The Spire

Jake Ruderman ’26

Opinions Editor

Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign has been a shining beacon of success in an otherwise devastating year for the Democratic party. Mamdani, the 33-year-old New York state assemblyman, has been able to convey his campaign message loud and clear: costs of living are too high, and he’s going to change that. 

While Mamdani’s campaign is reasonably focused on life in New York City itself, the concerns he’s targeted are universally applicable across the country, even in non-metropolitan areas. Let’s take a brief dive into what these policies are and how he specifically plans to achieve them.

The heart of Mamdani’s campaign has revolved around the ever-increasing expenses of the country’s biggest city. Mamdani’s campaign website succinctly summarizes his views: “New York is too expensive. Zohran will lower costs and make life easier.” While it might seem too good to be true on the surface, and too far-removed from the ‘hot-button’ issues of abortion, immigration, DEI, and trans women in sports, Mamdani’s beliefs are supported by his list of supposed fixes. 

The Mamdani campaign has boiled the problems of expensive living down into four main categories: housing, groceries, childcare, and transportation. Each of these categories has specific solutions that Zohran promises to implement, including freezing rent in stabilized housing; creating a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on affordability, not profit; providing free childcare for children up to five years old; and ensuring all public buses are fast and free. 

In order to pay for each of these solutions, Mamdani is proposing a series of taxes on the wealthiest 1%, resulting in the generation of billions of dollars of revenue. And while this may sound like a radical overreach of government, the reality is far from it. 

Specifically speaking, Mamdani proposes raising New York’s top corporate tax rate from its current 7.25% to 11.5%—which he emphasizes, is the same rate as New Jersey. According to Mamdani’s Revenue Proposal, corporate earnings have surged nearly 80 percent since the pandemic, while at the same time, the federal corporate tax rate has been slashed from 35% to 21%. Meanwhile, New York’s state corporate tax rate has decreased from 12% in the mid-1970s to 7.25% today. Increasing the tax rate to 11.5% will generate an estimated $5 billion for the city to allocate towards the campaign’s proposed solutions. 

Additionally, Mamdani proposes instituting a 2% individual income tax increase on all $1 million+ annual earners. Currently, the top 1% of New Yorkers currently control over 35% of all income generated in the city, while the bottom third has been reduced to living paycheck to paycheck and, at times, on the streets. Through simply taxing the 1%, Mamdani’s campaign has estimated it will generate more than $4 billion of revenue per year. Despite wealthy critics assuring they’ll flee the socialist city should this happen, Mamdani is calling their bluff. At the heart of his proposal is the notion that the policies he’s looking to implement will improve the lives of all people, not just the lower classes. In a more affordable New York where everyday people don’t worry about where their next meal will come from or if they’ll be able to pay their rent, Mamdani estimates that crime will decrease, the number of unhoused people will drop, and the city will be better off for it.

While these policies are certainly impressive on paper, the underlying narrative of Mamdani’s mayoral campaign hasn’t been the technical x’s and o’s, but rather his ability to authentically connect with young voters. Mamdani defeated his main competitor, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in a landslide primary victory, garnering over 130,000 more votes than his establishment challenger. When you zoom in on the results, you realize that specifically, Mamdani decimated Cuomo amongst the youngest voting brackets, racking up the most votes ever recorded in a New York City primary. This type of turnout is exactly what Democrats will need if they’re going to mount a serious challenge in the upcoming mid-terms. 

So, in the wake of Mamdani’s resounding success in the Democratic primary, surely the entire Democratic party has rallied around Mamdani and looked to expand on the revelations of his campaign to galvanize turnout in elections across the country, right? 

Far from it. Unfortunately, the Democratic establishment and their ideological love for centrist values, and the supposed advantage they provide in our politically polarized era, have refused to get on board with Mamdani’s support for Democratic socialism. Democratic socialists, like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, proved this support to be widespread this past sumer, in their anti-oligarchy campaign across deep red states. But still, Democratic leadership refuses to endorse such strategies. 

Optimistically speaking, one could blame the Democratic party’s hesitance on their skepticism that such drastic changes to the established party will yield long term positive results. 

To this, I’d contend that it’d be hard for Democrats to do much worse. In the 2024 elections, Democrats lost the presidency, the Senate, and failed to flip the House of Representatives; in short, they’ve failed across the board, so why not change strategies?

Cynically speaking, one could point to the fact that the pockets of establishment Democrats have gotten fat thanks to the mega-donors, lobbying firms, and PACs that have funded their ongoing campaigns and bought their votes on particular issues. To endorse Mamdani’s policies would be to endorse a destruction of the system they’ve benefited greatly from—they’ve got it good, so why change anything? It would certainly appear that establishment Democrats, such as prominent New York politicians Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Hakeem Jeffries, are not willing to shirk wealthy donors for an unproven strategy of endorsing democratic socialist ideals and relying on grassroots donations from the working class. Mamdani’s campaign has proudly refused all PAC money, and has instead been supported strictly by individual donors.

With this conundrum in mind, Senator Bernie Sanders summed it up beautifully, explaining that “what you have is an oligarchal group in New York. But you know what they’re worried about? They’re not just worried about Mamdani. If Mamdani wins in New York, the idea will go all across the country, that in fact, you can take on the oligarchs, and you can beat them. That at the end of the day, grassroots organizing, ordinary people, working-class people, standing up and fighting back, are more powerful than the oligarchs and all of their money. That is what the oligarchs are afraid of. That’s what the Republicans are afraid of. That is what I fear the Democratic leadership is afraid of.”

It’s far past time for a change in Democratic leadership. It’s time for Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Hakeem Jeffries, and the other hundreds of Democratic politicians that line their pockets protecting the wealthiest at the expense of the poorest to go. It’s time for a new era of the Democratic party, one that harkens back to its FDR-roots and course-corrects to fight again for the working and middle classes and reign in the oligarchy.

Featured image courtesy of the Manhattan Institute

Copy Edited by Sophia Mariani ’26