In the wake of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rise, his hard-left Democratic Socialists of America are looking to eat up more offices now held by older-school Democrats — and the moribund, corruption-plagued Dem establishment may lack the fortitude to resist.
It certainly doesn’t show any hint of plans for a counter-attack: The old guard’s prospered so long by attacking Republicans from the left, it doesn’t have a clue how to stave off the same assault by the hard left.
The DSA is targeting multiple seats in the Legislature this year, plus at least two House contests, and early signs are grim for traditional Dems.
Notably, Rep. Gregory Meeks and his Queens Democratic machine find themselves compelled to back the DSA’s choice, Diana Moreno, in the Feb. 3 special election to fill Mamdani’s former Assembly seat.
Meeks, who didn’t endorse Mamdani last year, has little choice but to support Moreno or be humiliated in “The People’s Republic of Astoria,” an area represented by DSAers in the City Council, state Legislature and Congress.
Now look at the Democratic primaries in June, where DSA chapters have already endorsed eight candidates for Assembly, Senate and House races — while seven DSA-backed incumbents, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, face no serious reelection challenge.
And that’s not counting DSA-adjacent Brad Lander who’s challenging Rep. Dan Goldman in Manhattan, arguing that Goldman isn’t harsh enough on Israel and also is richer than him.
The socialists see a great chance to inherit Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat, running Assemblywoman Claire Valdez against Brooklyn Beep Antonio Reynoso; Velázquez’s machine will be on his side, but the mayor has endorsed her. (Nydia’s bestie, AOC, has remained conspicuously silent.)
On the other hand, Mamdani weighed in to squelch a DSA challenge to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (even though Jeffries despises the hard left, which has been pushing hard in other races on his turf).
The DSA is also gunning for pro-Israel Rep. Ritchie Torres in The Bronx; he’ll likely hold on but he’s rushing to the left on a host of issues.
Heck, the party could still play kingmaker in the insane scramble to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler.
The city’s regular Democratic county organizations have grown fat from pork and patronage, at the price of looking ever-more corrupt — and so opening the door for hard lefties to mainly run under the banner of honest reform.
Perhaps that taint is why Mamdani has hired vanishingly few “regulars” for his City Hall team; many leading black and Hispanic old-schoolers are quietly grousing about that, even if they present it as a “lack of diversity” rather than a loss of patronage.
Yet the DSA is basically another form of the elitist “woke” leftism that’s been driving blacks and Hispanics across America to rethink their loyalties to the Democratic Party; these voters don’t love socialism, trans rights, open borders and green dreams as the lefties do, nor share the DSA’s obsessive hatred of Israel.
Any DSA-led realignment, in other words, may well open opportunities for a new coalition to the right of today’s Dem regulars: In small-d democratic politics, no coalition stays on top forever.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
