Zohran Mamdani Gets Closer to Becoming New York's Socialist Mayor
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Socialist candidate Zoran Mamdani stuns the New York Democratic establishment, taking a large plurality of the votes in Tuesday's primary for mayor. Where does the city's big political race go from here? And is this a signal where the energy is in the Democratic Party going into 2026 and perhaps even 2028? Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal.

We're joined today by my colleagues on the editorial page, editorial board member Mene Ukebarua and columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady. Tuesday's results are only preliminary because of New York City's complicated ranked choice voting system. But the initial returns are strikingly different than polling, which had former Governor Andrew Cuomo with a comfortable lead to be the Democratic Party's next nominee for mayor.

The actual outcome of the first round of choices on these ballots is notably different. Zoran Mamdani with 43.5%, leading Andrew Cuomo with 36%. And Brad Lander, another candidate on the progressive side of the Democratic spectrum with 11%. So nearly 55% for Democratic candidates who are further to the left than Andrew Cuomo is one way to characterize it.

Let's listen to a piece of Mamdani's victory speech at his campaign party in Queens. We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city they can afford. A city where they can do more than just struggle. One where those who toil in the night can enjoy the fruits of their labor in the day. Where hard work is repaid with a stable life. Where

Hours on the factory floor or behind the wheel of a cab is enough to pay the mortgage. It is enough to keep the lights on. It is enough to send your kid to school. Where rent-stabilized apartments are actually stabilized. Where buses are fast and free. Where childcare doesn't cost more than CUNY. And where public safety keeps us truly safe. And it's where the mayor

will use their power to reject Donald Trump's fascism.

And here is former Governor Andrew Cuomo last night looking pretty much like it also ran. Now, I want to look at all the numbers as they come in and this ranked choice voting and what the numbers actually say and do. There is no doubt that there are important issues that are facing this city. That's why this election is so imperative. That's why so many people came out to vote.

Because these are real issues and they're not getting better and they're getting worse.

Manet, what's your read of the election returns first and how Mamdani pulled off this victory? Yeah, it's a huge surprise, I think, to a lot of people. But I think that those who are watching the way the race was unfolding might have predicted this outcome because of the pace at which Mamdani was closing that gap. So as you mentioned, the most recent polls before the primary election actually took place did still show Andrew Cuomo with a slight lead over Mamdani. But as recently as March,

Andrew Cuomo had about a 28% lead over Zoran Mamdani, who was very little known. And so the fact that as his campaign was kicking into full gear, as his very viral marketing was grabbing more eyeballs and people were just starting to tune into the race, he rose very quickly.

And polls are always going to show a lag somewhat. They're always going to trail the direction that things are moving by Election Day. So I think that those last polls were just a little bit behind. Another factor is that polls don't capture turnout. You can call people on the phone and say, who do you want to vote for? Who do you prefer as a candidate? Even likely voters. And they'll tell you. But that doesn't tell you who's going to actually make it to the polls to vote on Election Day.

And by everything that we can see, Mamdani's voter base was very young, energized people who really thought that this is a different candidate, unlike people we've seen before and were enthusiastic about coming out to support him. So I think there was a big enthusiasm gap between him and Cuomo that contributed to the deficit between the poll numbers and what we actually saw. But generally, if you look at the breakdown of who voted and how they voted,

It's interesting to note that Mamdani's coalition was actually fairly broad. He was quite successful among voters across the outer boroughs, including a lot of Black and Hispanic voters, whereas the early polls that were tracking the rise of his campaign were showing that his earliest support came from wealthier, whiter voters in Manhattan. And so it shows that he began as a political phenomenon among voters.

core progressive voters who are very politically plugged in. But as more people started to pay attention, he actually did have quite a lot of purchase among middle and working class voters who constitute the majority of the Democratic Party base in Manhattan. And so I think you combine all of that with the fact that Andrew Cuomo didn't realize the challenge he was getting from Mamdani until very late.

His campaign mostly was focused on trying to do and say as little as possible because he had such a big lead from the fact that he had wide name recognition as a former governor. And so he was essentially playing catch up late in the race, trying to say, I'm going to raise a minimum wage. I'm not going to curb policies that are favorable to unions.

signaling that he was still a viable candidate of the left once Mamdani started putting pressure on. But I think it was way too late by that point. And so once people really caught wind of Mamdani and his campaign, it seemed like his momentum built and built and carried him easily across the finish line. Mary, what's your take? And a couple of thoughts I would throw out as fodder from my end. Mamdani is obviously a very charismatic candidate. He's a young candidate. There's a generational difference between him and Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo may also have been weighed down more than expected by the baggage that we had talked about previously, the scandals, COVID, the sexual harassment allegations that forced him from office. But also, it seems that one of the messages that really resonated with voters is Mamdani's talk about an affordability crisis.

