Four Challenges for Mayor Mamdani

We’re a few weeks into the biggest experiment in left-wing politics in the United States in decades. Here are some initial impressions.

I have a piece on the challenges facing Zohran Mamdani and the left in New York City for the German publication ND. You can read the English original here.

The four big challenges facing Mamdani and the left as I see them:

1. Priorization: How do we pick and choose the battles to be fought, when a strong case can be made for almost every issue and a well-organized bloc of activists who want it to be a priority?

2. Finding leverage: Is the key to moving Zohran’s agenda forward persuading or compelling centrist Democrats to come along?

3. Timing: How can Zohran score some big wins in the first few months to keep up the momentum from the campaign?

4. Trump: What is to be done about the mad king?

My article is more a piece of journalism — an attempt to explain to a German audience the questions that are being discussed here in the city. I don’t say much in it about my opinion. These are my answers to those challenges though:

I think the activist left is going to have to be patient. Zohran has to pick his fights, or his administration will quickly become overwhelmed. The best example here is Zohran’s decision not to replace the controversial chief of the New York Police Department, Jessica Tisch. Tisch is beloved by the city’s elites and the media establishment but justifiably opposed by activists. A billionaire heiress like Tisch should not be in charge of any city institution, including the NYPD, but I can see why Zohran chose not to pick that fight now. By almost everyone’s account, the left’s views on policing are still unpopular. Why should Zohran pick a fight to start where he is on weak ground and almost guaranteed to lose? With more experience and some wins to shore up the public’s confidence, harder fights like police reform become easier to win.

As for leverage, my major concern is that the early friendly overtures from Gov. Kathy Hochul will be mistaken for something they’re not. Hochul is not having a spiritual awakening and finding her inner progressive. She’s afraid she’ll be sucked into a bruising primary battle against her second-in-command, Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado, who is challenging her from her left. She knows that her party’s base is tilting leftward and to win she needs to temporarily reduce tensions with progressive organizations and leaders, Zohran included.

In other words, what concessions she’s making now, she’s making out of fear. The minute she no longer feels threatened by the left in the state is the minute she’ll revert to form, as the governor who shields the billionaire class and big business from taxes and who vetoes expanding public services. For this reason, I think Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) state senator Jabari Brisport’s decision to endorse her challenger sends precisely the right message. It probably makes sense for Zohran to hold the threat of intervening in the election over Hochul’s head until after the New York budget negotiations and on the eve of the primary. But the main message should be clear: the left will work with centrist Democrats like Hochul on specific issues — expanding childcare for example — but we won’t back down for a minute when it comes to challenging them on all the other issues where we’re not aligned. And that includes working to defeat them in elections.

On the timing question: Zohran’s first moves have been pitch-perfect. The early steps taken to lock down childcare expansion, open up public restrooms across the city, and show up to support the massive 15,000 member strike by the New York State Nurses Association have received lots of attention. He’s delivering quickly, and he’s doing it with a great deal of publicity. The contrast with Joe Biden, who achieved very little but won credit for even less, is striking. At least the left learned something from those four lost years.

Finally, on Trump: This is the big wild card, and it’s the sort of thing that’s impossible to plan for. Despite his friendly meeting in November, Zohran hasn’t shied away from strongly condemning Trump’s intervention in Venezuela and the latest escalations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We’ll see what happens if and when ICE is deployed to the city in full force.