Republicans are hoping Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old self-proclaimed socialist, becomes the new face of the Democratic Party after his shock win in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in the New York mayoral race.
Mamdani’s surprise, come-from-behind victory against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is only a day old, but Republicans are viewing his socialist platform, including rent freezes and promises of free child care and city-run grocery stores, as a political liability for Democrats ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
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Mamdani must still compete in a general election contest with incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, Republican Curtis Sliwa, and possibly Cuomo, if he joins Adams in running as an independent, but Republicans wasted no time citing the primary as evidence the party had not recalibrated after its 2024 election losses.
While the result will not be finalized until July 1 under the city’s ranked choice voting rules, Republicans, up to President Donald Trump, sought to tie Mamdani to Democratic leaders while highlighting his past calls to defund the police and other controversial statements.
“We’ve had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous,” Trump said on Truth Social Wednesday, claiming that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was “groveling” over Mamdani.
“Yes, this is a big moment in the History of our Country!” Trump added.
The Left celebrated Mamdani’s victory as an indictment of the political class with lessons of its own to draw for Democrats. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) encouraged candidates to embrace the “fighting oligarchy” message he has taken to rally-style events across the country.
But a senior Democratic strategist in New York, granted anonymity to speak candidly, argued that Trump was the “biggest winner” from Tuesday’s primary.
“For the next several months, President Trump, the Republican and conservative, right-wing political media ecosystem, can now very credibly point to the highest-profile Democratic race of the current moment and say, ‘See, we were right all along,’” the strategist told the Washington Examiner.
“For Democrats, that is going to be a very unfortunate byproduct, and the party and other candidates are going to have to work extra hard to shed themselves of that,” the strategist added.
Centrist Democrats keep Mamdani at arm’s length
Democrats’ nomination of then-candidate Joe Biden in 2020 helped blunt a left-wing resurgence marked by calls to defund the police and abolish immigration enforcement, though Biden stepped to the left upon taking office.
Their losses four years later led to further reevaluations of whether the party needed to soften its stance on transgender politics and other cultural flashpoints.
Keenly aware of the electoral consequences of Mamdani’s primary win, centrist Democrats distanced themselves from his campaign on Wednesday, while senior Democrats stopped short of endorsing him.
Yet the openness of Democratic leadership to meet with him, and reflections that Mamdani’s emphasis on the cost of living was valuable, gave Republicans a case to argue he was leading the party back in time.
The Republican National Committee and campaign arms for both House and Senate Republicans began tying Mamdani to the New York congressional delegation, including Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
“The new face of the Democrat Party just dropped, and it’s straight out of a socialist nightmare,” said Mike Marinella, the National Republican Congressional Committee press secretary. “He’s pro-criminal. A full-blown socialist. Proudly antisemitic. Wants to defund the police. Supports open borders. And yes, he even wants to create government-run grocery stores.”
The campaign arm linked to Mamdani’s past tweets and his sidestepping of whether Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. Mamdani later promised not to defund law enforcement during his mayoral campaign.
Next year’s midterm elections will be critical for the GOP, as it works to defend narrow margins in the Senate and House. Six of New York’s districts are considered competitive by election analysts, including the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
Those districts include Reps. Laura Gillen (D-NY), John Mannion (D-NY), Josh Riley (D-NY), Pat Ryan (D-NY), and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) on the Democratic side, and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) on the GOP side.
The party is also eyeing the gubernatorial contest, which many speculate could come down to incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the latter of whom has not announced a bid but has begun a “shadow campaign” against Hochul.
Lawler, who is also considering a run for governor, said Schumer is “cooked” in a 2028 primary and that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who endorsed Mamdani, is Tuesday’s biggest winner. Ocasio-Cortez has been urged to challenge Schumer for his Senate seat, though it’s not clear if she is interested in the race.
The GOP’s Senate campaign arm argued that Mamdani’s win proves “socialist progressives are calling the shots in the Democrat Party now,” comparing his win to other Democratic candidates such as Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota.
“The grassroots Democrat energy … is a serious threat to everything Americans elected President Trump and Senate Republicans to protect,” Joanna Rodriguez, the communications director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told the Washington Examiner.
At the centrist end of the Democratic Party, sitting lawmakers were taking pains to create daylight with Mamdani. Suozzi said in a post he had “serious concerns” about him before Tuesday, noting that those same concerns “remain” despite his victory.
Adams, who is running as an independent amid corruption allegations he denies, criticized Mamdani as a “snake oil salesman.”
“He will say and do anything to get elected,” Adams told Fox News on Wednesday. “He wants to raise taxes on the 1% of New York’s high-income earners. As the mayor, you don’t have the authority to do that. You know who has the authority to do that? An assemblyman, which he is. He wants to do free buses. He could have done it as an assemblyman.”
