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    Zohran Mamdani has the Palestinian protest movement to thank for his win | Heba Gowayed

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    In a tremendous upset of politics as usual, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old brown, Muslim, Democratic socialist who had little name recognition in February beat the poster boy of the Democratic party establishment, Andrew Cuomo, by a plurality of votes in the first round of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City.What makes this win even more remarkable is that Mamdani has refused to back down from his vocal support for Palestinian liberation, a position that has long been a death knell for candidates within a party whose establishment is unabashedly pro-Israel.Mamdani’s victory shows that his support for Palestine is not a liability, nor irrelevant to his mayoral campaign. In fact, Palestine has moved to the heart of domestic politics thanks to an organized, grassroots movement of Palestinians and allies, students and activists, that paved the way for this mayoral win.Over the course of the last two years of genocide, protests and social media activism has shifted the national discourse around Palestine. A Quinnipiac poll has found that sympathy for Israel has reached an all-time low, with Pew showing that over 71% of Democrats aged 18-49 have a negative view.On Tuesday, the day of the Democratic primary (as well as the hottest day New York has seen in over 13 years), I stood on the corner of 146th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, trying to convince New Yorkers to rank Mamdani on their ballot. One of the leaders of our canvass was a student who was doxed for fighting for her university’s divestment from Israel alongside Mahmoud Khalil. Later that evening, after Cuomo’s concession, Mamdani’s campaign manager thanked Jewish Voice for Peace, whose chapters are integral in organizing against Israel’s genocide and apartheid, for its early endorsement of his campaign.While Cuomo was rich in money, receiving $26m in Super Pac funds as opposed to Mamdani’s $1.8m, Mamdani’s wealth was in the people already organized on issues of progressive politics, including Palestine.The Mamdani campaign’s “joyous” ground game, tens of thousands of people who volunteered to knock on over 1.6m doors, is not simply a story of individuals being organically moved to action by progressive politics or a charismatic candidate. It is instead a story of people who have for years been organizing to oppose an electoral system that marginalized them, who saw Mamdani as an alternative to “elected officials [who] endorse or overlook genocide” whether they organized through ethnic organizations like Desis Rising Up and Moving (Drum) or the Democratic Socialists of American (DSA).This is not a campaign that can be recreated with any fresh face, or just any economically progressive platform. Bernie Sanders is wrong to say that Kamala Harris would “be president of the United States today” had she simply had a platform geared towards the working class, and focused on knocking on doors.People came out for Mamdani because he rejected a party machinery whose establishment candidate, Cuomo, was literally part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal team. It mattered that Mamdani started his college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. It mattered that Mamdani said he would arrest Netanyahu, that he’d disband the Strategic Response Group of the NYPD, which I’d watched brutalize my Cuny college students as they protested. People came out to campaign for him, rain or shine, because he refused to decry the phrase “Globalize the Intifada” even as he endured vile smears and a death threat for it.If the mayoral race is a referendum on Israel, there was a record turnout for Mamdani. People who had not voted in prior elections showed up to the polls, with Mamdani winning in deeply Hispanic and Asian areas, and doing extraordinarily well among young people of all races. Polling showed him second among Jewish voters.Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary, however, is just one big step in what will continue to be a tough mayoral race. Perhaps the largest threat this campaign will face is the pressure placed on it by the pro-Israel machinery of the Democratic party. The senator Kirsten Gillibrand suggested he may be a threat to Jewish New Yorkers, Laura Gillen, a congressperson, called him “too extreme” and Tom Suozzi, another congressperson, said he had “serious concerns” about his campaign. Mamdani is reportedly scheduled to sit down for meetings with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, who have so far declined to endorse him.Mamdani is also being targeted by the right. In a grossly racist action, the Tennessee Republican Andy Ogles called for Mamdani to be denaturalized and deported, posting on X “Zohran ‘little muhammad’ Mamdani is an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great City of New York.” And even as she called his campaign “unique” and “smart”, Marjorie Taylor Green retweeted an AI-generated image of the Statue of Liberty covered head-to-toe in a black burqa saying, “This hits hard.”Mamdani’s very identity is a challenge to a two-party system that has