Zohran Mamdani ran an excellent campaign. But his victory was made possible by a decade of serious electoral work by New York City’s democratic socialists and the structural dysfunction of the political establishment.
Zohran Mamdani’s astonishing victory in New York City’s mayoral election will electrify the Left nationally — as it should. But what does this win mean for socialists? It’s always tempting to read election results in sweeping ideological terms, as an index of the national mood or the vindication of an ideology. We all remember less than a year ago, when Kamala Harris’s loss showed that an increasingly anti-immigrant nation was lurching rightward — and older readers will even remember that four years ago Eric Adams’s tough-on-crime centrism was the future of the Democratic Party. (Now people are saying the same thing about Zohran.)
But elections are never tidy referenda on an ideology or a platform. They’re determined to a very large degree by the talents and foibles of whoever happens to run. If Mamdani hadn’t been elected to the New York State Legislature in 2020, he wouldn’t have been in a position to run, and no candidate of similar talent and commitment would have replaced him. If Eric Adams hadn’t been notoriously corrupt, he might well be cruising to victory right now, and no serious candidate might have emerged to challenge him. There was no guarantee that the opportunity to run a democratic socialist for New York City mayor in 2025 would emerge, or that when it emerged there would be a candidate ready to seize it.
Exactly because of that contingency though, the work that positioned the Left to seize that opportunity was crucial. A significant part of that work was done by the New York City Democratic Socialists of…
Auteur: Michael Kinnucan