Gillen, who defeated Republican ex-Rep. Anthony D’Esposito last year, called Mamdani “too extreme to lead New York City.”
“His entire campaign has been built on unachievable promises and higher taxes, which is the last thing New York needs,” Gillen wrote, accusing him of “a deeply disturbing pattern of unacceptable antisemitic comments which stoke hate at a time when antisemitism is skyrocketing.”
Mamdani, a vocal Israeli critic, has denied that he is antisemitic, and following his victory, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), one of the state’s most prominent Jewish leaders, endorsed Mamdani in the general election after backing Scott Stringer in the primary.
Nadler called Mamdani’s win a “seismic election for the Democratic Party that I can only compare to Barack Obama’s in 2008,” according to the New York Times.
Allegations regarding antisemitism include Mamdani telling moderators during a debate that he believed in Israel’s right to exist but as a state “with equal rights,” not as a Jewish state. He separately appeared to defend the phrase “globalize the intifada,” drawing backlash.
Progressive Democrats brush off ‘overblown’ attacks
While Republicans and some Democrats see Mamdani’s win as a sign of party extremism, the left wing argued his victory is evidence that the current model for Democrats is not working.
Many eye Mamdani, Ocasio-Cortez, and like-minded allies as the face of a new generation, equating new blood with their more aggressive brand of politics.
One of those is David Hogg, the Generation Z activist recently ousted from the Democratic National Committee. He appeared with Mamdani on the campaign trail, and his political group, Leaders We Deserve, endorsed Mamdani’s mayoral bid, donating $300,000 to a Working Families Party super PAC. The group fundraised off of Mamdani’s win after the Tuesday election.
Others argued that his social media-savvy campaign and heavy focus on the cost of living can serve as a template for candidates around the country.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said he thought Mamdani ran an “extraordinary race” because he “didn’t shy away from his convictions on the economy.”
“Part of the lesson is that Democrats are often so focused on the exact solutions, but the first thing is to give voice to what people are feeling is the problems and the frustration,” Khanna said.
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said the mayoral race proved “big, bold ideas win.”
“He did a great job in doing that in a way that’s authentic to him,” Frost said, but he added, “What he did is not gonna make sense for everybody.”
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairman Greg Casar (D-TX) agreed, noting that what worked in New York City won’t necessarily work in Oklahoma City or San Antonio, Texas.
“But, at baseline, we’ve got to learn that focusing on working people’s economics, not doing things the same old way, and exciting tens of thousands of volunteers is something that I think the whole Democratic Party can learn from,” Casar said.
As for the criticism by centrist Democrats, Frost called them “overblown.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who plans to meet with Mamdani soon, said she doesn’t think his win has broader implications for the party. Gillibrand is the chairwoman of the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm for 2026.
“I don’t think it’s true,” she said. “I don’t think a New York City mayor’s race is applicable to most parts of the country. But I do think the issue of affordability, cost of groceries, cost of housing, cost of medicine, are really important to voters everywhere.”
Republicans see enduring ‘boogeyman’
Despite the nuance behind some Democrats’ embrace of his candidacy but not his platform, Republicans aren’t likely to let up anytime soon.
Democratic strategist Christopher Hahn told the Washington Examiner that Republicans appreciate “a boogeyman” and predicted they will try to turn Mamdani into the “new AOC.”
Another Democratic strategist, Stefan Hankin, similarly downplayed Democratic concerns, simply responding “shut up” to questions about the perception problem created by Mamdani.
Hankin reminded Republicans they elected Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), a firebrand conservative with no shortage of scandals of her own.
“Forty-three percent is where he ended up, so it’s not like 60% of Democratic primary voters,” Hankin told the Washington Examiner. “That’s not like, ‘Oh, his win doesn’t count.’ But like, let’s lay off the ‘All Democrats are full-on socialist’ BS that the Republicans are trying to sell here.”
“Cuomo is not exactly, how shall we say, a perfect candidate for multitudes of reasons,” he added. “This wasn’t like you had a pristine, more moderate candidate running against the pristine, more socialist candidate in the socialist one.”
Hahn similarly alluded to Cuomo’s perceived toxicity due to allegations of sexual misconduct and his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the nursing home deaths under his watch.
“Cuomo ran a campaign strikingly similar to Eliot Spitzer’s 2008 failed attempt at a comeback,” Hahn said of the two former New York governors. “Mamdani ran a youthful, affordability-focused campaign that appealed to a broad spectrum of voters.”
Mabinty Quarshie and Ramsey Touchberry contributed to this report.