Why is my only choice as a Democrat to vote for a mayoral candidate who self-identifies as an extreme, left-wing democratic socialist?
The only real Democrats in the mayoral race are Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo. Unfortunately, they’re both running as independents. Independents rarely win and I don’t like to waste my vote. But I can’t vote for a democratic socialist. Or any socialist. Neither can my wife or son. Though he wouldn’t mind a rent freeze.
Democrats, Socialists and America don’t belong in the same sentence, let alone on the same ballot line. Ever vote for a Conservative Liberal? How about a Communist Republican or Libertarian Democrat?
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the country’s largest, far-left, socialist, political organization. DSA was formed in 1982 as a merger of the Democratic Socialists Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the New American Movement (NAM). Its decentralized structure allows for local chapters to be ideologically autonomous.
City socialists are not, as Cuomo calls them, merely a “faction.” They’re punching way above their weight in this mayoral cycle. Too small to qualify as an official political party in New York, NYC-DSA members are not “registered.”
There are 3,035,104 active, registered Democrats in NYC and 5.9 million in NYS. The New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) chapter has only 11,000 dues-paying members. The National DSA, naturally headquartered in NYC, has a membership of approximately 51,000, down from a peak of nearly 79,000 in 2021.
Bottom line: 469,000 “Democrats” voted for Mamdani in the primary. Now, here he comes in the general election. And, this time, he’s got the Democratic and Working Families Party lines. “This is going to be high turnout mayoral election of young voters”, NYU urban policy & planning professor Mitchell Moss told me.
The 33-year-old assemblyman is, clearly, a social media creation-and-sensation. Young Democratic Socialists of America — Mamdani’s hardcore base — misidentify politically as Democrats. They’re often entitled, naïve, idealistic and guilt-ridden limousine liberals like Mamdani who expect — make that demand — government giveaways. I’m sticking with Young Democrats of America, the youth plank of the Democratic Party.
But props to Mamdani for tapping into the disaffected “change” vote. Shame on the state Democratic Party for not protecting against its radical-left flank. I’m looking at you Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Kathy Hochul, Carl Heastie, Antonio Delgado and Jay Jacobs, chairman of the New York Democratic State Committee.
Jacobs’ political counterpart, Ed Cox, has done a better job as chairman of the New York Republican State Committee. Don’t be surprised if Elise Stefanik or Bruce Blakeman beat incumbent Hochul or her estranged lieutenant governor Delgado in next year’s governor’s race.
My longtime City Council member, Gale Brewer, recently told me that she got her DSA-NYC card way back in 1980. So did former Manhattan borough president and failed mayoral candidate Ruth Messinger. Silly me. All along, I’d thought they were regular, Upper West Side Democrats like me.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the closest we’ve had to a Socialist Democratic President. Bill de Blasio and Fiorello LaGuardia were the nearest to socialist mayors. Enough about de Blasio.
A “Republican of a socialist sort”, LaGuardia at times referred to himself simply as a “socialist.” Though highly independent, when the American Labor Party was founded in 1936, LaGuardia joined.
LaGuardia’s brand of progressivism was considered by political observers of the day to be socialism. After his own Republican Party denied him the nomination, he successfully ran for reelection on the Socialist Party line for Congress in 1924.
As mayor, LaGuardia aimed to improve the lives of working-class people. He implemented public housing initiatives and a publicly-owned transit system and used public power to combat municipal corruption, reform city services and modernize the City of New York.
Unlike Mamdani, LaGuardia never fundamentally challenged business or real estate interests and didn’t seek to dismantle capitalism. FDR and The Little Flower were wartime and Great Depression-era leaders, striving to revive a country and the nation’s largest city, not hand-out gratuitous freebies.
There’s no Democratic Socialists of America Party line on the Nov. 4 mayoral ballot. However, old-time Democrats I know are resigned to voting for a socialist and have already conceded Mamdani’s victory. I’m not and I haven’t.
Sure, the pickings are slim. But I expect Democrats, real Democrats, to wake up and vote for Cuomo, a “Democrat running on an independent line”, right-leaning Democrat Adams or even crossover for Republican Curtis Sliwa.
Anyone but a socialist on the Democratic line. Whatever that is.
Frydman is CEO of Source Communications LLC, a strategic and tactical consulting firm in Manhattan.
