Zohran Mamdani, the spectre that haunts the Democrats and Republicans

A spectre – a ghost – is haunting the Democratic party. That spectre has a smiling face and a name to go with it – Zohran Mamdani. In fact, he is haunting far more than the Democratic Party; he is haunting all of US politics, and as the likely next mayor of New York City, he is haunting global capitalism. One of New York city’s biggest landlords, Scott Rechler, made the issue clear: “you want to have leadership [i.e. a mayor] that speaks to what New York is. It’s the capital of capitalism” he said, and popular support for this “capital of capitalism” is being undermined from below, by an open and proud “democratic socialist“, who appears likely to be the next mayor of that city.

Hedge fund manager and longtime Democratic Party donor Daniel Loeb said “it’s officially hot commie summer“. And many of New York City’s so-called business leaders who had been longtime donors to the Democratic Party met shortly after the June 24th primary election to first discuss how they could coalesce behind the corrupt, serial sexual harasser – former governor Andrew Cuomo. They now are trying to figure out how to get the even more corrupt current mayor of New York, Eric Adams, reelected. 

New York State senator Kirsten Gillibrand denounced the apparent nominee of her own party as a supporter of “global Jihad“, which supposedly means a violent global attack on Jewish people. The top 2 national leaders of the Democratic Party, senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, and house minority leader Hakeem Jefferies, have so far refused to endorse the apparent Democratic nominee for New York City mayor. And William Daley, former US commerce secretary, and then chief of staff under then President Obama denounced Mamdani as an “extremist“, and said his positions must be kept out of the Democratic party’s platform.

What is it that so terrifies the Democratic Party leadership? The Wall Street Journal editorial board put their finger on part of the reason. They wrote that his victory “signals the rise of left-wing economic populism as a leading alternative to the MAGA Republicans….. The left-populist, working class appeal of the Mamdani campaign poses obvious problems for national Democrats who want to move the party back toward the middle. But Republicans would be wise not to gloat. If Trump economics fails to deliver strong growth and gains in real income, the left-wing populists will be waiting as the main alternative.”

Mamdani started his election campaign with something like 1% support according to the polls. In the first round of the rank choice voting system that the city has for its primaries, Mamdani received almost half of the first place votes – 43.5% – compared to runner-up and former New York State governor Mario Cuomo, who has 36.4%. When second choice votes were counted in the runoff, Mamdani got 56%, a decisive 12 point victory over Cuomo. 

Mamdani did it by mobilizing a base of over 50,000 mainly younger New Yorkers to go door-to-door and stand on street corners campaigning for him. He created that base by focusing his campaign around issues that are near and dear to the hearts of millions of New Yorkers – “affordability”. 

But much of what Mamdani proposes is not really all that different or radical. As political consultant Peter Felt pointed out,“when Michael Bloomberg was Mayor, he raised taxes on the rich and called for free crosstown buses. Now, even Eric Adams supposedly supports free buses. Bill de Blasio froze the rent and provided universal pre-K.” So Why are both the Democratic Party leadership and the entire Republican Party so up in arms about Mamdani?

First of all, Mamdani is not just any “left wing, economic populist”; he is open and proud of labeling himself as a “democratic socialist” who as he said when he was interviewed by Stephen Colbert on the late show “doesn’t like capitalism”. That reflects the view of a plurality of those under 30 years old. The most recent poll by Pewresearch shows that 44% of those 18 to 29 have a positive view of socialism while only 40% have a positive view of capitalism. 

It is these youth upon whom Mamdani has built his campaign.

Ideas matter, but so does organization. And in the world of politics, organization can ultimately mean one thing only: a political party. While it’s true that Mamdani runs as a Democrat, and he even refers to the Democratic Party as “our party” as he did in an interview on MSNBC recently, in reality that is not where his real base is. His real base is among those 50,000 people who campaigned for him, and are loyal to him rather than to either the Democratic party or the established leadership of that party. 

Assemblyman Mamdani’s staff. Their background is not in the Democratic Party.

State Representative Mandami’s staff is also significant: his chief of staff, Elle Bisgaard-Church, has no previous record of having worked for Democratic party politicians. The same is true for his office manager, Davina Bhandari and his community communications officer, Ayit Hysseini. The communications director for his campaign is Andrew Bard Epstein. Epstein had previously served as campaign manager for Democratic state assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, who also says she wants to “promote a democratic socialist future”. In other words, those who are closest to him, those upon whom he would rely for immediate advice, do not have institutional ties to the Democratic Party hierarchy. This is different even from both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders.

