Howie Hawkins
Posted July 17, 2025
THIS ARTICLE IS a slightly edited section from “Independent Political Action Under Trump” that appeared in Counterpunch, July 8, 2025.
What About Zohran Mamdani?
Zohran Mamdani’s win in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor on June 24, 2025 is being hailed by advocates of organizing progressive politics inside the Democratic Party. They say it shows that their strategy of running on the DP line is a winning strategy.
It is way too early to draw that conclusion from one primary campaign. It’s not clear what his or DSA’s strategy is. He has not defeated the two-party system of corporate rule that will try to make his fate like that of India Walton or Brandon Johnson.
After winning the Democratic primary for Buffalo mayor in 2021, the progressive Walton was defeated by a combination of wealthy Democratic and Republican forces in the general election. The progressive Johnson won the Chicago mayoralty in 2023, but his reform program and his favorability ratings have been crushed by the opposition of the wealthy Democratic and Republican establishment there.
After India Walton defeated the four-term incumbent Buffalo mayor, Byron Brown, in the 2021 Democratic primary, wealthy Republicans combined with wealthy corporate Democrats to lavishly fund and mobilize a write-in campaign for Brown that focused on viciously smearing Walton. Walton lost the general election decisively by a 58 to 39 percent margin.
The same convergence of ultra-rich Republican and Democratic donors to defeat a progressive Democrat is now happening in New York City. Wall Street billionaire Bill Ackman tweeted the morning after Mamdani’s primary win that “there are hundreds of millions of dollars of capital available to back a competitor to Mamdani that can be put together overnight (believe me, I am in the text strings and the WhatsApp groups) so that a great alternative candidate won’t spend any time raising funds.”(1)
The super-rich donor class has not at this writing agreed on whether to keep backing Cuomo or the equally corrupt and disgraced incumbent mayor Eric Adams, who both have independent ballot lines established, or the prominent lawyer running as a centrist on an independent line, Jim Walden, or a write-in who is “a superb candidate,” as Ackman floated as a possibility. Mamdani could lose the general election like Walton did.
If Mamdani survives the general election, the same corporate forces will resist and undermine his mayoralty. The big capitalists have the private power to wreck New York City’s economy and fiscal stability with a capital strike or capital flight, as they are already threatening.(2) The corporate Democratic leaders like Kathy Hochul in the governor’s mansion and the leadership of the state legislature have already made it clear that they will block his proposed city tax increases on personal income over a million a year and on big businesses that he needs to fund his reforms. He will need state approval for those tax reforms.(3)
The federal government will also make life hard for a Mayor Mamdani. One only has to recall President Gerald Ford’s refusal to provide federal assistance during the city’s 1975 fiscal crisis, which prompted the famous tabloid headline by the New York Daily News: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”(4) President Trump has already said as much: “If he does get in, I’m going to be president, and he’s going to have to do the right thing, or they’re not getting any money.”(5)
Mamdani could find himself in office but not in power. That could mean an outcome like the progressive Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has experienced since being elected in 2023. Johnson’s failure to deliver on his promises, along with some self-inflicted mistakes,(6) has sent his approval rating plummeting, bottoming out at a dismal 6.6% in February 2025.(7) That is even lower than Rod Blagojevich’s 8% approval rating after the Illinois Governor was caught on tape trying to sell the appointment to the US Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama with these self-incriminating words: “I’ve got this thing, and it’s fucking golden. I’m just not giving it up for fucking nothing.”(8)
Johnson was elected to mayor with the support of a coalition similar to that behind Zohran Mamdani, anchored by progressive organizations like United Working Families, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). Johnson had been a member and paid organizer in CTU before being elected to the Cook County Board of Commissioners in 2018. Once in the mayor’s office Johnson has been stymied in implementing his program of progressive tax reform to fund his housing and school initiatives and close the city’s huge budget shortfalls.
