New Yorkers Aren’t Afraid of a Democratic Socialist Mayor

Fifty-six percent of New Yorkers supported a democratic socialist for the Democratic Party’s nomination to lead the nation’s largest city, according to New York City’s ranked choice voting tabulation. The results, which were released Tuesday, gave Zohran Mamdani a resounding 56-44 victory over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, confirming that Mamdani’s campaign had upended not only the calculus of municipal politics of New York City but also of a national Democratic Party that is struggling to identify its ideological direction following its 2024 election setbacks.

Mamdani’s grassroots campaign helped fuel the highest turnout in a Democratic mayoral primary since 1989. He secured a striking 545,334 primary votes in round three of the ranked choice voting process, and declared, “Democrats spoke in a clear voice, delivering a mandate for an affordable city, a politics of the future, and a leader unafraid to fight back against rising authoritarianism.” He also achieved a much-coveted goal of the left: expanding the electorate by getting tens of thousands of new voters, particularly young voters, to the polls. 

Mamdani’s sweeping victory came after a campaign in which he and his opponents were absolutely clear about where the 33-year-old state legislator was coming from. 

Two days before New York City’s June 24 primary, Cuomo made a last desperate attempt to scare Democrats away from supporting the surging campaign of a rival who had begun his bid with scant name recognition and single-digit poll numbers. The former governor used the “S” word, warning that the party was being “taken over by this far-left socialist mentality” and complaining that his ideological rivals wanted to do things like “invest all the money in education.”

Cuomo’s attack wasn’t just an end-of-the-race Hail Mary. During the long course of the campaign for the Democratic nod in New York City, the Cuomo camp and the free-spending political action committees that backed it left zero doubt that, like Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, 1963 March on Washington organizers A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, and Pledge of Allegiance author Francis Bellamy, Mamdani had embraced a socialist vision for achieving economic and social and racial justice in the United States. Media outlets—especially The New York Post—highlighted every “grim warning to New Yorkers about electing a socialist mayoral candidate.”

Yet, Mamdani refused to run scared. He explained on a pre-primary Bloomberg podcast that, “I am a democratic socialist, yes. I started to call myself that after Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign for president, when I finally had a language that described how I saw the world, and the way that I believe the world should be — which is one where every person has the dignity they need to live a decent life.” While Cuomo complained that Mamdani’s program was “just a fantasy,” Mamdani leaned into his ambitious platform, offering a costed-out plan to tax the rich and multinational corporations in order to pay for free buses, affordable housing, more access to healthcare, universal childcare and, yes, lots of education.

Mamdani put an exclamation mark on things by welcoming the active support of Democratic Socialists of America campaigners in New York, along with endorsements from the nation’s two most prominent democratic socialists: Sanders, I-Vermont, and US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York.

By end of the primary campaign, New Yorkers had gotten to know Mamdani and his agenda, and they approved. Yet, his critics still thought that attaching the socialist label would somehow disqualify the first-time mayoral candidate in the eyes of New York City voters. They were sorely mistaken. The initial election results weren’t even close. Mamdani finished so far ahead of Cuomo—with 44 percent to 36 percent for the former governor—that the former governor conceded on election night.

Headlines identified Mamdani as the winner long before the conclusion of the ranked-choice-voting process, which would only increase his numbers. The maps of where and how Mandani won were striking. The assemblyman was carrying Brooklyn by a staggering 17 points and maintaining comfortable leads in vote-rich Manhattan and Queens. Indeed, Mamdani won so many diverse neighborhoods in the vast city that, on election night, he was able to declare, “We have won from Harlem to Bay Ridge. We have won from Jackson Heights to Port Richmond. We have won from Maspeth to Chinatown.”

That freaked out the editors of The Post, which headlined its Wednesday morning post-primary paper, “NYC SOS: Who will save city after radical socialist batters Cuomo in Dem mayoral primary?” Fox News and other conservative media outlets took up the call, referring to Mamdani’s proposals to make rent, transportation, and food more affordable as “kind of bonkers.” President Trump labeled Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic” in a post-primary Truth Social post that scholars and fact-checkers immediately rated “false.”  (He also questioned Mamdani’s citizenship and threatened to arrest him if Mamdani blocked New York from cooperating with ICE agents.) Corporate-aligned Democrats such as US Rep. Laura Gillen, D-New York, griped about the choice the voters had made. “I just didn’t think that New York would elect someone who is a self-proclaimed socialist to lead the city that is the global epicenter of capitalism. So, I was very surprised.”

But she shouldn’t have been surprised. The issue was litigated in the primary campaign—in debates, television appearances, TV ads, and mailings. It was all over the media. Yet, voters weren’t dissuaded. They chose a candidate who said, “This entire race was about the question of affordability, and ultimately I have run a campaign that speaks about the tools that city government actually has to deliver that affordability in the wealthiest city and the wealthiest country in the world.”