New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is a declared member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), one of eight avowed socialists in the New York State Assembly.
But Mamdani is also as slippery a politician as you’ll find anywhere. When pressed to defend some loony proposals that the national Democratic Socialists of America espouse, Mamdani claims he never believed in such things as emptying local jails, defunding the police, or decriminalizing all drugs. He said, “My platform is not the same as national DSA or any DSA organization.”
Except when it is.
As recently as 2024, the local Democratic Socialists chapter in New York City said on its “DefundNYPD” website, “It’s time to defund the NYPD and refund the people!” It also said “Cut NYPD budget & police force by 50% … Close Rikers, No New Jails, Free Them All,” according to the New York Post.
The Mamdani campaign is trying to finesse his association with the loony tunes national DSA. It’s not working out very well.
A spokesperson for the Mamdani campaign, Dora Pekec, tried to thread the needle.
“Zohran’s affordability agenda is crystal clear: if Zohran has not publicly endorsed or spoken on a position during the campaign, it is not a part of his mayoral platform,” Pekec said.
You can’t claim the DSA label for your campaign and then pick and choose which kooky proposals you’ll endorse and which ones you’ll eschew. That’s not how politics works, especially in the big leagues, such as big city mayoral races.
Mamdani’s campaign says his platform is separate from the DSA agenda; the NYC-DSA says that its “shared values do not mean Zohran adopts” every DSA position.
OK, so does he reject its positions? Has he decided (and when?), for instance, that minors shouldn’t get sex changes without parental consent?
Mamdani’s refusal to speak to any specifics is damning.
If he won’t explicitly reject any of the DSA’s radical positions, voters must assume he still believes in all of them.
He’s just hoping he can keep wearing that smile and they won’t notice his true intentions until the morning of Nov. 5.
The former governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, is running a distant second in the race and has been desperately searching for an attack strategy that will expose Mamdani for the crazy radical he is.
Recently, Cuomo asked Mamdani a series of rhetorical questions, looking to demonstrate how truly radical his agenda is.
“Do you believe what the D.S.A. charter says when they say, close prisons? Do you believe what the D.S.A. charter says when it says, close jails? Do you believe what the D.S.A. charter says when it says, gradually reduce the police budget to zero? Yes or no?”
Mamdani fends off these attacks with ease. It’s a large part of his success that he’s able to give socialism “a human face” and, like Barack Obama, deliver “a spoonful of sugar” to help voters swallow his radical proposals.
It’s also helping his campaign that the National Democratic Socialists of America are staying out of the New York City mayoral race. They fully realize the damage that could be done to Mamdani’s cause if the DSA’s true radicalism was placed front and center.
While the local chapter endorsed Mr. Mamdani’s mayoral candidacy, the national umbrella organization did not. But it did celebrate his primary win over Mr. Cuomo, and even claimed some ownership of it.
“Zohran never ran as an individual, but as a representative of a working-class socialist movement,” the national D.S.A. said in a statement in June. “This movement is bigger than one person, election, city or organization.”
The national D.S.A.’s media relations team did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Once Mamdani is in office, we can expect the National DSA to step forward with pride and claim him as a favorite son.
It’s very clear that younger Americans will have to learn the lessons of their parents and grandparents about the devastation that socialism causes all over again. They weren’t taught in school about people having to stand in line for moldy beets and a bottle of vodka in Soviet Russia, or how healthcare was rationed in socialist countries.
After a few years of Mamdani in office, the lessons of history will likely finally be learned.
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