New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that the victory of candidates he backed in Tuesday’s primary is an extension of the Democratic Party’s traditions, not a repudiation of it.
“It speaks to what makes so many of us proud to be Democrats,” he said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “It speaks to a vision that goes back to a New Deal understanding of what working people deserve,” referencing the era of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the label given his domestic policies.
“And I’ll tell you that for too long that kind of politics, you can only find it in history books, and we need to bring it back to the present day.”
Mamdani, a 34-year-old elected in 2025, emerged as something of a kingmaker last week. Three congressional candidates backed by Mamdani won Tuesday, with two of them, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Brad Lander, ousting incumbent Democrats.
“They ran campaigns that spoke to working people,” he said, “and that said life in the nation’s most expensive city need not be this way any longer. And I can’t wait to have them as partners in D.C. and at work.”
Host Jonathan Karl asked Mamdani about concerns, including some stated by national Democrats, about the label of democratic socialists and fears that it represented a disturbing radicalization of American politics. Many Republicans were aghast. “This is a very real problem in which the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said last week.
Mamdani made it clear he saw the progressive rhetoric in practical terms as one that helps “working people” live their lives.
“For a lot of people who ask themselves: What does democratic socialism mean? And you can tell them the answer at a theoretical level: It’s the choice to extend democracy from the ballot box to the rest of their lives,” Mamdani told Karl.
Mamdani added: “I think democratic socialism at the heart is pragmatic, because if we cannot deliver for working people, then what is this for? I’m not interested in writing a manifesto or, frankly, in reading one. I’m interested in delivering, and that’s exactly what we’ve been showing.”
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