His platform was similar to Mamdani’s, featuring progressive tax increases that required state approval in order to fund his city reform agenda. The state of Illinois refused Johnson’s tax reforms. He has faced resistance from the corporate Democrats on the city council and in state government, a bellicose police force, and the private economic and media power of Chicago’s hostile corporate elite.(9) Johnson has pushed through a number of progressive reforms but the left in Chicago is now reckoning with the fact that the mayor’s office and the progressive movement do not yet have the power to structurally transform the institutions that generate extreme inequality and public sector austerity in Chicago.(10)
Mamdani is not destined to be slapped down by the existing power structure as badly as Walton and Johnson were. But it is also clear that he and his movement will face strong resistance, notably from the corporate Democratic establishment. “In fact,” writes New York historian Alexander Zevin, “given the difficulty of finding a suitable alternative to stop him, the Democrats and their donors might be wiser to wait: let Mamdani cross the finish line, then work to block his agenda in office, via the governor and legislature — disillusioning his supporters and discrediting his program in a blow to the entire conceit of municipal socialism.”(11)
Are Mamdani and his movement are willing to do what it would take to push the corporate Democrats out and take over the party in New York City? It doesn’t seem that they are ready to struggle all-out for a decisive defeat of the corporate Democrats. In the lead up to the primary, the leaders of Mamdani’s campaign, DSA, and the Working Families Party, which could have provided a ballot line if he lost the primary, were not interested in continuing with a third-party run against the Democratic Party nominee, presumably Andrew Cuomo. They seemed ready to make peace with corrupt corporate Cuomo and the Democratic establishment if Mamdani lost the primary.(12)
Some in the Mamdani coalition did advocate a third-party run should Mamdani lose the primary, but Mamdani made clear from the beginning of his campaign that he would focus exclusively on the Democratic primary and not run a third-party campaign if he lost the primary.(13) Mamdani showed more loyalty to the Democratic Party than the corporate Democratic candidates who petitioned to qualify and intend to run on independent ballot lines, the Fight and Deliver line for Andrew Cuomo and the EndAntiSemitism and Safe&Affordable lines for Eric Adams.
In office, Mamdani will be pressured to make peace with Governor Hochul, a corrupt(14) centrist corporate Democrat in the mold of Andrew Cuomo who named her his Lieutenant Governor. She will expect an endorsement for her re-election campaign soon after a Mayor Mamdani takes office. He could endorse her and still likely not get his modest tax-the-rich proposals passed at the state level because Hochul and the majority of Democratic legislators are corporate Democrats whose political careers depend on the donations the corporate rich, who are militantly opposed to paying taxes so the masses can have decent public services.
Mamdani’s campaign has not demonstrated what progressives who advocate for a progressive takeover or break away from the corporate Democrats say will be the outcome of working within the Democratic Party. His campaign and potential mayoralty remain enmeshed in a Democratic Party where the corporate wing still rules. Those constraints, along with the private power of the corporate elites, will make it hard for him to carry out most of his progressive reform program.
Positive Lessons from the Mamdani Campaign
There is still much that an independent progressive political movement should learn from Mamdani’s campaign besides recognizing the fatal limitations on progressive politics inside the Democratic Party. In many ways, his campaign took approaches I have advocated here for an independent progressive political movement.
The need for a dues-paying mass-membership political organization is one lesson to learn. Mamdani started out with a core of support from New York City chapter of DSA. The chapter does not publish its membership numbers, but informed sources have put it at between 5,000(15) and 9,000(16) members. Standard dues in DSA are $15 a month, or $180 a year. Do the math. DSA had the resources to pay staff to organize their members into the Mamdani canvass, phone banking, sign posting, and other campaign activities. From that DSA core, the Mamdani campaign built out an organization of 50,000 volunteers who knocked on 1.5 million doors.(17) DSA is recruiting new members out of that volunteer army.
[This is not to imply that DSA’s dues covered Mamdani’s campaign budget, just that the covered NYC-DSA staff who organized DSA members into Mamdani’s campaign, which had many more paid staff once they got the public campaign funding.
NYC has an eight-to-one matching funds program, with a maximum of $8 million in public funding. That is what paid for most of the campaign.
Mamdani received 18,000 small contributions and hit the first million in March. After that he didn’t raise money — and spent $8 on his campaign.—HH]
There are no local independent progressive parties in the Green Party or any local independent progressive parties with the size and capacity to be the core of a campaign organizing at the scale that the Mamdani campaign has achieved in New York City. But local independent progressives have, or can soon organize, the capacity to build campaigns of the scale necessary for competitive campaigns in district races for municipal councils, state legislatures, and, with some time and experience, US House districts.
