NEW YORK — Zohran Mamdani and New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America will have some relationship issues to iron out if he’s elected mayor of the nation’s largest metropolis.
The DSA has been integral to his success: It has supported the Democratic nominee since his early days in the state legislature, provided the foundation for his ground game operation and amplified the major policy planks of his campaign. Yet Mamdani has attempted to keep it at arm’s length during the general election. The DSA, in turn, has given him a wider-than-normal berth to deviate from its tenets.
How the arrangement will work should Mamdani win on Nov. 4 is uncharted territory.
“One of two things will happen: They will give him a grace period and let him get his sea legs and recognize that compromise is a way to get something done, or they become one of his biggest obstacles,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “And if that happens, he’ll be fighting people from the right and the left.”
The DSA’s breakthrough moment came in 2018 when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning congressional upset turned the insurgent group into a force in New York politics. In the years since, it has matured into one of the most disciplined power centers on the left — part activist network, part political machine — with members who see themselves not just as campaign foot soldiers but as co-governors once their candidates win.
Now, with Mamdani on the cusp of becoming mayor of the nation’s largest city, the DSA is approaching its greatest electoral victory yet — and its biggest test. Mamdani’s deliberate distance from the group in the general election hints at a new phase for both: a candidate trying to show he can lead beyond the movement that made him, and an organization learning what it means to share power with one of its own leading City Hall.
The 34-year old is still blazing a meteoric rise, as evidenced by the 10,000 people who packed a Queens tennis stadium over the weekend to rally with a fervor rarely seen in a mayoral race. But Mamdani remains a divisive candidate outside his fanbase. And his well-heeled enemies, who have poured millions of dollars into stopping him, would be eager to exploit any erosion in his support.
A preview of the many fraught decisions awaiting Mamdani has already come. The democratic socialist has made it clear he wants to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, beloved by the business class but, politically, a walking antithesis to the DSA’s membership. He has committed to following through with the city’s plan to build four new jails to replace Rikers Island, a policy he and DSA had previously opposed. And he has opened the door to funding his main policy proposals outside of taxing the rich, something he would have little power over as mayor but that has long been an animating force for democratic socialists.
If elected, Mamdani will be faced with policy dilemmas and political pressure magnitudes greater than anything he’s so far been confronted with as a backbench lawmaker in Albany.
As a state Assembly member representing Queens, he voted against the budget and focused on pet issues like a free bus pilot program. (In 2024, as POLITICO reported, Mamdani’s vote against the budget came at the expense of his bus plan.) Now, Mamdani is poised to be in charge of more than 300,000 municipal employees and a $115 billion budget, which under law must be balanced each year. It’s a job that requires constant, real-time decisions affecting 8.5 million people and scores of special interest groups — and one that is frequently incompatible with ideological considerations.
As a grueling battle against Andrew Cuomo has dragged into the general election, Mamdani has already hinted that his governing style will involve shifts to the center. When pressed repeatedly by reporters, he has emphasized his platform is not synonymous with that of the DSA’s. In addition to his overture to Tisch, he has distanced himself from portions of the national organization’s agenda like ending prosecution of misdemeanors. And he has apologized for past criticisms of the NYPD and ended his calls to defund the police.
Those shifts have helped him win over most of the state’s Democratic establishment, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, who will wield tremendous influence over Mamdani’s ability to deliver on his campaign promises.
They also serve as a reminder that more compromise is likely on the horizon, especially given the tremendous cost of Mamdani’s proposals.
The DSA endorses judiciously, has a rigorous vetting process and, if their candidates succeed, expects them to work in close concert to advance their goals. It’s a political culture that helps give the group its electoral power. It’s also part of what makes the candidacy of the mayoral frontrunner so unique.