normalized anti-Muslim hate, and through its prism anti-Palestinian repression and genocide. Trump began testing his mass deportation policy on the Palestinian students who led the movements that made the Mamdani campaign possible, including by kidnapping and imprisoning Khalil, the negotiator for the Columbia encampment. Trump justified his travel ban, which Mamdani’s home country Uganda may be added to in the coming months, as part of fighting antisemitism.What his pathway to victory in the primary shows is that his continued strength, and that of any other candidate hoping to secure a similar victory, will not rely on political endorsements. Instead, it will rely on him staying true to the authenticity that made this campaign resonate with millions of people in New York and around the world. More

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      Andrew Cuomo resigned in disgrace – but New York’s big beast won’t stay dead

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      When Andrew Cuomo resigned in disgrace four years ago, few would have predicted him to make a comeback.Yet the former New York governor, who resigned amid sexual harassment allegations, is the frontrunner to become the next mayor of New York City, a role that he hopes could rehabilitate him and, allegedly, give him a platform to run for president.Through the early months of the Democratic primary, the winner of which is likely to be elected mayor in November, Cuomo was polling well ahead of his opponents – his name recognition and wealthy backers making for a formidable candidate.In recent weeks, it has become clear that Cuomo, a centrist who worked in Bill Clinton’s administration before turning his attention to state politics, is unlikely to have it his own way.Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state representative who has garnered the endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and excited young and leftwing voters in New York, has emerged as a serious challenger to the former governor, cutting into Cuomo’s lead.As Mamdani has risen in the polls Cuomo, a pugnacious politician whose aggressive style contributed to a long-running feud with former mayor Bill de Blasio, has responded in typical fashion. In the closing days of the campaign, groups supporting Cuomo have pumped millions of dollars into attacking Mamdani through TV ads and mailouts, portraying Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as a “dangerous choice for mayor”.Money has been one of Cuomo’s biggest assets in the primary, which he entered in March this year. Fix the City, an organization supporting Cuomo’s bid, has raised about $20m – the most raised by any Super Pac in New York City history, the New York Times reported – including $5m from the billionaire former mayor Michael Bloomberg. Other backers include donors typically known for donating to Republicans, including John B Hess, the billionaire oil company CEO; Ken Langone, the billionaire Home Depot co-founder, and Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager and Donald Trump supporter.It’s an atypical list of supporters for a Democratic candidate, and one that has drawn attention from Cuomo’s rivals.“Our city is under attack by an authoritarian Trump administration. And it is under an attack that is now being echoed by Trump’s allies right here in New York City,” Mamdani said during a debate in early June.“We deserve to have a mayor who is not funded by the same billionaires that put Donald Trump in DC. We deserve to have a mayor who will actually fight back.”Cuomo’s response to criticism has been to largely try to stay out of the spotlight. Mamdani has held rallies attended by thousands of people, but Cuomo has kept his campaigning small and private, like the intimate event at a trade union in May where he pledged to raise the minimum wage to $20/hr in the next two years.Instead, Cuomo appears to be relying more on name recognition, his lengthy record of government experience, and those ads. His campaign and supporting groups repeat similar messages: Cuomo “delivered as governor”, and will bring crime down and build affordable housing.“We’re not talkers, we are doers. We get the job done. And we’re going to build 500,000 units of affordable housing. If anybody has any question whether or not we can do it, I have got a bridge to show you,” Cuomo said in May, before referencing the Mario Cuomo bridge – a structure named after Cuomo’s late father and a former governor. Cuomo signed the bill to name the bridge himself.For all Cuomo has attempted to sell voters on his record, his past has sometimes proved to be a drawback, with rivals seeking to profile the allegations that led to him resigning as governor in 2021. An investigation by the New York’s attorney general found that Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, most of whom worked for him, and reported that the governor retaliated against some of those women after they made complaints.“Mr Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace. I have never cut Medicaid. I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA [the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway, buses and trains],” Mamdani said during the final primary debate.