Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor continues its rise in meeting the political moment, offering an alternative for working people willing to fight the faux-populist Right and their pro-austerity centrist enablers. The state representative’s NYC-DSA-endorsed campaign has seized the left lane while centered on winning concrete material demands. The campaign cleaned up in its first filing period, raking in over $642,000 from 6,500 individual donors, outraising the combined total for three other progressive-aligned contenders in the race — Brad Lander, Scott Stringer, and Zellnor Myrie.  

From the onset we realized that this race is bigger than NYC-DSA. It’s essential we grapple with the campaign’s broader significance and lessons. At its core the campaign serves as a sharp reminder of the art of building a multiracial working class coalition, the importance of integrating ourselves with coalition partners and their rank-and-file, and the crucial process of training and organizing thousands of new volunteers into leadership, thus generating momentum for a socialist agenda. 

Building the Coalition

The campaign’s vision emphasizes a positive alternative to the city’s existing political and economic struggles. It addresses the cost-of-living crisis and the neoliberal hollowing out of city capacity. Mamdani’s lighthearted targeted communications strategy has been a hit with the Left and successfully shored up a base of support while introducing democratic socialist demands to segments of the city’s working class that Mamdani aims to bring into the coalition. That segment includes self-identified socialists, individuals radicalized by the genocide in Gaza, rent stabilized tenants, Arab and Muslim-American progressives and the growing anti-Mayor Eric Adams/Gov. Andrew Cuomo coalition, including parts of the labor movement. This coalition can use ranked choice voting to block centrists and cohere an anti-Adams/Cuomo public narrative by not aiming fire at one another. 

With implementable material demands, the terms of the debate within the progressive lane have shifted away from technocratic competency or ‘muddling through’ incrementalism toward concrete economic relief for working people. To build this momentum that base will need to expand.  

To achieve this vision, we need motifs that transcend the rightward shift we have seen among New Yorkers since the 2024 general election and fracture the Adams coalition, particularly among outer-borough working-class Latinos and African Americans. What sets Mamdani apart is not only his ruthlessly pro-working class agenda but his belief, as a democratic socialist, that everyday New Yorkers will need to organize to see his campaign through. To shake up the status quo of New York City politics, this campaign must be movement-driven and anchored by mass class politics. 

Connecting with everyday New Yorkers is crucial to convey that this campaign goes beyond one candidate. It’s about building a movement that demands collective action — organizing our communities, workplaces, and schools to create lasting change. The key next steps are to expand the base of supporters, broaden the coalition, and amplify our story.   

What is Our Story?

To expand the coalition to fight for the New York we all deserve, we need to figure out DSA’s story and our place in the movement inspired by Mamdani’s campaign.

Our story has its roots in the affordability crisis. Eric Adams’ corruption, and more significantly, his austerity politics, have rapidly increased the cost of living while starving every municipal service other than law enforcement. Rents are rising, the subways are crumbling, and the lack of school funding puts youth at risk. Against this grim backdrop, the Mamdani campaign and NYC-DSA envision a more equitable and livable city. This vision is based on the experiences of working New Yorkers who are active participants in the campaign. By rooting our story in the lives of New Yorkers, we can engage potential members on an emotional level, spreading our socialist gospel of transformational change, undergirded by the politics of hope.

Like Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, the Mamdani campaign can champion mass socialist politics and galvanize a new generation of organizers. While it’s impossible to replicate that national moment, we can learn from the Sanders campaigns’ counter-hegemonic narrative; his vision, the clear identification of class enemies impeding that vision, and emotional identification of the individual voter as part of an interdependent collective (a social identity) espoused in the slogan “Not me, Us.”

Emotional identification through coherent and detail-based counter-hegemonic narratives can help develop and mobilize a coalition durable enough to enact transformative politics and run New York city against an obstructive state government and an oppositional federal government. Only a movement from below can respond to the housing, public safety, and education crises with an ambitious framework and lay groundwork for a successful mayoralty. 

NYC-DSA has its own story about why a democratic, mass-membership socialist organization will be essential to pushing the movement around Mamdani’s campaign forward, win or lose. To grow our organization during the Mamdani campaign we need more than arbitrary recruitment metrics or a “let them come to us” outlook — we need to train members to share their stories and the story of NYC-DSA in a way that connects with the narrative of the Mamdani campaign. That will allow us to grow intentionally and symbiotically without bringing NYC-DSA into conflict with the campaign and other members of our multiracial working-class coalition. 

Our chapter’s success hinges on an outward-facing approach in our field and communications operation. This means engaging with our community, sharing our mission and narrative, and highlighting the vital role new volunteers play. By doing so, we can build emotional connections with our audience that inspire action. 

Relational Organizing

One of the most exciting parts of endorsing a citywide mayoral race is the potential for our organization to take on a more mass character and rooting ourselves in the multiracial working class of New York City. Endorsing a Muslim immigrant and socialist during this alarming rise of racist fearmongering and anti-immigrant scapegoating presents significant challenges. This puts us, along with our multiracial coalition partners — including Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), New York Communities for Change (NYCC), CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities (CAAAV), and the many imams and mosques supporting Mamdani — in the crosshairs of some of the worst elements of our city. Now more than ever, deepening our relationships and creating spaces for collective strategizing are crucial to our political success.

