One Mayoral Election Could End Up Awakening A Dormant Corner Of The Left

The largest socialist organization in the U.S. is laying the groundwork to make one of its allies the next mayor of New York City amid a generational battle for the Democratic Party’s identity.

Democratic New York State Rep. Zohran Mamdani is polling above nearly all the moderate candidates in his party’s mayoral primary race — and raising the most money — with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the race could shape left-wing politics across the country by reinvigorating DSA candidates who grew increasingly unpopular over the past four years.

“I do think that the DSA candidate is absolutely capable of winning,” Chris Talgo, a research fellow for the conservative Heartland Institute, told the DCNF.

Talgo co-authored a report on the growing momentum of far-left campaigns in 2024, which found that 94% of candidates endorsed by the DSA and two other socialist organizations won with an average margin of 49 points. Talgo said New York’s mayoral race will be a “test case” for Democrats’ future ideological leanings.

“Are they going to go more toward the center, or are they going to go even more toward the left?” Talgo told the DCNF. “I think that these kind of races are going to … give us an interesting, you know, picture into that.”

“If Mamdani became mayor, the significance for the future of socialist politics would rise immeasurably, probably in direct inverse proportion to the fortunes of NYC if his policies were implemented,” author and conservative commentator Seth Barron told the DCNF. Barron primarily covers New York City politics and culture.

“To have the nation’s biggest city run by an avowed advocate of radical wealth distribution, defunding the police, and the arrest of Israeli citizens for ‘war crimes’ would demonstrate that, at least in blue cities and states, the future of socialism is rosy,” Barron said.

Mamdani polled at 22% for the June primary falling behind former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 45% in a Honan Strategy Group survey conducted in April. The DSA endorsed Mamdani in October, and his poll numbers jumped by 13 percentage points between January and April.

Mamdani and Cuomo’s campaigns did not respond to multiple requests for comment. (RELATED: Democrats Running For Mayor In Crime-Ridden New York City Suddenly Back Cops)

“Defunding the police is ultimately about creating balance.

As Mamdani puts it, it isn’t about eliminating ‘everything that creates harm in our society,’ or an invitation for chaos.

Rather, it’s a chance to respond to problems differently than we have.” https://t.co/dWfz0eacN8

— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) June 5, 2020

If Mamdani wins the primary, he would face New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is running for reelection on an independent ticket and fell behind the state representative, Cuomo and Democratic candidate Brad Lander in recent polling. Adams was elected as a Democrat in 2022 but lost the support of some in his party after criticizing former President Joe Biden’s handling of illegal immigration.

The top two candidates represent different generations competing for power among Democrats.

Mamdani was born in Uganda but raised in New York as the son of an “anti-colonialism” scholar at Columbia University. The candidate is focused on bringing numerous “free” programs to New Yorkers, such as a $30 minimum wage, de-prioritizing the role of local police and arresting Israel’s prime minister if he ever enters the city.

Cuomo was born in Queens, supports Israel, wants to grow the police force and is more than twice Mamdani’s age. His economic solutions include tax relief and increasing “affordable housing” among other more moderate ideas.

While Mamdani’s campaign has raised more than $8 million in private contributions and public matching funds, neither Cuomo nor Adams has received public funding due to the state’s procedural hurdles. Cuomo’s campaign will reportedly qualify for public matching funds by May 12 if it corrects a paperwork error, while Adams was denied matching funds due to suspicions stemming from Biden-era federal corruption charges against him that were dropped by the Trump administration.

“The Democrat party right now is still in somewhat of a civil war, and I think that the momentum and the money is on the side of the much more progressive [candidates],” Talgo said.

Beyond endorsing Mamdani, the DSA has also fundraised for his campaign and conducted voter outreach ahead of the election. One New York DSA leader said in February that the group hopes to “transcend the rightward shift we have seen among New Yorkers” after several counties swung toward President Donald Trump in 2024 by single and double-digit margins.

DSA’s national and New York City chapters did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

A Mamdani win would also counter losses DSA experienced during Biden’s term, which included declines in membership and campaign victories tied to financial struggles and internal disputes.

DSA endorsed fewer candidates and ballot initiatives in 2024 than in any year since 2019, data from the group’s website shows. The ballot initiatives touched on workers’ rights, abortion, alleged police overreach and other issues.

Still, only 45% of the 2024 campaigns won, a decrease from over 50% between 2020 and 2023, according to the DCNF’s analysis of the data. The analysis excluded DSA campaigns promoting a “noncommitted” vote as well as two elections that resulted in runoffs.

The number of DSA members in good standing peaked in April 2021 at about 79,000 before sliding down by more than 9,500 over the course of the Biden years, according to data posted online by affiliates of DSA. By last December, the number was 69,155 but has since increased by more than 7,000 since January. Some bumps in membership appeared to correspond with the anti-police Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in summer 2020, Trump’s first term in office and the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the national abortion precedent Roe v. Wade. 

With the gradual decline in membership came a lack of dues payments, resulting in financial problems and occasional reports of infighting.

DSA leaders passed a resolution in early 2024 to lay off 12 full-time employees to account for a projected budget deficit of more than $1.2 million. A flurry of debate about DSA’s future has ensued since the onset of its “budget crisis,” with members accusing one another online of mismanaging the organization — or claiming DSA’s nonprofit fundraising arm is too “conservative” for their movement. Some members wrote that leaders ignored signs of the budgetary gaps early on and that “little was done to prevent” the financial shortfall until it became serious.

Antisemitism and the Israel-Hamas war have been another dividing line among different groups of Democrats. Mamdani and DSA have especially drawn criticism for their anti-Israel stances, with local activists accusing Mamdani of currying the favor of antisemites.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York also criticized DSA in 2023 for staging protests in support of Palestinians shortly after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks. The DSA pressured Ocasio-Cortez and former Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, both DSA members, to take stronger stances against Israel by issuing statements and temporarily declining to endorse them for reelection. DSA’s New York City chapter proposed a measure to censure Ocasio-Cortez for hosting a panel on antisemitism but ultimately rejected it.

Regardless, Talgo told the DCNF that Mamdani’s framing of economic problems as a war on the middle class could appeal to many New Yorkers struggling with growing costs of living. Housing costs, for example, have risen faster than incomes across the city from 2019 to 2023, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute.

“Although I completely, completely disagree with the DSA’s policies, I will at least give them some credit that they are addressing some of those core concerns,” Talgo said. He said establishment Democrats’ years of dismissing populist presidential candidates, such as DSA-backed Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, may come back to bite them. 

“When you look at, like, [Ocasio-Cortez] and Bernie going on their anti-‘oligarch’ tour, they’re the ones who are drawing the big crowds,” Talgo said.

Talgo said one could also blame a Mamdani victory on Cuomo being a “very flawed candidate” due to his history of scandals and sexual harassment allegations, which prompted his resignation from office. Such a win would still embolden the same leftist factions whose radicalism has been blamed for Trump’s reelection, analysts told the DCNF.

“[Mamdani’s] victory would vindicate the DSA as the central force within the Democrat Party,” Barron said. “It would pave the way for the nomination of AOC in 2028, formalizing her unofficial status as the foremost Democrat in the United States.”

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