More of What’s in Store for Mamdani That Won’t Be Pretty
In my two most recent Dorf on Law columns (here and here), I discussed the frantic efforts by the Democratic Party's establishment -- together with the likes of The New York Times, both on its editorial and news sides -- to kneecap Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani in the upcoming New York mayoral election. The party's leaders could not be bothered to find an alternative to Mamdani who is even a little bit palatable, instead falling in line behind the disgraced Andrew Cuomo, who was forced to resign from his office in 2021 when his lifelong habits of bullying, dishonesty, and misogyny at long last became impossible to ignore. Are there truly no non-Mamdani politicians in New York who are decent human beings, bigwig Democrats?
Apparently not, or at least the party's leaders seem not to think so. In any event, my ire in those two recently columns has been focused on the fact that the party's power brokers have obviously been icing out Mamdani because he proudly identifies as a Democratic Socialist. New York's current governor, Kathy Hochul, has gone much further than most of her insider buddies by actually endorsing Mamdani, an endorsement that I (admittedly ungenerously) characterized as a "hacked-up hairball" that she "coughed out."
My cynicism comes from her decision to say early on in her endorsement that "we've had our disagreements" and to close the piece by emphasizing that "Mr. Mamdani and I don’t see eye to eye on everything, and I don’t expect us to. I will always reserve the right to disagree honestly and to argue passionately." Even though she immediately added that she "also believe[s] that New York State and New York City are at our best when we stand together against those who attempt to tear us apart," her attempt to maintain plausible deniability when it comes to Mamdani struck me as something that she would not have insisted upon with any other endorsement.
So consider this my moment to cut Gov. Hochul a bit more slack than I had previously allowed. As I noted parenthetically above, I was ungenerous. And this is all the more important to say now in light of how obvious it is becoming that she undeniably took a big step away from her gaggle of insiders with even this somewhat muted endorsement. There are a lot of people in New York who will never forgive her for this, because they view Mamdani as unacceptable and even dangerous.
I am not surprised by the Republicans who have already (as I noted in last Friday's column) decided to use Mamdani as an avatar for the entirely imaginary "pro-terrorist wing" of the Democratic Party. That sliming was not some Republican back-bencher's random and desperate attempt to get attention, by the way, but was in fact a statement from House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has also claimed that there is a "pro-Hamas wing" of the opposition party and asserted that, "[j]ust last month, one-third of Democrats surveyed said they support Hamas — a foreign terrorist organization — more than our ally, Israel." (Yes, I believe that Johnson is accurately describing the results of a credible poll from an unbiased survey operation. No doubt about it. He is such a scrupulously honest source.) Johnson was talking about the No Kings rallies (calling them 'hate America" events), but upstate New York congressperson Elise Stefanik drew the direct connection by saying that Mamdani embraces "terrorist sympathizers."
So as soon as they had a Democrat in their sites with a foreign-sounding name who is a convenient target for their all-purpose Islamophobia, Republicans were going to do what they always do. But because New York City is home to large numbers of Jewish voters, the politics were inevitably going to become more complicated and heated, even setting aside the Republicans' well-worn playbook.
To be clear, the "Jewish vote" in New York is anything but monolithic. Jews for Racial and Economic Justice re-posted a New York Times article from August under this somewhat surprising headline: "New York Times: Many Jewish Voters Back Mamdani. And Many Agree With Him on Gaza: Zohran Mamdani won over Jewish voters in New York City who were energized by his economic agenda and unbothered by — or sympathetic to — his views on Israel and Gaza.) To be clear, that is the headline from The Times's original story, but the reprint puzzlingly reworded the sub-headline in ways that seemed unnecessary (albeit not misleading).
What about the numbers? CBS News reported the results of a poll (run by Fox News) last Friday with the headline "Jewish voters nearly split between Mamdani and Cuomo in NYC mayor's race, new poll finds," reporting specifically that "[t]he poll [which had a margin of error of +/- 3 percent] of Jewish voters gave Cuomo 42%, Mamdani 38% and Republican Curtis Sliwa 13%." Even if Sliwa ends up withdrawing, and even if all of his voters and all 7 percent of undecided voters break to Cuomo, Mamdani is the choice of three out of every eight Jewish voters. Still, that means that five out of eight oppose him, which is worth analyzing.