In some campaigns, our chapter has found success from organizing our field coordination in separate, NYC-DSA-only spaces. In other races, we’ve successfully integrated our field program more deeply as the senior partner, bringing a broader layer of activists into the democratic socialist project. In the Mamdani campaign, we will need to take the latter approach on a significantly larger scale. 

An integrated field program will allow us to build deeper relationships, where we can unite on shared values and assess the resources at each other’s disposal to build collective capacity. This approach can put NYC-DSA at the center of the larger working-class movement we need to transform the city. 

Often the Left gets bogged down in having the perfect strategy. What is most important is how a good strategy is developed, when, and by whom. By centering our strategy around our base of supporters, we’re empowering them to lead the way and shape our collective success. Although our theories of change might vary among different coalition partners, focusing on electing Mamdani and defeating Adams and Cuomo and investing in the structures that allow us to collectively debrief, assess tactics, and continuously strategize will lead to a stronger front. 

Crucial to sustaining a strong coalition will be committing to building lasting relationships. Comrades should use time-tested relational organizing tools like one-on-ones, house meetings and community mapping. These practices are also a way to show commitment to our larger project of building the Left and to notice leadership qualities that might be helpful in future campaign asks. A field orientation that is consciously unifying the coalition beyond the electoral cycle can serve as the spine of a future mass socialist party.

The objective of our electoral project is organizing a democratic socialist constituency as opposed to simply mobilizing voters. Through relational organizing, we can sustain this coalition beyond elections. This approach will also enable us to respond effectively to far-right threats against working-class communities of color and achieve and surpass our goal of growing the chapter by 5%. 

Momentum 

As the campaign gains traction and coheres, we can also employ tactics from the Momentum model of organizing. The model, recently associated with the union drives of Starbucks Worker United, emphasizes changing the public narrative to achieve concrete reforms, wielding a dedicated core of committed organizers to build polarizing campaigns that share a compelling alternative vision to chip away and challenge the structures that uphold the old consensus.

Across the chapter, we can feel the energy and willingness that new comrades are bringing to fight the rise of the far-right and to build a democratic socialist alternative. Mamdani’s January 25 field launch in Brooklyn, in the freezing cold, brought over 400 canvassers who knocked 11,717 doors, perhaps the largest canvass ever organized in New York City. Two tactics can help us maintain this energy:

• “Momentum canvasses”, in which we hold periodic, centralized, rally-like gatherings followed by a canvass, a tactic employed by Bernie’s campaign. 
•  “Turning ones to wins”, recruiting campaign volunteers at the doors. To scale up our project, aggressive acquisition tactics will be crucial. Every canvasser should be trained and prepared to quickly onboard enthusiastic supporters we meet at rallies and at doors. 

The Momentum model’s weakness, as its name suggests, is that it’s prone to collapse once momentum fades, especially if built around a personality rather than a theory of change. Our chapter can provide the structure undergirding Mamdani, fostering engagement, leadership development, and a theory of change which can offer new organizers the politics to stay in the struggle for the long fight ahead.

Mass Politics Wins

This race is also a crucial test for our electoral project and, if successful, can serve as a catapult for the democratic socialist movement by seizing government authority in the country’s financial hub.

With an overarching narrative fueled by mass class politics, we can create a unifying identity for our campaign. This unity, combined with the citywide momentum of Mamdani’s campaign, will help defend our working class champions in the City Socialists in Office who are up for re-election: Tiffany Cabán and Alexa Avilés. Connecting these campaigns and the work of our nine DSA elected officials in Albany through a shared vision and narrative will be an opportunity to elevate NYC-DSA’s political program and solidify our electoral project. 

We cannot retreat into a defeatist mentality where our goals aren’t ambitious, or fail to make the necessary political and strategic adjustments to continue rising to meet the political moment. As much as the political situation is dire, there are opportunities for us to win critical demands for working people. By aiming to win, we can build the Left and engage thousands of people. Viewing it merely as a propaganda opportunity means missing our chance to grow by sinking deeper roots in the multiracial working class of New York City. 

NYC-DSA’s goal of knocking one million doors reflects the project’s scale. With a six-figure win number, and a goal of mobilizing 50,000 volunteers, including 250 field leads, engaging with voters by canvassing is the only path to victory. While street canvasses and tabling can be beneficial, especially during the petitioning phase, these are passive tactics. Our bread and butter is knocking on doors, which forces us into uncomfortable conversations, hones our ability to tell our story, and builds a cohesive political message by engaging with people in our own communities and class.  

By focusing on the heart of the story at the doors and shifting our chapter to an outward-facing growth mindset rather than a defensive one, we can unlock the potential of this campaign to transform the lives of working class New Yorkers and put NYC-DSA at the center of a broader movement. Every working class New Yorker has a part to play in this fight. The next act of this race is to make sure they are aware of that and our potential to win government power.

People interested in helping execute NYC-DSA’s strategy for the Mamdani campaign can sign up to volunteer online.

Signed articles express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of DSA as an organization.