On May 18th, just five weeks before the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, I found myself in the Manhattan field office of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign. It was a Sunday—technically a day off—but about 15 young staffers were deep in work, peering into laptops or huddled in intense conversations. I felt like an outsider, not because I didn’t support Mamdani, but because I had little hope that he could actually beat Andrew Cuomo—the ultimate Democratic Party insider and ex-governor of New York. Ten weeks prior, I’d spoken with Zohran himself as the campaign hustled for donations to unlock city matching funds. I helped raise some money, not out of real optimism, but because of his strategically concrete promises that directly spoke to the working class: a rent freeze, city-owned grocery stores, free buses, and universal child-care. At best, I thought his campaign would force these issues into the debate, creating a “left pole” in the race. Just four months earlier, Mamdani was barely noticeable in the crowded field, with less than 1% support. By May 18th, he had climbed close to 20%. His proposals were now part of daily conversation in New York, but Cuomo still held 37%—a daunting 20-point margin with just a month to go. Yet the campaign staff were undeterred. “Cuomo just has name recognition and Zohran does not. But what he has is a program. We just have to knock a million doors and we can turn this election around,” one staffer told me. By the time I had left the campaign office that afternoon, I had a new bounce in my step.
By early June, the momentum was shifting. The first mayoral debate on June 4th saw Mamdani hold his ground against a hostile Cuomo, and his ratings soared. Within days, Cuomo stagnated at 38% and Mamdani surged into the high 20s. Ranked-choice voting—where voters rank up to five candidates, with votes redistributed until someone crosses 50%—suddenly became pivotal. Mamdani, often the second or third choice among progressives, was closing the gap. By June 9th, pollsters were openly questioning whether Cuomo’s campaign had peaked too early. The second debate on June 12th brought more progressive candidates into Mamdani’s corner. Michael Blake urged his supporters to rank Mamdani second, and by June 21st, city comptroller Brad Lander and Mamdani had cross-endorsed, consolidating the progressive vote. Lander, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in New York, inoculated Mamdani from a fierce zionist attack that had gone as far as to suggest that if Mamdani were to win, the jewish communities of New York might be forced to evacuate. On June 22nd, just two days before the primary, an Emerson College poll showed for the first time, Mamdani winning in the eighth round of counting against Cuomo.
This remarkable surge in the last four weeks before poll date was produced through an exponential growth of Mamdani’s volunteer base. Towards the end of May, Mamdani’s volunteer army was just a little more than 15,000 which within just a span of three weeks had reached a little over 40,000. It was this volunteer base that is the most significant evidence of a remarkable mood-swing within the very fabric of New York City,making knocking on over a million doors possible. When the results came in on election day, Mamdani had pulled off a historic upset, winning by 12 points—56% to 44%—over Cuomo, New York’s most established Democrat. He is now the official Democratic party candidate.
What made this remarkable victory possible? How did Mamdani overcome a twenty point deficit in a month? Clearly, his victory lay at the centre of many converging trajectories. In much of the analysis of the results that have followed, including from within Mamdani’s camp, one of the clearest statements that have emerged is that neighbourhoods that had voted Trump in the 2024 elections had turned around and voted Mamdani in this primary. This indeed points to a popular surge of support for Mamdani’s economic program, from deep inside the working class of New York City that was struggling to stay afloat under conditions of high inflation and deep price-gouging. It also points to the fact that the democratic party’s establishment is deeply out of touch with the popular mood as it failed to course-correct even as it saw the Mamdani campaign succeed. And instead depended on the party machines and some of the mainstream unions to deliver alongside the deployment of the worst of Islamophobic tropes and a campaign war chest of over 32 million dollars. In the end, the Mamdani victory is probably just as significant as the victory of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) in the US Congressional Primary in 2012 where she defeated a well established democratic party neoliberal. Both represent at specific moments, the left flank of the Democratic party, smashing into its neoliberal core. Nobody could’ve been more establishment than Andrew Cuomo.
What is the establishment within the Democratic Party—and why is Andrew Cuomo its key figure in New York City? For over three decades, the Democratic party has functioned as a coalition of three clear blocs. At its center lies the Keynesian-Welfare bloc, rooted in the New Deal era under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and later figures like Trueman, Johnson and Carter. This bloc built a welfare compact—from the 1930s to the 1970s—where capital paid its share to fund programs like Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and child-support.