“I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records, and I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr Cuomo.”Cuomo claimed the complaints were “all political” in the final debate.While Cuomo definitely has the support of the wealthy, that’s not his only reason to be confident ahead of Tuesday’s election. He has been endorsed by a slew of labor unions and New York elected officials, and continues to lead Mamdani in the polls, including among key voting groups. On Wednesday a Marist poll found that 48% of Black voters and 40% of Jewish voters back Cuomo, compared to 11% and 20% for Mamdani. Support from both communities has proved crucial in previous New York City primaries.“When he was governor he looked out for New York. He was for the people of New York, compared to Eric Adams,” Yvonne Telesford, a 71-year-old from Brooklyn who voted early for Cuomo, told the Guardian.Telesford is a registered Democrat, but said she had voted for Republicans in the past, including Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor, and Ronald Reagan.“I always look and listen and see what the candidates have to offer, and then I come up with my decision,” she said. “And one thing I have to say, I think Andrew Cuomo will stand up to our president now.” More

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      Socialist Zohran Mamdani could be New York’s next mayor. This is what the western left could learn from him | Owen Jones

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      The Zohran Mamdani phenomenon should not be happening, if received wisdom is a reliable predictor of events. He’s the 33-year-old Muslim leftist and Queens assemblyman running for the New York mayoralty with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the vitriolic campaign against him suggests his momentum has caused panic in gilded circles. His chief opponent for the Democratic nomination, Andrew Cuomo, could not scream party establishment more loudly: he’s New York state’s former governor – just like his father was – and a former cabinet secretary. He married into that classic Democratic royalty, the Kennedys; his endorsements include the former president Bill Clinton; and billionaires such as Mike Bloomberg are pouring millions into his Super Pac.In another age, someone like Mamdani would have been a no-hoper. What changed was the 2016 presidential campaign of the long-marginalised socialist senator Bernie Sanders, which re-energised the US left. But Donald Trump’s recent victory on a more extreme platform led to predictions of a general rightwing lurch in US politics, with progressive positions scapegoated for the Democratic loss (even though Kamala Harris ran on a squarely corporate, “centrist” ticket). I was scheduled to interview Mamdani on the night of the US presidential election, but his campaign asked to postpone as results started to come in suggesting a Trump victory was likely. Presumably, they wanted to reassess strategy in the coming US political winter.But just a few months later, Mamdani is surging, and his campaign offers lessons for the western left in an age of chronic economic insecurity, rising far-right authoritarianism, war and genocide. The primary election vote is tomorrow, but a poll released during crucial early voting shows Mamdani overtaking Cuomo in “ranked choice” voting: it’s within the margin of error, but five months ago the insurgent candidate was polling only 1% support. In only a month, Mamdani has leapt from 22% to 32%, particularly powered by a 2:1 lead among the under-50s.Yes, the millennial has been helped by Cuomo’s chronic liabilities – the former governor resigned in disgrace after an investigation by the state attorney general found that he had sexually harrassed several women – but rival candidates with bigger profiles and more political experience could have gained from that instead. The New York Times pleaded with readers not to rank Mamdani in the preferential voting system, rich New Yorkers are threatening to flee the city if he wins, he’s been attacked for inexperience, and smeared over his championing of Palestinian rights. “Zohran Mamdani is a public menace,” screeches rightwing magazine the National Review.So what’s the universal lessons for the western left? Three Ms are key: messaging, medium and movement. Grace Mausser is the co-chair of New York City Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). When I suggested that Mamdani’s campaign would surely originally have been driven by revitalising the left, rather than the prospect of an actual election victory, she disagrees.“When we started, we knew the path to victory was narrow,” she conceded. But, she emphasised: “We don’t run races for purely moral reasons or to make a point like the Green party in the US which has failed in their project.” Indeed, the DSA played a pivotal role in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shock defeat of another Democratic luminary, the former chair of the House Democratic Caucus Joe Crowley back in 2018. In turn, Ocasio-Cortez has bolstered Mamdani with her endorsement, underlining how progressive victories feed off one another.