By Socialist Party reporters
“The sun may have set over our city this evening, but, as Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.”
These words from Zohran Mamdani’s powerful victory speech express the hope that many felt following the resounding election of a socialist candidate in New York and the defeat of the city’s billionaire establishment. It is an important spark in a time of much darkness – coming one year since Trump’s reelection, two years since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, and against the backdrop of climate chaos and the rise of the far-right globally.
It was a stunning achievement. Mamdani went from 1% in the polls in February to winning over 50% in the election. Indeed, he won with a record number of votes, exceeding one million, as young people turned out in huge numbers – displaying an enthusiasm for left-wing politics and a desire for radical change.
It is fitting that the election of Mamdani, who will be the first Muslim mayor of New York, happened on the same day that former Vice President and war criminal Dick Cheney died. Cheney was a key figure of a discredited neo-liberal capitalist order, and the architect of the ‘War on Terror’ that contributed to the deaths of 4.5 million and a regime of legalised kidnapping and torture. Mamdani’s victory showcased a clear rejection of the Islamophobia that Cheney and the US ruling class sought to entrench in the wake of 9/11.
Mass popular campaign
Mamdani’s campaign inspired all sections of New York’s immensely diverse working class, which was reflected in the record turnout. Over the course of a year, the campaign mobilised 100,000 mainly young volunteers into action, with three million doors knocked on. Of those aged between 18 and 29, 78% voted for Mamdani, with 84% of women in that age group voting for him. Over 60% of Black voters and 57% of Hispanic voters backed him.
He stood on a platform that centred on the cost-of-living crisis, which is pricing workers and young people out of the city. This marked a stark contrast to the campaign of corporate Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2020 presidential election, which saw her lead over Trump in New York decline by 15 points compared to Biden’s 2020 performance. Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and a Palestine solidarity activist who supports the BDS campaign against the Zionist state. He engaged in a 15-day hunger strike alongside drivers in the New York Drivers Alliance in 2021, demanding relief from the debt trap they faced.
His campaign popularised demands such as the need for universal childcare, a freeze on rents for two million renters, building 200,000 homes, a $30-an-hour minimum wage, and free and fast buses. He also raised his opposition to the existence of billionaires and demanded greater taxation for the super-rich. He made his opposition to the genocide in Gaza and Israeli apartheid clear, along with the brutal ICE raids orchestrated by Trump, which are tearing immigrant families apart across the US. In his victory speech, he made clear his solidarity with the trans community and his campaign put forward the demand of channeling $65 million into gender-affirming care and the establishment of an LGBTQ+ office.
In both the primary election in June and in the general election, he defeated the Democratic Party establishment candidate, the disgraced Andrew Cuomo, who was forced to resign as Governor after harassing and assaulting 13 women. Along with Cuomo, he easily defeated the racist Republican candidate and vigilante, Curtis Sliwa. The current (also disgraced) New York mayor, Eric Adams, was forced to drop out of the race in September as his poll numbers plummeted.
The fact that Mamdani was able to win by adopting a strong pro-Palestine stance is an indication of the sea change in attitudes to Israel in US public opinion in the aftermath of two years of genocide in Gaza. This shift is also being felt within sections of the large Jewish community in New York and was reflected in this campaign. A poll in July found that 67% of Jews in New York under the age of 44 supported Mamdani.
Establishment attacks
Mamdani faced an almost unprecedented smear campaign from the outset. This took the form of old-style and at times comical red-baiting, exemplified by a headline in the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post the day after the election: “On your Marx, get set, Zo! Mamdani wins race for mayor. THE RED APPLE”. The campaign also took a more sinister form with consistent attempts by his pro-billionaire and pro-Zionist opponents to portray him as an anti-Semite.
This was connected to a vile campaign of Islamophobia on the part of the Cuomo campaign itself and amongst his broader supporters. A report from The Centre for the Study of Organized Hate found there was a 450% increase in Islamophobic posts related to Mamdani on the X platform in September and October, from over 18,000 unique accounts. Cuomo’s disgusting Islamophobia was on display when he said in an interview: “But can you imagine that? If Mamdani was in the seat on 9/11, what would have happened in this city?”. When the interviewer responded by saying, “I could. He’d be cheering”, he laughed.
With characteristic petulance, Trump has threatened to cut funding to New York if the city elected Mamdani as Mayor. This is not the only opposition his programme will face. The city’s capitalist class are fervently opposed to his programme and the hopes it has raised amongst working-class New Yorkers. They spent $54 million on pro-Cuomo or anti-Mamdani propaganda, compared to $19 million raised and spent by Mamdani and his supporters.
