His nearest competitor, Zohran Mamdani, is a self-described Democratic Socialist.
At the outset of the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Republicans who hoped to derail Donald Trump’s trajectory to the presidency lamented the “collective action problem” with which they were contending.
The theory went something like this: At the time, Donald Trump could count on the support of roughly one-third of GOP primary voters. And yet, that one-third gave Trump the most support in a field crowded with alternative candidates. Each of these alternatives believed that Trump would fade, and each thought they would benefit as a result. But no one wanted to be the first to attempt to bell the cat. Trump was popular among Republican voters, and he would respond to the slightest criticism with disproportionate force — burying his opponents in invective and dragging them down as a result. This paralyzing idea led Trump’s Republican opponents to focus their attacks on each other. Rather than working in concert, they were at cross purposes until it was too late.
That was the idea, anyway. Collective action remains a lofty but often unachievable objective in political contests where it’s every man for himself. But New York City’s mayoral candidates did their best to overcome their mutual hostility and take down the biggest threat to their respective ambitions: former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
On Sunday, almost every candidate vying to oust Eric Adams from Gracie Mansion — Republicans and Democrats, left, right, and center – gathered for an apolitical event where they nevertheless presented a united front against Cuomo’s restoration to power.
Via the New York Times:
On Sunday, nine mayoral candidates stood on a street in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood in front of a memorial wall that displayed photos of nursing home residents who died during the Covid crisis. Each candidate said that they were not attending for political reasons, while taking the opportunity to criticize the former governor, who is leading in the polls.
. . .
Mr. Cuomo’s critics have focused on a July 2020 state Health Department report regarding nursing homes, which they have called inaccurate and have said deflected blame for the deaths away from the governor. In 2021, New York State’s attorney general, Letitia James, found that Mr. Cuomo’s administration had undercounted coronavirus-related deaths of nursing home patients by the thousands.
It was a noble effort. But for all the popular fealty to the notion that a Trump-like figure can be stopped by the collective will of a united opposition, it probably won’t work. Two recent polls of New York City’s Democratic electorate find Cuomo soaring above his competitors with 41 percent and 39 percent, respectively. His nearest competitor, Zohran Mamdani, is a self-described Democratic Socialist and, thus, an unpalatable alternative to Cuomo among those who would be inclined toward a collective action solution to his candidacy in the first place. Ultimately, the strategy cannot work without a clear alternative to the candidate the collective is attempting to displace. No one in the race to engineer Adams’s ouster fits that bill, and none of the also-rans in this race seem inclined to make way for such a figure.
Even if there were, it would be tough for that hypothetical candidate to overcome a plurality this large. America’s voters tend to get what they want. New York City’s experience suggests that perhaps “collective action” was never the panacea its proponents made it out to be.