“Super-clear messaging” is how Mausser sums up the Mamdani strategy. The early campaign settled on three main messages: “Fast and free buses, freeze the rents, free childcare. That’s so easy to remember. People know it, and it’s said over and over and over again.” Mamdani has other pledges, too – such as launching publicly run grocery stores – but key to his success are core, endlessly repeated commitments focused on a cost of living crisis triggered by a broken economic system.This strategy is essential in combating a “culture war” designed to force leftists into a defensive posture. It doesn’t mean abandoning marginalised minorities – Mamdani has unequivocally committed to transgender rights, for example. It just means emphasising unifying economic messages. Anger is redirected from the disenfranchised to thriving economic elites, whom Mamdani seeks to tax to fulfil his pledges. The campaign has settled, too, on not backing down to bad faith attacks: Mamdani has not given an inch in his pro-Palestinian advocacy.View image in fullscreenThen there’s the medium. What Mausser calls “high-quality video production” has been pivotal. Across the west, the far right has proven adept at using platforms such as TikTok to radicalise supporters, with the left mostly not even playing catch-up. Mamdani’s campaign made slick videos that are witty, sassy and snappy, communicating its messages to wide audiences. “All the conversations after the election [were] about needing a ‘Joe Rogan of the left’, how people aren’t getting their news from traditional media, how they’re getting their news from TikTok, Instagram and YouTube,” says Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid. “And that is exactly the story of Zohran.”When Sanders endorsed Mamdani, he declared how he was “very impressed by the grassroots movement that he has put together”. Mamdani’s campaign has an army of door-knockers, often visiting districts traditionally ignored by Democratic machine politicians. For many of these canvassers, this is their first political experience. Mausser reports: “If you ask them, ‘How did you hear about Zohran?’, it’s like: ‘Oh, I saw his video on Instagram or TikTok.’” The message and the medium raised an army. There’s another factor, too: Mamdani, like Ocasio-Cortez, is charismatic and telegenic. It’s not fashionable to discuss this on a left which prioritises the collective over the individual, but we need compelling communicators who look the part.Mamdani may not win the Democratic nomination. Even if he does, Cuomo will stand as an independent candidate, although the socialist challenger may do this, too. His campaign’s weaknesses reflect those of the wider US left: too little inroads among Black and older voters, as well as those with little online political engagement. But Mamdani’s against-the-odds success underlines why the far-right surge doesn’t have to weaken the left – far from it. Indeed, Mamdani positions himself as best-placed to resist Trump, rather than kowtow to his agenda. When the Republicans won, one of Mamdani’s first viral videos was visiting local districts where Trump enjoyed his biggest swings.Whatever happens, Mamdani shows that the US left lives on after what Shahid calls “a shitty year”: along with Trump’s triumph, there have been dispiriting primary defeats of progressive representatives Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush at the hands of notorious pro-Israel lobbyists Aipac. Mamdani has built a movement in New York, but his campaign has also given a shellshocked western left a gift: a strategy to take on the establishment even in adverse circumstances.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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      Free buses, more housing, taxing the rich: how Zohran Mamdani has gone viral in the New York mayor’s race

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      Zohran Mamdani trailed Andrew Cuomo, the frontrunner to be the next New York City mayor, by 30 points just a few months ago.Now, just ahead of the Democratic primary on Tuesday, the 33-year-old democratic socialist has bridged the gap with Cuomo, a politician so of the establishment that a giant bridge north of New York literally bears his last name.The surge in support for Mamdani, an aspiring rapper turned state politician, with a penchant for turning out snappy social media videos and a track record of progressive, leftwing ideas, has shown his clear ability to win over young voters. It also didn’t hurt when he won the backing of the progressives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders this month.Mamdani’s rise has lent a new edge to an election that was in danger of becoming a procession for Cuomo, the former New York governor who resigned in disgrace in 2021 after being accused of sexual harassment.For a Democratic party struggling to stand up to Donald Trump and his “make America great again” acolytes, the closely watched election will offer an insight into what rank-and-file Democrats desire: a good old boy promising a steady hand on the tiller, or a fresh outsider who has energized parts of a weary New York electorate with plans to freeze rent and make buses free citywide.Mamdani’s rise has been boosted by a social media following that dwarfs his rivals’.He has almost a million followers across Instagram and TikTok, where he posts funny and self-aware videos selling himself to the public. The clips frequently show him walking through New York, or riding the subway, things that are unlikely to come naturally to the multimillionaire Cuomo.After supporters commented on Mamdani’s frequently exuberant hand gestures in the videos, he posted a clip where he promised to keep his hands in his pockets, removing them twice only to have them slapped down by a man on the street.