New Yorkers woke up to a new reality on Wednesday: A proud socialist won the New York City mayoral primary, beating out his nearest rival, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, by nearly 10 points.
Zohran Mamdani ran an avowedly far-left campaign, one focused on kitchen table issues rather than the woke cultural battles we鈥檝e become accustomed to from the left.
Instead of promising to Defund the Police (though he supported that movement in the past) or hyping the historic nature of becoming the first Muslim mayor of New York City, Mamdani promised free busing, a rent freeze, government-owned supermarkets and free childcare 鈥 which he said he鈥檇 pay for by raising taxes on businesses and the rich.
Despite the promise of redistributing from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, in an ironic twist, the socialist beat Cuomo handily with wealthy New Yorkers. Meanwhile, Cuomo crushed Mamdani by a staggering 19 points with New Yorkers who make under $50,000 a year.
Mamdani also lost in a big way in New York鈥檚 majority Black neighborhoods, which overwhelmingly chose Cuomo, as did neighborhoods with the highest Hispanic concentration.
Cuomo succeeded with voters without a college degree, while Mamdani absolutely slaughtered him among voters with advanced degrees. Mamdani鈥檚 support was strongest with 鈥測outhful, renter-heavy neighborhoods known for their left-leaning politics,鈥 as The New York Times pointed out.
Gentrifiers of the World, unite!
Welcome to the new Democratic Party, same as the old, with a slight twist: Instead of imposing cultural doctrine on working-class people of color with zero interest in their woke ideology, the Dems are now imposing a socialist economic agenda on those same recalcitrant normies who just won鈥檛 get with the program.
Mamdani鈥檚 success with the educated continues a decades-long political realignment in which the working class has been steadily leaving the Democratic Party for the GOP, a process that turbocharged under Donald Trump, while the Democrats鈥 base is now college-educated elites.
Nine of the 10 wealthiest congressional districts are currently represented by Democrats, as are 65% of Americans making over $500,000 a year.
The process culminated in the 2024 election with Kamala Harris winning the majority of Americans making over $100,000 a year, while Trump won with those making under.
Rather than a repudiation of the trendline in the Democratic Party, Mamdani鈥檚 success reveals that even when they talk about kitchen table issues, even when they talk about redistributing resources from the wealthy to the poor, progressives are doing so in a way that speaks to the wealthy and alienates working-class voters.
Mamdani knew how to perfect the lingo of trust fund socialism from personal experience: He himself is from the exact over-educated, over-credentialed, elite background that the Democrats now represent 鈥 whether they are pushing socialism or wokeness.
The son of a filmmaker and an academic and educated at a liberal arts college in Maine, Mamdani鈥檚 campaign staff was equally elite, overrepresented in Ivy League graduates, as reported in the Free Press.
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This is not to say that Mamdani鈥檚 campaign was totally devoid of cultural battles unpopular with working-class voters. Mamdani joined a protest against border czar Tom Homan at the state Capitol, shouting, 鈥淒o you believe in the First Amendment?!鈥 as Homan disappeared down a corridor munching an apple.
Mamdani also opposes the existence of a Jewish state and defended the genocidal cry 鈥淕lobalize the Intifada鈥 as being nothing more than a call for Palestinian rights; at Bowdoin College, Mamdani founded his school鈥檚 chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Like Free Palestine or Defund the Police, Zohran became a synonym for cool among young leftists, a brand for disaffected white college grads. And his victory signals where the Democratic Party might be going.
Wokeness is dead, but it鈥檚 been replaced by something equally at odds with the working-class voters the Dems lost to President Trump: a redistributionist economic socialism that appeals to the elites in the same way that the 鈥渁nti-racism鈥 of Robin DiAngelo and the Abolish ICE of AOC did.
It turns out, working-class New Yorkers, like working-class Americans more generally, don鈥檛 want government-run supermarkets any more than they want trans athletes in their daughters鈥 sports. They don鈥檛 want to abolish the police or ICE. They don鈥檛 want a rent freeze for already rent-stabilized apartments.
They want a fair shot at the American Dream. They want jobs that pay well, less immigration, good healthcare, and 鈥 most relevant to the mayor of New York City 鈥 safe streets.
Will the Democratic Party ever learn? I wouldn鈥檛 bet on it. The party鈥檚 bigwigs have lined up behind Mamdani, with everyone from Chuck Schumer and Hakim Jeffries to Jerry Nadler and Bill Clinton posting in support of his victory. The media has tried to portray this as the right using Mamdani as the poster child for the Democratic Party, but they鈥檙e doing that all on their own.
The real lesson of Zohran Mamdani鈥檚 win is this. Though the topic has shifted from culture wars to economics, the Democratic Party still has not learned that the way to get working-class voters is simple: Listen.
Batya Ungar-Sargon is the author of 鈥淪econd Class: How the Elites Betrayed America鈥檚 Working Men and Women.鈥