In the weeks after he won the 2021 Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, Eric Adams was enthusiastically embraced by the party’s establishment. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi posed for a picture with Adams and described herself as “honored” to host him at a meeting of House Democrats. He was seated near President Biden at a White House session. “Why Top Democrats Are Listening to Eric Adams Right Now” was the headline of a New York Times story.
Four years later, Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral Democratic primary in the Big Apple by a larger margin than Adams, with far more overall votes, and on the strength of a spectacular campaign that inspired young voters across the country. But the party’s establishment is dissing him. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, hugely influential figures in both New York and national politics, have refused to endorse Mamdani. Same for the state’s other senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Governor Kathy Hochul. Many prominent national Democrats, such as Rahm Emanuel and Cory Booker, are also either criticizing Mamdani or refusing to back him. It was considered a coup for Mamdani when it was reported that he and Barack Obama had a lengthy and positive phone call. But the former president hasn’t actually publicly announced his support for Mamdani, either.
The shunning of Mamdani is an important illustration of the state of the Democratic Party in 2025. It shows some unfortunate truths about the party’s center-left establishment and points to some clear steps progressives must take.
Why are center-left Democrats so reluctant to endorse Mamdani? At first, they hinted that he didn’t care enough about the safety of Jewish New Yorkers, since he had refused to condemn the phrase “Globalize the intifada” during his primary run. But now that Mamdani has declared that phrase problematic, the goalposts have moved. Jeffries claimed last week that voters in his congressional district aren’t convinced Mamdani’s ideas are achievable. (Mandami won Jeffries’s district during the primary.)
I don’t buy the viability of Mamdani’s ideas as the reason prominent Democrats refuse to endorse the winner of the Democratic primary, particularly in a race against Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo, who have long records of scandal and are in some ways trying to align with President Trump. If politicians only endorsed candidates who they were sure could implement their campaign promises, there would be very few endorsements.
Let me move to what I suspect are their actual reasons for the cold shoulder Mamdani is receiving. First, many center-left Democratic strategists and lawmakers fear that prominent progressives tar the entire party as overly left-wing. So they don’t want a socialist to become mayor of New York City and certainly would not endorse that person and encourage his victory.
There’s something to this perspective. Republicans do run ads attacking moderate Democrats in purple and red districts and states for what more progressive Democrats in very blue areas say and do. Perhaps those ads work.
But that’s nothing new. Before the arrival of “the Squad” made her seem more centrist, Republicans constantly likened moderate Democrats to Pelosi and other coastal figures in the party. In the 1990s, Democrats attacked moderate Republicans by suggesting that they were clones of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. A political party will almost always have some more ideological figures that the other side can attack.
Also, the idea of local representation is important. New York City’s electorate is to the left of say, Wisconsin’s. So it’s entirely appropriate that the city’s leadership reflects that liberalism. Zohran Mamdani is electable in New York City. Candidates there shouldn’t be judged on their palatability in swing House districts far away.
As party leaders, Jeffries and Schumer in particular may view their roles as appealing to the median voter across the country. That’s reasonable. If their position is that they can’t associate themselves with Mandami because he is too far left for swing voters outside New York, they should state that explicitly (or at least have their aides leak it). That way, they are not implying that Mamdani has policies so radical that he can’t be endorsed even for New York City. It would also end the drama around their refusal to endorse Mandami. If their primary considerations are swing voters far away, they have little reason to back Mamdani, no matter what he promises them.
But I doubt the wariness of Mamdani is entirely about electability and party positioning nationally. I worry that Jeffries, Schumer, Gillibrand, and perhaps more importantly their campaign donors simply oppose someone as progressive as Mamdani holding office, particularly one as prestigious as mayor of New York.
One big piece of evidence for that theory is that Jeffries basically did nothing as progressives Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman were ousted from their U.S. House seats in Democratic primaries last year. Bush and Bowman were not perfect politicians, but they were perfectly electable in general elections in their districts. But more centrist forces in the party, particularly pro-Israel donors, spent heavily to defeat them. A similar centrist coalition is developing in New York, egged on by the refusal of the city’s top Democrats to coalesce around Mamdani.