The difficulty there, from my perspective, Mary, is A, who's been running the joint? New York City is not a hotbed of Republican conservative free market thinking. It is full of all kinds of union feather bedding and zoning and land use rules that make it hard to build.

rent control, rent stabilization. And his prescription seems to be to double down on those things that I think are in part contributing to the affordability crisis that he's talking about. And just to pick on one, rent stabilization. The reason that housing prices get so high is because demand outstrips supply. And when you come in and you

put in rent freezes like Mamdani is talking about, you are subsidizing demand and you are restricting supply. So what could possibly go wrong? Well, I think one of the things we have to keep in mind here is that this wasn't really a campaign about what works, what's actually going to deliver. It was really a campaign about, I see what your problem is. And I think that was the biggest appeal of Mamdani. You know, we talk about how voters vote their pocketbook.

And you mentioned before that Andrew Cuomo kind of got to the sidelines where he started a stall sort of like you would do in basketball, passing the ball around the outside of the court, but not actually engaging.

engaging with these questions. And I think the appeal of this candidate from Queens is he was saying, I see your problem, which is New York is too expensive and I'm going to fix it. Now, none of his solutions are going to fix that problem, but he connected with voters in the sense that

I think they felt like he was talking about what they were concerned about. And, you know, you mentioned rent freezes. He doesn't actually have the capacity to do rent freezes. Those are done by a board that basically evaluates the needs of the landlords and of the tenants and comes up with something. So he can't just dictate that.

rents are going to be frozen. That's a false offer. He says he's going to make buses free. And as I mentioned last week, the head of the transit union said, this is great because ridership will soar, which is really hilarious. I mean, if you give prime rib away for free on Fifth Avenue, meat consumption will soar, but that doesn't

improve the living standards of New Yorkers. So I think that Mondami was a very sort of a typical 21st century, 33-year-old marketing guru who was very good with social media, with getting his message out there, with touching the issues that are really important to New Yorkers, particularly in the area of affordability. And I think that resonated with people. And just lastly, I'll say that

He got this momentum going. And when you're going into a race that looks close and you have that level of momentum, I think the outcome that we saw, as Mene mentioned, if you were following the race, it wasn't that surprising. What has surprised people, I think, is that Cuomo is kind of a New York Democratic establishment figure.

And so that this guy came out of the state assembly very young and was able to tip him over, I think has stunned a lot of people. I think that in the long run, that may be a problem for the Democratic Party because what we've seen with Democrats is

is that some segment of the party is very far to the left, offering free bus, no police. I mean, that's one of the big concerns with this guy is that he doesn't believe in policing. He wants instead to have sort of turned the police force into a kind of a group of social workers. And if crime and living standards, shortages in housing start to be affected, that's going to be bad for the Democratic Party, not just in New York,

but I think nationally. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Air Force Research Laboratory is partnering with Google Cloud, using AI to accelerate defense research for air, space, and cyberspace forces. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation. Welcome back.

We should mention that this plurality victory so far by Mamdani is still preliminary. Again, the New York ranked choice voting system, the way that it works is they tabulate everyone's number one top pick for the Democratic mayoral nomination. Then if nobody gets a majority threshold, they start eliminating the candidates

at the bottom. And because they are still tabulating right in votes and so forth, I'm seeing reports that they may not get to that ranked choice tabulation until next Tuesday, so a week after election day. But the thinking so far seems to be that Mamdani is only about six and a half points

from that majority threshold. Again, Brad Lander has about 11% of the vote. Mamdani and Lander had cross-endorsed one another. So the thinking right now is that Mamdani is probably close enough that Cuomo will not be able to make it up once there's this reshuffling that takes place. But Manet, that does not necessarily end

Andrew Cuomo's political prospects, because he has said before that he is considering if he lost this Democratic primary running in November as an independent on a minor candidate line, which, by the way, the current incumbent mayor of New York, Eric Adams, has also decided to do because he was concerned, I think, that he was going to lose this Democratic primary.

Let's give Mr. Adams a bit of a word here. Here he is this morning on Fox and Friends talking about the prospect of a Mamdani nomination. He's a snake oil salesman. He will say and do anything to get elected. Think about this for a moment. He wants to raise 1%. He wants to raise tax on 1% of New Yorkers high income earners. As the mayor, you don't have the authority to do that.

