Run Zohran?
This article was originally published in the MUG-NYC organ The Socialist Tribune, as can be found here.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Role of the Executive in New York City: The Cop-in-chief problem.
We need to assert our strategic goals.
We need to be bold in our platform.
We should endorse a “Don’t Rank Adams” canvassing plan.
We need to ensure political independence and programmatic control.
We should be wary of drawing organizing capacity away from our other duties as socialists.
Conclusion
1. Introduction
In July 2024, sources across New York reported that Assemblymember Zohran K. Mamdani of AD36 in Astoria was considering running for Mayor of New York City. Mamdani, being a DSA-endorsed Socialist in Office, would likely seek another endorsement from our organization before running this race. Endorsing here would essentially be uncharted territory for us. While it is technically true that NYC-DSA has endorsed in executive races in the past, this would be our first time doing so for what is essentially a homegrown DSA candidate. This race presents a wide range of opportunities and challenges for our organization. The endorsement process, should the candidate seek to go through it, will test the strength of our democracy as we navigate a deeply contentious decision together. It is my hope that we can discuss, debate, and indeed disagree joyfully and in the open.
In service of this, I want to summarize some of the main points of contention that will arise around this race. These include the role of the executive in American governance, the role of electoral campaigns in DSA, the possible strategies and tactics to be employed should we decide to run this race, and its potential impacts on our organization. I write this as a member of New York City DSA who supports the endorsement of Assemblymember Mamdani for Mayor, provided the conditions outlined below are met. These are by no means exhaustive, but rather seek to begin some of these important conversations that will impact DSA both in New York and throughout the country. I hope it will help ground our discussions as our electoral work advances into a new era.
2. The Role of the Executive in New York City: The Cop-in-chief problem.
Before I begin to discuss the campaign itself, it is necessary to be clear about the role of the Mayor in New York City, and what it means to hold this office under the present state of affairs. The office of the Mayor controls, or at least supposedly controls, the 36,000 officers of the New York Police Department. For almost two centuries, this private army has waged class war against working New Yorkers, primarily people of color, with little democratic oversight. The NYPD has used its political influence to control urban affairs for decades as mayors of various political stripes have passed through Gracie Mansion. Governing the city under its present political system would require the Mayor to engage, negotiate, and compromise with a police department that has used its deep embeddedness within our city’s so-called democracy to demand more funding and resources as schools and libraries go without.
We cannot attribute the power of the NYPD merely to the relative size of its budget. Rather, we should treat the police as a political force capable of using its institutional authority (especially around issues of crime and “quality of life”) and its various advocacy organizations (the police “union,” the Republican Party, local news media stoking crime panic) to exert control over city politics.
This dynamic cannot be explained by Eric Adams alone. While he was produced by the NYPD’s patronage systems and has richly rewarded the police, the power of the city police and their “unions” go beyond the rot of any one mayor. To enact change within how the NYPD functions—and to even point the city in the general direction of abolition—will require a mass movement the scope of which has never truly been seen in the United States, with the mandate from a majority of society to fundamentally alter the relations of political power. To take executive power in the absence of the structure for that movement, in my view, is a mistake.
Doing so would make DSA responsible, at least in part, for the abuses of the NYPD, and this will be reflected in our organizing work with communities who have suffered under its tyranny.
Our inability to corral the police in any meaningful way will affect Mamdani’s ability to govern as well, which impacts DSA. Our organization will metaphorically foot the bill for any misgovernance resulting from the difficulty of leading as a socialist in the absence of either a legislative or popular coalition to provide political support. Victory would thrust DSA into a governing coalition without a mandate to govern. The organization would be thrown into chaos, our work would be disrupted as we are forced to tail mayoral politics, and Zohran Mamdani would more than likely go down as one of the “least effective” (to use bourgeois political terms) mayors in city history as the forces of capital muster against him. At best, he would be able to govern as a progressive while critics punch left and accuse us of attempting to sabotage his administration if our democratic processes put us into disagreement with his actions.
This does not mean that a victory would not result in gains for New York’s working-class—it very well could. After all, the Mayor has vast amounts of control over the budget of New York City, and improvements can be made in many aspects of life here. But our ability to do that will always be restrained by power brokers in the city, which include police interests. Despite the fact that the cops only comprise five percent of the municipal budget, “functional governance” at the present juncture will always hinge upon appeasing police interests. As such, it is imperative that Zohran Mamdani does NOT run to win.
