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The Mamdani Mayoralty

  • Writer: Paul Francis
    Paul Francis
  • Nov 10
  • 13 min read

Updated: Nov 12

Commentary # 23 by Paul Francis

PDF available here:

Introduction

Much has been written both before and after last Tuesday’s election about the significance of Zohran Mamdani’s election as the mayor of New York City and whether it represents an inflection point in the Democratic Party’s battle between the “Progressive” wing of the party and the “Moderate/Often Technocratic/Traditional Liberal/Establishment” wing of the party – or an aberration based on Mr. Mamdani’s exceptional political skills, the electoral liabilities of his principal opponent, Andrew Cuomo, and the unique makeup of the New York City electorate.


In the spirit of full disclosure, I worked for Andrew Cuomo in New York State government for many years and was one of his principal policy advisors during this campaign. I have the advantage of having closely followed Mr. Mamdani’s campaign, but I cannot claim to be completely objective. I worked hard for Andrew Cuomo and thought that he would be the better mayor, but with the election behind us I sincerely wish Mr. Mamdani well and hope he succeeds as mayor.


There is no doubt in my mind that Zohran Mamdani “won” both the primary and the general election far more than Andrew Cuomo “lost” those races. I’m also convinced that while Mr. Mamdani was a brilliant campaigner and there were other issues and dynamics in the campaign, he was only able to come out of nowhere to win the primary and general election because his affordability agenda resonated so strongly with a decisive segment of the New York City electorate. Specifically, CNN’s exit polling showed that Mr. Mamdani won 69% of the vote among voters aged 18-44, while Gov. Cuomo won 53% of the vote among voters older than 45.[1]


In this Commentary, I want to address two matters: first, how the campaign proposals on affordability of Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo illustrated the divide between the Progressive wing of the party and the “Moderate/Often Technocratic/Traditional Liberal/Establishment” wing, which I describe collectively as “Traditional Democrats.”

Second, I want to discuss the threshold challenge Mr. Mamdani will face in implementing his affordability agenda, which is the fiscal condition of New York City.


Defining the Progressive and Traditional Wings of the Democratic Party


Although there is no official platform of the “Progressive” wing of the Democratic Party, the defining features of the Progressive movement can be inferred from the platforms of its leading evangelists, particularly Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and now Zohran Mamdani. All three proudly identify as “democratic socialists,” and “socialism” itself has ceased to become a pejorative term for many Democrats, but I’m using the term “Progressive” as a more neutral characterization. The boundaries of the Progressive wing of the party are marked by strong support (in language and substance) for positions that critics describe as “woke” on cultural issues, highly critical characterizations of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza, and – most pertinently for purposes of this Commentary – an economic agenda based on programs with universal eligibility (e.g., programs such as public education and Social Security) that are not means-tested and are financed by higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.


Democrats in the Traditional wing of the party fit on a spectrum from relatively moderate to relatively liberal, but still operate within a common set of boundaries. Traditional Democrats are more likely than Progressives to distance themselves from the most unpopular extremes of woke politics, emphasize strong support for the state of Israel, and support an economic agenda that includes incrementalist (and typically means-tested) social programs which can be financed without significantly raising taxes at the state or local level and without a federal wealth tax or other iconoclastic changes in federal tax policy.  


The battle for the soul of the Democratic Party is now underway and will play out over the next three years, until the Democrats nominate their candidate for president in 2028. Some pundits have read last Tuesday’s positive results for Traditional Democrats in New Jersey, Virginia, and elsewhere around the country as evidence that Democrats can win in 2028 just by running against President Trump. Others find significance in Zohran Mamdami’s victory in New York City. In any event, there is a strong consensus that affordability is the issue of the moment.


Particularly in a contested Democratic primary against a charismatic Progressive such as Zohran Mamdani – and perhaps in a general election against a charismatic MAGA populist – members of the Traditional wing of the Democratic Party face a fundamental challenge: Their solutions are simply mismatched to the scale of the core economic problem in America today – which is that life is increasingly unaffordable for the middle class.


The conventional solutions Traditional Democrats offer to address affordability – for example, enhanced premium tax credits in healthcare, incremental expansion of childcare subsidies, and marginal increases in the amount of affordable housing – are constrained by the political demands of Democratic interest groups – ranging from environmentalists to labor unions to the donor class – as well as fiscal constraints because of the limits Traditional Democrats self-impose on the level of tax increases they support.  