I’m really disappointed by what’s happening in New York. In my view, the Democratic Party in the Trump era must be a true coalition—respecting ideological differences. That can’t work if the center-left rejects progressives who win Democratic primaries fair and square (not to mention in one of the more stunning upsets in recent New York political history). Even if these party leaders end up endorsing Mamdani before the election, they have damaged him and implied that winning a Democratic primary alone is not enough to get support from party elders.
What should progressives do about the rejection of Mamdani? First of all, progressive activists and non-politicians (me, for example) should complain about the unfairness of it all. Most on the left got behind Kamala Harris during last year’s presidential election, even though we felt the Biden-Harris administration was facilitating a genocide in Gaza. Surely free buses, rent freezes, and public grocery stores (Mamdani’s ideas) are not more problematic than providing arms to Israel as it kills Palestinian civilians. Jeffries and Schumer perhaps have to consider swing districts and states. But there is nothing stopping Cory Booker, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Biden, Harris, Obama, Pete Buttigieg, and numerous other Democrats who aren’t part of the party’s top current leadership from endorsing Mamdani right now. Progressives should make the case that “Vote blue no matter what” seems to be only respected by one side.
Secondly, progressive activists should acknowledge this reality and internalize what it portends—that centrist Democrats have real differences with progressives on many issues and aren’t going to cede control of the party easily. A few years ago, I hoped and perhaps expected that the Democratic Party would become a true progressive party, in the same way that conservatives have captured the GOP. In Republican politics today, the party usually nominates the most conservative person who can win the election in a given area. (So in Maine that’s Susan Collins, in Texas it’s someone like Ted Cruz.)
But Democratic politics are likely to be split along center-left versus left lines for the foreseeable future. So Michelle Wu, Boston’s very successful mayor, is facing a primary challenge because there is a moderate faction in the city that views her as too progressive. Progressive strategist Waleed Shadid argued in a sharp recent piece that the Democratic center is so strong and ready to contest the left that progressives should for now retrench from trying to win primaries and general elections in purple and red states and instead focus exclusively on winning primaries in very blue areas.
Progressive candidates, though, shouldn’t lead with their annoyance with the establishment. Instead, they should follow Mamdani’s model: Campaign hard to rank-and-file Democratic voters; meet with establishment leaders and court their support; don’t complain about establishment resistance even after those meetings.
The average Democratic voter isn’t a committed progressive or moderate. They want Democrats to win and stop Trump. They like charismatic, inspiring candidates of all stripes. They aren’t eager to hear Democrats bash one another. So Mamdani, by meeting with Jeffries, Schumer, and the like, is doing his part. Those politicians are making themselves look bad by refusing to endorse a Democratic candidate who seems eager to build alliances across the party. Even centrist voices such as the Bulwark’s Tim Miller are questioning why Jeffries and other senior Democrats won’t endorse Mamdani.
But I don’t think progressive politicians should just let this behavior slide, either. They need to recognize that they are in a coalition with some allies who don’t respect them, and act accordingly. Progressives have leverage, and they should use it. For example, if Democrats win the House majority next year, progressive members should demand, in exchange for voting for Jeffries to be speaker, that he pledge to endorse the Democratic nominee for president, whoever that is. That way, if somehow a progressive wins the nomination, Jeffries won’t be able to repeat this dance of bashing the candidate that the party’s voters support. If he won’t make that commitment, progressive members should not give their votes to Jeffries for speaker, instead holding out for another Democrat who will make such a pledge.
The Democratic Party is so ideologically diverse these days, from Rashida Tlaib to Jared Golden, that there are bound to be conflicts. But not every disagreement is legitimate. There is no good reason for Jeffries, Schumer, or Gillibrand to refuse to support Mamdani, an inspiring candidate who won the primary and is willing to work with people to his right, particularly when his opponents are the ethically challenged Adams and Cuomo. Party leaders are dead wrong here—and their terrible instincts in New York are a reflection of their broader shortcomings.