A large part of this difference probably stems from the enormous change that has swept through US, and in fact world politics since AOC was first elected just six years ago. 

The MAGA horde has radicalized the youth

The continued rise and radicalization of MAGA Fascism has also radicalized tens of millions of younger people in the opposite direction. Part of their radicalization has resulted from the frustration over the Democratic Party’s leadership’s refusal to mount a serious campaign against Trump and MAGA.

But there is also another change: Israel has been increasingly exposed for being the racist, expansionist, and now openly genocidal force that it is. The issue of Israel, or Zionism, is extremely important for US and world capitalism. Joe Biden expressed it when he said as long ago as 1986 that the $3 billion per year sent to Israel “Is the best foreign policy investment that we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States would have to invent an Israel.” And more recently Democratic party leader Hakeem

Jefferies explained it even more bluntly. He said: “Israel today, Israel, tomorrow, Israel forever.” He was channeling the former premier racist in the United States, former Alabama governor George Wallace, who once said the same about segregation:  “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” 

The United States capitalists do not place such importance on Israel because of some supposed influence of “the Jews“; they do so because Israel is the only really dependable ally in the so-called “Middle East”, which has global importance because it is still the main global source of oil. Biden made that clear in his 1986 Senate speech. A second important reason is that a huge amount of global trade passes through either the Straits of Hormuz, which is effectively controlled by Iran, or through the Suez Canal, which is controlled by Egypt.

Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is open for the world to see.

Israel‘s genocide in Gaza and its stepped up ethnic cleansing in the West Bank is open for the whole world to see. With the development of the Internet the capitalist news channels cannot hide it. A recent article in the Washington Post explained that even many members of young Republican clubs on college campuses are turning against Israel, out of disgust for its genocidal policies in Gaza. 

Mamdani does not pull any punches on his view, not only of Israel’s policies, but of Zionism itself. He was asked about that by Stephen Colbert. He responded by saying he supported the right of Israel to exist as a democratic state with equal rights for all. Colbert pressed him on the issue and asked him whether that included a “Jewish state“. Mamdani was very clear. He said he did not support any state that privileged any particular ethnic or religious group. 

But the very essence of Zionism is to place the Jewish people above all others. If you do not support a “Jewish state“ then you do not support Zionism. It’s just that simple. And Mamdani’s answer to Colbert was also very simple. How can anybody who claims to believe in democracy support giving special privileges to people of any religion? Colbert was unable to undercut Mamdani’s explanation and had to pass on to another topic.

Mamdani’s chances of winning the Nov. 4 general election seem very good. The opposition to him is fractured. First the Democratic Party’s major donors tried to coalesce around Cuomo, and when that appeared to crumble, they then turned to the even less popular Eric Adams. Now, since both Cuomo and Adams will be on the November ballot, along with Republican Curtis Sliwa, that means that the opposition to Mamdani will be split three ways. As opposed to the June primary, all Mamdani has to do in November is to win a plurality, that is to say get more votes than any other candidate. He does not have to win an absolute majority.

The fact that the Democrats are stuck with one of two corrupt and unpalatable “alternatives” reflects how out of tune they are today. It is similar to how they foisted Hillary Clinton on voters as the Democratic Party candidate in 2016, despite the fact that everybody knew how unpopular she was, and how the entire Democratic Party leadership was perfectly willing to try to foist  a clearly senile Joe Biden on Democratic Party voters in 2024. 

In a sense, Donald Trump brought the Republican Party into the 21st-century in 2016, and the Democratic Party has yet to catch up. But they cannot coalesce around somebody like Mandani in the same way that the Republicans did around Trump because the former directly clashes with both the capitalist values and one of its most important international issues: support for Israel.

So they are trying to bring Mandani into the fold. After Gillibrand made her Islamaphobic comments about Mandani she subsequently walked them back. And while Schumer and Jefferies have not endorsed Mamdani, both of them publicly congratulated him for his victory, and all three of these Democratic party leaders are now in communication with Mamdani. 

Another absolutely central wing of the Democratic Party is the union leadership. This leadership in effect makes the party a cross-class “popular front”. Historically, popular fronts bring the workers organizations including the unions under the partial political control of the employers. Most of the union leadership supported Cuomo in the primaries. Now two of the most important unions have moved into the Mamdani camp. 

