By Elliot Crossan
New York City is the beating heart of the global capitalist system. It is the wealthiest city in the world, home to more billionaires and millionaires than any other city by a significant margin; the diplomatic centre of the world, home to the headquarters of the United Nations; and the financial centre of the world. Every day, an unfathomable volume of money flows through the Wall Street stock exchange, the life-blood of the global economy.
New York is the birthplace of Donald Trump. The current President of the United States began his career there as a real estate mogul; his first campaign to become the Republican presidential nominee was launched in June 2015 when he rode down the golden escalator of Trump Tower, Manhattan, to give the first of many speeches attacking immigrants and Muslims. Ten turbulent years later, Trump is making a spectacle of mass deportations across the US whilst cracking down on dissent; the President deployed the National Guard against anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, America’s second-largest city, and has threatened to do the same in New York.
The wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, many of whom live in New York City, may think they run the world from the top of their skyscrapers. Yet like every other city in the world, it is the working class whose labour is required for New York to function. From Trump Tower to the Empire State Building — every landmark, every high-rise building, every house and every shop was built by workers. The iconic taxis, the subway system, the buses and the ferries — every wheel that turns is thanks to working people. The city never sleeps because of this constant labour.
New York is the most populous city in the United States, and is famously a melting pot of diversity. New waves of migration have added to the life and culture of New York for generations; more than a third of the city’s current population are migrants.
One such migrant is Zohran Kwame Mamdani. Born in Uganda and named after Ghanaian revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, Mamdani’s family moved to New York when he was seven. Mamdani was a rapper before entering politics. In 2020 he was elected to the New York State Assembly as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). In October 2024, Mamdani announced his candidacy in the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City.
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was the overwhelming favourite to win the mayoral primary until the final few weeks of the campaign. New York uses ranked-choice voting, which makes counting the votes take longer than usual; when voting closed on Tuesday, 24 June, it was considered unlikely that the winner would be known until the final results were tallied a week later.
However, Mamdani’s lead over Cuomo in the initial results was so convincing that the former Governor was forced to concede defeat on election night. The release of the full results showed Mamdani winning by a 12-point margin, with 56% of the vote to Cuomo’s 44% — an extraordinary slam-dunk victory for a candidate who three months earlier had been polling in the single digits. This victory was driven by an unprecedented surge in turnout among young people and first-time voters.
Mamdani’s shock primary victory was against all of the odds. It was a much-needed win for socialists across the English-speaking world. Whilst he hasn’t been elected mayor just yet, as the Democratic nominee in a safe blue city he remains the favourite to win the general election on 4th November.
The Mamdani campaign contains lessons for socialists in America and across the world. If he wins the general election, the significance will be huge. New York City, the jewel in the crown of the US empire, the 11th largest city in the world, will have a socialist mayor; a mayor who believes that billionaires should not exist, and who stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
Inspirational political leaders overseas, particularly in the US, often cause New Zealanders to ask where our own version of that leader is. In 2016, some on the left asked where we could find a “Kiwi Bernie Sanders;” when Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the UK Labour Party, there was demand for a “Kiwi Corbyn.” With the socialist movement in this country in desperate need of leadership, some — myself among them — will be wondering how we find a “Kiwi Zohran.”
If we want to see the emergence of a “Kiwi Zohran,” then the left in Aotearoa must closely observe how and why Mamdani was able to pull off this stunning underdog victory. It did not come out of the blue. It was the result of years of unglamorous organising and campaigning work by socialists across New York City. The success of the Mamdani campaign is the result of a mass movement of working people with an independent socialist organisation — the DSA — at its core.
Money vs. People
“We have found exactly the way to defeat organised money, which is organised people. We’re speaking about a scale of a campaign that we haven’t seen in this city in a long time.”
These were Mamdani’s words in his first major interview since his primary victory.
According to Tascha Van Auken, the field director for the Mamdani campaign, more than 50,000 people signed up as volunteers, and more than 30,000 of those people got involved by canvassing and phone-banking for Zohran. The campaign knocked on 1.6 million doors.
This mass grassroots movement was certainly necessary considering what the campaign was up against. By “organised money,” Mamdani is referring to the record-breaking $25 million that was spent on the Cuomo campaign.
Cuomo’s mayoral campaign was an attempt to resurrect his political career four years after scandals relating to sexual harassment and mishandling of Covid-19 forced him to resign as Governor. Millions poured into Cuomo’s campaign coffers in spite of these scandals, and so did the endorsements from the Democratic Party establishment. Former President Bill Clinton, billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and influential Congressman Jim Clyburn all lent their support to Cuomo.