You know who has the authority to do that? An assemblyman, which he is. He wants to do free buses. He could have done it at assemblymen. He doesn't understand the power of government and how you must make sure you improve your economy, raise the standard of living. And this is what we've done in the city. And I'm looking forward to being on the campaign trail.

Mone, the prospect of a potential four-way race raises some interesting questions because, again, this is only the Democratic primary. There are still some independent, centrist Republican voters in New York who were not participating potentially in this vote on Tuesday. And where do they decide to go if there is a race between a Republican candidate who is presumably not going to get over the finish line?

Mamdani as a socialist saying that he's going to freeze rent for about half of the rental housing units in New York City, open city-owned grocery stores and so forth. And then in between, you have maybe two of these moderate candidates, or I guess that's the way they would pitch themselves. Andrew Cuomo, I don't think he's a real moderate, but he's maybe to the right of Mamdani. And then the current mayor, Eric Adams, who is unpopular for all sorts of reasons, one of which is indictment and then his

seeming deal with President Trump to drop that case if he would help crack down on illegal immigrants in the city. I mean, it raises the question of, is there a collective action problem? Does one of these candidates in the middle need to drop out? Should it be Andrew Cuomo? Yeah, I think that the way to read the possibility of a four-candidate general election is to say that

Mamdani probably would have the inside lane to winning regardless, because Democrats have a huge registration advantage in New York City. And most voters, when they go to the polls, are going to cast their vote for the person representing the party with which they're affiliated. And so Democrats for the past three or four elections have won very easily in New York City mayoral campaigns, even when the candidate is not extremely popular or there are doubts about what they'll do in office.

City Hall, as there are about Mamdani. But I think you have to say that these independent candidates, Eric Adams, who has declared, and then potentially Andrew Cuomo, if he decides to get in, if anything, might increase Mamdani's edge because the general election is going to be a first-past-the-post system. And so basically, the top vote-getter succeeds. And you

You could imagine an electorate that is divided between Mamdani enthusiastic supporters and people who are skeptical of him. And so if you have two fairly recognizable candidates in Eric Adams, the sitting mayor, and Andrew Cuomo, the former governor, dividing that group of people who are skeptical of Mamdani, who don't think that his recipe of socialist policies is going to be good for New York City, then that's going to actually increase Mamdani's edge. And so

I think Andrew Cuomo has said he's going to be looking at the polls and trying to see whether an independent run would be viable. I think that he's not going to like what he sees. Frankly, it's very unlikely that the early general election polls are going to show a viable path to victory for either him or Adams. The only way that it could work, I think, would be if one of those candidates was willing and able to do something different.

big to shake up the reputation that they have compared with what voters have seen so far. They would have to really attack Mamdani in a very harsh way. They would have to put some kind of very recognizable policy proposal on the table in a way that could rally voters to their support. But as of now, it seems as if Mamdani is almost certainly going to be elected. And if we get the chaotic four-person race, that will only make it more likely.

Mary, is your assessment of this the same? I mean, you can't imagine in a four-person race a Mamdani victory with something like 40% of the vote or 35% of the vote, which would mean that 60% is voting for somebody else. 60% of the city does not want to take this socialist Mamdani path. But if that splits between, again, the Republican and Quintin

Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams, if there's no way to coordinate which of those is going to be the strongest non-socialist, non-Mamdani candidacy, then you can imagine Mamdani winning with a plurality and not even a huge one necessarily. Yeah, I think you would need two things to keep Mamdani from getting the win in November. One would be that these other candidates drop out and that you consolidate his opposition.

The other would be that that opposition has to create a campaign and a movement that somehow excites voters. I mean, Andrew Cuomo was a giant yaw. He didn't offer anything. He tried to compete on the

minimum wage. He said, I want to move it to $20. He had done pension reform as governor. He started talking about how he wanted to reverse that pension reform. You know, he tried to compete with Mamdami on the same issues in the same manner, but he was

doing so in a slightly less extreme way. But I think what you would need is you need a candidate who can poke holes in what Mamdami is offering to people in terms of affordability, poke holes in the crime problem that he's introducing by saying that he doesn't want police, he wants a department of community safety. I mean, we lived through a very violent

period during COVID and the immediate aftermath of COVID until we got Jessica Tisch as our police commissioner. And things are moving in the right direction, but we need to hire more police officers. We need to get rid of things like no cash bail, which, by the way, was a product of Andrew Cuomo. We need somebody who offers the alternative

vision of how to make New York more affordable and a better place to live. And right now, none of those candidates, I mean, I suppose Curtis Sliwood, the Republican candidate, does that a little bit. But I mean, he's been running for mayor forever. He doesn't have what it takes. I think they would need a candidate who is considered more moderate and who can speak to these issues. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment.

