Yes, To Winning: A Response to "Run Zohran?"
SMC Editorial Board Note: This piece is not an official caucus statement, but the opinion of the author.
In July, City & State reported that Zohran Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman and NYC-DSA member, is exploring a potential mayoral run. The piece was light on details beyond a couple political consultants' quotes, but within NYC-DSA speculation abounds over the campaign’s prospects.
Endorsing a candidate for mayor would be NYC-DSA’s first endorsement at the executive level since Cynthia Nixon for governor in 2018 and our subsequent election of nine members to our state and city legislatures. One question consistently coming up about Zohran’s prospective race against a deeply unpopular mayor is whether it fits into an electoral strategy that has for years centered on winnable races not simply messaging campaigns.
Earlier this month, Sid C., a fellow NYC-DSA member, pressed the question: “Should NYC-DSA endorse Zohran Mamdani for the mayor of New York City?” His piece took internal debate on the race public and encouraged others to articulate how the org should consider such a heavy decision. I believe we should endorse Zohran, even against long odds. The campaign should strive for victory, because it provides the best opportunity to ensure Eric Adams' defeat and build a stronger left bloc within New York City. I cannot tackle Sid’s entire piece, so this will instead focus on three key points and close with how NYC-DSA should be oriented in 2025.
1. We Run to Win
Sid argues Zohran’s mayoral campaign should reject winning over concerns that an electoral win wouldn’t contain enough social power to counteract the NYPD. The 30,000+ workforce often operates as a semi-autonomously military apart from the city workforce but if we’re seeking executive power we cannot pick-and-choose what parts of the state sits beneath the mayor on day one. Still Sid suggests of Zohran’s campaign that “we will need to run a serious campaign and present a vision of a socialist executive, even as we inwardly express doubts about its present possibility.”
While it’s certainly true that the odds will be stacked against any self-declared socialist, under ranked-choice voting this intervention would be the best way to defeat our ring-wing incumbent mayor and make sure a program for working class new yorkers is foregrounded in the election. There’s no reason to embrace a premature defeat as a means to avoid confronting power, even in a campaign that faces long odds. We should instead analyze that reality and organize to overcome it.
No left-wing candidate in a city-wide election in New York City has gotten over a third of the vote this decade in a Democratic primary. Bernie’s 2020 campaign received 20% (although the election was held after he dropped out of the race). Maya Wiley totaled 29% in the second to last round of the 2021 mayoral race. In 2022, Jumaane Williams got 27% for Governor and Ana María Archila got 30% for Lieutenant Governor with the support of the Working Families Party.
If Zohran captures the entire left vote, he then needs to win over Democratic voters, who’ve repeatedly embraced milquetoast liberals: Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, with fewer than 10,000 additional votes reallocated in ranked-choice voting could be our mayor today. In her 2022 primary, Kathy Hochul, an exceptionally small-bore governor not even from the city, dominated both Park Slope and the Upper West Side, core neighborhoods for any progressive running city wide.
Even before June, if polling starts to show Zohran with a real shot, we should be ready for an onslaught of spending to tank his candidacy. We just witnessed the millions AIPAC flooded into races against Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman for two congressional seats; one can only imagine the spending to prevent NYC’s mayor from being a pro-BDS socialist. In 2009, Michael Bloomberg spent over $100 million to secure a third term. The prospect of a dedicated socialist entering Gracie Mansion would inspire real estate, finance, and the entire business class to open up their checkbooks to stop him no matter what. (The New York Times recently reported Brad Lander, the current city comptroller running for mayor, could face an onslaught of outside spending due to his perceived affiliation with DSA.)
Sid highlighted in his piece the political power of the NYPD, but let’s not forget other uniformed agencies, and all other types of right wing reactionaries that’d be eager to keep a median left Democrat out of power. (Republicans helped defeat DSA member India Walton with a write-in campaign during the 2021 Buffalo mayoral race.) These facts and histories should be explicit to illustrate struggles ahead.
Despite these challenges, launching a campaign with an assumption of failure undermines any ability for the campaign to inspire. When Zohran says he wants to freeze the rent on your apartment, NYC-DSA should be ready to help you organize into the campaign and outside it for more tenant power. Our message shouldn’t be “Hit these doors even though we’re gonna lose”; rather, Claire Valdez, who won her Queens state assembly race in 2024, with a campaign message of “Workers Deserve It All” should be expanded to mean the city’s entire working class. We’re not ignorant of the odds against a Zohran victory, but the campaign provides us the best vehicle towards defeating Adams by standing alongside a broader movement that’s grown against him since 2021.