The other day, Professor Dorf sent me some thoughts on this matter; and without in any way claiming that he endorses my views here, I will rely on his very useful taxonomy/description of Jewish voters who are pointing to Mamdani as someone who is bad (even scary) for them in particular:
1) People who oppose Mamdani because he is a Democratic Socialist and thus a political progressive. This is why Hochul has been running around being the "therapist in chief" (her words) trying to calm down New York's business guys, both Jewish and otherwise. A Guardian article, for example, reports this regarding Jamie Dimon (the CEO of JPMorgan, who is not Jewish): "Just days ago, Dimon lambasted Mamdani at an event in Ireland, calling the mayoral hopeful 'more of a Marxist than a socialist. And now you see these Democrats falling all over themselves saying, "Well, he’s pointing out some real problems, affordable housing and grocery prices,"' Dimon continued, before claiming Mamdani pushed 'the same ideological mush that means nothing in the real world'."
The point is that people who agree with Dimon's nonsensical statements can deny being motivated by fear of progressive policies and instead talk about "fear among Jewish voters" as a reason to oppose Mamdani.
I should specify that I am not in any way qualified (or sufficiently informed) to say whether anyone is truly afraid of Mamdani, and I am definitely not saying that everyone who expresses such fear is using that as a pretext. It is true that there are people who have argued that those claims are overblown, with one New York activist (Mik Moore) responding to a rabbi's "jeremiad against Zohran Mamdani" by saying that what makes "you and your congregants skeptical of Mamdani[ is] fear, stoked by Israeli hasbara, amplified by right-wing media, and seasoned with a pinch (or more) of old-fashioned bigotry." Again, however, this is not a monolithic group of voters, and there are surely many people pounding their keyboards as I write this, passionately responding to Moore's assessment.
To repeat, I am not qualified to referee that dispute, and I would never pretend to do so. I am simply saying that there are people claiming that they are afraid of Mamdani's possible mayoralty, some of whom are surely sincere but some of whom are using it as cover. The existence of the latter group in no way delegitimizes the honest feelings of anyone in the former group.
Back to Professor Dorf's taxonomy (again, for organizational purposes only):
2) Some of it comes from constituencies -- like ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn -- that in recent years have become increasingly Republican and so are in no way within the reach of any Democrat (Cuomo or otherwise).
3) Some of it comes from those Jews who view any criticism of Israel or support for Palestinian human rights as antisemitic. This includes those who say that if someone criticizes Israel without simultaneously criticizing all other human rights violators, the selectivity indicates antisemitism.
4) Finally, there is a residual group of anti-Netanyahu, generally progressive Jews, who are against the war in Gaza but uncomfortable with Mamdani because of his associations and statements. They attribute to Mamdani the phrase "globalize the intifada," which (as the Guardian article linked above notes) is an inaccurate claim, because Mamdani has not himself used it but has not condemned people who use it, on the ground that he interprets them to mean something banal like "respect Palestinian human rights."
For what it could be worth -- and I am fully aware that for some people Mamdani's word is per se worth little or nothing -- a CNN article earlier this month, "Zohran Mamdani tries to reassure Jewish voters in NYC worried about his ascendance," reported this: "Facing pressure and persistent media questions, Mamdani has condemned Hamas and discouraged use of the phrase 'globalize the intifada.'" I suspect that such statements are a virtual Rohrschach test for New York's voters. And even though the mayor of NYC has no impact on foreign policy, the people who are genuinely afraid seem to be saying that they are afraid of what will happen in New York itself if Mamdani becomes mayor.
So where does that leave us? As I have tried to emphasize, I am not the right person -- if such a person even exists -- to say who is genuine, who is using accusations of antisemitism opportunistically, and so on. Although I suppose that further polling might be able to shed light on some of those questions, at least as a matter of figuring out how large groups 1 through 4 might be, that is not the issue that strikes me as the most momentous in this discussion.
Instead, I want to take us back to my second Mamdani-fueled column (which I published two days ago), where I argued that Mamdani is going to become absolutely toxic, possibly even within a few days of taking office. The sure-to-be-coming linking of arms by the Republicans and anti-progressive Democrats to disparage the new mayor, plus New Yorkers' infamous ability to hate every mayor as soon as they can blame any problem on him, will (as I put it) "definitely be an ugly thing to watch."
And now, we can add to that toxic stew the simple reality that even in the very safe city that New York has become, some people will be the victims of violent crimes after Mamdani takes office, and some of those crime victims will be Jewish. Some people will truly believe that Mamdani is the reason such things will have happened. I take no position here about whether those people will be right, although I will say that their case to date strikes me as incomplete.
What I can say is that, no matter who is right on that score, the people who want to get rid of Mamdani for any reason -- including people who do not believe the cause-and-effect story -- will gladly jump on board the media firestorm that will most definitely follow. People who believe that Mamdani is in fact responsible for such violence will of course feel justified in criticizing him, and everyone else who wants to take him down will be happy to go along for the ride, pretextually or otherwise.
Again, it will not be pretty.
- Neil H. Buchanan