A Democratic battle over the future of the party intensified after Zohran Mamdami’s stunning upset in the New York City mayoral primary.
Progressives argue Mamdani’s win is a sign of where the party needs to go if it wants to build winning coalitions that propel it to victory in next year’s midterms and beyond. But moderate Democrats opposed to Mamdani say moving too far in that direction could put the party in jeopardy in areas of the country less friendly to the sort of progressive policies he has embraced.
Some political observers point to Mamdani’s strengths as a candidate and messenger as more critical to his success and a future playbook for other Democrats than his ideology.
“[Mamdani] pretty clearly has a lot of political talent,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of the nonpartisan election handicapper Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “Whatever his ideology is, it may be that the talent itself is more important than the actual issue positions.”
Mamdani shocked New York on Tuesday as votes poured in, showing him in a healthy position to beat the former powerful governor for the Democratic nod for mayor. The remarkable lead — well ahead of his start 30 points behind Andrew Cuomo — excited progressives in and out of the city, offering them a much-needed boost after a dismal November election.
Democrats pointed out that Mamdani, a young democratic socialist who’s served in the state Assembly since 2021, offered a vision to voters that excited them and noted the coalitions that he uniquely brought.
“You can win if you build a coalition, and you show that you’re not just speaking to one part or one slice of voters — you’re speaking to a broader slice,” said Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, the co-founder and vice president of the Democratic strategy firm and donor network Way to Win. “And that enabled him to keep likely voters who were maybe on the fence, for him to win them over. But then he also, by doing that, won over all these new people who came into the electorate.”
The extent of Mamdani’s success, leading by 7 points in the first round of ranked choice voting after almost no poll showed him ahead, is a result not just of his strengths but outperforming expectations with groups believed to be his weaknesses.
Key to Mamdani’s coalition were young people, who rallied significantly behind the 33-year-old, along with white voters and those with a college degree. But he also performed significantly better than expected with groups considered to be in Cuomo’s column.
He minimized his loss in heavily Black areas that went strongly for Cuomo, put up decent numbers in Hispanic precincts, and even won in some mixed Black-Hispanic areas like Harlem. He also won in some older white, wealthy neighborhoods.
Progressives quickly pointed to Mamdani’s success as evidence that progressive policies can win over a wide range of voters and should represent the direction for the Democratic Party.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who endorsed Mamdani in the primary, told Politico in an interview that he ran a “brilliant” campaign.
“So number one, he ran a strong grassroots campaign around the progressive agenda. They go together,” he said. “You cannot run a grassroots campaign unless you excite people. You cannot excite people unless you have something to say. And he had a lot to say.”
David Hogg, who stirred controversy during a brief stint as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee for his advocacy of primarying certain incumbents and calls for generational change, praised Mamdani. “It’s gonna be a fun couple of years,” he said in a post on X.
But moderates have been equally quick to distance themselves from Mamdani and argued that the GOP was just given ammo to further attack Democrats as extremists. Republicans have pounced since Tuesday’s results, calling Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party and tying others to him.
Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.), who represents a battleground House district on Long Island, called him “too extreme” and the “wrong choice for New York.”
“His entire campaign has been built on unachievable promises and higher taxes, which is the last thing New York needs,” she said in a statement.
Kate deGruyter, the senior director of communications for the center-left think tank Third Way, argued Mamdani’s victory was because Cuomo was a “deeply flawed” candidate, citing the controversies that surrounded him.
“Mamdani had a youthfulness and dynamism that fit this moment, but the baggage and the danger of some of the ideas that he espouses and does so proudly, even in the final stretch of his campaign, is something that Democrats have to recognize is going to be deeply problematic in the places that we are going to need to win to take back the House,” she said.
Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett said on X that too many Democrats running for president in 2019 felt pressure from the left, and it continues to haunt the party today.
“It’s dangerous to believe a NYC Dem primary offers a roadmap for winning in purple/red places,” he said, pointing to moderate Democrats’ success in the 2018 midterms.
One senior New York Democratic strategist familiar with Cuomo’s campaign said it failed to see how “adeptly” Mamdani was rising and change the conversation. They said Mamdani was able to separate himself from his past identity as a “radical extreme socialist.”
The strategist did acknowledge a positive takeaway from Mamdani’s campaign that other Democrats can look to for inspiration for their own.
“What is good for the party nationally is this is proof positive that young candidates, super talented at messaging, media, social media and energizing voters who are laser-focused on an economically popular agenda and an economic populist agenda will win and should be put forward,” they said.
They argued that should be “decoupled from the radicalism that comes with Zohran Mamdani,” saying it wouldn’t work anywhere except a “big, super liberal city.”
Democrats across the spectrum agreed that the party must find the right balance to broaden its appeal and can make inroads using Mamdani’s strategy.
New York Democratic strategist Trip Yang noted that Mamdani won in areas that voted in 2021 for Mayor Eric Adams, whom many consider a moderate or even conservative Democrat, demonstrating the widespread appeal. He said those watching Mamdani’s ads couldn’t immediately tell he is a member of Democratic Socialists of America, only hearing what he said about safety and affordability.
He said some aspects of Mamdani’s campaign, like his video team’s skills at virtual messaging and his own “charm,” can’t be replicated, but others can.
“He might be a democratic socialist, but he actually talks differently about progressives,” Yang said. “He opens the tent and encourages people who are not identified progressives or identified socialists, ‘Come on in. The water is warm.’ That’s the real skill.”
Fernandez Ancona said one consistent trend among Democrats has been a desire to shake up the status quo, and the result proves Democrats can’t “status quo our way out of this mess.”
“It’s not necessarily where are you on this left, right spectrum,” she said. “Are you telling a story that plugs into disrupting the status quo in order to make people’s lives better in a very real, tangible way? And are you authentic in how you do it?”
Caroline Vakil contributed.
