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.