Mamdani's Mission

New York’s mayor Zohran Mamdani has a dual mission. Naturally, he wants to be an effective mayor, a mayor who gets things done that advance his policy agenda. At the same time, as the first socialist mayor of the nation’s greatest city, he reasonably enough sees himself as a potentially consequential agent of political change: he would like to move the country, starting with the Democratic Party, to the left. These two missions are somewhat in tension. Until recently, it seems to me, Mamdani recognized and was managing that tension fairly well. Now, I’m not so sure.

The tension is practically inevitable because to govern effectively, any political executive—mayor, governor or president—needs to cultivate a broad political coalition. That means, in the first place, that he would like to have the fairly unified support of his own party. But, any consistent, forceful effort to push his party in a new direction is likely to encounter opposition, threatening the partisan unity that he needs. Mamdani’s appreciation of that tension was most apparent in his early endorsement of Gov. Kathy Hochul for re-election. That endorsement effectively pre-empted any thoughts the very progressive lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, might have had about challenging Hochul in the Democratic primary. Delgado is certainly closer ideologically to Mamdani than is Hochul, and Mamdani conceivably might have appreciated Delgado’s potential pressure on Hochul from the left. But Mamdani presumably calculated that the mayor’s need for a cooperative relationship with the governor outweighed any possible benefit from pressuring her from the left. Mamdani’s pragmatism was even more evident in his ingratiating himself with Donald Trump, which surely must have been distasteful to the young anti-fascist mayor.

Mamdani’s interest in transforming the Democratic Party has become evident in the current primary season, in which he has chosen to promote his preferred candidates against what he regards as the party establishment in three Congressional races. Mamdani is supporting Brad Lander, recently the well-regarded NYC Comptroller, in his challenge to the incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman. Goldman is smart and articulate and distinguished himself in the second Trump impeachment process. He is also a strong supporter of Israel, and declined to endorse Mamdani’s mayoral candidacy even after he won the Democratic primary. Lander is a strong critic of Israel and effectively partnered with Mamdani in the ranked choice mayoral primary, each designating the other as second choice. So, Mamdani’s preference for Lander is fully understandable, and it’s hard to fault his opposition to Goldman as divisive, since Goldman himself chose to subordinate party unity to his pro-Israel sentiments.

It’s harder to understand Mamdani’s intervention in another Congressional primary race, to replace the retiring long-tenured and highly respected Rep. Nydia Velaszquez. Mamdani sidestepped Velaszquez’s preferences to endorse a democratic socialist loyalist, Clare Valdez, who is running against Antonio Reynoso, the current Brooklyn Borough President. Reynoso is a solid progressive, has deeper roots in the district than Valdez, and has far more support among unions, who of course are a major Democratic party constituency. He also has the support of the Working Families Party, another stalwart component of the NY City Democratic coaltion. One might think that a respect for Democratic coalition maintenance concerns would have dictated Mamdani’s neutrality in this race.

It’s also hard not to question Mamdani’s intervention in a Manhattan Congressional primary in which he has very actively promoted Darializa Avila Chevalier, a political newcomer, against Rep. Adriano Espaillat. Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic caucus, has a predictably progressive voting record. The first Dominican-American to serve in Congress, he can reasonably be considered a major figure in the NYC Democratic Party coalition. Avila Chevalier, a Columbia Ph.D. candidate, has a background as a community organizer and has done commendable work as an anti-ICE activist, but has also engaged in some wildly reckless rhetoric in her anti-establishment tweets. The biggest problem with Espaillat, from Mamdani’s perspective (and mine), is that he is a staunch friend of Israel and an AIPAC beneficiary. Most egregiously, he declined to take up the defense of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student activist who was threatened with deportation for his pro-Palestinian views. (Columbia is in Espaillat’s district.) But Espaillat, unlike Goldman, unlike Chuck Shumer, did endorse Mamdani after he won the mayoral nomination, and Mamdani soon afterward privately pledged his support for Espaillat in his upcoming re-election bid. I think reneging on that pledge was a mistake politically (among political elites, your word needs to be taken seriously), as well as arguably dishonorable.

Espaillat is my Congressman, and the primary is tomorrow. I haven’t yet firmly decided, but I will probably not vote in the Congressional primary. I’m generally favorably disposed toward Mamdani and his vision for the party, but I am uncomfortable with his prioritizing ideology over coalition-building. So, I am what political scientists call “cross-pressured,” and cross-pressured voters are often abstainers.