Mamdani has described his approach to voter outreach as “listening, not lecturing.”(18) That is the same deep canvassing approach I have urged here that independent progressive parties undertake. Deep canvassing is not only about listening to voters’ concerns, but also using those empathetic conversations to persuade voters to support or at least consider what we are advocating. Mamdani’s canvass and campaign messaging appears to have done that persuasion and moved voters to replace crime with housing as the top issue in the polls.(19)
[Here is an insider’s account of how DSA built their electoral machine and focused on deep canvassing.—HH]
Clear, concrete messaging is another lesson the independent progressive political movement should take away from the Mamdani campaign. Mamdani focused on a clear theme of affordability and highlighted a few concrete demands to realize it: free buses, free childcare, rent freeze. Voters grasp and can believe concrete demands far more than more abstract slogans like accessible mass transit, childcare as a public good, or affordable housing.
This is consistent with my argument here that independent progressives should raise popular progressive demands, not abstract concepts of a plan or worse, an ism. Mamdani did not hide his identification as a democratic socialist, but he didn’t campaign on it either. He didn’t ask people to vote for democratic socialism. He asked them to vote for fast and free buses, universal free childcare, and a rent freeze on rent-regulated apartments.
Another lesson we should draw was not presented by the Mamdani campaign itself. But we should derive that lesson from the balance of power between the campaign and the corporate Democrats, and the private political-economic power structure behind the corporate Democrats. An independent political movement should not seek the governing responsibility of executive power until it has majority support in the legislative branch along with an extra-parliamentary social movement that can counter the private power of the corporate elites.
We can uphold our principles as legislators. But if we take executive power without enough legislative support and a strong social movement, an independent progressive mayor, governor, or president will be trapped into administering the system they started out to change. They will be in office, but not in power.
Our immediate task is to find a political approach that can organize the progressive majority that already exists into an effective force that can defeat Trumpian neofascism and the Democratic neoliberalism that has fostered the inequalities and insecurities that enabled neofascism to grow in reaction. I am arguing that we all need to start in our own communities now and build independent political action there first. That should be the foundation for building up to winning seats in the state houses and the US House.
The existential crises of climate, war, inequality, and democracy are upon us. “We must make haste — slowly,” as the Chilean socialist president Salvatore Allende in the early 1970s urged his movement as he tried to consolidate its grassroots democratic base into a power that could defeat the looming fascist military reaction.(20) The Chilean revolution did not consolidate its popular power in time. The lesson is that we must move quickly but we can’t take shortcuts around organizing a real grassroots base. Organizing that base into local independent progressive political parties is the first step that we can all take now.
Notes
- Bill Ackman, June 25, 2025, https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1938094628034506984.
back to text - Kevin T. Dugan, Gregory Zuckerman, and Brian Schwartz, “Wall Street Panics Over Prospect of a Socialist Running New York City,” Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2025, https://www.wsj.com/us-news/wall-street-panics-over-prospect-of-a-socialist-running-new-york-city-da7db7e4; Rebecca Picciotto and Peter Grant, “NYC Developers Gripped by Hysteria After Mamdani’s Sudden Rise,” Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2025, https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/nyc-real-estate-zohran-mamdani-4797e4c9.
back to text - Hannah Fierick, “Gov. Hochul rips Zohran Mamdani’s proposed tax on rich,” New York Post, June 18, 2025, https://nypost.com/2025/06/18/us-news/gov-hochul-rips-zohran-mamdanis-tax-on-rich-admits-costs-are-pushing-nyers-to-palm-beach/; Matthew Haag and Benjamin Oreskes, “Free Buses and Billions in New Taxes. Can Mamdani Achieve His Plans?,” New York Times, June 28, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/nyregion/mamdani-policies-economy-housing-buses-childcare.html.
back to text - Ryan Purcell interviews Benjamin Holtzman, “Ford to New York: Drop Dead,” SoundscapeNYC, May 2, 2025, https://open.spotify.com/episode/6xCaGuFkD4tCMjWD7T0dPl.
back to text - Julia Ornedo, “Trump Warns Dem NYC Mayoral Candidate: Behave or Face Consequences,” Daily Beast, June 29, 2025, https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-warns-dem-nyc-mayoral-candidate-behave-or-face-consequences/.
