Mamdani and his campaign doubted viability early on

Politico

a day ago

NEW YORK — During the genesis of Zohran Mamdani's now-surging mayoral campaign, the candidate and his democratic socialist allies said it was highly likely — or even certain — that Mamdani would lose the mayor's race.
Instead, the goal from the campaign's inception was to build the New York City arm of the Democratic Socialists of America, said six Democrats who relayed private discussions and meetings with Mamdani, a campaign staffer and DSA leadership. All were granted anonymity to freely discuss private strategy.
'He was pretty clearly like, 'I know I'm not running to win. I know I have no path to victory,'' said one Democrat, who spoke directly to Mamdani shortly before he launched his campaign.
The strategy appears to be working. Since Mamdani's October campaign launch, DSA membership has grown 40 percent and a DSA leader told POLITICO the campaign has put together a trove of data the party can repurpose to launch primary challenges in areas where Mamdani is popular.
'Since Zohran launched his mayoral campaign, we have gained over 2,400 members,' Grace Mausser, co-chair of NYC-DSA, said in a statement. 'New members often mention Zohran's success and the refreshing nature of a candidate — and movement — that puts working people and affordability first.'
Mamdani joined the race with little name recognition, less than four years in public office and a spot at the bottom of the crowded pack of candidates. Early polls put him at 2 percent or less in the race.
But since his launch, he has risen to take a decisive hold on second place. His longshot effort has morphed into the strongest opposition to mayoral front-runner Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani was the first to max out in the city's public campaign finance system, has the backing of a super PAC and has the very real potential of landing key progressive endorsements from the Working Families Party and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as their top-ranked candidate.
Ocasio-Cortez's membership in the NYC-DSA and her national popularity have made her a power broker on the left.
But barring a primary win, the yardstick for measuring Mamdani's success may end up being subjective. Some on the left, who are already rankled by his rise, are more inclined to preemptively view his run as a failure.
Many progressives fear Mamdani's label as a Democratic Socialist repels voters in a city ruled by a moderate Democratic governor and a moderate Democratic mayor-turned-friend of President Donald Trump. Mamdani's positions on Israel and thin legislative experience don't endear him with the political establishment, either.
All of this, they claim, is blocking other candidates closer to the center-left who could be capable of building a broad enough coalition to beat Cuomo.
Mayoral hopeful Brad Lander has the cash, legislative record, experience winning a citywide election and support from Democratic electeds to theoretically attract a base big enough to win the primary — but Mamdani has prevented him from breaking out of an increasingly distant third place.
While a Marist College poll conducted earlier this month shows just one-fourth of Democratic voters in the city identify as 'very liberal' — a potential ceiling for Mamdani — a poll released this week showed him surpassing that benchmark in later rounds of ranked choice voting.
The survey found he came within just eight points of beating Cuomo in the final round.
'From the day he entered this race, Zohran has been running to win — and nothing demonstrates that quite like the latest polls, which have us less than nine points away from defeating Andrew Cuomo,' Mamdani's spokesperson, Lekha Sunder, said in a statement. 'With still three weeks to go, millions in cash-on-hand, and 25,000 volunteers who believe in this movement, we are on a clear path to victory and to a city New Yorkers can actually afford.'
DSA leadership's statements and resolutions also show the organization's members can range from reluctant to outright hostile when it comes to embracing other anti-Cuomo candidates in the city's ranked choice voting system.
'Their goal was to get in third place and to build the party, build the DSA, and now their goal seems to be to get into second place and build the DSA,' said another Democrat, who spoke directly with top DSA leadership this fall after Mamdani launched his campaign.
Members of the DSA who were present during the fall forum when Mamdani sought the DSA's endorsement say the campaign was pitched as a party-building exercise, instead of a genuine path to City Hall.
'It was just said over and over again, that this was a way to build the base that would make it easier to win campaigns in the future,' said one DSA member.
A Mamdani spokesperson, Mausser and Michael Whitesides, the DSA's current electoral working group co-chair, deny this.
'That was not how this was framed to me,' Whitesides said. 'I don't think DSA takes on races we feel like we can't win. We can appreciate it's a long shot and think about the consolation prizes — like grow capacity or learn new skills — but we as an organization are not in races to lose. The thrust of the pitch to run Zohran was to try and win.'