As members across NYC-DSA largely agree that chances of victory are far from likely, I will not belabor this point at great length. But it needs to be understood that once we have abandoned illusions about winning, we can likewise abandon many of the unpleasant compromises that go into an executive electoral campaign. This does not mean we can eschew developing an actual platform for governance as we talk to voters and other stakeholders. Outwardly, 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.
3. We need to assert our strategic goals.
Even after abandoning the goal of electoral victory, there will be robust debate about what this campaign is actually for. Is it about gathering data on which areas of the city might be receptive to having a DSA candidate? Is it about gathering data about political issues more generally? Is it about using the campaign as a vehicle to put DSA messaging on the airwaves? Is it about growing our cadre of electoral organizers as our political terrain becomes less favorable? Is it about creating a political coalition that will indirectly unseat Eric Adams? Is it something else? I’m not quite sure. All of these ideas are important, and we need to sort them out as a separate question from our platform.
Either way, we should make an effort to make the purpose of this campaign understood among cadre members who are working to organize volunteers. Though our goals are manifold and diverse, we need to campaign with a unity of purpose as we enter uncharted political territory. Without being able to clearly articulate our goals, we will not be able to create the groundswell of personnel (and campaign contributions) needed to make for a successful agitational operation.
NYC-DSA will need to proactively respond to a new reality. Previously, when a campaign’s primary goal is to win at all costs, political and strategic discussions within the campaign space have often been pushed to the wayside or held among small groups of stakeholders and cadre. This has even extended to removing socialist messaging from campaign literature. While I am skeptical of this methodology even in a typical campaign, it will be wholly inimical to our operation here. We need to use our democracy to build space to deliberate our goals, both within the formal structure of the campaign and outside of it.
We cannot forget that we are trying to build a socialist party that is capable of making interventions at all levels of political, economic, and social life. An agitational electoral campaign is a unique tool for doing so, and left-wing parties have employed them since at least 1848. However, unlike a third party that seeks to run a dead-end candidate every four years while lighting money on fire to sue for ballot access, we will be using the space of this campaign to build the scaffolding for future organizing efforts. It is up to us to ensure that they are democratically decided and targeted for maximum effectiveness.
4. We need to be bold in our platform.
We have already discussed how winning a mayoral election in any major American city requires the appeasement of the police, and capital itself (which in present-day New York often means caving to the demands of the real estate lobby by lowering taxes on developers and unraveling tenant protections). Because victory is unlikely, Assemblymember Mamdani does not need to risk alienating political and economic elites as he builds his campaign message alongside DSA. An agitational campaign such as this one needs to be bold in the construction of a platform.
Despite the low risks, it is still likely that the Assemblymember will draw inspiration for his platform from a wide range of sources as he builds his campaign. DSA needs to be proactive about articulating which planks we want to see in the platform should we give him our endorsement. These will be the issues that will shape our organizing activity in 2025 (and likely well into the 2026 electoral cycle), so we should choose wisely and do so in the open. It is my view that we should urge Assemblymember Mamdani to campaign on four key issues, listed in order of those he is more likely to agree to. They are: expanding tenant protections, showing solidarity with the people of Palestine, fighting for a democratic city, and reallocating funding and political power from the NYPD.
a. Expanding tenant protections.
The 2024 electoral cycle demonstrated the power of tenant issues at the state level. At the city level, the political players are different, but no less relevant to the millions of New Yorkers living in fear of rent hikes and displacement. In New York City, the Mayor almost dictatorially controls the Rent Guidelines Board, the body that sets rent increases (or theoretically, decreases) in the city’s ~1 million or so rent-stabilized apartments. Under recent administrations, the board has generally sided with landlords, pushing through rent increases despite public opposition.
Assemblymember Mamdani has already shown his support for protecting and expanding rent stabilization during his tenure in Albany, and DSA should have no trouble in urging him to center tenant protections in his platform. Specifically, he should run on using his control over the RGB to demand a rent freeze for the duration of his tenure in office, and then work to bring the board under democratic (read: tenant) control before he leaves it.
b. Showing solidarity with the people of Palestine.
