Why New York City Should Reject Zohran Mamdani—and Electoral Politics With Him

Opinion | Katya Yindra

A new so-called “progressive” is stepping up to change the system from the inside. This time, it’s New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, now vying to be the next mayor of New York City. Running as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidate, Zohran’s platform promises fare-free buses, universal childcare, and rent freezes. His campaign has gained notable momentum, already maxing out his $8 million fundraising cap and creeping closer to the frontrunner, disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Zohran’s punchy, primary-colored posters are hard to miss. Plastered on post boxes and bodega windows, they posture that a vote for Zohran is a vote “for a New York you can afford.”

These are demands that speak directly to the suffering of the working class in a city shaped by imperialism’s decay: skyrocketing prices, stagnant wages, brutal repression of protest, and a genocidal war funded with our tax dollars. Zohran mimics the language of the people, and for many disillusioned by the Democratic Party machine, his campaign appears as a welcome rupture.

But Zohran is not an exception to the crisis of electoral politics; he is a symptom of it. His candidacy is a repackaged version of what the DSA has long offered: left-sounding rhetoric attempting to pull mass struggles into alignment with US imperialism.

Why should Zohran be the exception in a long line of DSA-backed candidates who run on progressive aesthetics, only to sell themselves and their constituents out to the highest bidder?

As the June 24 Democratic primary approaches, the tension between what the working class demands and what the ruling class allows is beginning to increasingly expose the farce of Zohran’s campaign.

Zohran built his reputation by publicly opposing the US-Israel genocide in Palestine. He’s been denounced by Zionist officials and lobbying groups and accused of antisemitism for his vocal condemnation of Palestinian suffering. However, as his campaign gains momentum, he’s now struggling with the contradiction between pandering to his base and not being blackballed out of the primary. On May 16, a video on X showed Zohran affirming Israel’s “right to exist” in front of a crowd of reporters. Less than a week later, at a town hall hosted by the United Jewish Appeal (UJA)-Federation of New York, he doubled down on his position. The UJA, which has a branch in occupied Jerusalem, boasts that it has raised more than $173 million to “support the people of Israel” since October 7, and over $14 million for “emergency needs in New York resulting from the war in Israel.”

Likewise, in April, he posted a photo-op with the New York Jewish Agenda (NYJA), calling it “a pleasure” to meet them on their Albany lobby day. NYJA’s platform explicitly supports “democracy and peace in Israel”—a sanitized euphemism for continued Zionist occupation and ethnic cleansing. Cozying up to groups like this signals the stances Zohran is already prepared to take.

Similarly, when an Israeli-owned restaurant in Brooklyn was painted with messages like “Israel Steals Culture” and “Genocide Cuisine,” Zohran quickly condemned the act on X, writing: “This vandalism is wrong and not the NYC we’re fighting for.” It appears the NYC he’s fighting for is an imaginary one where politics and class do not come into contention.

Zohran’s opportunism mirrors that of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another DSA darling who once called Israel’s actions a genocide and made a brief appearance at Columbia’s student encampments. But materially, she has never wavered in her support for Israel. She voted to fund the Iron Dome, posed with the father of an IDF soldier holding a “hostage” sign, promoted a “two-state solution,” and campaigned for Joe Biden—the primary backer of what she herself called a genocide—until the bitter end.

This is the DSA playbook: ride into office on the momentum of mass struggle, then retreat the moment it’s politically inconvenient. José Garza, the DSA-backed District Attorney in Austin, Texas, provides another example. Garza campaigned on holding police accountable during the 2020 uprisings. Once elected, he dropped charges against officers who brutalized protesters—including one who shot a 16-year-old in the head.

The most generous interpretation is that these politicians don’t change the system; the system changes them. These are not isolated betrayals, but the predictable outcomes of candidates who exist to co-opt, pacify, and redirect mass anger back into the ballot box. DSA serves as a pipeline back into the Democratic Party. They speak of “socialism” and working-class “power” but ultimately channel that energy into campaigns that uphold US imperialism, something at the root of the DSA itself. Its founder, Michael Harrington, openly defended the US war in Vietnam and US support for Israel and built the organization to act as a “left conscience” of the Democratic Party, not an alternative to it. The group has long maintained close ideological and political ties to Israeli institutions, and from its very outset identified itself as a haven for liberal Zionists.

Today, even Cuomo and NYC Mayor Eric Adams have adopted talking points from Zohran’s platform—such as fare-free buses and baby baskets—because talk is cheap, and these demands are innocuous enough that even the most reactionary representatives of the ruling class can safely run on them.

Zohran calls for a $30 minimum wage and standing up to “bad landlords” with union-built, “affordable” homes. But what would achieving these goals actually entail? The housing crisis in New York City is not merely a matter of scarcity—it is the logical outcome of speculative real estate markets and private ownership of land. Any real solution would require confronting these foundations, which no politician—least of all one embedded in the electoral machine—can afford to challenge.

Zohran’s inability to address these structural roots is not a personal failure, but the systemic function of electoral politics itself. Elections in the U.S. are not neutral tools; they are mechanisms designed to stabilize and legitimize capital’s rule. Their purpose is not to resolve discontent, but to absorb and manage it. As Lenin wrote in State and Revolution, “a democratic republic is the best political shell for capitalism”—it offers the illusion of choice while preserving the dictatorship of capital beneath. Even a candidate with all the “right” positions would be hemmed in the moment they took office: by donors, lobbyists, party leadership, the legal structure, and the demands of capital.

The only party that can represent our class is the Communist Party—not a legal, electoral party, but a General Staff that skillfully combines the struggle for the daily demands of the people with the conquest of power through revolutionary war. Political power is not handed out; it must be conquered. And as long as power remains in the hands of the imperialist class, their array of politicians simply work to fine tune the state’s role in facilitating exploitation and oppression, without offering a way out.

In the absence of the Communist Party, our task then is to reconstitute it. Fortunately, the anti-imperialist movement is gaining global coherence, galvanized by the heroic Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the ongoing people’s wars. Organization is the best weapon of the working class, and our responsibility as revolutionaries is to forge this anti-imperialist energy into an irresistible torrent. Zohran’s campaign, for all its progressive gloss, is a barrier to that torrent. It diverts our momentum, dilutes our demands, and prepares us to lose by tailing the mass movement behind capitalist candidates under the guise of progress.

Photo: Zohran Mamdani posing with Sharon Kleinbaum, board member and cofounder of the Zionist lobbying group the New York Jewish Agenda. Photo retrieved from X.

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