This is the centre of US capitalism, and the Wall Street elites do not want to see the advancement of an agenda and movement that is committed to prioritising the interests of working people over those of big business. They see this as a threat to their power, profits and prestige. They have no wish to concede to reforms when their system is facing crises on multiple fronts.
The other major source of pressure will come from the Democratic Party establishment – the leaders of his own party. While Donald Trump and Elon Musk enthusiastically endorsed Cuomo, leading Democrats, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (who is a Senator for New York State), as well as Barack Obama, refused to endorse him, despite Mamdani being the official Democratic candidate. This is an indication of how these people are false friends of any socialist who chooses to run on the Democratic Party ballot line. Obama offered to advise Mamdani after he was elected – advice he should firmly reject.
Will Mamdani disappoint?
Mamdani said in his victory speech: “When we enter city hall in 58 days, expectations will be high. We will meet them.” No doubt he is sincere in this statement, but the pressure he will come under will be truly immense. A crucial question for Mamdani and the prospects for his programme is whether he will resist this pressure and stand up to the City’s elite interest groups, by mobilising his base into consistent and increasing activity, or will he compromise with them. Doing so will inevitably mean compromising on the demands of his base that delivered him to victory precisely because he articulated them so earnestly and inspiringly.
Moreover, any sense of compromising with big business interests will disappoint the one million working-class people who voted for him, which can in turn lead to demoralisation and demobilisation – the very thing that will be needed to succeed. Unfortunately, there are already signs that he may take the latter path. This was illustrated in July when he met members of Partnership with New York City, a consortium of 350 members representing banks, law firms and corporations. This has been followed up with further meetings, leading the New York Times Magazine to conclude:
“The conversations have allowed Mamdani to reframe his previous positions, tweaking the us-versus-them language of his democratic-socialist values to be a tad less punitive. He has made it clear that he wants to support renters, not punish landlords. He wants to support public education, not take a hammer to specialized schools with elite admissions. He supports Palestinian rights; he’s not anti-Zionist. He made key concessions when it comes to policing. Importantly, he made clear that he was open to compromise when it came to his proposed millionaires’ tax. Call it Mamdani 2.0.”
All of this may be an overstatement of how far he has gone in retreating from his political positions, but it likely reflects a trend. While he stood firm in his support of Palestinian liberation, he notably distanced himself from the slogan “globalise the intifada”, under pressure from the pro-Israel corporate media. He also made concessions to the NYPD, apologising to the force for past comments pointing to their horrendous record as a repressive force and supporting the demand of “defunding the police”.
In truth, not only does the movement that brought Mamdani to power need to be consolidated into local and city-wide organisations that can continue to mobilise, if Mamdani’s programme is to be fully realised; the programme itself will have to go further, demanding ever more radical policies in the face of the resistance, obstacles, and sabotage it will come up against. The work to prepare for this needs to begin straight away.
“Our Time Is Now”
The last decade has provided crucial lessons about the pitfalls of working within the framework of one of the two parties of US capitalism and imperialism, and the betrayals that are inherent to it. This was best exemplified by the experience of Bernie Sanders, who articulated and energised working-class anger at the system. Imprisoned within the Democratic Party, however, he disastrously endorsed Joe Biden on two occasions, wasting real opportunities to pose an alternative to both capitalist parties and their policies of enriching the billionaires and waging wars at the expense of the working class. He and his co-thinkers like AOC, therefore shoulder some of the responsibility for Trump’s return to power and the further rise of MAGA. Breaking with the rule of the billionaires necessitates breaking with the parties that uphold their rule.
Speaking at a celebration after Mamdani’s election, anti-capitalist author Naomi Klein said:
“This movement, this is anti-fascism, and it is also the antithesis of fascism, because fascists want everybody to be the same. They celebrate conformity, uniformity, sameness, hierarchy… New York is the most unruly city. The entire campaign was a love letter to the diversity, linguistic, faith, cultural diversity of the city, at a time when the Republicans never stop pouring hate onto cities and [to] make people afraid of each other.”
Mamdani’s victory will rightly inspire many. This inspiration cannot be allowed to give way to disappointment. That a self-described socialist can be elected in the “belly of the beast”, a city that symbolises the power of US capitalism, is a victory to be celebrated and wherever possible emulated by learning key lessons from it. It must be the start of a new movement uniting and empowering the working class and oppressed in all their diversity, a movement that takes aim at the rule of millionaires and billionaires, proffering a socialist alternative to the capitalist system and the hellscape it is offering humanity. Mamdani’s campaign slogan – “our time is now” – is an apt one. Let’s seize it.