Socialists must continue to resist Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine through all means available to us. Assemblymember Mamdani has long stood in solidarity with Palestinians, both in New York and around the world. Many DSA members have suggested that his electoral base will be disaffected Muslim voters in the outer boroughs who are frustrated with U.S. apathy towards mass death abroad. Assemblymember Mamdani should use this campaign to build public support for the statewide Not On Our Dime Act (which strips tax-exempt status from charitable organizations materially supporting Israeli settlements) while looking to pass a similar law at the local level. He should also offer his public support to the BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) movement while removing legal and civic barriers to its operation in New York City. Finally, he should support a law protecting workers from discrimination, harassment, and intimidation due to their activity or beliefs in support of Palestinian liberation.
Ultimately, the onus will be on the Assemblymember to show that city-level electoral politics are an effective arena in which Palestinians and their allies can continue the fight for liberation.
Thankfully, an agitational campaign like this one will be able to engage with the movement in a diverse array of ways without having to compromise politically with institutional Zionism, especially if the university encampments resume at the beginning of the school year.
c. Fighting for a democratic city.
New York City is run by an elected monarch. The doctrine of “Mayoral Control” gives the Mayor broad authority over rent stabilization, the school system, and a wide range of other city agencies, all with minimal oversight from City Council. Assemblymember Mamdani should use this campaign as a space to highlight the profoundly undemocratic nature of our city. In addition to the reforms to the Rent Guidelines Board mentioned above, Mamdani should run on a platform of bringing other city agencies under the authority of City Council, the most democratic body in the city. Additionally, Mamdani should push for other democratic reforms, including the re-implementation of proportional representation for City Council.
The necessity of these reforms will be debated at length at NYC-DSA’s convention in October. It is important to note that this convention will be key for deciding which issues are important for our local political program. Should we pass a “fight for a democratic city” resolution, making sure of Assemblymember Mamdani’s adherence to the resolution and other aspects of our political program will be key to ensuring this campaign is capable of bringing people into DSA.
d. Reallocating funding and political power from the NYPD.
Over four years on from the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department, issues surrounding abolition appear to have receded from the political work of the Left. Given the outsized control police forces have over city politics, I regard this as a mistake. Running a high-profile mayoral campaign without the need to appease police and their unions offers us an incredible space for political intervention, but only if we properly seize the moment.
It is important that socialists do not conflate the political power of the cops with the raw amount of money they are given. A brief search reveals that the NYPD commands about five percent of the city’s annual budget. While it is true that other (and more useful) agencies draw a greater proportion of the city’s cash flow, we should not assume that actually reallocating funds from the police budget will not have both positive economic and political consequences. As such, DSA should use this campaign to challenge the authority of the police in New York. Assemblymember Mamdani should use his campaign to take an agitational and oppositional stance to the power of the police in New York. While I am hopeful that Mamdani will take a public stance in favor of reallocating funds from the NYPD budget, I am presently skeptical that he will do so.
For many Black and brown New Yorkers, negative (and quite frequently, deadly) interactions with New York’s uncontrollable private army are the primary engagements they have with the State as adults. Money being used to harass immigrant workers, further dispossess unhoused people, and brutalize fare evaders can instead be used to fund necessary city agencies struggling under austerity conditions. But threatening to reallocate money away from the police budget will also show that Assemblymember Mamdani is deeply concerned with the political state of affairs in New York and wants to check the power of this rogue agency. His decisions in this race may compel other politicians to do the same.
If Assemblymember Mamdani does not commit to this, there are other key things his campaign will need to do in order to demonstrate to voters that the out-of-control NYPD is a top concern. He needs to publicly oppose the $225 million Cop City project, currently scheduled to open in Queens in 2026. Additionally, he must demand investigations into police conduct at protests over the previous four years, and work to disband the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (SRG), which has been responsible for the brutalization of protestors and activists at pro-Palestine marches this year. He needs to commit to closing Rikers Island, which previous administrations have promised but failed to do. Finally, he should use campaign media platforms to highlight the current issues with the status quo, from Eric Adams’ obsession with racist surveillance boondoggles to bloated spending on police settlements and overtime pay. In doing so, Mamdani will provide a space for New Yorkers of all races and backgrounds to question the role of police in a moment when challenges to their authority have reached a low point.