“This election is in your hands,” a caption read on the video, in which Mamdani urged people to register to vote. The video was left to roll at the end as Mamdani laughed at the shtick.Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Mamdani moved to New York City when he was seven years old, and had a long-term interest in politics. Last week, a former classmate shared a video in which she recalled how Mamdani won a “mock presidential election” in 2004. A cricket and soccer player – “he usually played defense or defensive midfield, and would sprint down the field and score”, a former teammate told the Guardian – he was elected to represent an area of Queens in the state assembly in 2021.View image in fullscreenMamdani has bold ideas for what he would do as mayor. In a city with a longstanding affordable housing crisis, he wants to freeze rent increases for people in applicable buildings, and build 200,000 new units over the next 10 years. He says he would eliminate fares on city buses, something which would cost at least $630m but, according to Mamdani, would generate $1.5bn in economic benefits. (New York City has an annual budget of $115.1bn for 2026.) He says he can fund his proposals by increasing the corporate tax rate and bringing in a flat tax on people earning more than a million a year.But Mamdani’s limited political record, more than his proposals, has come under scrutiny as he has flown closer to the sun.There was more than a whiff of jealousy from Mamdani’s opponents during the Democratic debate on 4 June, with even his progressive rivals taking a shot. Jessica Ramos, a state senator – theoretically a more powerful position than Mamdani’s role as state representative – lamented that she had not run for mayor four years earlier, adding: “I thought I needed more experience, but turns out you just need to make good videos.”Ramos’s slight mirrored Cuomo’s persistent refrain that Mamdani lacks the experience to be mayor. As Mamdani has risen in the polls, Cuomo has stepped up the attacks on his rival, painting him as too radical and inexperienced to lead the city in a barrage of TV ads and mailed-out flyers. In one proposed mailer, a pro-Cuomo group appeared to have darkened the skin and beard of Mamdani, who would be New York’s first Muslim mayor, a move Mamdani criticized as “​​blatant Islamophobia”. A spokesperson for the group said the ad had been proposed by a vendor and upon review “it was immediately rejected for production and was subsequently corrected”.For his part, Mamdani has repeatedly sought to tie Cuomo to Trump, pointing out that many of his donors backed Trump in the presidential election.“Oligarchy is on the ballot. Andrew Cuomo is the candidate of a billionaire class that is suffocating our democracy and forcing the working class out of our city,” Mamdani’s campaign said in an email to supporters on Tuesday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a more pointed critique of his opponent, Mamdani said on the debate stage: “I have never had to resign in disgrace. I have never cut Medicaid, I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA, I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment, I have never sued for their gynecological records, and I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr Cuomo.”The New York Democratic primary will use ranked-choice voting, allowing voters to select multiple candidates, which Mamdani hopes could boost his chances. Last week, he announced he was “cross-endorsing” with Brad Lander, a fellow progressive who on Tuesday was arrested by Ice agents while visiting an immigration court.The winner of the primary is not guaranteed to become the 111th mayor of New York, but it is highly likely in a city where registered Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans. The incumbent, Eric Adams, who won the 2021 election as a Democrat but is running this year as an independent candidate, is deeply unpopular in the city. Last year, Adams was charged with taking bribes and accepting foreign campaign contributions. The charges were dropped in April after the Trump administration intervened.While popular with young people and the left of the party, Mamdani has lagged behind Cuomo among Black and Latino voters – though a recent poll showed Mamdani gaining support from both.The Cuomo campaign and its backers have also raised the issue of Mamdani’s criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza. He has said the country is committing genocide, a characterization that Cuomo, a fiercely pro-Israel Democrat who has courted the city’s large Jewish population, has sought to exploit. In a recent post on X, Cuomo all but accused Mamdani of fomenting antisemitism. Mamdani says he has built a coalition including Jewish New Yorkers, and would form a department to investigate hate crimes.In an election where Cuomo’s strategy has been to largely avoid the press and the public, the energy has been with Mamdani.A rally with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman and a fellow democratic socialist, drew thousands of people to a music venue in Manhattan in mid-June, and Mamdani’s appearances at hip music venues across the city have drawn enthusiastic crowds.“For the longest time, mayoral candidates have been kind of the same type of guy. Either they’re like legacy New York politics people, or businessmen that kind of pivoted through,” said Tomas Carlson, a 23-year-old Mamdani supporter.“This is the first time in a while where I saw a candidate that had new ideas. And I think the Democratic party in general, we need a sort of fresh breath of air.” More