In the 1980s, as the capitalist class rallied behind Ronald Reagan’s neoliberal assault on the welfare state, Democrats shifted right. By the 1990s, the neoliberal bloc had taken control, embodied by Bill Clinton, followed by Barack Obama, and candidates like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. Bernie Sanders remained a lone progressive voice until the 2008 financial crash sparked a new left flank, represented by AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Ilhan Omar.
By the mid-2010s, the three blocs were firmly defined, with neoliberals dominant and often allying with centrists. Bill Clinton built the bloc; Al Gore, his VP, was the centrist compromise. Obama cemented neoliberal control over the party after posing as a centrist in his campaign; Biden, as his VP, reassured the middle. In Obama’s second term, it became increasingly clear that the neoliberal assault was fueling both the growth of the ultra-right (Tea Party white supremacists and the christian nationalists) and the new left flank both inside and outside the Democratic Party. Andrew Cuomon became governor of New York State in 2011, as a true representative of the complete control of the neoliberals bloc over the Democratic party and it took a sexual harassment scandal ten years later to force him to resign. The hegemonic neoliberals held onto the party and kept their blinders on. In 2016, they backed Hillary Clinton, an arch neoliberal like her husband, who failed to stop the rise of right-wing populism. Sanders, her main primary challenger, was sidelined again in 2020 when the party pushed Biden out of retirement, pairing him with Kamala Harris to block a leftward shift.
In 2024, Biden’s declining health gave the neoliberals an opening—they installed Kamala Harris as their candidate. This four-decade arc helps explain what unfolded in New York last month. Andrew Cuomo is the neoliberal torchbearer of the New York Democratic Party—the local Clinton and Obama rolled into one.
Mamdani’s improbable victory, however, is only the beginning. Early reactions suggest that the neoliberal bloc within the Democratic Party remains unwilling to concede—despite Mamdani’s remarkable success in mobilizing young voters and energizing New York City’s working class. The ideological hold of neoliberalism is strong; even as Mamdani pulled Trump voters leftward—exactly the shift the Democratic Party needs—figures like Hakeem Jeffries and Kirsten Gillibrand, heirs to the Clinton legacy, show no signs of shifting course.
Wall Street was already uneasy during Mamdani’s surge, funnelling millions into Cuomo’s super PAC. Now, the capitalist bloc appears not only to be consolidating against Mamdani but actively seeking a more “winnable” centrist figure. Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman tweeted shortly after the primary, urging the public to nominate “your best centrist candidate.”
The November race is crowded. Mamdani is the nominee of both the Democratic Party and the Working Families Party. Curtis Silwa is the Republican candidate. Cuomo and the current mayor, Eric Adams–running under the cloud of corruption scandals—are both running as independents. There's even speculation that Ackman and the Wall Street bloc may fund a centrist write-in. While a split field could favor Mamdani, the Democratic establishment may negotiate a withdrawal by either Cuomo or Adams to consolidate the race.
To win, Mamdani must broaden his support, especially among Black and Latino communities. Early signs point to a targeted effort to mobilize young voters in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan. His campaign has so far remained rooted in an unwavering commitment to improve life for working-class New Yorkers. If he maintains that focus—and compels opponents to address the underlying problems his proposals confront—his chances remain strong.
The opposition will likely fall back on the deadly and toxic combination of Islamophobia and charges of anti-semitism and keep attempting to create a wave of fear. But these attacks are losing traction. The more Mamdani demands specifics from Cuomo and Adams on affordability and exposes their ties to billionaire (and Trump) donors, the more difficult it will be to counter his rise. Unlike the establishment’s belief that billionaires ought to be objects of inspiration and awe, Mamdani’s campaign has clearly framed class antagonism in a way that many New Yorkers are ready to engage. The question of class and dignity have been brought together in his package of solutions– each solution from rent freezes to child support– clearly being connected to an urban working-class life with dignity. What else is a socialist aspiration under conditions of neoliberalism, but dignity in the life of the working-class?
The fight is on.
(Amit K S is an union organizer with over 25 years Of experience in the immigrant labor movement in New York and New Jersey.)