Top: NY Central Labor Council announces endorsement of Mamdani; botton: Mamdani speaking at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network

Those are the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council Local 32BJ of the SEIU, and the New York State Nurses Association. These two important unions have a combined 125,000 members who live in New York City. They also can provide an important addition to the public canvassers for Mamdani. And on June 30th, the NYC Central Labor Council, the largest federation ofLabor Unions in NYC, representing 1.3 million union workers also publicly endorsed Zohran Mamdani. Also, it seems that Al Sharpton, who is quite influential among black voters in New York, is moving towards endorsing Mamdani. 

Mamdani’s victory in November is not guaranteed, however. 

Some people point to the example of the 2021 election for Mayor in Buffalo, New York. In that case the democratic socialist Democratic candidate India Walton, defeated the incumbent Byron Brown in the primary. Brown, however, chose to run as a write-in candidate and won the general election. No two situations are exactly the same, and for one thing 2025 is not 2021. 

Also, the opposition to Mamdani will be split several different ways in the general election. Mamdani also faces another challenge: in the primary he won slightly over 432,000 1st place votes. His ally, Brad Lander, won another 112,000 votes. Even if all those Lander voters vote for Mamdani in the general election that makes a little over 540,000 votes, whereas four years ago Adams won nearly 754,000 votes. A lot more people turn out for a general election than a primary, but those statistics should still be kept in mind. 

Furthermore, winning with an absolute majority rather than just a plurality will strengthen his ability to stand up to the powerful forces that will be mobilized against him.In order to win a decisive victory in November, and maybe even more important in order to build a force that can stand up to the attacks that are sure to come, Mamdani will have to shore up support in two key and overlapping sectors of the New York City working class. 

One is among black voters, who in the main apparently did not vote for Mamdani in the primary. But it is not just a question of the election itself; it is also, and maybe more importantly, a question of building a force, a movement, after the election. That is where the black youth come in. Historically black youth have always played the central role in any youth movement, including the youth movement against the Vietnam war. Mamdani, and the movement around him, will have to convince black youth that they are really serious about their fight to transform the city and U.S. politics in general.

Another key, and overlapping, sector is public service workers, especially the members of the NYC transport workers union (TWU Local 100). Many subway and bus workers, for instance, have to deal with the crisis of US capitalism in a very direct and personal way, when they are confronted with homelessness and crime on the New York City subways. They are also very vulnerable to violent attacks on the job as transit workers as evidenced by statistics from the TWU Local 100, the NYC Transit workers union, that say that NYC Transit workers are subjected to approximately 2,200 incidents of harassment and assaults each year or an average of 6 per day.

Here, the role of the union leadership comes into play: a leadership that has for decades been in effect telling the members to think only of themselves and not to see the issues they confront as broader social issues. Even worse, they have at every turn have publicly supported “cracking down” on fare-beaters and repeated hateful stereotypes against the homeless and immigrants in particular (even using migrants as an epithet).

In doing so they have made common cause with the MTA Bosses and pro-capitalist politicians like Eric Adams, seeking to reinstitute and recycle every failed “tough on crime” narrative and policy. The Union leadership even endorsed Eric Adams for NYC Mayor in 2021, despite knowing that Eric Adams was openly calling for bringing back the “Stop and Frisk” and the notorious “Street Crimes Unit”, policies that directly led to a massive wave of racial profiling and police brutality that culminated in the NYPD choking death of Eric Garner, the son of a NYC Transit worker. 

NYC subway workers tend to be “trauma bonded” with NY cops because no general solution is offered.

Tragically as a result of the unsafe conditions they face on the job, the sense of abandonment and betrayal they feel because nothing ever seems to change in terms of the assaults  they face, it is not surprising that many bus and subway workers are in effect trauma bonded with the NYPD and wrongly see them as workers like themselves and their close allies in the fight for safe working conditions. The general attitude is to want to keep the homeless and other “troublemakers” out of the subways. Therefore, they tend to be skeptical of Zohran Mamdani’s plans to make public transit more available to New York City’s poorest. Mamdani and his movement will have to help those workers see the solution to their daily problems in the context of a broader solution to the problems of poverty, homelessness, and the general despair which leads to substance abuse.