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      Why establishment Democrats still can’t stomach progressive candidates like Zohran Mamdani | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Who’s afraid of Zohran Mamdani? The answer, it would seem, is the entire establishment. The 33-year-old democratic socialist and New York City mayoral candidate has surged in the polls in recent weeks, netting endorsements not just from progressive voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders but also his fellow candidates for the mayoralty, with Brad Lander and Michael Blake taking advantage of the ranked-choice voting system in the primary and cross-endorsing Mamdani’s campaign.With the primary just around the corner, polls have Mamdani closing the gap on Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York. This has spooked the establishment, which is now doing everything it can to stop Mamdani’s rise.Take Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed Cuomo earlier this month and followed this up with a $5m donation to a pro-Cuomo Pac. The largesse appears motivated not by admiration for Cuomo – during his mayoralty, sources told the New York Times that Bloomberg saw Cuomo as “the epitome of the self-interested, horse-trading political culture he has long stood against” – but animosity towards Mamdani and his policies.Mamdani wants to increase taxes on residents earning more than $1m a year, increase corporate taxes and freeze rents: policies that aren’t exactly popular with the billionaire set.Bronx congressman Ritchie Torres (who was once progressive but moved steadily away from that and now receives fundraising assistance from far-right donors) is another establishment Democrat trying to prevent a Mamdani win at all costs. Torres, who makes his pro-Israel positions explicit, has criticized Mamdani for pro-Palestine comments. Torres has even said he won’t run for governor in 2026 if a socialist like Mamdani becomes the mayor because it will “revolutionize the political landscape”.The New York Times’ editorial board is also aghast at Mamdani’s sudden popularity. On Monday, it published a piece urging New Yorkers to completely leave the candidate off their ranked-choice ballot, arguing that the assemblyman is woefully underqualified for office and has a bunch of wacky progressive ideas that will never work including free buses and frozen rent. The Times, which announced almost a year ago that it will not make endorsements in local elections, did not officially endorse a candidate but it certainly didn’t tell people not to put Cuomo on the ballot. It seems being accused of sexually harassing multiple women and then going after those women in an aggressive and intrusive way (including demanding gynecological records) isn’t as disqualifying as progressive policies. And, of course, the sexual harassment is just one of many scandals that Cuomo has weathered, including allegations he covered up nursing home deaths during the pandemic.The Atlantic also came out with an anti-Mamdani piece, albeit one that was more subtle and which focused on the process rather than the personality. Staff writer Annie Lowrey argued that ranked-choice voting in a mayor primary, used by New York City since 2021, is not truly democratic: “Without ranked-choice voting, Cuomo would probably steamroll his competition. With ranked-choice voting, Mamdani could defeat him.” While there are problems with ranked choice (as there are with first-past-the-post systems), I think the bigger democratic threat might be a system in which a billionaire can swoop in with millions to prop up their preferred candidate at the last minute.All of this is anti-Mamdani mobilization is depressingly predictable: the Democratic establishment is allergic to fresh blood and new thinking. Shortly after Trump won the election last year, and the Democrats also lost the House and the Senate, Ocasio-Cortez launched a bid to become the lead Democrat on the House oversight committee, which is an important minority leadership position. Ocasio-Cortez has become a lot more establishment-friendly since getting into power in 2018 (New York Magazine even decreed in 2023 that she is just a “Regular Old Democrat Now”), but she’s still not centrist enough for the Democrats, it seems. Nancy Pelosi reportedly sabotaged the 35-year-old congresswoman’s ambitions and ensured that 74-year-old Gerry Connolly, who had esophagus cancer at the time, got the job instead. Connolly died age 75 earlier this year, becoming the sixth House Democrat to have died in office in 12 months.Then there’s the Democratic backlash to David Hogg, the young Parkland shooting survivor turned politico. The 25-year-old was briefly vice-chair of the Democratic national