Cuomo was born into a political dynasty which has held a tight grip on the New York Democratic Party for decades. He was the only mayoral candidate with widespread name recognition. There was a sense of inevitability to his candidacy: of course the candidate everyone’s heard of, who has a colossal financial advantage and the support of party grandees, is going to win. No wonder he considered Mamdani a “nobody.”
Yet the eventual winner of the primary proved that organised people can defeat organised money and institutional support. Tens of thousands of volunteers knocking on millions of doors, inspired to spread a message of hope, can turn the tide. This volunteer army will likely grow further as Mamdani’s campaign turns towards the general election.
Mamdani’s message is laser-focused on the affordability crisis that is afflicting the working people of New York — a crisis all-too-familiar in Aotearoa, where the cost-of-living continues to hit working class communities hard. His popular policy proposals include city-owned grocery stores, free childcare and fast, fare-free buses. The biggest focus was affordable housing, promising a rent freeze, a public house-building programme, and a plan to crack down on bad landlords. He promised to pay for it by taxing corporations and wealthy New Yorkers.
Centrist liberals are trying to spin Mamdani’s success as merely a result of his charisma and social media presence. Some even claim that he won the Democratic nomination for mayor in spite of his policies.
There is no doubt that Mamdani is hugely charismatic and likeable, and that his social media game is extremely effective. Yet the reason he connects with voters is because he has a message that speaks to them, a message he clearly believes in. His videos have gone viral — particularly amongst young people, who turned out in droves to vote for him in the primary — because he is promising to improve their lives in a concrete way. 50,000 volunteers signed up to his primary campaign to fight for a New York where they can “afford to live and afford to dream.”
The biggest attack on Mamdani has come from the Zionist lobby. In the midst of Israel’s active genocide in Gaza, pundit after pundit has attempted to smear Mamdani as antisemitic due to his support for the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people, claiming that Mamdani’s views make Jewish New Yorkers feel “unsafe.”
Cuomo is one of the loudest voices in support of the genocidal Zionist regime. He described himself on the campaign trail as a “hyper aggressive supporter of Israel and proud of it,” and went so far as to volunteer to be part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal team, defending the Israeli Prime Minister from charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Mamdani on the other hand has stayed true to his principles in the face of overwhelming Zionist opposition. He has refused to condemn the slogan “globalise the Intifada,” and promised that as mayor he will comply with the ICC warrant to arrest Netanyahu if the Israeli leader visits New York.
The Antidote to Trump’s Poison
Mamdani and the movement he represents face colossal challenges in the coming months and years. To win the general election in November, Zohran will have to overcome an Islamophobic, red-baiting smear campaign that is already going into overdrive. This campaign won’t only come from Fox News — Democratic Senator for New York Kirsten Gillibrand falsely claimed two days after Mamdani’s victory that he had “made references to global jihad.”
Republican billionaire Bill Ackman has offered to help bankroll a candidate to defeat Mamdani. No doubt Ackman will be just one of many oligarchs frantically working to stop the Democratic nominee — the $25 million raised by Cuomo’s primary campaign may pale in comparison to the amount that New York elites are willing to spend to prevent a socialist victory in November.
If he wins, Mamdani will face the even greater challenge of implementing his policies in defiance of the billionaires and millionaires who own the city. Democratic Governor of New York state Kathy Hochul has thus far declined to endorse Mamdani and will also present a barrier to his agenda; not to mention the hostility Mamdani will face from an authoritarian federal government which is committed to defending the oligarchy at all costs.
President Trump initially responded to Mamdani’s primary victory with a Truth Social post calling the Democratic mayoral candidate a “100% communist lunatic” and insulting his looks, voice and intelligence. In the following days and weeks, Trump’s threats have grown more worrying. He has threatened to arrest Mamdani, strip him of his citizenship and deport him. White House officials have falsely claimed that Mamdani concealed his support for terrorism whilst becoming a citizen.
The howling emanating from the White House, Wall Street and the rest of the US ruling class is not a sign of strength. It is a sign of weakness. Capitalists, billionaire-backed politicians, corporate media and the Zionist lobby are all terrified of this 33-year-old socialist and the movement that backs him.
The Democratic nominee represents the ultimate threat to their system. He represents the possibility that at the very heart of the capitalist system, the multi-racial working class could rise up and take away the wealth and power that has accumulated in the hands of such a tiny section of the population. He represents the possibility that the American empire could be threatened from within by people fighting for global peace and justice; by people whose basic human decency means they can no longer tolerate the horrors that the Israeli government, armed and funded by the US, is unleashing in Gaza.
Mamdani’s victory is the ultimate rebuke to Trump. He is a Muslim, a migrant, a socialist — everything Trump rails against. He leads with compassion, dignity, conviction and humanity — the antithesis of Trump’s narcissism, greed and cruelty. At the same time, these attributes mean that Zohran stands as a rebuke to the Democratic leadership, which is utterly devoid of all principles except to support corporate power, the American war machine, and the genocidal state of Israel.
