No Mo’ Cuomos

Last November, New York City became the center of a national debate over the Democratic Party’s disastrous loss in the 2024 election and the electorate’s supposed shift to the right. Though Democrats lost significant ground to Republicans in virtually every state, nowhere was the swing more pronounced than in Donald Trump’s former home state, where he cut the Democratic margin of victory in half compared to 2020. Trump performed better in the Empire State than any Republican since 1992. And not just in the suburbs. The Republican picked up more new votes in the five boroughs than he did in California or New Jersey, fueled in large part by voters from working-class and minority-majority neighborhoods where Democrats have historically dominated. 

Those results gave rise to competing explanations for the Democratic rout. To most of the Democratic establishment and the pundit class, Trump’s gains were seen as clear proof that the party’s “left” had gone too far, tarnishing the party brand with “wokeism” and scaring off the ordinary American voter. These critics pointed specifically to the supposed rightward drift among working-class Hispanic and Asian voters, as seen in Queens neighborhoods like Jackson Heights, Richmond Hill and Corona. According to these observers, the party had no choice but to meet the voters where they were and embrace more centrist and conservative positions on issues like crime, immigration and culture. 

Those on the left put forward a very different analysis and accompanying strategy. Voters in cities like New York, they proffered, did not move to the right so much as reject a Democratic Party that had come to embody the establishment and status quo. The scapegoating of the “left” was belied by the fact that Democratic candidate Kamala Harris had run a conventional and business-friendly campaign that more or less followed the preferred script of the party’s neoliberal wing. Harris steered clear of populism and sought the approval of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, while avoiding any kind of rhetoric that could be deemed “woke.” She ran an overly cautious campaign that seemed to accept the very assumption that voters had become more conservative, when in fact they had become more populist. For many voters, especially in the lower income brackets, Trump wasn’t the conservative or right-wing choice — he was the anti-establishment choice. 

Which brings us to Zohran Mamdani. Few politicians have grasped this distinction more intuitively than the 33-year-old assemblyman from Queens who shocked the Democratic establishment and the city’s business elite last week when he trounced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor. Instead of moving to the center, the self-described Democratic Socialist ran an insurgent populist campaign that was largely shaped by the conversations he had with the city’s residents after last year’s election. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Mamdani laid out how his people-centered campaign was informed by interactions with everyday New Yorkers, including those who voted for Trump: “We have tried to listen more and lecture less, and it’s in those very conversations that I had with Democrats who voted for Donald Trump many months ago that I heard what it would take to bring them back to the Democratic Party — that it would be a relentless focus on an economic agenda.”

Mamdani’s “relentless focus” on an economic agenda devised to address the city’s affordability crisis helped catapult him from relative obscurity last November to national prominence today. The assemblyman ran an energetic and grassroots campaign with an army of volunteers that remained laser-focused throughout on lowering costs and improving quality of life for New Yorkers. For the majority of city residents who struggle to pay the bills, proposals like a rent freeze, universal childcare and free public buses proved very popular. 

The Democratic race for New York City mayor served as a kind of testing ground for the rival explanations of the party’s eroding support across key voter groups. While Mamdani represented the populist theory in practice, Cuomo stood as the standard-bearer for the centrist approach. When the latter announced his campaign this year, he echoed neoliberal criticisms of the party’s left, arguing that Democrats had stopped living in the “real world” and embraced extreme rhetoric and policies that alienated most voters. Cuomo also called out the “extremists” who promoted “anti-corporate” and “anti-capitalist” politics, singling out progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. The lesson of 2024, he said, was “you can’t have this extreme wing of the Democratic Party running the Democratic Party.” 

