Jayapal to top Dems: Get on board with Mamdani
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Mich., is telling Democratic Party leaders that it's time to rally around Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race. | Photos: AP / Design: PW

WASHINGTON—Despite Zohran Mamdani’s landslide win in the New York Democratic mayoral primary, the party’s top leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both from New York City, are still silent on whether they’ll endorse his mayoral candidacy.

But in the wake of Mamdani’s overwhelming victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., a top progressive who enthusiastically endorsed Mamdani before the primary had a blunt message for fence-sitters and intra-party foes: Get on board.

“Anybody who’s staying out at this point instead of endorsing an incredible dynamic leader is missing an opportunity,” Jayapal said.

She has a point. Mamdani’s initial lead over Cuomo, in first-place votes, was just over six percentage points. But New York City has ranked choice balloting, with the count continuing until one candidate has an absolute majority, including first-place and other-choice ballots.

Adding them all together, Mamdani clobbered Cuomo, 56%-43%.

Mamdani ran on a progressive platform, including free bus service, experiments with free grocery stores, cracking down on rent-gouging landlords, and boosting economic equality. State Assemblyman Mamdani is a member of Democratic Socialists of America, as are Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

Like Jayapal, both Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind.-Vt., endorsed Mamdani before the primary. AOC campaigned with him in New York, then hosted a closed-door breakfast for him in D.C. on July 16 to meet other lawmakers. She also shepherded him around Capitol Hill. He got an enthusiastic reception from fellow progressives.

“He is so smart, so authentic, cares so much about working people, and he has put together an incredible coalition. We’re thrilled,” Jayapal said. Other lawmakers said Mamdani didn’t get into specific positions but talked about “affordability” issues he stressed in the campaign.

“It is beautiful to have someone who is so authentic. Money cannot buy that,” said New York Rep. Nadia Velasquez. She summarized his message: “Talk to the issues that are important to the people.”

After Mamdani led the primary on just the first-place votes and Cuomo conceded, the New York City Central Labor Council endorsed Mamdani. It had been neutral in the primary. The New York State Nurses Association, which backed Cuomo, switched to Mamdani. Influential Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., endorsed Mamdani after the final tally was disclosed. So did the United Federation of Teachers.

AFSCME District Council 37 re-endorsed Mamdani. In the primary, it recommended voters pick three hopefuls, including Mamdani, but not Cuomo.

Neither Schumer nor Jeffries came to the breakfast. But Schumer said, “I spoke with him [Mamdani] last night and we’ll be meeting in New York City.” Jeffries added, “I’m scheduled to meet with the Democratic nominee at the end of the week back home in Brooklyn.” Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul previously said she looks forward to meeting Mamdani. They haven’t set a date.

The reluctance didn’t faze Ocasio-Cortez. “I think it’s always best to hear directly from the person themselves, instead of, you know, whatever the media static is,” AOC told a TV interviewer in a walk-and-talk down a Capitol hallway afterwards. “If anyone has any reservations, it’s best to hear its straight from the source and make a determination from there.”

Some New York Democrats ducked the breakfast, including Rep. Thomas Suozzi. In a cable TV interview, Rep. Kendrick Meeks was dubious.

“I’m going to be talking to all of the individuals that are running,” he said. “I have not had that conversation, but I am setting up opportunities to have a dialogue and have a conversation with them, because my #1 focus is winning the House of Representatives back. Donald Trump is the existential threat to the city of New York” and “to this nation with how he is running this country.”

Was openly hostile

Establishment pollster Mark Penn was openly hostile, declaring the GOP would hang Mamdani and his positions around all Democrats’ necks. That’s no great surprise. It’s been a common Republican tactic for years: Paint a leading Democrat as an extremist—think Republicans demonizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco—then link the rest of the party to the “villain.”

Penn engaged in red-baiting, castigating him as a “socialist,” almost as if that were some type of a curse. That, too, is a common GOP tactic.

“I think this is a real danger for the Democratic Party. There’s no question Mamdani is socialist and has expressed views that, if not antisemitic, are certainly frightening to most Jews,” Penn told another cable TV interviewer. Mamdani “does not disavow ‘globalize the intifada,’ even though people tried to say he was going to do that today. He didn’t, which means kill Jews.

“I mean, this is really frightening for the party. And, you know, the party should not be a big tent that takes anyone. The party should be a tent that believes in progressive free enterprise, not in socialism.”

Mamdani, 33, faces four other candidates in the fall election. If elected, he would be New York’s first Democratic Socialist mayor and first Muslim-American mayor. One foe is a nuisance candidate. The other three are Cuomo and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, both running as independents, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, former head of the Guardian Angels.

All three have heavy electoral baggage, one New York TV analyst pointed out, and all three are telling the other two “No, you drop out!”

Cuomo’s baggage is the scandals that forced him out of the governor’s chair, plus Mamdani’s primary landslide. Sliwa and Adams both say to him “You had your shot,” backed by millions of outside dollars. Adams’s polling is underwater—19% favorable, 68% unfavorable—also due to scandals, in cutting zoning corners for a foreign mission to the UN, and in running the police department “as a criminal enterprise,” as a former NYPD commissioner put it. Sliwa lost the 2021 election to Adams by a three-to-one ratio.

Cuomo has picked up one big-name endorsement already, from the president every Democrat loves to hate: Trump, with even more red-baiting thrown in.

“Mamdani is a Communist. I don’t think our country is ready for a Communist, but we’re going to see. And I don’t think that race is over yet either,” Trump told a TV interviewer. Of Cuomo, Trump said, “He’s running against a Communist. I would think that he would have a good shot of winning.”

Mamdani spokesperson Jeffrey Lerner had fun with Trump’s statement. Cuomo’s ability to pull in millions from Wall Street money men may make him Mamdani’s most-credible foe, despite Cuomo’s landslide loss and his scandal-scarred gubernatorial reign.

“We would like to congratulate Andrew Cuomo on earning Donald Trump’s endorsement,” Lerner deadpanned. “The question now is whether Cuomo will embrace Trump’s support publicly or continue to just accept it in private.”

 

 

 


CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg
Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.