Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in New York has horrified the whole US political establishment. It gives hope to everyone desperate for an alternative to the cautious mainstream parties and politics run for the rich.
It’s a slap in the face for Donald Trump, who raged against Mamdani saying he was “bad news” and threatening to arrest him if he defied the president.
Mamdani is part of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and proudly declared himself a socialist.
He humiliated the corporate sleazeball Andrew Cuomo, a right-wing Democrat who Mamdani defeated in their pre-selection ballot, but who then stood as an independent funded by the rich. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg alone pumped $8 million into his campaign.
Mamdani made clear his support for Palestine and will be the city’s first Muslim mayor.
There was massive enthusiasm for his campaign. The voter turnout in New York was the highest in 50 years.
Mamdani focused on making New York affordable for the city’s working class.
He talked about how working class people are being “pushed out of the city they built”—promising to freeze rents and build 200,000 affordable housing units in the next decade.
He wants to deliver free childcare for kids under the age of five, fast, free bus services and a network of low-price, publicly-run grocery stores.
And he was unapologetic about saying the rich should pay for it—through a wealth tax on the top 1 per cent.
“It shows that people want something different,” Eric Fretz, a socialist activist in New York, told the British Socialist Worker.
New York has become a playground for the rich, with the most billionaires of any city in the world.
“The 1 per cent want their foothold in the city and it brings up the prices for everyone else.
“The city has just been changing—there used to be pockets where things were actually affordable but they’ve all disappeared,” Eric said.
But this was more than a campaign simply focused on economic issues. Mamdani also promised to keep Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids out of city facilities and support immigrant workers.
NYC DSA member Jesse Ortiz said that Mamdani “has demonstrated a commitment to supporting Muslim and immigrant groups”.
“He has worked tirelessly with mosques and other community organisations throughout the city.
“I think this is particularly salient in post-9/11 NYC when Muslims, Arabs and South Asians were brutally villainised and targeted by local and national politicians, and in the current context of Trump’s opposition to immigration.”
Where now?
Mamdani’s campaign mobilised 104,000 volunteers across the city to door-knock and build support. This is a huge base that could strengthen the Palestine solidarity movement, organise against ICE raids and fight for action on the cost of living.
Mamdani will come under huge pressure from the rich and the political establishment. Implementing his plans will require a fight.
Trump has threatened to send the National Guard to New York to enforce ICE raids and has threatened to cut funding to the city.
The Democratic Party establishment will be looking to force him to compromise and tone down his policies. The tax increases on the rich needed to fund them require approval from the state government, which is controlled by corporate Democrats.
Resisting this will require mobilising his supporters in the streets and the workplaces in a defiant movement to take on the billionaires and the existing political system.
But already there are signs that Mamdani is prepared to retreat in order to try to work with business interests and powerful institutions.
He has agreed to keep the city’s Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch in place, a signal that he won’t challenge the notoriously corrupt and powerful NYPD. Tisch was appointed by the previous mayor Eric Adams, who flooded the subway with extra cops and demanded more arrests to prove he was “tough on crime”.
Mamdani also moderated his stand around Palestine, saying he would stop using the slogan “Globalise the Intifada” and that he supports Israel’s right to exist.
And he has sought out meetings with business leaders to reassure them about the scope of his program and his willingness to listen to their concerns.
Some will use his success to argue for the left to focus on elections and winning power within Congress and city halls. But the real power to change society lies in movements outside parliaments and strike action by workers in offices, factories and public services.
Mamdani and the DSA, however, are committed to working within the Democratic Party to try to drag it to the left.
But the Democratic Party is one of the central political institutions of US capitalism and is dominated by corporate interests and billionaires. The problems with trying to take it over the Democrats can already be seen in the compromises made by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC).
Bernie’s decision to work within the Democrats meant he threw his support behind Joe Biden, the candidate of the corporate machine and the imperialist establishment. AOC has moved from being a radical outsider in the party to voting in Congress last year against a measure that would have cut funding to Israel.
Mamdani faces the same problems. As Eric Fretz put it, “Because he is running as a Democrat candidate the same pressures are on him as on people like AOC.
“The compromises he is already starting to make are partly because he is on a Democrat ticket. He has benefited from disgust with the established Democrats. But he is making it more difficult for there to be an alternative in the long run.”
Eric added, “What happens next will depend a lot on what the left do. We can’t just wait and see what Mamdani does.”
The millions of people who mobilised in the recent anti-Trump “No Kings” rallies show the potential to turn the tide against Trump and the corporate elite.
Socialist politics focused on building movements of resistance outside the Democratic Party and the electoral process is going to be needed to ensure real change.
By James Supple