The last decade has seen working class America abandon the Democrats due to the party’s complete devotion to corporate interests at the expense of workers and unions. This resulted in Trump becoming the first Republican presidential nominee since 1960 to win higher support amongst low-income communities than his rival.
Yet Trump’s betrayal of the workers who voted for him is even more egregious than the Democrats’ treachery. His so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” cut nearly one trillion dollars from healthcare programmes in order to extend tax cuts for the super-rich and allocate more money towards the military and immigration enforcement. Both Democrats and Republicans have spent decades making life worse for American workers — Trump is accelerating this process.
Mamdani’s socialist agenda for New York City represents real hope for real change in the interests of working people. He is offering something that Trump, the Republicans and the neoliberal Democratic establishment are incapable of offering. He represents an existential threat to their interests.
Trump and the far-right across the world succeed when they turn working people against each other, convincing the ‘white working class’ that their problems are caused by immigrants, men that their problems are caused by women, and so on. They succeed when they distract attention away from the minority group that is genuinely tearing our society apart, the billionaire class.
Mamdani represents politics which can unite instead of divide. This unity is not based solely on abstract appeals to diversity, inclusion or shared values. It is not that socialists are opposed to these ideals; but they ring hollow when they come from the mouths of liberal politicians such as Kamala Harris who represent corporations at the expense of working people. Instead, socialists like Mamdani build unity based on working class people standing in solidarity with one another, fighting to transform society for the better, in opposition to the billionaire class. This unity is based on organising around a shared purpose, a shared hope for a better world; it is powerful. That power is the ultimate threat to both establishment liberals and to Trump and the far-right.
Fascism rose across the world in the 1930s in response to the economic crisis that was devastating the lives of working people. In his victory speech on the night of the primary results, Mamdani quoted the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking in that dark decade:
“As FDR said, democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people disliked democracy but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity. In desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat.”
The politics of hope, of improving the lives of working people, is the only way to save democracy. Mamdani and the socialist movement provide the only way forward for those who wish to see Trump and the far-right politics of hatred and division defeated. No wonder Trump and the billionaires are shaking in their boots.
The Tide Is Turning in the Democratic Party
The defeat of Andrew Cuomo at the hands of an insurgent socialist candidate represents a colossal defeat for the neoliberal establishment of the Democratic Party. There were strong echoes of the shock 2018 upset which saw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez elected to Congress representing New York’s 14th district. Ocasio-Cortez was inspired to enter politics by Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, just as Mamdani was; she was also endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America; and she defeated a titan of the Democratic Party establishment. Her district is split across working class, Latino-dominated sections of the Bronx and Queens.
If he wins the general election in November, Mamdani’s victory could prove to be even more crucial than AOC’s 2018 win. The mood of the Democratic base has turned decisively against the centrist establishment. Hostility from the party base towards the leadership is much deeper than it was in previous years, when Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were able to prevent Sanders from becoming the party’s presidential nominee. Anger that was simmering as the Biden administration failed to act on the cost-of-living crisis whilst facilitating Israel’s genocide in Gaza is now boiling over in the wake of Harris’ failure to fulfill what is seemingly the only objective of today’s Democratic Party: to defeat Trump.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken in mid-June, 62% of registered Democrats now want party leaders to be replaced. Mamdani’s win could open the floodgates for a new wave of left-wing candidates to challenge and defeat corporate-aligned incumbents.
Adding to this anger amongst Democratic voters is another crucial factor. Sanders and AOC may have both inspired mass movements to support them by standing up for the working class and campaigning on socialist policies; yet both of their campaigns were based around individuals, isolated from any formal organisation.
Mamdani is not standing for New York mayor as an isolated individual. This is not merely a victory for one charismatic individual with clear messaging and radical policies; nor is it a victory for a spontaneous, disorganised mass movement. It is a victory for the DSA — the largest socialist organisation in the United States, and an organisation which is aiming to build what working class Americans need most: a socialist party that is fundamentally opposed to the interests of the billionaire class.
If we hope to find our own “Kiwi Zohran,” a leader — or several leaders — who can lead the struggle to transform Aotearoa in the interests of ordinary people, then we need to learn what we can from the DSA. That means starting with independent socialist organising, and building towards a party which can organise working people to take on both the billionaires, and the Coalition that is waging class war on their behalf.
Part 2 of this essay will examine Mamdani’s relationship with the Democratic Socialists of America, and what their attempt to build a “party within a party” can teach us here in Aotearoa.
Elliot Crossan is an ecosocialist writer and activist from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He is the Chair of System Change Aotearoa. Subscribe to his Substack page to read more.
