On September 25, the mayor of New York was indicted on criminal charges for the first time in the modern era. The charges marked the culmination of only one of four ongoing federal investigations into an administration drowning in FBI raids, subpoenas, and resignations.
This cartoonish corruption, in addition to alleged shakedown operations, has revived the memory of Tammany Hall, the corrupt Democratic Party club and patronage machine of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century New York. William M. “Boss” Tweed, the man most associated with Tammany, was eventually imprisoned for his corruption. The mayor is trying to avoid this fate by groveling his way to a pardon from Donald Trump, going so far as to shamelessly cancel Martin Luther King Jr Day plans to attend the inauguration. But the damage to Adams’s political career could already be permanent.
With politicians across the city smelling blood, Adams now faces a competitive primary in 2025, with a widening field that includes socialist assemblyman Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani is running on an ambitious platform that boasts a rent freeze, free buses, no-cost childcare, and city-owned grocery stores. The cost-of-living-focused campaign aims to harness the frustration of the city’s working class — and in particular Muslim and Arab American New Yorkers, who have grown disaffected with a Democratic Party and a mayor that have been championing the interests of capital over those of working people and cheerleading Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
In this legitimacy crisis for Adams and Democrats nationally, Mamdani and the democratic socialist movement in New York can draw lessons from the Old Left’s fight against corrupt Tammany Democrats like Tweed. The Left helped break the power of Tammany…
Auteur: Trevor Goodwin
