Why Mamdani’s Win Isn’t a Total Victory

On Tuesday, voters in New York City sent a clear message to the city’s ruling class when they elected 34-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as the city’s next mayor. After trouncing Andrew Cuomo by 12 points in the primaries — with more votes than any mayoral candidate in New York primary history — he again defeated Cuomo and the city’s power elite in the general election with the biggest vote tally in half a century. 

Mamdani’s elite detractors spent the last four months downplaying his popularity and painting him as an imposter. After refusing to bow out of the race, Cuomo and his supporters doubled down on the same tactics and arguments that Democratic voters rejected in June, hoping that his dog whistles would play better with the general electorate. They branded Mamdani a fake New Yorker and a fake American and unleashed Islamophobic attacks reminiscent of the worst post-9/11 bigotry. They also cast Mamdani as a fake Democrat, even as Cuomo courted Republicans and earned an endorsement from the big man himself. During a press conference last week with current Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. David Patterson, the trio maintained that they were the true Democrats while Mamdani was “a socialist masquerading as a Democrat” who did not hold “core Democratic values.” The charges held echoes of intraparty carping from Southern Democrats at the dawn of the Civil Rights era. 

The anti-Mamdani coalition attempted to portray the Democratic nominee as a far-left extremist who would destroy the city with his socialist policies. The prospect of a “democratic socialist” mayor of New York City — the “capital of capitalism” — triggered the latest of many Red Scares in America, with Republicans and Cuomo stoking fear about the terrifying specter of communism. This red-baiting played very well with the city’s 1%, who opened up their wallets in a last-ditch effort to deny Mamdani the mayorship, raising over $40 million in support of the former governor. Dozens of billionaires contributed financially to the anti-Mamdani effort, while many others vocally supported Cuomo and threatened to leave the city if his opponent won. In the end, however, this overwhelming show of support from the billionaire class likely backfired. Indeed, their collective panic over Mamdani was itself a ringing endorsement of his campaign and a validation of his populist critique of New York as an unaffordable playground for the rich.

It is not a coincidence that Mamdani’s triumph comes at a time when the billionaire class is more powerful than ever before, with modern-day robber barons eclipsing their 19th-century predecessors, not just in the size of their fortunes, but also in their vast reach over American life and culture. Scarcely any corner of modern life escapes their reach, from the social media platforms that serve as public squares to the major news outlets and television networks that manufacture consent to the elections that have largely devolved into contests between different billionaire-backed candidates. 

It has never been a better time to be ultrarich — and things have only gotten better under President Donald Trump, whose policies have ushered in a golden age for the billionaire class and brought the country closer than ever before to outright oligarchy. According to a recent report from Oxfam, the 10 richest men in the world — nearly all Americans, including several top Republican donors — have added nearly $700 billion to their fortunes since Trump’s election last year, while the share of total assets held by the top 0.1% have hit a record high at 12.6%. The rest of the 1% has also done exceedingly well: Collectively, the wealth of America’s richest percentile has swelled by over $4 trillion in 2025 alone. 

The meteoric rise of Mamdani delivered the first major blow to the corrupt oligarchy that has taken shape in the Trump era. As home to more billionaires than any other city on Earth, it is fitting that New York has become ground zero for a budding revolt. Yet it also signals the great challenges that lie ahead. While the city’s power elite lost the electoral battle, their opposition to Mamdani is only just beginning — and they have every intention of winning the war. 

Sadly, the odds remain in their favor. 

As mayor, Mamdani will encounter resistance every step of the way, from Albany to Washington to Wall Street. The president has already threatened to withhold federal funds owed to the city and will almost certainly send troops into the city in the near future, while Mamdani’s big policies largely hinge on whether he can convince Albany to sign off on his proposed tax increases for millionaires and corporations. Yet the biggest threat to Mamdani’s new mayorship comes from the same plutocrats who have spent the last several months trying to derail his campaign. 

As historian Michael Beyea Reagan recently explained, the same neoliberal forces that ended New York City’s mid-20th-century experiment in social democracy remain deeply entrenched and will be very difficult to overcome for a lone progressive mayor, particularly in the face of a hostile president and an obstructive governor: 

“When public programs are financed through the private sector, banks hold the ultimate veto power,” said Reagan. “This is what happened in the fiscal crisis of 1975, when Wall Street locked the city out of the credit market and forced New York to make cuts to the satisfaction of the banking sector. This is the structural veto that Wall Street holds over our very democracy.” 

The left should have no illusions about the enormous challenges ahead. As Reagan notes, “capital holds all the cards” in a “capitalist democracy” such as ours. The only way progressives can hope to overcome the structural barriers and elite resistance to their project is to organize and cultivate a popular movement that outlasts Election Day. 

The good news is that Mamdani’s success was based on his campaign’s ability to mobilize an army of volunteers who knocked on nearly 3 million doors ahead of the general election. This ultimately helped him garner over 1 million votes and drove record turnout among young voters and strong support from the city’s working-class residents. If the mayor-elect and his team can carry even a fraction of this popular energy forward, the odds of a successful administration will rise sharply.