It’s hard to recall the last time the city’s power players rallied behind a candidate the way they did for Cuomo. The former governor was backed by virtually the entire New York City establishment, from the Democratic Party machine to the city’s financial and business elite. His Super PACs were bankrolled by hedge fund billionaires and the real estate lobby, while he picked up endorsements from dozens of elected New York Democrats and prominent national Democrats like former president Bill Clinton and Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. In the end, however, this overwhelming support from the city’s political and financial elite may have inadvertently helped Mamdani’s populist message resonate even more with the city’s frustrated electorate. 

Despite overwhelming opposition from the power elite and a concerted smear campaign to paint him as an antisemite due to his principled critique of Israel and its genocidal actions in Gaza, Mamdani defeated Cuomo with ease. After just one round of the rank-choice voting, the Democratic Socialist won 56% of the vote to Cuomo’s 44%. He also carried many of the same districts that veered sharply toward Trump last November, winning over demographic groups that had ostensibly shifted to the right, including Hispanics, Asians and young men. In the district where he recorded a viral video interviewing Trump voters shortly after last November’s election — where the vote swung 25-points toward Trump — Mamdani picked up over 80% of the vote. 

Mamdani’s populist coalition was broad and diverse, stretching across race and class. While Cuomo’s strongest backing came from low- and high-income voters, Mamdani appealed to working- and middle-class voters in between. New York writer Michael Lange aptly described it as a coalition of the “in-between: working, middle, and upper-middle class renters spanning White, Hispanic and Asian neighborhoods across all five boroughs.” The candidate also galvanized young and disengaged voters who had previously stayed home on election day. According to an analysis by the New York Times, 37,000 people registered to vote in the two weeks leading up to the election, compared to just 3,000 in the 2021 primary. 

Mamdani’s decisive victory proved that populist messaging resonates with voters that have been moving away from Democrats for years. Yet many top Democrats have responded to the Democratic Socialist’s triumph with alarm rather than hope. Indeed, Mamdani’s win has thrown much of the party’s elite into a state of panic, with insiders fretting that a Democratic Socialist mayor of New York could spell trouble for the party’s brand and put incumbents in battleground districts at greater risk. Even more alarmed are New York City’s financial elites, who are now scrambling to derail Mamdani’s march to Gracie Mansion (Plan B, it appears, is to back the Trumpian incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who currently has a 20% approval rating). 

What truly unnerves the city’s monied elite — and much of the Democratic establishment — isn’t the fear that Mamdani will fail, but that he might succeed and actually improve life for working- and middle-class New Yorkers. In a recent interview, the Democratic nominee said that he is not interested in winning an “ideological argument” but in delivering on “making the city affordable for everyone,” reflecting a pragmatic approach toward governing. As other commentators have noted, Mamdani’s philosophy of governance is reminiscent of the “sewer socialism” of 20th century Milwaukee and even Sanders’ successful governing approach as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. The “ideal” model for a Mamdani administration, argues Ross Barkan in The Nation, would be the municipal socialists who governed Milwaukee for much of the 20th century. In that midwestern city, socialist mayors and legislators “delivered durable public goods and managed a clean, effective municipality,” offering a stark contrast to the corrupt machine politics of neighboring Chicago. The “sewer socialists” were “notably non-corrupt in an era when cronyism and graft ran rampant,” notes Barkan. 

Mamdani, if elected, will have his work cut out for him. Even when the establishment isn’t lined up against you, being mayor of New York City is one of the most difficult and thankless jobs in American politics. Most of his major policies hinge on raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, which requires state approval and will probably face opposition from Gov. Kathy Hochul and other lawmakers in Albany. He will also face stiff opposition from the same financial and business elites who are currently working to thwart his election, plus a hostile media. Ultimately, Mamdani will have to work to maintain the grassroots energy that helped him take down the state’s most powerful political dynasty and communicate directly with the people of New York. To achieve his goals, he’ll need to build and sustain a broad coalition bound not by ideological conformity, but a shared desire to improve the city for all New Yorkers. And for the Democrats to follow his success and regain national power, they’ll need to accept that the path runs not through the center, but away from the neoliberal order that voters everywhere are eager to leave behind.