The DSA leadership’s theory on Mamdani is to play the long game: While members might not be fond of all of his mayoral decisions, the organization would still be electing a kindred spirit with the potential to deliver on major democratic socialist policies like universal childcare. Mamdani’s election to such a prominent perch in one of the country’s most intense media markets would also expand the reach of the movement to a new and highly visible frontier. And in the process, he could till the electoral fields for other DSA candidates looking to grow campaigns for city, state or federal legislatures.
According to Grace Mausser, co-chair of the city’s DSA chapter, attacking Mamdani over lapses in democratic socialist doctrine would be a waste of energy and divert resources from loftier goals.
“Of course there will be instances where we disagree. Zohran’s administration is not the same as NYC-DSA. We know that,” she said. “We really want to put our energy into what we can build together with the power of a mayoral administration and the power of not only DSA but of a broad left-labor coalition. I think we have the opportunity to really transform the city in ways that haven’t been seen before.”
A resolution penned by the local DSA’s steering committee and approved by 80 percent of the membership clarified the organization's posture toward a potential Mamdani mayoralty.
“We must grow the size of our movement across every borough and every neighborhood such that we have the numbers and power to serve as an effective outside ally to a potential Zohran Mamdani administration, not primarily to elect a target for ourselves,” the resolution read.
For Mamdani’s campaign, the feeling is mutual.
“DSA has been an essential partner for Zohran Mamdani in powering this campaign, and he looks forward to working with them to deliver a more affordable city and continue to engage more New Yorkers in the political process,” spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement.
The DSA, of course, has its limits.
In 2021, the organization discussed expelling then-U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman over his Congressional vote to approve Israel military aid and a junket to the Middle Eastern nation. Bowman represented a heavily Jewish district covering parts of Westchester and the Bronx where, last year, the Israel-Hamas war became a central fault line in a reelection run flooded with outside money that he ultimately lost.
Last year, the national organization pulled its endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez over her stance on the same conflict.
Even the Mamdani resolution was the subject of debate, with an earlier version modified after some DSA factions wanted more leeway to hold Mamdani accountable.
That previous draft hinted at how the left has sometimes been quick to criticize their own.
“If we succeed in electing Zohran Mamdani, our priority will not be policing the mayor’s lapses and demanding accountability — orientations the left has adopted in moments of decline and marginality,” a since-revised clause in the resolution read.
Fortunately for Mamdani, his coalition transcends the DSA: Results from the primary show he made inroads into neighborhoods typically skeptical of such left-leaning candidates. But the frontrunner still derives much of his power from the organizing clout offered by the DSA’s members. If he’s elected, any dilution of that support would make it much more difficult to govern a divided electorate.
Mamdani has been consistently polling just under 50 percent owing in large part to the presence of Cuomo, who’s running in the general election as an independent after losing the Democratic primary, and GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa, who has been trailing at a distant third. A recent poll found that, while most voters supported Mamdani for his policies, many Cuomo backers planned to pull the lever for the former governor simply because he’s not Mamdani.
Mausser emphasized the DSA is planning to be a constructive force and is cognizant that doing so will require altering its typical interactions with endorsed elected officials.
“There is a real discussion within DSA, and I’m sure within Zohran’s campaign, about the ways in which our collaboration will look similar to when Zohran was in the Assembly and the ways it will look very different,” she said.
Her organization, for example, typically meets with DSA-affiliated elected officials on a weekly basis as they hash out shared priorities — a practice that will be unlikely with Mamdani in City Hall.
And while Tisch would be near the bottom of DSA’s shortlist for police commissioners, Mausser noted Mamdani’s public safety platform has been focused on creating a Department of Community Safety, which DSA plans to advocate for.
She also charted out a way to reduce potential concessions before Mamdani would even have to consider making them: Apply pressure outside of City Hall to officials like the governor.
“It’s about changing the constraints, and that is what DSA is dedicated to. We want to create the conditions and pressure so that Hochul changes her mind about the political feasibility of taxing the rich,” she said. “And that changes, too, Zohran’s challenges and what compromises he might have to make.”
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