2. A “Don’t Rank Adams” Campaign
“Don’t Rank Adams” literature should be on every NYC-DSA tabling effort, our elected officials should say this in every interview until Election Day, and it should be on a shirt by our October’s convention. The single political question of 2025 in New York City will be about the mayor’s race. People personalize city issues in a way that differs from legislative races we typically run. NYC-DSA cannot sit on the sidelines when it comes to the Mayor Adams question, as we did in 2021. Left, and broader liberal, disorganization is partly to blame for a failure to assess the threat Eric Adams, not just Andrew Yang, posed to the city. Thus we’ve seen many rollbacks from Bill deBlasio-era policies: cuts to universal Pre-K, underdelivering on bus improvement, and stacking the Rent Guidelines Board with pro-landlord votes. NYC-DSA electoral wins may not, alone, be capable of wielding executive power but we cannot abdicate articulating clear opposition to the mayor.
A “Don’t Rank Adams” message forces the question of “Who should I vote for?” Ranked choice voting should alleviate spoiler concerns and city matching funds could give Zohran the millions he’ll need for a proper campaign (i.e. TV ads). He is also a compelling speaker and voice for our organization, the city’s Muslim communities, and public institutions like our library and parks system that have faced constant cuts under Adams' administration.
Sid is correct to say: “We should just be honest about our politics: We hate Eric Adams and want people to rank anyone else.” That left-wing voting bloc may not be enough alone to win, but NYC-DSA, as one of the best organized sections, shouldn't shy away from directing voters towards an outcome that makes Eric Adams a one-term mayor.
Winning socialism “requires participating in a popular front against the right in general elections," as the Socialist Majority's Points of Unity acknowledges. Indeed, "We know a popular front alone cannot liberate the working class from capitalism, so we must also advance socialist politics by fighting corporate Democrats in primaries, highlighting the shortcomings of liberalism while offering a political alternative.”
Eric Adams, a former republican, governs well to the right of the typical NYC Democrat. The fact that so many electeds including Zohran are eyeing a challenge against him from his left outlines a sizable coalition that can be built. In the 2013 Democratic primary, a number of unions came together explicitly to stand against anticipated victor Christine Quinn, the then-Speaker of the City Council, who ultimately came in third. We’re still far enough from Election Day that NYC-DSA can, and should, cohere a similar message on the mayor’s failures. The other candidates and NYC-DSA may not seek a direct coalition, but electoral engagement in this race contributes more weight to this anti-Adams majority that should take power in 2026.
3. Building Our Own Bloc
NYC-DSA should commit to a member and voter registration drive as part of Zohran’s mayoral campaign. DSA’s moments of mass member growth (Trump’s election or AOC’s win) in many ways were outside of our control. Membership accelerated from 2016 to 2021, and though we saw growth in the number of our local electeds, that hasn’t immediately translated into parallel organizational growth. We should campaign for Zohran’s victory, but also build our own ranks and prepare our base to vote. This helps expand the anti-Adams majority but will also allow us to discover how far our message can resonate across the city to help identify potential future electoral fights.
Sid makes a good suggestion of proportional representation in city elections, but since New York City continues to utilize closed primaries, increasing Democrat registration is critical. This isn’t intended to rope them in county level Democratic party inner workings that DSA has strategically avoided for many years; the reality is just that registering to vote without a party affiliation limits one’s ability to engage in local politics. This strategy can boost the number of potential anti-Adams voters and lay the groundwork for 2026 campaigns and beyond.
There’s plenty to wrestle with over the question of the Zohran endorsement. However, an August email by the Electoral Working Group asked the correct question: “How do we make Adams a one-term mayor?” Multiple reform groups of the United Federation of Teachers have written extensively about tying their union struggle for internal democracy into the 2025 primary. The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, a newly mobilized group of city workers standing against the privatization of their health care by city unions and Eric Adams, knows the threat he poses to New Yorkers. Adrienne Adams, our moderate city council speaker derisively refers to Adams (no relation) as a “king” due to his frequent abuses of power (refusing to enact city council laws, politically motivated charter revision commission, and ongoing investigations into his 2021 mayoral campaign).
We shouldn’t be coy about our desire for a new mayor, nor should we be fearful that running a strategic campaign to intervene would only lead to either demobilization or presiding over a rebellious NYPD in victory. Success wouldn’t, and can’t, rest solely on the shoulders of our organization, nor would knocking off the mayor be our task alone. We’re already part of the city’s anti-Adams majority—let’s back Zohran so that our movement can take power.