On Thursday morning, democratic socialist New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed centrist governor Kathy Hochul for reelection, explaining his decision to the Left with an op-ed in the Nation. The move reflected the mayor’s close relationship with the centrist governor, a partnership that Mamdani argues is crucial to delivering on the affordability agenda he ran and won on by a wide margin in November.
The timing of Mamdani’s endorsement of Hochul came as a surprise to some allies on the Left, given that the governor has repeatedly stated her opposition to taxing the rich, which Mamdani sees as central to enacting his agenda and weathering the coming federal cuts to health care and food assistance.
Also, in the fourth week of the city’s largest-ever nurses strike, Hochul extended an executive order making it easier for hospitals to hire scabs, as my colleague Alex Press wrote for Jacobin, prompting nurses and their supporters to march to and picket at the governor’s New York office last Monday. And there’s no shortage of other issues for the Left to criticize her on, from dragging her feet on climate policy to doing too little to protect immigrants from Donald Trump.
Left critics of the mayor’s decision included New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA), the group that Mamdani belongs to and which can take significant credit for his election, saying in an official statement Friday:
Governor Hochul has demonstrated time and again that she will only prioritize the needs of working-class New Yorkers when she is forced. The announcement of a childcare expansion earlier this year was the result of a movement of millions electing democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. But with fascism here, and ultra-wealthy hospital CEOs refusing fair pay and benefits for nurses amid a historic strike, New York cannot afford to let the Governor continue to protect billionaire donors at the expense of SNAP, Medicaid, truly universal childcare, and…
Auteur: Liza Featherstone
