
When Socialists Run for NYC Mayor, Good Things Can Happen
Socialist legislator Zohran Mamdani is running for New York City mayor against a corrupt, unpopular mayor. Morris Hillquit did the same thing a century ago.

Socialist legislator Zohran Mamdani is running for New York City mayor against a corrupt, unpopular mayor. Morris Hillquit did the same thing a century ago.

When architects and designers understand themselves as workers in need of unions, they can take advantage of political breakthroughs like Zohran Mamdani’s recent mayoral win to use their skills to advance a vision of the built environment for the many.

It’s not just Zohran Mamdani — socialist candidates won municipal elections across the US last week. Like the New York mayor-elect, many of them focused their campaigns on affordability and relied on impressive grassroots volunteer operations.

As strange as it may sound, Zohran Mamdani’s new policy on halal cart licenses would lay the groundwork to democratize ownership through cooperatives — an approach that could finally help make New York City affordable again.

Facing a massive budgetary crisis, Zohran Mamdani is breaking with technocratic norms to openly explain the deficit while reiterating his pledges to oppose austerity and tax the rich — which means walking a political tightrope with Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Beyond his marquee campaign promises on affordability, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the movement behind him have the opportunity to expand popular participation in politics and push for reforms that democratize economic life.

The Right has long owned ideas of government efficiency and cutting red tape, using them to carry out austerity. With the Commission on Government Efficiency (yes, COGE), Zohran Mamdani is attempting to claim the cause of good government for the Left.

The way to help Zohran Mamdani overcome establishment and billionaire opposition to his agenda has to involve organizing bigger and deeper, rather than simply criticizing him harder.

Socialists’ path to supporting Mayor Zohran Mamdani will build on the strategy that socialists there have developed over the past decade, writes NYC Democratic Socialists of America cochair Grace Mausser.

New York City Hall has traditionally had an antagonistic relationship with the city’s municipal workforce. Mayor Zohran Mamdani can chart a new course, working collaboratively with city workers to deliver better public services.

The issue of Palestine speaks to a range of constituencies that Zohran Mamdani is trying to stitch together into a new coalition — and creates a cleavage with the establishment leaders of the Democratic Party like Andrew Cuomo and Chuck Schumer.

The Democrats have failed to mount a serious response to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism. Their fecklessness has left the door open for democratic socialists like Zohran Mamdani to position themselves as the real opposition to Trump.

Zohran Mamdani’s win wasn’t the only race last week or even in the past few years where pro-Israel money and arguments failed. The Israel lobby’s power rests on appearing more fearsome than it actually is.

Politicians have long used red-baiting to win Asian American votes, assuming an aversion to anything labeled socialist. But Zohran Mamdani’s primary triumph in Asian immigrant neighborhoods suggests that economic populism can overcome ideological baggage.

Long before Zohran Mamdani, Schenectady, New York, elected a socialist mayor who tried to make good on radical promises inside city hall. His short experiment still speaks to the challenges — and possibilities — of governing on the Left.

A democratic socialist will be inaugurated mayor tomorrow because he told New Yorkers they deserve it all — love, leisure, pleasure, sport.

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.

Zohran Mamdani’s proposal for city-run grocery stores is entirely practical. What’s more unrealistic, begging corporations to sacrifice profits to fulfill a necessary social role or simply providing basic urban infrastructure ourselves?