Between the time that you are reading this and the primary election in 2025, many Black people in New York will be killed by the police. Some of these incidents will go unheralded by the media, while others will be a cause for mass mobilization. When this happens, people will look to Assemblymember Mamdani’s campaign for an affirmation that DSA is fighting for a better world. DSA needs to be able to show working-class people of color in New York that someone is going to fight back against the political and economic power of the NYPD without reservation or fear of intimidation. Both DSA and the candidate need to be ready and not be blindsided into statements that condemn police brutality but not the existence of the police themselves.
e. Other issues
These aren’t the only issues that make our city run. As the campaign develops, there will be plenty of things to talk about and plenty of things we need to fight for as we lay the groundwork for our socialist future. But these four issues are the ones that will set Asemblymember Mamdani apart from the other candidates in this race. These are the issues that will push the DSA difference, and these are the issues that will help build our base as we go out into our city and rally support for our candidate. There would be no point in running in this election if our candidate was not willing to establish himself as the furthest-left option in a crowded field. “Sewer socialism” issues may be our bread and butter, but they will only get us so far on the doors and in the hearts and minds of working people.
We need to use convention to ensure that these major issues become a part of Assemblymember Mamdani’s platform. If his vision for the city is insufficiently bold, we should withhold our endorsement for this election cycle and redirect our energy toward other necessary political projects. There would be no point in gathering working-class New Yorkers’ hard-earned money for the sake of running a campaign that will not try its utmost to shake the foundations of power in our city.
5. We should endorse a “Don’t Rank Adams” canvassing plan.
Now that we have discussed broader campaign strategy and platform, we will now turn to some of the finer points of running a mayoral race in New York City. Municipal elections in New York, primaries included, use ranked-choice voting. This means, with some rare exceptions, every voter who votes for our candidate will also be voting for others in this race. There are pieces of this issue that require our consideration: the spoiler effect and coalitions with other candidates.
For many Leftists, a primary goal in the 2025 mayoral election is defeating Eric Adams. Fortunately, the ranked-choice system significantly reduces the effect of an agitational campaign creating a spoiler effect—that is, taking votes away from other non-Eric-Adams candidates in the race. Even so, some DSA members have expressed concern that genuine electoral activity in this campaign will contribute to the possibility of Adams being re-elected. I find this unlikely, and DSA members should not be concerned about a spoiler effect. The most likely outcome, in my view, is that an army of DSA canvassers putting our thumbs on the scale will have the effect of raising the consciousness of an electorate whose turnout has plummeted in the previous three years, even if we do not recommend a specific candidate to rank second or third. We should just be honest about our politics: We hate Eric Adams and want people to rank anyone else.
This kills two birds with one stone: It allows DSA to focus fully on running Assemblymember Mamdani’s campaign without having to make what is essentially a full-throated endorsement of whatever non-socialist candidates we recommend ranking second or third. DSA members will be active in campaigning against Eric Adams while not being forced to tail whichever faux progressive earns the favor of local center-left power brokers.
The potential wrinkle here is the possibility of coalitions forming (or Zohran’s campaign apparatus forming them) over the course of the race. DSA should recommend against this, as coalitions will not increase our chance of victory, and will prevent us from using our political capital to attempt to hold other candidates accountable for bad positions. As we have learned in this month’s discourse surrounding the Presidential election, attempting to demand better from a liberal lesser evil is much more difficult when you are already promising to vote for them anyway!
6. We need to ensure political independence and programmatic control.
A mayoral campaign is a lot of work. It also has a lot of capacity to generate positive press and visibility for DSA and our vision. This campaign can put DSA in TV ads, bring our message to constituencies we haven’t yet reached, and clarify our political program. It will also be a massive undertaking that will bring us into coalitions with a wide range of groups that will, like us, attempt to exert pressure on the campaign to further their political goals. DSA must ensure that we will not be reduced to the status of junior partner to any other individual or group.
In order to maintain our political independence, DSA should require Assemblymember Mamdani and his campaign staff to facilitate regular general meetings with rank-and-file members. These spaces will allow us to discuss the goings-on in the campaign, provide a space for members to deliver feedback, and build hype for our electoral work as we enter uncharted territory. These spaces will allow Mamdani to get more buy-in from the rank and file, especially those who are skeptical of running an agitational campaign. Furthermore, conversations like these can serve as a blueprint for future DSA electoral campaigns, especially as we consider how we are growing our body of campaign volunteers and other cadres in the future.
7. We should be wary of drawing organizing capacity away from our other duties as socialists.
Less than two months (yes! It was only two months ago!) after the end of the 2024 primary election cycle, NYC-DSA is now considering another major electoral venture. While it is true that the Mamdani candidacy offers a wide range of incredible opportunities for our organization, it is important that we take a step back and consider this election in the broader context of our political work. In DSA, there is a tendency to believe that organizing capacity is not a finite resource. Priority campaigns, electoral work, and membership work are almost unilaterally framed as purely additive to DSA’s resources—often with little evidence or analysis.
