch.
The Moderate Clown Car
Zohran is undoubtedly helped by the chaos to his right. The spectre of Eric Adams’s indictment, and possible resignation, hung over the race for the past six months. Instead of backing down, though, the mayor loudly pivoted to the right. It was a savvy move that the Trump administration quickly repaid by dropping the charges against Adams.
The mayor’s MAGA conversion saved his skin but will probably kill his career. Once it became clear the Trump administration would intervene in his case, Adams gleefully repaid the favor by rolling back the city’s sanctuary protections. The armor of the Trump regime emboldened Adams, but the episode has been a pyrrhic victory lap for the mayor. Collaborationism helped him save his job — for now — but as nothing more than a useful puppet. Voters are taking notice. Adams’s approval rating is at an all-time low and a majority of New Yorkers want him to resign.
By refusing to step down, the mayor has saddled the election’s moderate lane with his awkward presence. The response of New York’s political class has been to crowd him out. Scott Stringer was supposed to lead the anti-Adams moderates, but he’s clearly not up for the task. A floundering has-been, who stumbled into the race still shellshocked from the sexual assault allegations that killed his 2021 mayoral campaign, Stringer is unlikely to build a base beyond the Upper West Side. The establishment’s response? Andrew Cuomo. The former governor hopes to skate to office on nothing but name recognition and fists full of real estate money, but for all his momentum, Cuomo’s victory is far from inevitable. If he does win, it will not only be a product of the moderates’ disorganization, but the vacuity and inertness of New York’s “progressive” alternative.
The Progressive Bind
Brad Lander was a leading contender for mayor in the months before his campaign announcement. A former City Councilman who built a Warrenite brand of progressivism in posh Park Slope, before adding technocratic bonafides as city comptroller, he seemed the perfect foil to the conservative and incompetent Adams. However, Lander’s progressive façade is starting to crack under the pressure imposed by talking out of both sides of his mouth. DSA’s entry into the race, with its clear messaging on Israel’s genocide and the cost-of-living crisis, upset Lander’s plan of keeping the left as a junior partner in his technocratic, liberal Zionist fold. Now he’s grasping at straws and increasingly eager to eschew his progressive ties.
The emptiness of the “progressive” label is clearest on the question of housing. Eric “I am real estate” Adams has raised the rent on 2 million tenants living in rent stabilized units (in NYC, this is a type of rent control, and covers about a quarter of the city’s renters) every year he’s been in office, becoming one of the most pro-landlord mayors in the city’s history. In comparison, Bill de Blasio froze the rent three times, and Mamdani is promising to freeze it every year he’s mayor. A rent freeze has become one of the defining issues of the campaign, and it’s one that Lander has (poorly) tried to dodge. At a recent candidate forum he meekly suggested he would freeze the rent “if the data supports it.” Working-class New Yorkers know what that means.
Lander is not alone in his strategic retreat. Both Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie were elected to the State Senate in 2018 as part of a progressive wave, but neither campaign has gained much traction. Ramos lags behind all other candidates in fundraising and Myrie, even more than Lander, has opportunistically lurched to the right. The Working Families Party (WFP) has yet to make a mayoral endorsement, but its down-ballot picks show a similar rightward drift. Evidently, the progressive response to Trump’s election last November is little different from James Carville’s new recommendation for the Democratic Party: “roll over and play dead.”
Zohran Mamdani’s Promise
Against the nightmarish present of Eric Adams, the return of the repressed in Cuomo, and the milquetoast future on offer from progressives, there is the promise of Zohran Mamdani. A former co-chair of the NYC-DSA Electoral Working Group in Queens, Mamdani’s organizing roots are deep. As opposed to mainstream progressives who parachute into social movement spaces and co-opt them for their own gain, Mamdani is an active participant in movement struggles. When members of the Taxi Workers Alliance needed relief from usurious city-owned debt, Mamdani went on hunger strike alongside them (a fight the taxiworkers won in the end). When NYU Langone recently capitulated to Trump, and cancelled appointments for their trans youth patients while flinging their doors open for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Zohran was the lone mayoral candidate to show up and denounce the cowards. The campaign has also threatened NYU Langone’s city tax-breaks if it doesn’t reverse course, showing a willingness to play hardball in a way progressives never will.
Confronting real estate capital will require thick skin, something Mamdani developed as a Muslim growing up in post-9/11 New York and as a long-time organizer in the Palestine solidarity movement. Before joining DSA and running for office, Mamdani got his start in political organizing by founding a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine on his college campus. This is not the typical path of a politician, and it uniquely positions Mamdani to speak to the anger of working-class Muslim and Arab American New Yorkers outraged by Mayor Adams’s cheerleading for genocide. Mamdani is the only candidate willing to abide by international law — pledging to have Netanyahu arrested if he visits the city — and the only candidate pushing for the demands of the BDS movement as he did in Albany with the Not On Our Dime! Act. The night Adams sicced the NYPD on the Columbia and City College encampments, at the behest of other capitalist puppet masters, the city’s progressive political class was nowhere to be found. Zohran was part of the crowd gathered outside 1 Police Plaza, at two in the morning, doing jail support for our comrades. No cameras. No fanfare. I saw him quietly carrying supplies just like everyone else.
Mamdani knows from his Sisyphean efforts in Albany that radical change does not emanate from the halls of power. The thing Zohran understands (and needs to communicate more often) is the classic Bernie 2020 message: “not me, us.” Charisma and vision are invaluable, but so is organization. This is something Bernie (and some NYC-DSA electeds) has tragically been unwilling to follow through on, but which Zohran is primed to develop. By emphasizing “not me, us” he can help build DSA and point toward a radical reimagining of the city. Beyond just freezing the rent, he could devolve and democratize the power of the Rent Guidelines Board, so rent-stabilized tenants are never again held hostage to the whims of real estate-lackey mayors. Beyond just knocking a million doors, the campaign can throw block parties and put together town halls. As a state assemblyman Mamdani did just that, bringing New Yorkers together to oppose utility bill hikes and discuss the Not On Our Dime! Act. These types of events, where working-class New Yorkers are empowered to speak about their lives, can help build longer lasting relationships and create the seedbed from which tenant unions or neighborhood ICE defense groups grow. This is the true promise and potential of the campaign.
While basking in the enthusiasm of the moment, the Mamdani campaign must also start looking ahead. Mahmoud Khalil’s detention and threatened deportation is the greatest threat to free speech in decades, and yet Cuomo cheers it on. Here, as elsewhere, there is little daylight between the ex-governor and Trump. If Cuomo wins he will steer the city further to the right and use his power against the left, as he did while governor. Should Cuomo win the primary, the Mamdani campaign should seriously consider a general election challenge. After the Adams mayoralty, the left can never again be browbeaten about the spoiler effect. Both Democrats and Republicans are a danger to the city, and the time to embrace a more independent politics has arrived. In Indianapolis, DSA-endorsed city/county councilor Jesse Brown was recently removed from the Democratic caucus for speaking against the party’s coziness with charter school interests. The left’s dirty break from the Democratic Party is happening, whether we want it to or not. A general election run would represent a return to form for the left in New York City. From Henry George to Morris Hillquit and Vito Marcantonio, the city has a proud history of independent, left wing mayoral challenges. At a time of mass exhaustion with the two-party system, we can’t miss this once-in-a-generation opportunity for independent politics.
