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BEFORE ZOHRAN MAMDANI, THERE WAS COMRADE LA GUARDIA  
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Waleed Shahid
June 23, 2025
Waleed's Substack
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_ First they call you radical. Then they name an airport after you. _


Zorhan Mamdani (l), Fiorello La Guardia (r),

 

In 1935, at the end of NYC Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's first year in
office, THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD assessed him bluntly:

_“[He is] fond of toying with haphazard proposals that may be
benevolent in intention but are dangerous or impossible in practice.
He seems always to want to have in hand some socialistic plaything or
other. Just now it is a municipal power plant.”_

Today, of course, La Guardia is remembered not as a dangerous radical
but as perhaps the greatest mayor in American history, the archetype
of bold and effective urban leadership. What was once derided as a
"socialistic plaything"—a publicly-owned municipal power plant—has
returned in new form as a central plank of contemporary policy. New
York’s recent Build Public Renewables Act, championed by Zohran
Mamdani, the city's chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, a
broad coalition
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labor unions, and even Governor Kathy Hochul herself, embraces the
very model that once drew scorn. Yesterday’s radicalism, as it turns
out, often becomes today's mainstream consensus.

[Image]
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The treatment Mamdani now faces—accusations of radicalism,
communism, terrorist-sympathies, naiveté—is strikingly similar to
the language once aimed at La Guardia. In the fierce mayoral campaign
of 1933, La Guardia's opponent Joseph McKee mocked him as "Comrade La
Guardia," calling him "a menace…to the cardinal principles of
American life."

As historian Joshua Freeman writes
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_Ironically, the mayor who governed like a socialist of sorts —
Fiorello La Guardia, who served 1934 to 1946 — was a lifelong
Republican. Throughout his career, first in Congress and then as
mayor, La Guardia had strong ties with those to his left. In 1924, he
even successfully ran for reelection to the House of Representatives
on the Socialist Party line, after his own party denied him the
nomination because of his support for Progressive Party presidential
candidate Robert M. La Follette._

_(Though LaGuardia asked to be listed in the House as a Progressive,
the clerk put him down as a Socialist, leading the only actual
Socialist in Congress, Milwaukee’s Victor L. Berger, to drolly
declare the New Yorker “my whip.”)_

La Guardia himself understood exactly how this rhetorical game worked.
In a reflective moment in 1933, he lamented to the Times, "The worst
part of the entire matter is that when anyone raises a question about
the existing order, he is called either a reformer or a radical. It
has been my lot to be called the latter. Why? Only because I have
consistently objected to things which I believe unjust and dangerous."
Such candor is rare among politicians, but La Guardia leaned into it.
He owned the label of radicalism, famously declaring, "If fighting
against existing evils is radical, I am content with the name."

But these rhetorical attacks didn’t stop at domestic policy. When La
Guardia spoke forcefully against fascism abroad in 1938, conservative
ethnic groups, including the German-American Citizens League,
dismissed him as "un-American, socialistic, and communistic." One
Brooklyn Republican accused him of making "unwarranted and unnecessary
utterances," effectively casting La Guardia’s anti-fascist
statements as irresponsible provocations on the global stage. To La
Guardia’s critics, his radicalism was always two-fold: a threat both
domestically and internationally.

His opponent in the 1937 mayoral race, Joseph Mahoney, explicitly
linked radicalism with disorder and chaos:

_"The radicals are those who are opposed to law and order and who
endeavor by force to impose their will upon us. I am as liberal as any
man, but I refuse to permit my city to be made unsafe for the
law-abiding citizen by men who have no respect for authority."_

[Image]
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La Guardia responded defiantly, embracing the label thrust upon him:

_"I was pronounced dangerous. Was I half as dangerous as the men who
were carrying on these manipulations? I have been called a radical. If
fighting against existing evils is radical, I am content with the
name."_

When La Guardia, then president of the Board of Aldermen, proposed
funding snow-removal equipment ahead of winter storms, Comptroller
Charles Craig reacted furiously, labeling the idea "the wildest kind
of radical, socialistic, _BLACKGUARDIA_ statement." The accusation
crystallized a widespread fear among La Guardia's contemporaries: that
expansive government initiatives were inherently reckless, costly, and
ideologically suspect. Yet those very initiatives, dismissed as
ideological whims at the time, built much of the essential
infrastructure upon which modern New York still relies.

La Guardia consistently responded to these charges with moral
conviction. Speaking at a police breakfast in 1938, he drew a striking
parallel: "I believe was sincere in His denunciation of the powerful
few who exploited the masses. What some of us who are called radical
are trying to do is to answer that call in His name."

[Image]
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Today, Zohran Mamdani’s platform—universal childcare, expanded
transit, a rent freeze—is met with the usual cries of radicalism.
Opponents cast him as naïve, extreme, out of step, a risk to the
city’s stability. But this is a familiar story in American politics.
What gets dismissed as reckless idealism in one era often becomes the
infrastructure of civic life in the next.

La Guardia wasn’t just aligned with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal;
he anticipated it, shaped it, even inspired it. As biographer Jay
Franklin observed, La Guardia was a “New Dealer before there was a
New Deal,” pioneering progressive policies at the municipal level
that Roosevelt later scaled into a national blueprint.

[Image]
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At a time when America’s political landscape seemed poised for
transformation, La Guardia understood the potential of fusing labor
and progressive politics into practical, pragmatic governance.
Roosevelt didn’t simply find an ally in La Guardia; he found a
forerunner and collaborator: a mayor whose bold experiments became
foundational to FDR’s sweeping national agenda. Their partnership,
warm enough for Roosevelt to affectionately call him “Fiorello,”
symbolized how local innovations in governance could ripple upward,
reshaping an entire country. As historian Joshua Freeman writes
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Buildings, infrastructure, and social services were important, but La
Guardia believed ordinary people deserved more. Running for mayor, he
declared, _“I want justice on the broadest scale. . . . justice
that gives to everyone some chance for the beauty and the better
things of life.”_

La Guardia’s ideas aged well; his critics did not. La Guardia’s
lasting achievements—from creating a unified, publicly owned transit
system to establishing the boldest housing and health programs in the
country—illustrate precisely what a socialist-inflected mayoralty
can accomplish, even under constraints, making him a compelling model
for contemporary progressive and socialist politicians today.

That’s the political history Mamdani is stepping into. The
resistance to his campaign isn’t about the specifics of his
policies; it’s about the threat they pose to a political class that
long ago stopped thinking in terms of possibility. What we’re
watching isn’t a clash between pragmatism and idealism, but between
stagnation and the kind of reform that, given time, tends to look like
common sense.

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The pattern is consistent: when traditional coalitions grow complacent
or compromised, new actors emerge to articulate the unmet needs of the
moment. Mamdani’s campaign reflects precisely this kind of
historical rupture: an effort to realign political priorities around
affordability, public goods, and working-class power. The opposition
he faces says less about the viability of his ideas and more about a
status quo incapable of renewing itself.

Waleed’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new
posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid
subscriber.

_Waleed Shaheed: Progressive and Democratic strategist. Director of
The Bloc. Former Justice Democrats spokesperson. Worked with Bernie,
AOC, Jamaal Bowman, and Summer Lee. YNWA. Follow Waleed: Substack
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* progressive politics
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* Zohran Mamdani
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* Fiorello La Guardia
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* New York City
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* the New Deal
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