In contrast to the incrementalist proposals of his Traditional Democratic opponents in both the primary (none of whom called for increased taxes) and general election, Mamdani’s platform included far-reaching proposals that promised fundamental change. His signature proposals included free buses and free universal childcare to be funded by raising $9 billion annually through increased taxes on high-income New Yorkers and corporations (plus another $1 billion from “efficiencies”), and construction of 200,000 units of deeply affordable public housing to be financed by borrowing $70 billion in municipal debt. He also promised to freeze the rent for four years on New York City’s one million rent stabilized apartments (which would transfer about $3 billion annually from landlords to tenants by year four), and to increase the minimum wage to $30 per hour by 2029 (which would increase wages in the aggregate by about $37 billion annually and affect about half of New York City’s workforce).


In Mamdani’s interview with David Remnick in the New Yorker, Remnick said: “I think first, the aspirational aspect of you is going to outweigh the practical outcome.” With characteristic flair, Mamdani replied, “Sometimes people treat aspiration as if it is a crime. That to dream of the city we deserve is as if to engage in a politics that has no place.”


When President Trump was first elected, his defenders said that we should take his policy statements “seriously but not literally.” The great Peggy Noonan’s column in the Wall Street Journal last Friday was titled, “Take Mamdani Seriously and Literally,” but I suspect most of Mr. Mamdani’s supporters – perhaps especially those in the New York City business and political establishment who he mollified after the primary – do not take his campaign proposals literally. I also suspect that, as is the case with President Trump, his base will be forgiving when he doesn’t deliver large parts of his campaign agenda. They will think, “his heart is in the right place.”


Mamdani in his victory speech made reference to the famous expression of Mario Cuomo, that you “campaign in poetry but govern in prose.” Andrew Cuomo, having governed in prose for so long, found it harder to campaign in poetry.


What Made Mayor-Elect Mamdani’s Affordability Agenda “Progressive”


What made Zohran Mamdani’s affordability proposals distinctively “Progressive” and set them apart from the proposals of his Traditional Democratic opponents in the primary and Andrew Cuomo in the general election? With respect to revenue proposals, it is fair to say that both Mamdani and other Democrats in the race would have favored revenue increases at the federal level that mirrored Mamdani’s campaign proposals. Nearly all Democrats favored the sunsetting of the 2017 tax bill, which would have had the effect of increasing the top marginal rate of federal income taxes from 37% to 39.6% – almost identical to Mamdani’s proposal to increase income taxes on high earners by 2%. Nearly all Democrats likely would have opposed the 3-4% reduction in the effective rate of corporate income tax rates that were established in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act through provisions such as immediate expensing of capital expenditures.


However, Zohran Mamdani and his opponents parted ways on the advisability of increasing tax rates on corporations and high earners at the state and local level. Reflecting the argument of Progressives nationally, Mamdani argued that increased taxes would not change behavior, while Andrew Cuomo advanced the view widely shared among Traditional Democrats that higher taxes at the state and local level would lead high earners and corporations to relocate to lower-tax jurisdictions. As Andrew Cuomo put it, “you can’t be a socialist city in a capitalist nation.”


Whatever the merits of this argument, from a purely political perspective, Mamdani could base his policy proposals on the assumption of $10 billion of new annual tax revenue ($13 billion if you count the value of the rent freeze) and $70 billion of additional capital investment from new municipal debt, which made Cuomo’s and his other primary opponents’ programmatic proposals seem like thin gruel in comparison.


It is not as if the Cuomo campaign didn’t recognize the issue of affordability. Andrew Cuomo’s first policy paper in the primary was titled “The Crisis of Affordability in New York City,” and its first paragraph began:


“New York City is experiencing a crisis of affordability. Lower income New Yorkers have always struggled, but New York is rapidly becoming unaffordable for the middle class. The cost of nearly everything has risen significantly since 2019 – the year before the Covid pandemic.”

 

But while Cuomo’s diagnosis was correct, his campaign’s prescription to resolve the affordability crisis – a series of means-tested initiatives such as free subway and bus fares for those with incomes up to 150% of the federal poverty level, targeted tax cuts for the working class, $7.5 billion more in capital for affordable housing, and a $20 minimum wage, all of which could be financed without the resources of new taxes or massive borrowing – could not compete with Mamdani’s ambitious and aspirational agenda.

