Early voting has begun in the New York City mayoral primary, with final day and in-person voting next week, June 24.
The Democratic nominee for New York City mayor is usually guaranteed to win the November election, but in 2025, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams is running for reelection as an independent, because of his deep unpopularity and identification with Trump. At least one of the Democrats, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, has set up a separate ballot line which he could use if he fails to win the primary.
While 11 candidates are vying for the party nomination, the race appears to be coming down to a choice between Cuomo and New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Cuomo is a known right-wing quantity and has been bankrolled by billionaire supporters, most prominently former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. With the help of name recognition and millions in advertising for social media and television, he has comfortably led in most polls until recently.
Mamdani, however, has lately closed the gap with Cuomo to only a few percentage points, according to some reports. A sharp rise in early voting—double the rate from last election—also indicates a growth in support for Mamdani.
Since the choice will be determined by a ranked-choice system, in which voters are asked to list five candidates in descending order of preference, it is possible that a candidate who has not received the most first-place votes can nevertheless emerge as the winner, after the ranked choices are redistributed.
Mamdani’s surge in the polls stems from a number of policies he has highlighted in his campaign. They have attracted great interest amidst a social crisis that, though virtually ignored by the mainstream media, is in some respects even more serious than that of the 1970s, when the city almost declared bankruptcy.
Mamdani has called for a rent freeze for up to two million residents in rent-stabilized apartments as well as free child care and free bus fares. He has also benefited from widespread disgust and hatred for Cuomo, a 67-year-old symbol of capitalist inequality and the status quo. In addition, Mamdani, alone among the candidates, has called the brutal Israeli attacks on the Palestinians in Gaza a genocide.
The real purpose of Mamdani’s campaign, however, is to corral the growing unrest within the working class in order to contain it within the confines of the Democratic Party, the notorious graveyard of social reform. The DSA, the “left” wing of the Democratic Party, seeks above all to prevent a break with the capitalist two-party system.
Over the last few days, Senator Bernie Sanders gave his endorsement to Mamdani, after withholding it for most of the campaign. More significant politically, however, was the cross-endorsement announced between Mamdani and City Comptroller Brad Lander, who has been running third in the polls.
The 55-year-old Lander is also a member of the DSA. However, first as a City Council member for 12 years and then the city comptroller since 2021, he has a lengthy record as a faithful defender of the profit system. The New York Times called him an “effective manager of the city’s sprawling budget office.” For Mamdani’s campaign, the Lander endorsement is an effort to reassure Wall Street that the promises of his campaign are only promises and will never endanger its interests.
Lander is seeking to refurbish his own image as a “progressive,” as well as to boost the overall effort to stop Cuomo from winning the primary. Earlier this week, he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, in an escalation of Donald Trump’s drive to dictatorship and criminalize political opposition.
Mamdani has made other moves to placate the ruling elite. Significantly, neither he nor any of the other candidates openly identified with or marched in the “No Kings” mass protests that took place in New York City last Saturday.
Above all, Mamdani has said nothing about how the reforms he has talked about will be achieved. He has floated the idea of negotiating with the current Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul. In other words, he has virtually admitted that his promises have no chance of enactment.
The mayoral election is unfolding under conditions of deep political crisis and extreme nervousness within the ruling class.
While billionaires like Bloomberg have no hesitation in openly backing Cuomo as the best candidate to beef up the police force and slam the door shut against the demands of the working class, the New York Times, which speaks for dominant sections of the ruling class, has been somewhat hesitant. It announced no official endorsement in its major editorial of June 16, while the editors essentially gave a reluctant nod to Cuomo.
The Times editors admit that they called for Cuomo’s resignation as governor in 2021. The sexual harassment scandal, whipped up by them at the time, is now set against a list of his many “accomplishments,” including infrastructure projects like the Second Avenue subway and the LaGuardia Airport renovation. Especially important to the Times is the fact, as it notes, that Cuomo enjoys the overwhelming support of the trade union bureaucracy. It is the unions’ job to betray and hold back the class struggle, and the bureaucracy has been instrumental in thus far keeping the lid on mass action by the working class.
Above all, the editorial continues, “We do not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballot. His experience is too thin, and his agenda reads like a turbocharged version of Mr. de Blasio’s mayoralty. As for Mr. Cuomo, we have serious objections to his ethics and conduct, even if he would be better for New York’s future than Mr. Mamdani” (emphasis added).
“Most worrisome,” the editors claim, Mamdani “shows little concern about the disorder of the past decade…”
This is the cynical voice of the ruling class. It may make brief mention of the housing crisis or increases in the cost of living, but “disorder” is its main worry. Its concern is not that Mamdani will lead any struggle, but that proposals to address social inequality are gaining traction with the working class and the poor. Such proposals may encourage a mass movement that Mamdani and the DSA will not be able to control.
The Times editors are right to be worried. Although they make no mention of the emerging third world war, including the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Israel’s unprovoked aggression against Iran, nor of Trump’s march to dictatorship, these national and international dimensions of the capitalist crisis are propelling hundreds of millions into struggle around the world.
This includes the escalating political resistance to Trump and the protests against the Gaza genocide, together with an upsurge in the class struggle that will inevitably accompany Trump’s tariffs and other destabilizing policies that reflect the bankruptcy and decline of US capitalism.
Within this situation, the role of the DSA and the Mamdami candidacy is to try to give some sort of face lift for the deeply discredited Democratic Party, thereby blocking the development of an independent movement of the working class.
There have been many experiences with this type of politics—including in the campaigns of Sanders for president and the rise of Mamdami’s fellow DSA member, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. At the time of Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in the Democratic primary election in New York in 2018, the WSWS wrote: “Anyone who suggests that her victory marks a shift to the left by the Democratic Party should be told, in no uncertain terms: Curb your enthusiasm!”
Over the past seven years, Ocasio-Cortez has risen to become a leading figure in the Democratic Party. She was an ardent supporter of the Biden administration, who has assumed as her central role the defense of the Democratic Party from “privileged critiques” on the left.
Changing what needs to be changed, Mamdani will play the same role. The enthusiasm with which demands for housing, transit and other basic needs has been met is very significant. New York and other major cities are on the verge of a social explosion.
Securing the interests of the working class, however, and stopping the descent into dictatorship and global war, is not possible without a frontal assault on the wealth and privileges of the capitalist oligarchy. This requires the mobilization of the working class, independently of and in opposition to the Democratic Party and capitalist politics as a whole, in the struggle for socialism.