
Zohran’s Victory Proves That Public Campaign Financing Works
Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory shows that we don’t just need better candidates and stronger messaging. We need public campaign funding to financially invest in democracy.

Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory shows that we don’t just need better candidates and stronger messaging. We need public campaign funding to financially invest in democracy.

Zohran Mamdani’s historic mayoral victory marks a new chapter for democratic socialism in America. Like Bernie Sanders before him, he’s shown that relentless focus on a unifying message of economic justice can win against establishment sabotage.

Discontent with the status quo and the political establishment culminated in a perfect storm in New York City when Zohran Mamdani beat billionaire-backed Andrew Cuomo to become mayor. The win shows how Democrats might beat Trumpism.

From censoring a report on CIA domestic surveillance to running cover for the Contra War to helping launch the war on terror, Dick Cheney dedicated his life to making sure the US national security state could kill, spy, and torture with few checks.

Centrists have been declaring the socialist movement dead for years in spite of the victories it has racked up. But Zohran Mamdani’s win makes its rise undeniable.

Largely ignored in coverage of the democratic socialist movement that helped produce Zohran Mamdani is this basic fact: at a time of rising authoritarianism, socialists have succeeded by old-fashioned grassroots, democratic organizing.

Last night in Brooklyn, after his win in New York’s mayoral race, Zohran Mamdani gave a victory speech that quoted Eugene Debs, directly challenged Donald Trump, and laid out a vision for a New York City transformed. We reprint it here in full.

Zohran Mamdani ran an excellent campaign. But his victory was made possible by a decade of serious electoral work by New York City’s democratic socialists and the structural dysfunction of the political establishment.

A democratic socialist wasn’t supposed to be able to win a major office like New York City mayor over the objections of billionaires. Yet Zohran Mamdani and the movement behind him built a campaign far stronger than the oligarchs and their unlimited money.

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign represented a struggle for basic dignity and an affirmation of democratic potential. It was ceaselessly denounced by political and media elites from across the spectrum as something sinister, violent, and dangerous.

Home insurance rates are skyrocketing faster than home prices and overall inflation, draining homeowners of billions of dollars in premiums amid rising policy cancellations — driven in part by insurers’ use of artificial intelligence to assess risk.

Billionaire Bill Gates says we should back away from urgent emissions cuts and bet instead on tomorrow’s tech. But unless that innovation is democratically controlled, it will serve the same interests that caused the climate crisis in the first place.