Mamdani's campaign also directed POLITICO to previous statements from the candidate, including in late February when he said, 'We always were setting up a campaign that could win this race.'
But the city's DSA chapter — which hasn't supported a mayoral candidate since David Dinkins' run in 1989 — is open about the fact that Mamdani's campaign is simultaneously serving as a vehicle for the future of the party.
'We're seeing a crazy amount more interest in voting for a socialist than I would have guessed eight months ago,' Mausser said. 'One thing we'll be looking at is: OK, what neighborhoods voted for Zohran number one? Are these places that we can and should be running in the future?'
In recent weeks, Mamdani has stood out as the candidate willing to boost other candidates — who all trail Cuomo by even wider margins than Mamdani's. He's the only candidate who has promised to endorse someone else as a No. 2 ballot choice through the city's ranked choice voting system, and he encouraged his supporters to donate to City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams' mayoral campaign after he raised the maximum amount through the city's public campaign finance program.
Despite these efforts, the DSA's local party leadership, who are fully behind Mamdani's bid, have stood in the way of supporting other candidates.
Mausser confirmed the party passed a resolution calling for DSA-endorsed elected officials to announce their intentions to rank Mamdani first on their mayoral ballot — if they don't, it could count against them the next time the organization is doling out endorsements.
Last month, Gustavo Gordillo, NYC-DSA's other co-chair, applauded Bronx state Sen. Gustavo Rivera for endorsing Mamdani — and cheered his decision to not endorse Lander, whose positions on the Israel-Hamas war and freezing rent put him at odds with the DSA.
'Credit to Gustavo Rivera for not being afraid to tell Brad no and buck the left-liberal orthodoxy,' Gordillo wrote in a since-deleted X post.
Mausser stressed the DSA does not have a formal position on the other candidates and is only rooting against Cuomo, who polling shows is projected to capture 50 percent of both Black Democratic voters and Democratic voters from the Bronx. He's also projected to win the support of 41 percent of Latino voters.
And while Mamdani places second in all recent polls, he has struggled to gain ground with groups representing a disproportionate share of low-income earners — the very demographic the DSA purports to be focused on persuading.
An April Siena College poll found Mamdani captured just 10 percent of Black voters, who, along with Latinos, make up the largest share of the city's low-income residents. He won only 2 percent of the vote in the Bronx, where median income significantly trails other boroughs.
'You can't win a mayoral race as a progressive without the support of working and middle class, black and brown communities, and this campaign does not have those relationships,' one DSA member told POLITICO. 'They have not had that from the jump, and as the race has unfolded, that has continued to be the case.'
Sunder, Mamdani's campaign spokesperson, said the campaign has knocked on about 12,000 doors in the Bronx and won endorsements from current and former Bronx elected officials like Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who left office in January. The campaign also touted Mamdani's support from Latino voters, which Marist clocked at 20 percent in its poll.
Gordillo said in another social media post that the DSA is using Mamdani's campaign to, in part, increase awareness residents have of their own position in the city's socioeconomic strata.
'NYC DSA is the only org on the left trying to use the mayoral race to change the political terrain on our terms and to raise class consciousness,' he wrote. 'I think this experiment will have outsized effects like Bernie did in 2016.'
The line between Mamdani's campaign and Gordillo and Mausser's DSA chapter has been hazy from the start.
The party helped orchestrate Mamdani's launch, and Mamdani made it clear he would not run for mayor unless he had the DSA's support. There are weekly meetings between the campaign and the chapter, and DSA members are helping with strategy in addition to taking the lead on his canvassing operation, Mausser said.
So far, with the DSA's help, Mamdani has knocked 545,000 doors, according to his campaign.
While Mausser claimed the DSA and Mamdani are in it to win it, regardless of whether he wins or loses, the post-primary prospects for the party — and Mamdani — are already looking up.
She pointed to the possibility of a failed mayoral bid cementing Mamdani's influence over the left flank of city politics, an outcome similar to the one experienced by Cynthia Nixon, Cuomo's 2018 gubernatorial primary challenger.
Nixon hasn't run for office since, but she hosted a fundraiser for Mamdani in March.
'Even if he loses, we'll now have an assemblymember who's dedicated to working with us, who has a huge profile and who can use his political clout to fight for DSA's priorities in Albany,' Mausser said. 'Cynthia Nixon is still a much sought endorser, and Zohran can find himself in a similar position as being something of a power broker for the progressive left.'