committee but stepped on powerful toes by criticizing the party for its “seniority politics”. Hogg, who has said that he’s worried about his generation losing faith in democracy, pitched competitive primaries which challenged Democratic incumbents who had become too complacent, injecting new blood into the party. This did not go down well and various members of the DNC had voted to hold new vice-chair elections that could have led to his ouster. Instead of waiting to be kicked out, Hogg recently said he would step away from the role.I am not a Mamdani evangelist, but while some of his ideas are a little pie in the sky, he’s authentic and ready to fight for normal people rather than corporate interests. Sure, he doesn’t have a lot of experience. But he has a huge amount of potential. He’s managed to get at least 26,000 New Yorkers to volunteer for him. And I don’t mean they’ve sent a couple of text messages: one week they knocked on almost 100,000 doors. Michael Spear, a professor of history and political science at a Brooklyn college, told Jacobin the degree to which Mamdani’s campaign has galvanized New York City voters is unprecedented: “I don’t think there is anything like it” in New York history.Nobody in the Democratic establishment is quite so delusional that they think the party is doing great. Everyone knows there is a need for change and yet they seem keen to sabotage anyone who might bring that change. Instead of rallying around fresh talent like Mamdani that can clearly mobilize young voters, the Democrats are mulling a $20m plan to try to manufacture a “Joe Rogan of the left” who can connect with young men, rather than support an authentic grassroots candidate who is already connecting with them.Will centrist interests prevail in New York? We won’t know until, at the very earliest, late on primary night, 24 June. Whatever happens, though, you can bet that Democrats will continue to do their very best to kneecap anyone who wants to drag them way from their obsession with doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. More

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      New York mayoral candidate accuses Cuomo donors of altering photo in act of ‘blatant Islamophobia’

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      Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist state assemblyman waging a progressive bid to become mayor of New York City, has accused donors to the frontrunner Andrew Cuomo of “blatant Islamophobia” after a mailer from their Super Pac altered Mamdani’s image giving him a darker, bushier beard.Mamdani, 33, posted a closeup of his face as featured in the mailer from the Cuomo-backing group Fix the City alongside the original photograph from which it was drawn. In the transition, the image’s visual contrast appears to be manipulated, slightly lightening Mamdani’s skin but also giving him the appearance of a longer and significantly fuller beard.The mailer, first revealed by a reporter from the Forward, was aimed at Jewish voters. It accuses Mamdani, who is openly critical of Israel’s war in Gaza which he calls a genocide, of refusing to recognize Israel and supporting the boycott movement against the state.A spokesperson for Fix the City, Liz Benjamin, said that the mailer had not been released in the form that Mamdani found objectionable. “The mailer was proposed by a vendor; upon review it was immediately rejected for production and was subsequently corrected.”She added: “We are disturbed that this was posted online without our consent.”Mamdani, who would become the first Muslim mayor of New York should he prevail in the Democratic primary on 24 June and go on to win the general election in November, said the altered image amounted to “blatant Islamophobia”. He added a dig at Cuomo, referring to his big money donors who also back Donald Trump and the president’s Make America great again movement.The image, Mamdani said, was a demonstration of “the kind of racism that explains why Maga billionaires support [Cuomo’s] campaign”.Mamdani also cast the altered image as a sign that Cuomo and his donors were afraid of losing the mayoral race. Recent polls have suggested a tightening contest, with one recent internal poll, disputed by the Cuomo campaign, indicating that Mamdani was edging in front.The New York mayoral race is being followed very closely in political circles, partly because the city is the largest in the US and partly because the clash between Cuomo and Mamdani could be a referendum on the future of the Democratic party. Cuomo, 67, is a consummate machine politician who was elected as governor three times before resigning in 2021 following accusations of sexual harassment which he denies.He has been endorsed by Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of the city.Mamdani, by contrast, is a progressive state lawmaker from Queens who immigrated to the US from Uganda when he was seven. He was elected as a member of the New York state assembly four years ago.A self-identified democratic socialist, he was endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the leading progressive member of Congress. He is running on a platform of making the city affordable to working New Yorkers, through a combination of rent freezes, free childcare and free and faster bus transport. More