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Progressive Unity in New York

Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander cross-endorse for the June 24 Democratic primary.

New York’s mayoralty race is increasingly becoming a proxy for the national debate over what Democrats should stand for. Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist who now stands a better than even chance of beating Andrew Cuomo, has come up with just the right one-line slogan for Democrats: The cost of living is killing working-class New Yorkers.

That’s true not just of New Yorkers. That phrase—“the cost of living”—includes unaffordable housing, sky-high child care costs, out-of-pocket expenses for health care, as well as college that requires disabling debt. And this didn’t just happen randomly. It reflects a disparity of economic and political power.

The tragic thing about the silly 2024 election-year debate about the price of eggs was that it really wasn’t about eggs. High-priced eggs became a proxy for the high cost of living generally. Poor Joe Biden didn’t have the wit to convert this small symbol into a debate about how the corporate economy is screwing working- and middle-class people generally.

Mamdani does, and more. What people care about is not “inflation”; that’s a statistical abstraction. They care about the backbreaking cost of the basics.

Government, in the right hands, has the capacity to change the high cost of living for the better, but the corporate domination of everything means that the change requires radical policies like controls on rents, an end to private equity ownership of housing, construction of substantial social housing, free or deeply subsidized public transit and child care, and debt-free college.

Until the national government is released from Trump captivity, cities and states are the locus of both imaginative policy debate and revived progressive politics.

This narrative also creates an instructive notional debate between Mamdani and journalist Ezra Klein. In a sense, Cuomo, as New York’s governor, was Klein’s “abundance” agenda made flesh. He is running for mayor as the politician who gets things done. He may be a little seedy, but he brought in the new Tappan Zee Bridge, named for his father Mario Cuomo, ahead of schedule and under budget. He cut red tape through sheer bullying.

Then again, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro also cut red tape when I-95 collapsed in June 2023. Experts advised that reopening the roadway would take months. Shapiro brought together local, state, and federal partners with unions, contractors, and the private sector to work 24/7 and get the six-lane artery back in service in 12 days. So you don’t have to be a bully to make government work.

Mamdani’s campaign invites the question, abundance for whom? This economy is abundantly wealthy. The problem is that most of the abundance goes to billionaires.

Klein is not wrong that a lot of what government does takes too long. But a little class consciousness could remind Klein that the deeper problem is that government policy favors the wrong people. And Mamdani gets this: At a rally over the weekend, he said, “Government must deliver an agenda of abundance that puts the 99 percent over the 1 percent.”

Among the most competent and diligent (and progressive) public servants in New York is the elected city comptroller, Brad Lander, who is currently running third in the polls, behind Cuomo and Mamdani. Last Friday, Mamdani and Lander did something extremely cool: They cross-endorsed.

Under New York’s system of ranked-choice (instant runoff) voting, a voter ranks candidates in order of preference. As the bottom choices are dropped, votes get reallocated. Mamdani and Lander urged voters to rank one of them first and the other second, depending on whom they preferred, to maximize progressive voting power and defeat Cuomo.

This is in welcome contrast to 2021, when progressive disunity allowed the corrupt and inept Eric Adams, now the incumbent, to narrowly win. This time, the left is united.

Even better than the strategy was the commercial announcing it, in which Mamdani and Lander have a chance encounter in the park, praise each other lavishly, and propose the cross-endorsement strategy. They are clearly having fun. They are both jaunty and irreverent, in contrast to Cuomo’s chronic grumpiness.

“We both love New York City,” says Lander.

“That’s why it’s so important to not send scandal-ridden, corrupt Andrew Cuomo to City Hall,” Mamdani adds.

“New Yorkers deserve so much better than a disgraced creep,” continues Lander. “Zohran, you’ve done a remarkable job building a historic grassroots campaign for a New York City all New Yorkers can afford.”

Mamdani returns the compliment: “Brad, you’ve been a principled progressive leader in our city for years.”

They then explain the cross-endorsement strategy and have a friendly mock dispute over who should be ranked first.

Wow! A disgraced creep!! That should stick. Remember when progressive politics was cool?

The word on the street is that if Mamdani wins, he will appoint Lander first deputy mayor, the equivalent to the city’s chief operating officer.

Early voting began Saturday, and broke records. It would be surprising if Cuomo generated that kind of enthusiasm.

It’s almost enough to take your mind off Trump.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

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