 

It’s worth noting that Mamdani’s spending promises were not limited to his signature initiatives of free universal childcare, free buses, and City-owned grocery stores. On his website, he also called for free tuition at CUNY (which could cost more than $1 billion), a new Office of Community Safety (at least $450 million), dedicating 1% of the Budget for Parks (costing approximately $500 million), and other miscellaneous spending proposals. In addition, Mamdani supports the City Council’s bill (which Mayor Adams vetoed) that would substantially expand the entitlement to CityFHEPS rent vouchers, which both supporters and opponents of the initiative have suggested would prove to be very costly.


The most defining characteristic of Mamdani’s proposals was not the cost, however, but rather his rejection of means-tested programs in favor of programs for which all New Yorkers would be eligible irrespective of income. Andrew Cuomo, by contrast, advanced the Traditional Democrats’ position that when revenue is constrained (which it almost always is), government spending should be concentrated on those who need it the most through means-tested programs. So, for example, while Mamdani promised free buses, universal childcare, and City-owned grocery stores, Cuomo called for making the subways and buses free for low-income New Yorkers, targeted tax cuts for working-class New Yorkers, and proposed an incremental expansion of food subsidies for those just above the SNAP income eligibility level.

 

It’s not entirely clear why Zohran Mamdani and his supporters were so fervently committed to programs involving universal eligibility – and why the blowback was so fierce to Andrew Cuomo’s modest proposal to apply means-testing to new renters of a rent-stabilized apartment (a requirement that already exists in the case of rent-stabilized apartments built after 1974). Certainly, in part it was a reflection of the belief among some that the level of income and wealth equality in New York City is so profound that it has taken on moral dimensions.

 

Forty years ago, I heard William Sloane Coffin say from the pulpit of Riverside Church that “New York is becoming – no is – a playground for the rich and a dungeon for the poor.” Forty years later, the middle class – especially younger New Yorkers – would not describe New York City as a dungeon, but the burden of student debt, a housing market that is unaffordable, and childcare out of reach may feel like an enforced prolonged adolescence. Adding means-testing, with the stigma many believe surrounds that, may feel like adding insult to injury.

 

At the national level, the difference in philosophy between Progressives and Traditional Democrats manifests itself in such issues as the choice between Medicare for All versus means-tested ACA premium tax credits; universal childcare versus expanding childcare slots for low-income parents; and a wealth tax on unrealized gains versus tinkering at the edges of marginal income tax rates.


One reason that so much of the energy in the Democratic Party at the moment is in the Progressive wing is that their sweeping agenda (along with a sharper-edged disdain for corporations and business than Traditional Democrats) seems better matched to the level of financial distress people feel and the mood of the times – especially among younger voters. The question at the state and local level – where budgets need to be balanced – will be what happens if there is simply not enough tax revenue to pay for new programs. The question at the Presidential and purple state federal level is whether the entire Progressive package – including its view on cultural and non-economic issues – will make Democrats unelectable in a general election.


Tax Revenue is Destiny: the Challenges of the Mamdani Agenda


In state and local government, tax revenue is destiny. Whether Mamdani succeeds as mayor – at least with respect to his affordability agenda – depends in large part on the fiscal condition of the City government he will inherit. To understand this better, it helps to go back to 2013 when Bill de Blasio was first elected mayor. The consensus view among the establishment at that time was that his ambitious campaign policy agenda would be severely constrained by New York City’s fiscal straits.


For example, in a profile of Mayor Bloomberg by Ken Auletta, published in The New Yorker in August 2013, Auletta noted that “[N]one of the Democratic candidates have addressed the one issue vital to the city’s future: the budget. Although the budget has been admirably balanced for the past decade, in the next few years New York may confront its most severe budget crisis since the nineteen-seventies.” The profile added that the Citizens Budget Commission “described the predicament the [next] mayor will confront as ‘the calm before the storm.’”[2]


The reality proved different. New York City’s Independent Budget Office (IBO) wrote in December 2013:


“Through much of the summer and early fall, it was asserted with some frequency that New York’s next Mayor and City Council would inherit a substantial budget shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year along with other fiscal challenges. Then in November Mayor Bloomberg released his quarterly update to the city’s financial plan and a different story emerged: The Mayor projected a sizable surplus for the current year as well as a balanced budget for next year, fiscal year 2015.”[3]


