Washington — Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory on Tuesday in the New York City mayoral race is already fanning the debate about the future of the Democratic Party and what his sudden political stardom could mean for next year’s midterm elections.
“We hope this is demonstrating a very powerful way forward,” said Ashik Siddique, a national co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. “This election proves that democratic socialist ideas are very popular.”
Mamdani ran on promises to confront economic inequality and cost-of-living issues, vowing rent freezes for residents of rent-stabilized units, affordable housing construction, free — and faster — bus service, free childcare, city-owned grocery stores to address high food costs and tax hikes on the wealthy.
His victory is the biggest win for progressives since Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated 10-term incumbent Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley in 2018. But history suggests his success isn’t likely to translate to a progressive sweep nationwide.
“It’s very reminiscent of 2018 when you had this superstar, young, telegenic and extremely capable candidate win a primary in New York City and set the world on fire,” said Matt Bennett, the executive vice president for public affairs for moderate Democratic group Third Way. “But in the end, the thing that really mattered was that 40 seats were flipped, and Nancy Pelosi got the gavel — and those seats were flipped by moderates.”
“Much ink will be spilled over Mamdani, and he will become a face to the party, but the idea that he will define what it means to be a Democrat, I think, is absurd,” Bennett said.
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Some in the Democratic Party who have been critical of Mamdani rallied behind Andrew Cuomo, the former Democratic governor of New York, who ran as an independent after his defeat by Mamdani in the Democratic primary. Cuomo, the son of liberal icon and former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, was endorsed by the current scandal-ridden New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who dropped his reelection bid, and President Trump.
In the 2024 primary elections, “mainstream” Democrats outperformed progressive candidates, winning about two-thirds of the races, according to a study from the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank. The study also noted just three House candidates and one Senate candidate who identify as democratic socialists won their elections in 2024.
A CBS News poll conducted last week found that just 22% of Democrats nationwide think the party should move toward socialist positions. A majority — 60% of Democrats nationwide — said their party’s economic positions should reflect a mixture of socialist and capitalist ideas. And 5% said the party should move more toward capitalist positions.
Establishment Democratic leaders have mostly offered tepid endorsements of Mamdani, or none at all, and moderate Democrats have been trying to distance themselves from his proposals.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, was slow to endorse Mamdani, offering his backing to the candidate in late October, only a day before early voting began. Neither of the state’s Democratic senators, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, gave their endorsement. Former President Barack Obama called Mamdani the weekend before the election, but he stopped short of offering public support.
Jeffries told CNN in an interview Sunday that he does not view Mamdani as the future of the party and is not concerned about Republicans using him as a “lightning rod” against Democrats in the elections next November.
That won’t stop Republicans from asserting that Mamdani is the new face of the Democratic Party. They’re doing it already. The National Republican Campaign Committee, the House GOP’s fundraising arm, has been linking Mamdani to vulnerable Democrats in New York, as well as party leaders.
“The Democrat Party has surrendered to radical socialist Zohran Mamdani and the far-left mob who are now running the show,” NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella said in a statement Tuesday. “Every House Democrat is foolishly complicit in their party’s collapse, and voters will make them pay in 2026.”
Bennett said Mamdani’s win and the Democratic Socialists of America platform gives Republicans “a pretty potent set of weapons” to use against Democrats running in Republican strongholds and battleground states or districts. He compared it to Republican attack ads against Democrats during the “defund the police” movement which gained prominence after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.
“It raises the level of difficulty to flip places from red to blue,” Bennett said. “What we have learned, and we especially learned from the ‘defund the police’ experience, is that silence is deadly. So Democrats cannot simply presume that their reputation, their brand, the fact that they are local in Wisconsin or Michigan or wherever they’re running is going to be enough to convince people that they don’t share the Mamdani ideas the Republicans suggest that they do.”
Also unclear: Whether New York Democrats will help or hinder Mamdani as he tries to implement his far-reaching agenda. He’ll need authorization from New York state agencies for proposals like free bus service, and Democrats in Albany will need to greenlight some of the tax increases on high earners that he’s proposed in order to pay for his plans.
“While there is some low-hanging fruit, we believe that many initiatives are not viable in their current form,” J.P. Morgan Asset Management said in a report on Mamdani’s platform last month that argued state lawmakers are unlikely to let him hike taxes on corporations and residents who make over $1 million.
Still, Bennett said there are lessons that Democratic candidates can learn from Mamdani, the most important being his “crystal clear” focus on affordability.
“I don’t particularly like his ideas, but he articulated them in ways that really resonated and that people could kind of repeat back to him, and that’s a very good lesson for Democrats to take,” he said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who also describes himself as a democratic socialist, told CBS News’ “The Takeout”: “If he wins, the message goes all over this country: You can stand up to the oligarchs, we can start electing members of Congress and mayors and governors who stand with the working class.”
