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New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani marching in a Labor Day parade on September 6, 2025 in New York City.<\/span>Michael Nigro\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zohran Mamdani hadn\u2019t been<\/span> Regina Weiss\u2019 first choice for mayor of New York City. She\u2019d ranked city comptroller Brad Lander number-one on her primary ballot in June, and told me she wished that the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist state assemblymember brought a bit more experience to the job. But Weiss, who volunteers with Indivisible, was happily supporting the Democratic nominee now, and expected to begin canvassing for him soon. What she couldn\u2019t understand, she told me, as she waited for the candidate to take the stage with Sen. Bernie Sanders at the \u201cFighting Oligarchy\u201d town hall in Brooklyn on Saturday, was why some of the biggest names in her party weren\u2019t doing the same.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never seen this before\u2014I\u2019ve never seen the Democratic leadership not endorse the Democratic candidate,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s so ugly, it\u2019s so cowardly, it\u2019s so stupid. The Democrats are basically in the crapper when it comes to enthusiasm. You\u2019ve got this guy\u2014the Democratic candidate for the biggest city in the country\u2014and they\u2019re not endorsing him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Weiss put her hands to her face in frustration. She\u2019d been reading happily before I came along.<\/p>\n \u201cSorry, I\u2019m very angry about this,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat is it? Is it like they\u2019re afraid? I mean, I guess<\/em> they\u2019re afraid, but my God!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne might think\u2014one might think!\u2014that if a candidate starting at 2 percent in the polls, gets 50,000 volunteers, creates enormous excitement, gets young people involved in the political process, gets non-traditional voters to vote, Democratic leaders will be jumping up and down! \u2018This is our guy!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Two months out from one of the biggest elections since Trump won the presidency, most Democratic voters in New York City are on board with their party\u2019s nominee. After defeating disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo by double digits in the primary<\/a>, Mamdani leads him comfortably again in four-way general-election polls. Scandal-plagued mayor Eric Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa are barely visible in the distance. Mamdani has raised the maximum amount allowable under the city\u2019s matching-funds system, maintained a relentless schedule of campaign appearances and media hits, and even talked privately<\/a> with Barack Obama. His support among elected officials is real. Four members of the city\u2019s congressional delegation have publicly endorsed him\u2014including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with whom he\u2019d appeared a few hours before the town hall. Along the side wall of the packed auditorium at Brooklyn College, city council members and state legislators milled about, mingling with Mamdani\u2019s top advisors and the omnipresent<\/a> former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (who has cut an ad for the candidate, brought Mamdani to a Wu-Tang show, and co-hosted a community event for him in the South Bronx).<\/p>\n But it was hard to ignore who hadn\u2019t<\/em> gotten on board. Even as Trump threatened to unleash hell on New York City, and the president dangled an ambassadorship to lure Adams out of the race, some of the most powerful Democrats in the city and the state have been deafeningly quiet. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who helped force Cuomo\u2019s resignation as governor, is publicly agnostic on whether Mamdani or Cuomo should run America\u2019s largest city. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, after previously avoiding questions about the race by insisting that he does not endorse in primaries, has still not made an endorsement more than two months after the primary. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has thus far avoided backing Mamdani while egging on<\/a> criticisms of his housing policy. Reps. Dan Goldman and Ritchie Torres, junior Democrats with outsized national profiles, have withheld thei support, while suggesting that the nominee has not done enough to condemn anti-semitism.<\/p>\n That Rep. Tom Suozzi, whose Long Island district includes parts of Queens, told a TV interviewer Mamdani should leave the party<\/a> is not so surprising. That Rep. Greg Meeks\u2014the chair of the Queens Democratic Party\u2014is still holding out is a bit more glaring.