Indeed, total revenues in the New York City budget for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014, were $5.2 billion, or 7.5% greater than had been forecast in the FY 14 Executive Budget introduced the year before. Shortly before leaving office, Mayor Bloomberg was able to announce, “For the first time in my memory and perhaps for the first time in New York City's history the budget for an incoming fiscal year has been balanced for an incoming mayor."[4]


As was the case in 2013, none of the candidates in the 2025 mayoral primary or general election sought to make New York City’s current budget challenges a major issue. The press implicitly assumed New York City would have a balanced budget, and whether Mamdani could implement his ambitious agenda depended simply on the level of new taxes approved by the state legislature and governor in Albany.


This willful ignorance of New York City’s fiscal situation was also maintained by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, a primary opponent who became Mamdani’s most important supporter. In mid-August, Comptroller Lander, commenting in his official capacity on the recently adopted New York City Executive Budget, warned that: “[T]he Office estimates the City will end FY 2026 with a gap of $4.2 billion (3.6% of total revenues), growing to $8.8 billion in FY 2027.”[5] The Independent Budget Office, the Citizens Budget Commission, and Mayor Adams’s Office of Management and Budget have issued very similar estimates.


If New York City is really facing a deficit of roughly $9 billion in Mamdani’s first budget – before any spending on new programs – his ability to implement his affordability agenda will be severely constrained. He will face a set of problems he was never asked to confront in the campaign. Unlike with recent fiscal crises, such as the Great Recession in 2008 and the Covid pandemic in 2020, the federal government will not bail out New York City, and New York State’s ability to help will be limited, although Gov. Hochul has signaled that she will support at least a phase in of universal childcare – much as Gov. Cuomo provided State funding for Universal Pre-K in lieu of allowing New York City to raise taxes to fund the program itself..


The fiscal hole that Mamdani finds himself in will be even more important than the willingness of State government to increase taxes to benefit New York City. Notwithstanding Gov. Hochul’s stated opposition, I would not be surprised to see the State raise the corporate income tax broadly along the lines proposed by Mamdani. New York State’s Mid-Year Budget Update released last week noted that the corporate tax law changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reduce revenue to New York State by $950 million; the impact on New York City is likely to be comparable.


However, if the State increases the corporate income tax rate, both the State and the City are likely to share that revenue, rather than use it for New York City exclusively as Mamdani proposed, and probably use it primarily to fund current budget demands rather than to significantly fund new programs.


Mayor Adams is not going to be the second mayor in New York City history to hand off a balanced incoming-year budget to a new mayor. But it is too soon to tell how much the fiscal deficit will be when Mayor Mamdani introduces his Executive Budget next April. New York City’s Office of Management and Budget is notorious for routinely sandbagging its tax revenue estimates. The New York State Division of the Budget raised its estimate of tax revenue in its Mid-Year Budget Update on November 2, 2025, by approximately $1.6 billion from its estimate in the June 30, 2025, Quarterly Budget Update. New York City’s tax revenues will benefit from the same forces and can be expected to be higher than the FY 25 Enacted Budget forecasts.


If Mamdani shares the good fortune of Mayor de Blasio and the fiscal deficit is much less than current expectations, and the State provides some additional revenue, Mamdani should be able to get off to a good start in beginning to implement some of his major promises. In this scenario, Mamdani’s early momentum will put air in the sails of Progressives across the country, proving the skeptics wrong by demonstrating that far-reaching proposals can, in fact, be implemented.


On the other hand, if the forecasts from Comptroller Lander and other fiscal experts prove to be close to accurate despite the better-than-expected economy, Mamdani will be hard-pressed to advance significant new initiatives if existing program spending needs to be curtailed to balance the Budget. Mamdani has laid no track to prepare New Yorkers for challenging fiscal times. A program of even relative fiscal austerity would reinforce the narrative of Traditional Democrats that the promises of Mr. Mamdani – and Progressives more generally – sound good but are merely aspirational goals incapable of being implemented in difficult economic times. 

Endnotes:

[1] Election 2025 Exit Polls: New York City Mayor. CNN Politics. November 6, 2025.

[2] “After Bloomberg.” Ken Auletta. The New Yorker. August 19, 2013

[5] Comments on New York City’s Fiscal Year 2026 Adopted Budget. NYC Comptroller Brad Lander. August 13, 2025.

 

 
 
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