New York’s immigrant Muslim Mayor Zohran Mamdani is trying to grab a leading role in the Democratic Party by using his urban political machine to defeat establishment Democrats.
“Mamdani Burns Allies in Making a Big Bet for Congress and the Left,” said a June 21 headline in the New York Times, which describes how the ethnic Indian Mayor is trying to defeat leaders in the city’s Latino and Jewish blocs:
Mr. Mamdani and allies are attempting to unseat two Democratic incumbents, Representatives Daniel Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, whom they view as too friendly to corporate donors and Israel. They want to lay claim to a third House seat. And down the ballot, they have designs on expanding the democratic socialist bloc in Albany.
If he prevails on Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani, 34, will go a long way toward establishing socialists as a major faction in New York City politics and himself as a kingmaker capable of vaulting relatively unknown candidates to victory and sidelining erstwhile power brokers.
“This is a way to remake the Democratic Party,” said Michael Lange, a far-left advocate in New York.
WATCH — Forget Socialism, Mamdani Is Going Full Commie:
Espaillat is chairman of the 42-member Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which is defending Espaillat from Mamdani’s coup:
[Mamdani’s coup] has already alienated Black and Latino progressives, powerful labor unions and the left-leaning Working Families Party, all of which helped him get to City Hall and partnered with him as mayor. Some, like Representative Nydia Velázquez, have taken the rare step of publicly declaring they have lost trust in him.
Espaillat’s challenger is Darializa Avila Chevalier, the far-left daughter of migrants from the Dominican Republic, from where Espaillat’s parents also arrived. For example, Chevalier repeatedly declined to support the deportation of immigrant convicted murderers. In response, Espaillat is claiming, “I’m the first undocumented, formerly undocumented member of Congress.”
The influence of the Dominican voting bloc has fallen because President Joe Biden welcomed many Muslim and Asian migrants.
African-born Mamdani has a chance to win because he can generate high turnout from his brown and black political machine of minorities, immigrants, and mosque-organized, politically ambitious Muslims. These groups are animated by their natural human resentment towards the huge gap between their ambitions and New York’s American culture.
Poor white college graduates were vital for Mamdani’s mayoral victory but might not turn out in the party primaries.
Mamdani’s machine works alongside the Democratic Socialists of America, a far-left movement led by American white college graduates. This group has its own priorities, such as greater legal status for men who insist they are women.
The two very different wings can cooperate because progressives have sidelined their old focus on economic inequality to instead embrace an Arab-style, anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish view of politics as a competition between Christian nationalist oppressors and the oppressed, or between settler colonialists and the colonized victims.
The novel perspective is good for Mamdani because it puts him and his fellow immigrants at the center of the Democrat base, amid President Donald Trump’s election-winning combination of economic populism and high-tech stock growth.
The emotional invective against the two Democrat incumbents is heightened by the growing political role of Muslims in the politics of New York, which was until recently seen as the capital city of American Jews. For example, a coffee shop in New York publicly denounced Rep. Goldman for a grab-bag of supposed offenses, according to a June 22 article by The Times of Israel:
Poetica Coffee, in the Williamsburg neighborhood, posts a photo of Goldman on social media, writing: “We see that you stopped by our shop today for a coffee. Do you see how it doesn’t taste like genocide juice?”
“We don’t serve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide enablers,” the post says. “Too bad we didn’t recognize you right away, or we would have turned you away.”
Mamdani’s coalition is so powerful that it has forced Goldman’s opponent — Brad Lander — to bend the knee at an anti-Israeli mosque. Both candidates are Jewish, showing how Mamdani’s movement is trying to trump the city’s normal ethnic politics.
The New York Times has carefully avoided describing Mamdani’s migrant politics, even as it has also shown his disregard for economic priorities and the city’s Jewish vote.
On May 29, for example, the newspaper described Mamdani’s disregard for the city’s economic planning agency:
On Jan. 2, Julie Su, then the city’s incoming deputy mayor for economic justice, circulated a memo calling for every E.D.C. [Economic Development Corporation] program to be re-evaluated to ensure the corporation was advancing “not just economic growth or economic strength, but justice.”
Ms. Su’s interests seem to align with those of Lina Khan, the Biden-era Federal Trade Commission leader who helped lead Mr. Mamdani’s transition team and has been personally involved in the quest for a new E.D.C. leader.
Together they urged the mayor to consider hiring Rohit Chopra, a former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Ms. Khan’s former colleague and co-author.
On May 22, the newspaper described how Mamdani elevated Arab concerns above Jewish concerns:
But the divisions within Jewish New York, and the discontent of pro-Israel Jewish leaders, were on display at Gracie Mansion on Monday night during an event to celebrate Jewish Heritage Month.
Mr. Treyger and representatives of other prominent Jewish groups, including the UJA-Federation of New York, which describes itself as the world’s largest local philanthropy, boycotted the event. The leaders of the groups had been planning to skip it …
“I know there are some who may ask, is that election not over?” Mamdani said at a political rally on July 18. “The Democratic Party must change.”
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