Zohran Mamdani’s triumph has given socialists huge power in New York City. Now they must use it well—or see the ruling class crush them.

Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City has thrust the US democratic socialist movement into the national spotlight. If Mamdani’s triumphant affordability platform—which includes plans to provide universal childcare by increasing taxes on high-income earners—is implemented, it could lead to a significant transfer of wealth from the wealthy elite to the working class and provide a blueprint for socialist leaders across the country. Equally, if Mamdani’s mission is stymied, the forces banking on his failure will use it as a weapon to try and banish the left everywhere. In other words, the stakes of a Mamdani mayoralty could not be higher. That’s why it’s so crucial for the left and progressive movements to adopt a mass politics orientation during Mamdani’s tenure, the 2026 midterms, and beyond.

Mamdani’s rise is partly due to the corporate elite’s failure to defend working-class New Yorkers against the city’s cost-of-living crisis. It’s also because corporate Democrats lacked a strategy to counter Mamdani’s left-wing populist economic message, which resonated with many New Yorkers who came to see themselves as renters and working people struggling with affordability because of the billionaire class.

Now, the movement behind Mamdani’s election is poised to stand up against the chaos fueled by Donald Trump’s policies, particularly those that have exacerbated economic inequality. The same strategy and message that worked so well for Mamdani can be used to challenge corporate Democrats in the midterms, holding them accountable for their inaction on the cost-of-living crisis and their failure to build a diverse coalition against authoritarianism.

Win the Affordability Agenda 

The Mamdani campaign transformed the New York City electorate, tapping into long-ignored Muslim and Southeast Asian communities while shoring up support among younger Black and Latino working-class voters—many of whom were being lured rightward by Trump. If it lasts beyond Mamdani’s win, this realignment presents an opportunity for progressive forces to become rooted in New York City’s multiracial working class and build an organized and combative political base. By doing so, they can leverage the electorate’s power to implement Mamdani’s affordability agenda.

The incoming Mamdani administration is well-positioned to build institutional working-class power by empowering unions with stronger contracts, raising the minimum wage to $30 per hour, standardizing and improving working conditions for informal workers, exploring sectoral bargaining legislation, increasing access to affordable housing, promoting public power in utilities, and encouraging community participation and civic engagement among working-class New Yorkers. 

The more than 100,000 volunteers the Mamdani campaign was able to mobilize can turn their attention to the work of sustaining the movement they helped build—for instance, by training volunteers to become community organizers in support of Mamdani’s political program. A key task will involve exposing the purposefully opaque and baroque channels through which the governor and state legislature in Albany might try to stifle Mamdani’s agenda. Having organizers on the ground who can demystify the state budget process and connect working-class New Yorkers to campaigns that pressure their state representatives—for example, to tax the rich in order to fund Mamdani’s plan for free universal childcare— will be key.

This organization can help create the mass working-class movement this city desperately needs and serve as a national model for other successful grassroots electoral campaigns. By institutionalizing the Mamdani coalition, we can popularize the narrative that his campaign rode to victory. 

There is not a second to lose in building up this infrastructure. That’s because the ruling class—the real estate industry, the finance sector, the charter school industry, pro-Israel forces, corporate Democrats, the right wing of the City Council and the state legislature, and, of course, the fascist Trump administration in DC—is already gearing up to try to derail Mamdani’s administration, turn public opinion against him, and attempt to fracture his political base. This coalition, which has spent decades hollowing out state capacity through ruthless austerity, will try to make an example of Mamdani’s New York City and use an “NYC in crisis” narrative for their own electoral gains in the midterms. (Republicans have wasted no time, instantly framing Mamdani’s ascent as a “national story of a party bending to socialism and the far left.”)

By staying laser-focused on winning the affordability agenda, orienting its work to organize the unorganized, and continuing to center the active participation of working New Yorkers in its campaigns, the left can take advantage of this populist moment and blunt the opposition’s narrative.

Replicating Mamdani’s ruthless message discipline can also help blunt the bigoted culture wars that both Republicans and many right-leaning Democrats seem so eager to fight. A key breakthrough that the left achieved through the Mamdani campaign was championing left-wing economic populism while demonstrating solidarity with oppressed communities. We prioritize a universalist affordability agenda not because we practice narrow economism, but because we know the cost-of-living crisis affects communities of color and other oppressed groups the hardest, and we aspire to center them as key pillars of our coalition. Applying that strategy nationwide can suck the air out of the far-right’s faux-populism and help the left in the midterms.