back to text - Ben Krauss, “Progressives need to reckon with Brandon Johnson,” Slow Boring, May 24, 2025, https://www.slowboring.com/p/progressives-need-to-reckon-with.
back to text - Katherine Fung, “Is This the Least Popular Politician in America?,” Newsweek, February 25, 2025, https://www.newsweek.com/chicago-mayor-brandon-johnson-approval-rating-2036026.
back to text - Salon Staff, “I’ve got this thing and it’s f—ing golden,” Salon, December 9, 2008, https://www.salon.com/2008/12/09/blagojevich_complaint_2/.
back to text - Kevin A. Young, “Brandon Johnson Won in Chicago. Now His Movement Will Have to Beat Capital Strikes,” Jacobin, April 12, 2023, https://jacobin.com/2023/04/brandon-johnson-mayor-chicago-capital-strikes-movements; Alan Ehrenhalt, “Why Is It So Hard to Run Chicago?,” Governing, June 11, 2024, https://www.governing.com/politics/why-is-it-so-hard-to-run-chicago.
back to text - Simon Schwartzman, “Trying Times for the Chicago Left: Mayor Brandon Johnson’s First Year,” Against the Current, January/February 2025, https://againstthecurrent.org/atc234/mayor-brandon-johnsons-first-year/; Asha Ransby-Sporn, “Two Years After Electing a Mayor, Chicago’s Left Keeps Contesting for Power,” In These Times, May 15, 2025, https://inthesetimes.com/article/mayor-johnson-two-year-left-power.
back to text - Alexander Zevin, “Gilded City,” Sidecar, the New Left Review Blob, July 4, 2025, https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/gilded-city.
back to text - Peter Sterne, “Many expect Zohran Mamdani to take the WFP line if he loses to Cuomo. That’s far from a sure thing,” City & State, June 24, 2025, https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2025/06/many-expect-zohran-mamdani-take-wfp-line-if-he-loses-cuomo-s-far-sure-thing/406270/.
back to text - David V., “Zohran Mamdani Should Run Third-Party in the General Election for New York City Mayor,” The Call, June 9, 2025, https://socialistcall.com/2025/06/09/zohran-mamdani-third-party/.
back to text - David Moore, “Hochul’s Stadium Swindle” The Lever, June 22, 2022, https://www.levernews.com/hochuls-stadium-deal-involved-seneca-ransom-money-and-could-benefit-her-family/; Jay Root, “Despite Hochul’s Vow, Her Policies Have Indirectly Aided Husband’s Firm,” New York Times, May 28, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/28/nyregion/hochul-delaware-north.html.
back to text - Ben L. and Gant R., “What is the NYC DSA Socialists in Office Committee?,” Socialist Tribune, June 9, 2024, https://socialisttribune.substack.com/p/what-is-the-nyc-dsa-socialists-in.
back to text - The Indypendent, “A Thrilling Victory & The Road Ahead,” June 26, 2025, https://substack.com/home/post/p-166892401.
back to text - Eric Blanc, “Zohran’s Historic Win: 16 Takeaways,” Labor Politics, June 25, 2025, https://www.laborpolitics.com/p/zohrans-historic-win-16-takeaways.
back to text - Zohran Mamdani, “Interview: ‘From lecturing to listening’: Mamdani explains how he drew votes from Trump supporters in NYC race,” MSNBC The Briefing with Jen Psaki, June 25, 2025, https://www.msnbc.com/the-briefing-with-jen-psaki/watch/-from-lecturing-to-listening-mamdani-explains-how-he-drew-votes-from-trump-supporters-in-nyc-race-242277957507.
back to text - Susan Kang, “Mamdani Is Showing Dems Don’t Have to Chase Voter Opinion — They Can Shape It,” Truthout, June 21, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/mamdani-is-showing-dems-dont-have-to-chase-voter-opinion-they-can-shape-it/.
back to text - David J. Morris, We Must Make Haste – Slowly: The Process of Revolution in Chile (Random House, 1973).
back to text
Howie Hawkins is a retired Teamster in Syracuse, New York. He has been active in movements for racial justice, peace, labor, and the environment since the late 1960s. A co-founder of the Green Party in 1984, he was the Green Party’s presidential candidate in 2020. He is a member of the Green Party, Solidarity, and the Ukraine Solidarity Network (US).
Leave a Reply