As one of the most powerful Democrats from New York City right now, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries probably wishes that both former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Eric Adams — two of the three liberal candidates for mayor of the nation’s largest city this November — would go away forever.
And yet, he won’t endorse the man who could make that happen, and who just so happens to be the party’s official nominee for the position: state assemblyman, crypto-commie, and Hamas sympathizer Zohran Mamdani.
After finally sitting down with Mamdani on Friday in a much-anticipated meeting that many expected would end in an endorsement, Jeffries said that the talk was “constructive” but declined to throw his lot behind Mamdani, according to the New York Post.
“The meeting between Leader Jeffries and Assemblyman Mamdani was constructive, candid and community-centered, with a particular focus on affordability,” a spokesman for Jeffries, Justin Chermol, said.
“Leader Jeffries and Assemblyman Mamdani discussed a variety of other important issues, including public safety, rising antisemitism, gentrification and the importance of taking back the House in 2026.”
The meeting, which took place in Jeffries’s home district, apparently won’t be the last, according to The Hill — but at least for now, there’s no endorsement.
“They agreed to reconvene shortly, alongside other members of the New York City congressional delegation and a few high-level community leaders,” Chermol said.
This is — to use the Orwellian newspeak that Mamdani would force city agencies to adopt if he could — a doubleplusungood outcome from the meeting.
Both leaders of the Democratic caucus in the two chambers of Congress — Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer — are from New York City. Both have declined to endorse Mamdani already. In Jeffries’ case, he’s defended the surprise winner of June’s primary against attacks from President Donald Trump and other Republicans, but has expressed unease with Mamdani’s refusal to disown the statement “globalize the intifada,” saying the nominee needs to “clarify” it.
Do you think establishment Dems will eventually back Mamdani?
“We don’t really know each other well,” Jeffries has previously said regarding his lack of endorsement.
Well, they now know each other a few hours more than they did before, and nothing has changed.
Jeffries arguably has more leeway to endorse Mamdani, as the Democratic caucus in the House has more left-leaning members — including several who have endorsed Mamdani, notably Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and his position is seen as being more secure.
However, to retake the House, the Democrats also need to keep moderates in economically conservative districts while unseating Republicans in states where Trump won. That’s going to be a problem if Jeffries makes an endorsement and clips like this one begin playing round-the-clock on local TV come 2026:
Zohran Mamdani says he’d be in favor of the “abolition of private property” pic.twitter.com/WRs6JEG5tv
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 17, 2025
Mamdani’s other proposals — government-run grocery stores, defunding the police, freezing rents, taxing everyone to pay for it — probably won’t play well in Peoria, either.
Nor, in fact, will be his curious insistence on treating Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank as the sixth, seventh, and eighth boroughs of New York City, respectively.
One might point out, not wrongly, that this betrays a certain [ahem] obsession with people of a particular faith. Throwing small sops to the pro-Gaza anti-Semitic rabblement that shares this obsession did not work for the party in 2024 — and given that nothing much has changed in the calculus aside from a successful campaign against Hamas’ chief sponsor, Iran, one assumes throwing larger sops that way isn’t going to produce results counterintuitive to past performance.
And yet, the deus ex machina of ancient Greek drama doesn’t exist in modern American politics, meaning that the pantheon isn’t going to come down and grant Cincinnatus ballot access at the last moment. Barring a desire to let GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa run the city — and Jeffries might actually prefer Donald Trump to take over that role in addition to the presidency if those are his options — the scandal-plagued, self-interested Adams and Cuomo are the only two liberal alternatives to Cap’n Commie.
A new poll shows Cuomo trailing Mamdani by just three points in a four-man race — the slimmest of the polls that have been taken since Mamdani’s upset victory, WNYW-TV reported Friday. However, all of the polls show the anti-Mamdani vote being split, and none of the candidates seem willing to step aside. Cuomo is looking to save his legacy, Adams his hide, and Sliwa the vague remnant of NYC conservatism. And, unlike the primary, the general election doesn’t used ranked-choice voting — meaning that a system that might have worked against Mamdani in the primary could work for him in November.
In other words, there are no good choices for Hakeem Jeffries. So, for right now, he’s making no choice at all. As the computer in the movie “WarGames” famously put it: “The only winning move is not to play.”
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