In a sense, this is true. Electoral, IWCO, labor, and all the other aspects of life within DSA draw in organizers who might not participate in our movement without individual areas in which to participate. Having a massive, citywide electoral operation is a thrilling way to grow our base of organizers on this particular front—one of the many reasons why I support running Assemblymember Mamdani for Mayor of New York. But we need to consider how this will reorient our political work in some key areas.
Right now, DSA is trying to establish a firm institutional foothold in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where we recently lost a State Assembly race by around five points. By opening an office and focusing on local outreach, we are working to develop the infrastructure to run again in 2026, this time with more support from various stakeholders. This is important work, in no small part because it (ideally) will bring a lot of electoral-oriented members, such as myself, into the other forms of organizing that building socialism requires.
Running an agitational campaign like this in 2025 could hinder this work, especially if Assemblymember Mamdani’s message does not resonate in the areas in which we canvass. We need to think about what it means to take money and time from working-class New Yorkers to invest in a campaign that will have limited immediate results, especially in a moment in which we are trying to develop our political work in new directions.
NYC-DSA is particularly well-developed in terms of its electoral organizing capacity. We have a robust SIO bureaucracy, and many of our members have deep and extensive electoral experience. I worry that a desire to endorse Assemblymember Mamdani is partially borne out of the idea that this race is a “path of least resistance” for members to continue to have a project to plug into without doing the deep organizing work that building socialism requires. This is, in my view, a genuine risk. But I think it is one we can bear.
First, I think bringing a bold platform to the table has the power to mobilize members who otherwise would not be involved in DSA work at all into a new project that can have a profound impact on our local politics. Our electoral movement is at an inflection point right now, and building a campaign space where questions about the future are debated freely will invigorate the work we do and the movement-builders who do it. It is an opportunity to test out new tactics and skills that can grow DSA as we continue to orient ourselves to a shifting, post-2020 political reality. It will give us a chance to revise our electoral strategy document, which is almost seven years old, and provide us with new direction as we take on the Democratic establishment in Albany (or perhaps even Washington) in 2026.
Secondly, I think this campaign represents an opportunity for DSA to better clarify our political program as we approach city-level politics in 2025. Right now, I think we are struggling to find a unity of purpose as we search for the “correct” interventions. The types of mandates provided by our convention and the power of running a truly citywide campaign will give NYC-DSA a chance to clarify what its program for the second half of the decade will be. By working with Assemblymember Mamdani to center issues such as Palestine, police power, and undemocratic city governance, we will be able to find new ways to make targeted interventions on all of these issues long after the campaign is over. Again, this is only possible if Mamdani and DSA are able to lead with a bold platform for New York City.
Ultimately, I do not know what the consequences of this campaign on the rest of our organizing work will be. I do think members who are not chiefly involved in electoral work, or who have bristled at the dominance of electoral work in our chapter, have a right to be concerned. The outsized role of campaigns, electoral and otherwise, have been a source of spirited debate, which I recommend members study as we consider this race. Members must think long and hard about why we want to run this campaign. We need to be sure that Assemblymember Mamdani is ready to take bold steps, both in platform and strategy, that will guarantee that DSA continues to lead on the most important issues affecting the working people of America and the world. To run this campaign is a tremendous leap of faith that will require input from all corners of DSA about how it will affect our organizing work.
8. Conclusion.
In an era of deep frustration with local mayoral politics, there is perhaps no better time for DSA to make a new foray into the executive arena. This is not, however, a free play. The clock is still running, the ball is live, and the stakes are higher than ever. DSA needs to make clear and concise demands of Assemblymember Mamdani if we are to devote months of blood, sweat, and tears to running his race. He has much to gain from this campaign, and little to lose: it will raise his public profile, demonstrate his acumen as a politician on a bigger stage than ever before, and prepare him organizationally for future, more winnable races.
The same cannot be said for DSA. Running this campaign is a choice that we will make, possibly at the expense of our other organizing work. It will test the strength of our democracy as we debate the merits of this endorsement. The issues addressed here will take center stage at our convention, which is only two months away. While I am hopeful Assemblymember Mamdani will rise to the challenge of building a radical vision for our city’s future, preserving and transmitting our message will require long hours and hard work from everyone involved. This conversation is just beginning. I hope everyone will join me in giving these important debates the light and air they deserve.