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Welcome back. Manet, what do you think this Mamdani surge says about where the broader Democratic Party might be going nationally? And recall, Democrats, I think, felt a little shellacked after the 2024 elections, President Trump's victory again, sending him back to the Oval Office. And there's been this debate within the party. What went wrong? Who's to blame? Was it

all Joe Biden's age? Was it some Joe Biden's age? Was it inflation? Was it the failures at the border? And in some way, some elements of the party seem to think that there are political gains to be had if they move somewhat to the center. Somebody who seems to be carrying this message is Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff for President Obama, who seems like he's considering potentially running in 2028.

On the other hand, the leapfrogging of an old warhorse like Andrew Cuomo here by a 33-year-old socialist assemblyman from Queens does suggest that there is a lot of energy in the Democratic Party on the left side of the spectrum, on the progressive side of the spectrum. I've been skeptical. Sometimes you hear people chatter about maybe Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going to run for president in 2028. I've been skeptical of that.

given the organization it takes, the capacity to fundraise it takes, all the things that need to fall in place. But this makes me wonder if I'm too underrating of the odds of that kind of outcome in a Democratic primary for president in 2028. Well, it's an interesting question. And a primary result like the one that we saw on Tuesday is the right time to ask it because

Parties always wander in the wilderness after they take big beatings like the Democrats did in November 2024. And you can really only get a sense of the way forward when candidates emerge who embody what could possibly be a way forward. You saw this, of course, with the emergence of Barack Obama, for example, in 2004, while Democrats were looking for an answer to the loss that they got when George W. Bush was reelected. Here we have this young charismatic candidate who's presenting an alternative approach

And that happens again and again with each election cycle. And so there are lessons to take away from the New York primary. But I do think that you can look at other races going on in the Democratic Party that show that there isn't a lockstep march toward a left populism necessarily. And you can look, for example, just across the Hudson River in New Jersey, where there's

Democrats just had their primary for the governor's race, which is going to be this November. They nominated Mikey Sherrill, who is known as a more moderate candidate. She's a veteran. She supports lower taxes or at least not increasing tax rates and is

basically making a common sense point about opposing Trump and embodying traditional Democratic Party values. Same thing in Virginia, which also has its governor's race this year. They nominated, without very much contestation, Abigail Spanberger, a former congresswoman who also comes from the moderate wing of the party. And so I do think that there's a ton of enthusiasm from the left populace right now. You see Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

doing essentially a roadshow where they've gathered crowds of thousands to fight the oligarchs and take on the billionaires, etc. And there's a ton of attention going to that. What we saw in New York with Zoran Mamdani reflects that same energy. But I think New York City is too distinct from the rest of the electorate and even the rest of the Democratic Party nationally.

to read too much into the direction that voters there in particular choose to go. And I think that if Democrats are prudent, they wouldn't read too much into Mamdani's victory and necessarily see it as a model that can be replicated in other races around the country, especially a presidential race.

Mary, what's your take on that? I get Menae's point here that the National Democratic Party in a national primary is different from what happens in New York City. You have to, as a presidential candidate, be able to win in all sorts of different states, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. On the other hand, this kind of a victory sometimes has a way of shifting the thinking inside the party that

Maybe these kinds of young, charismatic candidates who can drive turnout and get out the base will be the path to victory for the party. Well, I mean, I have to give your comments some credit.

but I don't buy it. I think, first of all, New York is not like any other place in the United States. It's a very special, unusual place for a lot of cultural and long-term reasons. Even big cities in other places in the United States are not like New York. So that's one thing. Secondly, you know, the Democrats lost last time around at the

presidential level for two reasons. One, they had a terrible candidate. I mean, she was just a disaster. And in this case, a guy like Mondami is a very charismatic and well-spoken campaigner, so he would be good at that. But I think the other reason why they lost was that they just went too far. I mean, when foreigners ask me, why did the United States vote for Donald Trump? I

My answer is Biden derangement syndrome. I mean, people just felt like Joe Biden and everything around him went too far, whether it was on transgender issues or national security issues, the border. All of those kinds of values that a guy like Zoran Mamdami has are not widely shared by enough of the American public involved.

to win elections. He's just too far to the left. I see him more as a problem for the Democratic Party than a solution at this point because what works in New York and at this stage of the campaign is not...

I don't think what's going to work in a presidential election on Election Day in November. Thank you, Mary and Manet. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back tomorrow with another edition of Potomac Watch.

The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Department of Defense is working with Google to help secure America's digital defense systems, from establishing cloud-based zero-trust solutions to deploying the latest AI technology. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.