All of this is of critical importance when one considers the forces that Mamdani will have to mobilize if he is to successfully stand up to Trump and company as well as the Democratic Party in general. He will face several challenges:

First of all, Mamdani may be overestimating his chances of getting the state legislature to pass a tax increase on the rich and big business, especially since Democratic governor Hochul has made it clear she opposes this. Mamdani would probably have to spread the movement beyond New York City, to help it grow in Buffalo, Troy, Schenectady, Albany and beyond. The message would be clear: “Don’t you want what we’re fighting for? Demand that your representatives pass this tax on the rich or replace them if they don’t.” Building a movement beyond New York City is also important because of another threat: Trump already is focused on attacking the major Democratic led cities in the United States. If Mamdani is elected mayor,  Trump will be laser focused on New York City. 

A second challenge will be his ability to successfully confront Trump and his Supreme Court. On the day Mamdani was announced the winner of the primary, Trump threatened to have him arrested if as mayor he doesn’t cooperate with ICE. Trump also went so far as to threaten to try to remove his citizenship and deport Mamdani! It’s also hard to see how the federal court system, ultimately meaning Trump’s Supreme Court, will not be used against the city. It seems likely that Stephen Miller, who has now replaced Elon Musk as Trump’s main hatchet man, will start focusing increasingly on New York for his ICE raids.

One thing that stands in our favor is the enormous arrogance of Trump and Miller. That arrogance is similar to the arrogance of then president George Bush when he ordered the invasion of Iraq. In that case, Bush and the neoconservatives figured that since no military force could stand up to the US military, there would be no problem in conquering that small and relatively poor country. Today, that invasion is generally seen as having been an enormous strategic blunder. Trump and Miller are subject to making a similar strategic blunder. In New York City, they are liable to start to stage ice raids against New York’s sizable Haitian immigrant population. Such raids will inevitably tend to spill over into attacks on Black Americans in New York, and that will have huge political consequences. Trump and Miller are probably already looking to mobilize the National Guard beyond Los Angeles, including in New York City. 

It is also possible, by the way, that the National Guard would have to be mobilized to enforce some extreme Trump Supreme Court ruling regarding New York. In either case, things

National Guard in L.A. on “No Kings” day. “This is not what we signed up for.”

could easily spiral out of their control, especially when we consider that there are credible reports that the National Guard in Los Angeles is already feeling somewhat demoralized. 

Imagine what would happen if they are confronted not just with a few hundred but with thousands and possibly tens of thousands of angry workers and youth in New York City! It would be an absolute, devastating crisis for all of US capitalism, and both the Democratic and Republican political parties, if they start to lose control over their own national guard troops.

There is also another freight train rolling down the tracks, and that is the 2026 midterm elections. Trump and his cult, which is the Republican Party, are pushing one unpopular measure after another. The only way that he can keep his senators and representatives in line is by in some way assuring them that they can keep their lucrative offices in those midterm elections. 

In other words, we are talking about voter suppression to a degree unheard of since the days of Jim Crow in the US South. But this time it will be on a far wider and also on a national scale. It is hard to see how that is not the plan for 2026, and one way or another it seems very possible that Trump would mobilize the National Guard as part of that plan, which was what he wanted to do in the 2024 election. In that case, only his military generals such as Mark Milly stopped him. Trump has made sure to get all of those types out of his present administration.

In conclusion, Oaklandsocialist has repeatedly pointed out that an independent working class political party will almost certainly not develop by simply running candidates. It will develop through the movement in the streets, the working class communities and schools, the workplace, and, yes, within the unions themselves. We can see how what could really be described as the beginnings of a Mamdani Movement could play a huge role in such a development, including driving Mamdani further than he himself has thought. 

The bigger and more decisive the victory for him in November, the more confident and powerful such a movement will be, and the more it will tend to drive forward the struggle for working class independence. This movement will have international implications, both for the embattled people of Palestine and also Ukraine, and also for a worldwide working class resistance to the ravages of global capitalism. 

A movement that defeats not only Trump and its MAGA horde, but also the complicit Democratic Party can start in one city, especially one as important as New York, but it must spread beyond to succeed. What Mamdani has developed could be the catalyst for exactly such a wider movement.

Note:   John Ferretti, socialist, NYC subway worker and Mamdani supporter contributed t this article. Also see our interview with him about this campaign.

Zohran Mamdani, the spectre that haunts the Democrats and Republicans