In a blow to the Democratic Party establishment, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist and a state assemblyman from Queens, all but secured a victory in the New York Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday. (The race may not be called until next week due to ranked choice voting procedures, but his main competitor, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has already conceded.)
There are a number of factors that explain Mamdani’s decisive lead. He radiates charisma that even his rivals can’t help but comment on. He uses social media with adroitness not seen perhaps since Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s first run for Congress. He had a jaw-dropping ground game, an army of happy warriors who swarmed the city canvassing for months and helped turn him from a little-known lawmaker in New York into a candidate with national name recognition.
Mamdani’s socialism is key to understanding his policy ideas — and their appeal.
But none of this would have come together had it not been for Mamdani’s central vision: a campaign laser-focused on the “crisis of affordability” in New York City and driven by hugely ambitious policy proposals to tackle it. Mamdani has not yet won the general election, but his insurgent campaign still has lessons for a party that has failed to find its voice on economic policy at a time of plummeting trust in institutions and skepticism of neoliberal economic thinking.
As establishment Democrats are casting about for ways to restore their tattered brand, Mamdani is showing how the left can make economic populism the centerpiece of political campaigns and wrest it back from the right. But it requires the willingness to be seen as polarizing, and the confidence to try to persuade the electorate.
In his campaign, Mamdani constantly talks with empathy and ambition about how to fix the cost of housing, mass transit, child care and groceries. The expensiveness of daily life is at the center of his campaign speeches, debate rhetoric, his website, his viral social media clips, his mailers. At certain points he has attributed this relentless focus as a response to what he’s seen in the polls and what he hears constantly from residents. “This is a city that we want to ensure does not become a museum or a relic of the working-class people who built it, but rather a living, breathing testament to the continuation of that story,” Mamdani recently told The New York Times.
But it would be a mistake to see Mamdani’s economic vision as a mere expression of “popularism,” a term used by a faction of Democratic commentators and analysts who (often naively) argue that the party Dems should only align themselves with policies and rhetoric that poll highly at the current moment. (Indeed, some popularists have tried to claim that Mamdani reflects their values.) While some of Mamdani’s specific points of focus might be tied to polls, the way he approaches economic issues also clearly emanates from an ideological commitment to left-wing class-first politics. He has been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America since 2017 and worked as a foreclosure-prevention counselor for a housing justice organization before entering office. He favors economic policies centered around the lives of working-class people and pursues them with an activist sensibility. He first made a splash as an assemblyman in 2021 by joining New York City cab drivers in a successful 15-day hunger strike lobbying for relief from excessive debt. It’s safe to wager that he didn’t defend the idea of free bus fares because of the Democratic consulting class.
Mamdani’s socialism is key to understanding his policy ideas — and their appeal. His solution for the cost of bus fares has been to propose making city buses free. His solution to bringing down the exorbitant cost of child care in the city has been to propose making it free. His solution for helping New Yorkers deal with the high cost of groceries has been a public option for city-owned grocery stores with subsidized goods. He also wants to freeze rent and build huge amounts of affordable housing. And, he wants to pay for these policies with a big tax hike on corporations and the wealthiest 1% of New Yorkers.
Mamdani doesn’t view policy through the prism of technocratic tweaking, he strives to turn vital services into social democratic goods. “To be a democratic socialist means that you are committed to the state providing for people that which is necessary to live a dignified life,” Mamdani said as he first ran for New York state assembly in 2020.
Mamdani also showcased how a leftie politician can remain focused on economic issues even in the face of culture wars from the right.
Let’s set aside whether one thinks every single one of these policies is wise or practical given the fiscal and bureaucratic constraints Mamdani would face as mayor. At the very least it should be clear how the ambition of his proposals can excite voters. It should also be clear how the simplicity of the proposals makes them easily digestible, memorable and memetic. Proposals can telegraph policy priorities and vision even if they are not literally fulfilled, although most politicians do in fact try to fulfill most policy pledges. (To take an example of a politician who communicates successfully through sweeping, symbolic language, President Donald Trump has accurately forecast many of his policies on immigration, protectionist trade and foreign policy through simple slogans like “build the wall,” “America first” and ending “cheating” on trade.)
Mamdani also showcased how a leftie politician can remain focused on economic issues even in the face of culture wars from the right. Cuomo, a conservative Democrat, played a Trumpian role in the race, painting New York as a hellscape that he alone could fix, and constantly tried to hammer Mamdani on his perceived weak spots on noneconomic issues. That included accusing Mamdani of trying to defund the police, a position he took in 2020. In this race Mamdani took a softer position on police reform, saying the police had a “critical role to play,” but proposed a department of community safety which would “invest in citywide mental health programs and crisis response — including deploying dedicated outreach workers in 100 subway stations.” He has also called for cuts to the police’s overtime budget and its notoriously repressive unit that responds to protests. This allowed Mamdani to push back against defund accusations while also proposing a real noncarceral solutions to real problems in New York.
Cuomo and his allies — with the complicity of mainstream media framing — also ran a shameful smear campaign attempting to paint Mamdani as an antisemite based on his positions calling Israel an apartheid state, accusing it of committing genocide and calling for it to comply with democratic principles instead of ethnocratic ones. I don’t agree with everything about Mamdani’s approach to the issue, but he showed sensitivity throughout his campaign. He did substantial outreach to the Jewish community and continually explained how he takes antisemitism very seriously and wants to proactively tackle the issue with measures such as increasing funds to prevent hate crimes. And he stuck by his objections to Israel’s policies and actions toward Palestinians.
In other words, Mamdani did not simply run on what seemed popular. His campaign successfully foregrounded a deeply populist economic program, while also showing both strong principles and sensitivity on policy fronts where the left is considered vulnerable. This helped give him that coveted quality all politicians long for — “authenticity” — which in turn builds trust.
Mamdani has illustrated how Democrats can excite people through an universalistic economic vision, by thinking big and showing the confidence to persuade voters. The party should take notice.
