I will start off my discussion of the Nov. 4 election with a quote from my daughter: “It’s unfair. Why does New York get to have Zorhan Mamdani and AOC and we have Daniel Lurie and Nancy Pelosi?”
Good question. Why has New York, which is generally considered a less progressive city, moved in the direction of economic democracy, while the supposedly liberal San Francisco is under the control of billionaires?
Adam Lashinsky, who writes for the SF Standard, has a piece in The Washington Post that I can only call bizarre. It’s almost obscene. He writes:
Mamdani and Lurie have a tremendous amount in common. Both are scions of privilege who bring little political experience to their jobs. The 34-year-old Mamdani, the progeny of a noted academic and an accomplished filmmaker, has been a state lawmaker for all of four years. Lurie, 48, grew up wealthy after his mother married Peter Haas, an heir to the Levi Strauss blue jeans dynasty. Before becoming mayor in January, Lurie had founded an anti-poverty nonprofit but had never held elected office.
Um … Mamdami is an immigrant who grew up middle class. Lurie is a white guy whose mother inherited more than $1 billion from an old-money fortune. Mamdani was elected to the New York State Assembly; Lurie was elected to nothing.
Mamdani realized that the middle class, even the upper-middle-class, has very little in common with the billionaire class. Even New Yorkers with decent jobs and incomes have a hard time paying the rent. He lives in a modest rent-controlled apartment. Lurie has never had to worry about paying rent in his life, and lives in a mansion.
In fact, the entire reason Mamdani won is that he pushed that economic point: People like Daniel Lurie have very little in common with people like Zorhan Mamdani. That’s why so many New Yorkers voted for him.
Lashinsky goes on to say that these two mayors can define the future of the Democratic Party: If New York prospers, then the party can move to the left. If San Francisco prospers, then it’s all about fighting crime and helping developers and big business.
He misses a crucial point: Daniel Lurie can operate with the support of a very big-money political operation, and can depend on Gov. Gavin Newson, who mostly shares his agenda. Mamdani will be fighting the New York big money from Day One, and can’t raise taxes on the rich without the permission of the governor, who so far is siding with the big money and won’t go along.
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There’s a much more important lesson here: The message that the economic crisis in the US is not the fault of immigrants, not the fault of neighborhoods, not the fault of whatever “Other” Donald Trump comes up with today, but the fault of the very rich taking all the resources of society—that seems to work.
Telling New Yorkers that they can have free and fast buses, free child care, rents that are frozen, and a lot more sounds like a promise no politician can fulfill in an era when the federal government is cutting off funds to Democratic cities. But Mamdani has said from the start: New York has plenty of money. We just to a modest tax on the rich to get it.
The late Huey Long, governor of Luisiana and the a US Senator, was corrupt as hell and a machine politician, but in 1934, in the depth of the Depression, he made the point pretty well:
How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what’s intended for 9/10ths of the people to eat? The only way you’ll ever be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub he ain’t got no business with.
The Lord has answered the prayer. He has called the barbecue: “Come to my feast,” He said to 125 million American people. But Morgan and Rockefeller and Mellon and Baruch have walked up and took 85 percent of the vittles off the table.
The idea is simple: We can have nice things. We can have affordable housing and child care and transit and cities that work for people. But we have to tell the billionaires they need to bring a little of those vittles back to the table.
A group called the Patriotic Millionaires, rich people who say rich people should pay more taxes, put it this way:
We’ve been saying this for years, but Zohran Mamdani’s victory last night in the New York City mayoral election made it abundantly clear: economic populism is the way forward for Democrats to win back the affections of working people.
This is not a message we are hearing from Mayor Lurie or any of his allies. It is not a message we are hearing from Gavin Newsom. It is not a message we are hearing from Rep. Nancy Pelosi or from state Sen. Scott Wiener, who wants her job.
But it got a 34-year-old immigrant elected mayor of the biggest city in the US. Something for the Democrats to think about.
The other clear message we got from the election is that Trump is, even in some swing states, a net negative.
In New Jersey and Virginia, Democratic candidates for governor ran directly against Trump, and won.
So as we approach the 2026 midterms, Democrats in swing districts have a roadmap. Again, from the Patriotic Millionaires:
Given his performance last night, it’s safe to say that Zohran’s strategy paid off. He didn’t capitulate to voters on social issues like some pundits seem to think Democrats should. For example, he didn’t pretend to be anti-choice or against expanding protections for LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers to appeal to more conservative voters. He didn’t make social issues the focal point of his campaign because he rightly understood that the sky-high cost of living was what mattered most to city residents and kept the spotlight there. He did manage to “broaden the tent” and attract a diverse coalition of support from voters of different races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The trick to doing that, though, was putting a big economic populist sign in front of his tent to entice as many people as possible to get under it.
Zohran’s victory also reaffirms our belief in the popularity and viability of two of his policy proposals: instituting a 2% tax on the top 1% of New Yorkers and raising the city’s minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030.
Every district is different, and not every Democrat will be Mamdani. That’s fine. But the record shows that if the party wants to win, it needs to move not to the “left” or the “center” as those terms are badly defined but toward an economic agenda that puts the working class back as a real constituency—and tells the very rich they have to bring some of those vittles back to the table.