<\/p>\n For the party\u2019s left-wing, often accused by more moderate factions of hampering Democrats\u2019 big-tent efforts, Mamdani\u2019s nomination poses an obvious question: What kind of \u201cbig tent\u201d party doesn\u2019t have room for the party\u2019s own candidate and the majority of its voters?\u00a0<\/p>\n As Ocasio-Cortez recently put it<\/a>, \u201cAre we a party that rallies behind our nominee, or not?\u201d<\/p>\n For the most part, the rally at Brooklyn College, a brisk walk away from Sanders\u2019 childhood home in Midwood, was an upbeat affair. Sanders has been holding these \u201cFighting Oligarchy\u201d rallies since February, and in always-unsaid ways they\u2019ve sometimes felt like a passing of the torch. Mamdani told the crowd about gathering signatures for his first assembly campaign outside a Sanders rally in 2019, and of building out a volunteer base by inviting people to the senator\u2019s debate watch parties. He spoke in some detail about Sanders\u2019 tenure as mayor of Burlington, Vermont<\/a>\u2014evidence that a socialist can run a city pretty well, but also, that a socialist running a city still feels pretty banal much of the time. (He \u201ctook on a broken property tax system,\u201d Mamdani said, and worked \u201cto transform the Lake Champlain waterfront.\u201d) A few protestors tried to spoil the fun, but never to much effect. At one point, a man with a Cuban flag on his shirt stood up to call the candidate a communist.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBrother, I\u2019m here with another Democratic Socialist,\u201d said a smiling Mamdani, referring to Sanders.<\/p>\n But the lack of support from high-ranking Democrats was an unavoidable topic. During the Q&A portion of the event, a guy from Canarsie stood up to express his fear that history was repeating.<\/p>\n \u201cI just look at this campaign and it reminds me a little bit of what happened a few years ago in Buffalo,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The man was referring to that city\u2019s 2021 mayoral election, when India Walton, a 39-year-old nurse, defeated the incumbent mayor in the primary\u2014only to lose to the same candidate in the general election. Billionaire donors\u2019 support for Cuomo, and the party\u2019s tepid response, was giving him \u201cdeja vu.\u201d \u201cHow do we make sure that something like like this doesn\u2019t happen again?\u201d he asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mamdani\u2019s response was fairly diplomatic. \u201cWe have to beat Andrew Cuomo one more time,\u201d he said, because, \u201cThis is a man who does not understand that no means no.\u201d He urged the crowd to continue volunteering and organizing.<\/p>\n But Sanders sounded like he had been waiting for something like this. And like Weiss, the woman I spoke with before the town hall, he was fired up.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to, if I might\u2014I want to add a point to that very good question,\u201d he said, standing up from his chair and walking toward the front of the stage. \u201cIt may be a little bit out of place here, but I want to do it. I find it a little bit strange that when we have a candidate who competed very hard, as did a number of other people in the Democratic primary\u2014\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He turned to Mamdani.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy understanding is you won that primary. Is that correct?\u201d Sanders asked.<\/p>\n Mamdani nodded.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy understanding is you are the Democratic Party candidate for mayor of the city of New York. Is that correct?\u201d<\/p>\n Mamdani nodded again.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNow, apropos that question: I find it hard to understand how the major Democratic leaders in New York State are not supporting the Democratic candidate,\u201d Sanders continued. \u201cOne might think\u2014one might think!\u2014that if a candidate starting at 2 percent in the polls gets 50,000 volunteers, creates enormous excitement, gets young people involved in the political process, gets non-traditional voters to vote, Democratic leaders would be jumping up and down! \u2018This is our guy!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The senator seemed to be saying what everyone else was thinking. The response from the crowd was surpassed, perhaps, only by Sanders\u2019 earlier condemnation of American weapons sales in Israel. And the two sentiments are not really unrelated\u2014in the case of both Israel and Mamdani, high-profile Democrats are substantially out of step with Democratic voters, and well-funded attempts to weaponize Mamdani\u2019s criticism of Israel in the primary only served to underscore<\/a> the qualities that made him appealing to voters.<\/p>\n\n