Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had no choice. He had to say something. And so, on the morning following Zohran Mamdani’s shock upset in the New York City Democratic primary for mayor on Tuesday, the firebrand leader of the Democratic Party in Congress tepidly entered the chat.
The aging Senate minority leader, who earlier in the day was treated for dehydration at a local DC hospital, announced on X that he had spoken with Mamdani, the city’s newly selected Democratic nominee for mayor. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) followed suit, congratulating Mamdani for what he called a “a strong campaign that relentlessly focused on the economy and bringing down the high cost of living in New York City.” Both Jeffries and Schumer have made plans to meet with Mamdani in person.
Though characterized by his liberal critics as a too-far-left progressive nepo baby who annihilated the New York political establishment in one fell swoop, Mamdani told MSNBC on Wednesday that he is hopeful to receive full endorsements from both Schumer and Jeffries in the months ahead of November’s general election.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), in an announcement to X, called Mamdani’s triumph in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor a “seismic election that I can only compare to Barack Obama’s in 2008.” The former president Bill Clinton also chimed in, wishing Mamdani “much success in November and beyond.”
Mamdani’s wild upset victory over the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday night has led to open speculation that a sea-change moment might be underway in a political party that has long associated with socialists but has never permitted them to hold power.
But in fact Mamdani and the far left’s ascension to the mayorship of New York City is not complete—far from it. There are still four full months of campaigning ahead, during which Mamdani will face the concentrated and coordinated efforts of political action committees, both left and right, who are determined to keep the burgeoning socialist out of high office. Though Cuomo initially signaled a hesitancy to continue his mayoral campaign, a source close to the governor’s campaign announced on Friday that Cuomo intends to compete with Mamdani and the current mayor, Eric Adams, on the general ballot in November.
Adams, who was spotted puffing hookah in a Queens lounge on Sunday, is the immediate winner following Mamdani’s upset on Tuesday. The former police officer, whose office has been dogged by corruption scandals, launched his re-election bid on Thursday. In a speech given in front of hundreds of supporters chanting “four more years,” Adams called Mamdani a “silver-spoon” socialist.
“It’s a choice between a candidate with a blue collar and one with a silver spoon,” Adams said. “I’m not interested in slogans, I’m interested in solutions. I don’t work with special interests, I work for the people.” The New York Times writer Ross Barkan noted that there was “more organic energy here” than at any of the Cuomo campaign stops he had covered in the runup to Tuesday’s primary.
Despite New York magazine’s assessment that Cuomo’s undoing represents “the Death of Centrism,” and despite underwhelming enthusiasm for Cuomo on the campaign trail, a Honan Strategy Group poll of 817 likely voters taken after Tuesday’s primary finds Cuomo leading Mamdani in the general if Adams drops out in the run-up. Even if Adams remains in the field, which he is likely to do, Cuomo is predicted to be in a dead heat with Mamdani come November.
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Though the frantic and chaotic end of the Democratic primary race focused on Mamdani’s views of Israel, the 33-year-old state assemblyman now enters the part of the election cycle where his progressive social and economic ideas will be heavily scrutinized. His economic ideas, from freezing the rent to providing no-cost childcare to city-owned grocery stores, are not new and have struggled to find success in cities that have implemented them. Despite the New York Post’s screeching headlines this week about how billionaires and luxury real estate brokers are threatening to leave the city in the wake of Mamdani’s primary victory, the Democratic electorate saw no issue voting for a young man who is speaking earnestly to their concerns about cost and housing issues in the city.
The Republicans are a complete afterthought in the general election. Curtis Sliwa, the 71-year-old, beret-wearing leader of the community watch group Guardian Angels, has no chance to win the race. His best opportunity to dethrone the Democrats came in 2021, at the height of Covid lockdowns and mandates, and even then he couldn’t scratch 30 percent against Adams. The billionaire Bill Ackman, a pro-business centrist who some are calling to lead the GOP ticket in NYC this November, refused to endorse Sliwa in a tweet confirming that he also has not endorsed Adams following Mamdani’s win.
And so, as it stands here at the end of June, New York City will consider three Democratic candidates to become the next mayor of New York City. The cretinous Cuomo, as my colleague Jude Russo so eloquently put it, against Hizzoner Adams and the radical Mamdani. If likeability is the measure, Mamdani, with his big smile and lack of scandals, appears in pole position to take down the establishment and reset the modern Democratic Party.
