The Moderate Case for Mamdani

I disagree with much of what Zohran Mamdani supports in his bid to become New York Mayor. But if the polls can be believed, he’s going to win easily in November. So, Democrats need to focus on the big picture strategy. Is it really worth the fight within the party to try to defeat him with a deeply flawed moderate who isn’t going to win anyway? In a counterintuitive way, those of us who want to build the moderate wing of the party would be smart to just let this happen.

Let me explain.

Mamdani won an unlikely and yet convincing victory in the Democratic primary earlier this summer, beating the moderates’ favored candidate, Andrew Cuomo. (Local elections in New York are partisan.) Ever since then, to hear my fellow moderates as well as the Wall Street Journal tell it, Mamdani represents the second coming of Joseph Stalin. Before you know it we’ll all be standing in line to buy a can of beans at a state-owned grocery store.

Now to be sure, I’m skeptical that Mamdani’s idea to create city-run grocery stores in food deserts is going to work out. But what’s wrong with seeing a real problem and proposing a creative solution to solve it, even if it doesn’t turn out to be practical?

Here in Madison we used a city subsidy to build the Trader Joe’s on Monroe Street in 2006. The market realities wouldn’t allow for a grocery store in that location so we used a tax incremental district to bring the lease terms in line with what a grocery store could support. The result was not only the fabulously successful TJ’s, but 50 units of housing above it and a lot more value on city tax rolls. The TIF subsidy was paid back in record time.

So, maybe New Yorkers might not get city-run stores, but highlighting the problem could lead to some other solution to a serious problem. If you want to run against this guy because he wants to make it easier for people to buy food, well, good luck with that.

The grocery stores are, of course, just one of Mamdani’s ideas that has come under fire — most for perfectly good reasons. Rent control creates more problems than it solves. His support for Palestine is understandable given the way Israel has ruthlessly overplayed its hand, but Mamdani has gone way too far in taking on a “river to the sea” mentality. There’s more, but he’s already moderated some of those stances and a person can hope that holding office in a widely diverse city will further push him to the center.

Then there’s the quality of the alternatives. Cuomo is now running as an independent in November as is incumbent Eric Adams. Adams didn’t even try to get the Democratic nomination after his indictments for various forms of corruption were nixed by Donald Trump’s Justice Department, allegedly in exchange for Adams’ pledge to support deportations of undocumented migrants. Call me crazy, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it eventually comes to light that more than a policy promise exchanged hands.

Cuomo was forced to resign as New York’s governor amid credible allegations of sexual misconduct while the charges against Adams also seemed more than plausible. You might say these guys are damaged goods. I’d rather vote for an honest man with whom I have some policy disagreements than a sleazeball who happens to be ideologically more in tune with my views. 

Finally, let’s deal with this whole notion that Mamdani is going to destroy the Democratic Party. Trust me, the Democratic Party needs no help in destroying itself. The party is at low ebb, more unpopular than ever and more unpopular even than the neo-fascist party in power right now. My party doesn’t just have an image problem, it has a problem with substance. It’s true that Mamdani won’t help that situation, but he can’t possibly make it any worse. And if he’s successful at making New York more affordable he might help.

He didn’t win the primary because New Yorkers want socialism. He won because he wasn’t Cuomo, he offered a fresh, positive approach and he addressed the housing and cost of living issues that plague his city. Even if voters didn’t necessarily agree with him on everything, he seemed like a candidate who cared about the biggest issues that mattered to them.

Mamdani won the primary fair and square. The party should unite behind him. If my fellow moderates continue down this road of hitting the panic button every time we lose to the left we’ll just keep driving the whole party down. We should expect that the left will support a moderate Democrat who wins the party’s nomination. But why should they after they’ve witnessed the moderates go unhinged over Mamdani? 

I think the answer is an organized, official Moderate Democratic Party operating as a subset of the Democrats and most definitely not as a third party. In order to make that work, we can’t be at war with the progressive wing. We need to honor their candidates when they prevail in primaries just as we should expect them to honor ours when they win the nomination.

It’s no secret that I think the better path for Democrats is down the middle. But no matter who my party offers up it’s better than the fascists.

A version of this piece originally appeared in Isthmus.