A Democratic Socialist from Uganda may become mayor of New York. Why is this important

As part of the New York mayoral election, the Democratic Party primaries were held, which ended in an unexpected way. The winner of the vote and the main contender for the post was a native of Uganda, Zohran Mamdani, who calls himself a socialist. He promised to freeze rental prices and tax the city's wealthiest residents. Mamdani's victory was the success of the radical wing of the Democrats, which can change the political landscape of the United States. About why these preliminary results of the local elections are important, see the Izvestia article.

How did the primaries go?

• The Democratic Party's primaries for New York City mayor were held on June 24 and were supposed to be a fairly routine procedure that could hardly attract widespread attention. The main favorite of the vote was the representative of the establishment, former Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, who left his post in 2021 amid allegations of harassment and an unsuccessful fight against COVID-19. Cuomo's only potential rival could be incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, but he refused to run for the Democrats due to allegations of corruption and low popularity.

• Given that the Republican position in New York is extremely weak, the winner of the Democratic primaries is virtually guaranteed the mayoral seat. Up until the final day of voting, Cuomo confidently led the polls. However, the first calculations showed that the experienced politician was defeated and unexpectedly lost to 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, who had almost no support back in the spring.

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• The results of the primaries have not yet been finalized. They use the so—called rating voting - the voter chooses not one candidate from the ballot, but five at once, arranging them in order of preference. To calculate the results, a system is used to screen out unpopular candidates and transfer votes for them to other candidates. Screening is conducted until one candidate gets more than 50% of the votes.

• This type of voting avoids a second round, but requires a long count. However, it is already known that Mamdani won, and Cuomo admitted defeat, and for the United States this event, formally only at the local level, became a national sensation due to the personality and views of the winning candidate.

Who is Zohran Mamdani?

• Zohran Mamdani was born in 1991 in Uganda. His father, an Indian Muslim, is a researcher of colonialism at Columbia University, and his mother, a Hindu, is known in India as a director and film producer. When the future politician was five years old, his family moved to South Africa, and two years later settled in New York. In his youth, Mamdani provided consultations to representatives of national minorities who were threatened with eviction from their rental homes, and also tried to establish himself as a rapper. It was only 20 years after moving to the United States that he became a citizen of the country.

Mamdani began his political career as an assistant to various candidates from the Democratic Party in elections at the city and state levels. In 2020, he ran for the New York State Assembly for the first time and has remained a congressman ever since. It is noteworthy that in every election in his district, Mamdani was the only candidate without Republican competitors.

• Mamdani calls himself a democratic socialist — this is a rather rarely used term for the United States, which only Senator Bernie Sanders identifies himself with among well-known politicians. Some of the views and promises made by the candidate during the primaries are extraordinary for American society.

• The situation in the city could also contribute to the popularity of Mamdani's candidacy. New York City has been drowning in a wave of poverty, garbage and increased crime in recent years, the number of homeless people on its streets is growing every year, and the authorities are not coping with these problems. At the same time, real estate prices are rising, and Mamdani acts as a representative of those who are tired of the current situation and the helplessness of the authorities.

• In his campaign, Mamdani emphasized the fight against inequality and the protection of the poor. He promised to limit rent increases, which make New York City one of the most expensive cities in the world, and to build social housing by consolidating affluent neighborhoods. Mamdani supports an increase in the minimum wage and an increase in corporate tax to the level of the neighboring state of New Jersey.

• Among his proposals, which are causing a lot of controversy in the United States, is the introduction of a 2% tax for those who earn more than $1 million per year. According to Mamdani, this measure will bring in $20 billion to the budget and finance free schools at universities, freeze subway fares, make bus rides free and protect tenants.

• Mamdani, being a local politician, actively criticizes the State of Israel, accusing it of genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. He regularly participates in pro-Palestinian protests that take place in New York, the city with the largest Jewish population in the world. At the same time, Mamdani emphasizes that he is not an anti-Semite, and has attracted a number of Jewish organizations to his side.

What does his nomination mean for the United States?

Mamdani's victory in the New York primaries has become a high-profile event in the political life of the United States, which is now expected to have far-reaching consequences. She became a notable success of the left faction within the Democratic Party. The centrist core that used to dominate it, which failed last year's federal elections, has now been defeated in the domestic arena, which may be a signal for its complete renewal.

Experts are already saying that the Democratic Party is ripe for its own equivalent of the MAGA movement, a radical wing that, with its bold slogans and populist promises, will attract young people to its side and become a formidable force in the next elections. It is difficult to say that Mamdani will lead it, but the socialist idea he proposed will definitely attract new leaders who are ready to shock the United States, just as the current president Donald Trump did at the time. The radical left, which the head of the White House has been scaring America with for so long, will now be inspired enough to form into a new force. Trump himself has already expressed his attitude to the emerging popularity of the Socialists quite clearly, calling Mamdani a "crazy communist."

• Mamdani also taught his fellow party members an important lesson on how to run their campaign. He did not focus on identity issues, which the neutral majority was tired of. Mamdani prioritized economic and social assistance issues, which concern the population much more than protecting the rights of various minorities. He actively worked at the grassroots level and communicated with voters on the streets, which is atypical behavior for the democratic establishment.

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• Finally, Mamdani's clear and unambiguous position on Palestine contrasted with compromise statements that usually come from Democrats and do not satisfy either supporters of Israel or its opponents. The fact that a man with an active pro-Palestinian position has achieved political success may in the future lead to the breakdown of the traditionally favorable attitude of the United States towards Israel, which seemed to be unshakeable mainstream. Given how actively Trump is acting in this direction, the anti-Israeli approach in American politics has its own perspective.

• However, so far, with regard to Mamdani and the revolution committed within the Democratic Party, only intermediate results should be summed up. He has not yet become mayor of the largest and richest city in the United States — there are still more than four months until the vote itself. Cuomo, who has been defeated, may try to run again as an independent candidate, and the first opinion polls already show that his chances with Mamdani are about equal. Given how weak the positions of Republicans and their candidate Curtis Plum are in New York, the two Democrats can afford to meet again on the ballot without threatening to give the city to someone else's party.

Why is this important

• The election of the mayor of New York will now become the starting point for changes in the Democratic Party, which has been struggling for a long time after a series of defeats at the federal level. Their completion will determine whether it will remain on a centrist platform or fully transform into a leftist force capable of challenging the Republican Party that has undergone a similar transformation. In this case, in a few years, the US population will be divided not into the right and the left, but into the extreme right and the extreme left, which will significantly worsen the split in society.

During the preparation of the Izvestia material, we talked and took into account the opinions of:

• American political scientist Malek Dudakov;
• Dmitry Drobnitsky, an American political scientist;
• the Americanist Roman Romanov.