Like most New Yorkers — and nearly half of those who voted — I didn’t cast a ballot for Zohran Mamdani in November. I’m a Democrat, not a socialist — or a democratic socialist. Mamdani’s campaign promised sweeping transformation: free bus fare, frozen rents, a $30 minimum wage and city-run grocery stores. To many struggling New Yorkers, the agenda Mamdani promised sounded like salvation. Call me jaded, but as someone who has watched this movie over and over again, I saw Mamdani’s campaign as politics at its most cynical.
I saw Mamdani’s campaign as politics at its most cynical.
His promises undoubtedly inspired many, but at the same time, it fed on New Yorkers’ desperation, offering fantasy and ignoring the limits of law, budgets, and basic math. In many ways, it’s not unlike the emotional sleight of hand Donald Trump used in 2024: grand promises that feed into populist fervor but collapse under contact with reality.
That reality has already arrived. Mamdani, who was sworn in first thing Jan. 1, is already encountering what will likely be a roadblock to implementing his boldest promise. As outgoing New York City Mayor Eric Adams was leaving, he made appointments and reappointments to the board that sets rent increases for more than a million rent-stabilized apartments. Adams’ maneuver to leave in place a board majority likely to oppose Mamdani’s pledge of a rent freeze is a direct effort to undermine Mamdani’s platform before he can get started. The newly sworn-in mayor should expect far more opposition to come.
Since his upset primary victory in June, parts of the left have celebrated Mamdani’s rise as proof that democratic socialism can scale nationwide. They claim Mamdani is a blueprint for the future. But the young New York assemblyman’s win was far from a landslide. He barely cleared a majority in a city that has traditionally given its mayors broad mandates. (His predecessors Adams and Bill de Blasio both earned more than 65% of the vote in their general elections). Still, Mamdani won. He’s now the duly elected mayor of America’s largest city. Those of us who didn’t support him should accept that result — and let him fail or succeed on his own terms.
A big problem for the new mayor is that his ambitions rely heavily on cooperation from Albany, but Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers have little appetite for subsidizing a socialist experiment. This is especially true given now that Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik has dropped what was expected to be an aggressive MAGA campaign for governor. A few months ago, when Stefanik loomed as a threat, Hochul may have felt the need to shore up support with those further left than she is, giving Mamdani leverage, but now she’s in a much stronger position to refuse. Still, as New York politics tilt purple, to state lawmakers, Mamdani’s revolution already looks more like a Christmas wish list than a governing plan.
That dynamic makes him an incredibly risky national symbol for the democratic socialist movement to hang its ambitions on. Republicans have clearly decided he’ll be their foil in the 2026 midterms, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee has already blasted out emails linking Democratic contenders to Mamdani. Meanwhile, moderate Democrats in flippable races will spend the next year drawing contrasts with Mamdani and insisting that competence and pragmatism — not slogans — win elections. Mamdani’s tenure will play out on a national stage whether he wants it to or not, and the stakes extend far beyond New York.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has already blasted out emails linking Democratic contenders to Mamdani.
Given that, moderates in the city can take the short-sighted route — quietly sabotaging his agenda through bureaucratic resistance, underhanded rent board maneuvers or NYPD slowdowns — or they can stand back and let his platform meet reality. The instinct to obstruct is strong. But that approach would only prolong a referendum on the far left’s agenda. Every act of interference will hand Mamdani a scapegoat, and every unfair obstacle will let him claim that, despite the will of the people, the establishment never gave him a real shot.
The smarter choice for Democratic pragmatists is patience. Let Mamdani’s ideas face the test of implementation. If buses aren’t free, rents don’t freeze and the math “doesn’t math,” then that verdict will come not from pundits and power brokers but from New Yorkers’ realities. Mamdani’s campaign was built on the conviction that moral clarity can substitute for real-world responsibilities and constraints. That’s not idealism. It’s manipulation. It drowns out progressives grounded in reality and cheats voters out of real, achievable reforms. Now, as mayor, he’ll find that governance doesn’t bend to belief. It bends to numbers, to laws, to time. His coalition is fragile, and his promises are outsized. There’s no need for anyone to play the villain in his story. Reality will do that work. Democracy doesn’t mean we have to agree with the winner. It means accepting the outcome and holding leaders accountable to their own words. Mamdani promised a city remade by idealism. Let him try. Let his movement own both the ambition and the consequences. If his ideas truly are possible and work, we’ll all be better for it. But in the much more likely scenario that they fail — as many of us insist they will — that failure will speak for itself, and the argument about democratic socialism’s viability for years to come will finally be settled not by slick media-driven campaigns and rhetoric, but by actual results (or the lack thereof). Moderates in the party will finally have the chance to flip around the far left’s favorite allegation that “we tried things your way — and it just doesn’t work.”
Kaivan Shroff
Kaivan Shroff is a senior advisor to the Institute for Education and a political commentator. He previously served on the advisory board for Dream for America, a progressive Gen Z-led non-profit. He is an alumnus of the Hillary for America digital team, holds a joint degree from Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BA in Political Science from Brown University. 
