The new power broker: How Zohran Mamdani muscled NYC’s Democratic establishment

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN

New York (CNN) — Outside Rep. Adriano Espaillat’s primary night party, four men on the sidewalk were dressed in full neon sequins, trying to get the party started. Inside, the bar had barely opened.

Espaillat spent 20 years trying to get to Washington and another 10 years in Congress. He arrived to give his concession speech and left in under 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, the real party was going on about three miles away. That’s where Zohran Mamdani was completing his victory lap of three celebrations with candidates who likely would not have gotten near Congress without his endorsements, just a year after he stunned the political world by beating Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary.

“We are showing that last June, a year ago tomorrow, was not an anomaly,” Mamdani said. “It was not the end. It was the beginning.”

The wins signify how New York politics and the Democratic Party have a new power broker. Hakeem Jeffries, the Brooklyn-based House Democratic leader, is losing two incumbent members and facing an ascendant band of agitators. And the people long in charge in Democratic politics, including the ones who for decades thought of themselves as the insurgents, aren’t happy about it.

They say they feel betrayed, left with a mayor they cannot trust. Around the city council, people who considered themselves his allies are sharing a line, according to one member who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity: Mamdani is only interested in allyship on his terms. Council members are talking about ways to give Mamdani his comeuppance, whether holding up funding for parts of his agenda or smaller ways of needling him.

Mamdani and those closest to him say: This is what a revolution looks like, on his terms. He elevated a former campaign volunteer in Avila Chevalier, with a long record of inflammatory tweets and attendance at a widely decried rally the day after Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attacks, and propelled her toward Congress over the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

That’s even after Espaillat endorsed Mamdani last year after his primary victory over Cuomo when other Democrats wouldn’t. Two people familiar with the mayor’s thinking say that he was initially skeptical of Avila Chevalier’s chances to win. But in a quietly convened City Hall meeting of democratic socialists and other allies, he decided to get on board.

“Mayor Mamdani is modeling a different kind of politics — not billionaire-funded or consultant-driven, but one that champions the needs of working people. That is precisely what New Yorkers are asking for, it’s what his endorsed candidates stand for, and it’s why this slate won tonight,” Mamdani communications director Anna Bahr told CNN.

Asked after the race was called for Avila Chevalier, giving Mamdani his trifecta, if the mayor would work to rebuild bridges after these primary fights or now people would have to come to him, Bahr’s response was a succinct text: “:).”

Mamdani, an avowed New York Knicks fan, posted a clip of superstar guard Jalen Brunson speaking at the team’s recent championship celebration.

“There’s a lot of people that have a lot of negative stuff to say. There’s a lot of people who have a lot of opinions,” Brunson says in the clip. “But when you prove them wrong, you don’t have to say shit to them.”

How Mamdani targeted two Democratic incumbents

Not long after Mamdani won last year, Jeffries delivered a message to Mamdani advisers, according to two people familiar with the matter: If they were going to come after any incumbent Democrats, he said, come after him.

At first, Mamdani didn’t do that. To the consternation of some allies, he interceded directly to head off a brewing Jeffries primary challenge from city councilman Chi Ossé, rallying the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America against a politician who’d been a friend and supporter.

Then Mamdani went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and said clearly that he wanted Jeffries to become speaker if the Democrats take the majority in the House.

Asked on Tuesday morning why he thought Mamdani was willing to go after others and not back his potential bid, Ossé told CNN, “I don’t have an answer on that.”

Rep. Dan Goldman, who declined to endorse Mamdani last year given his anti-Israel views even as Goldman’s district overwhelmingly voted for the mayor, was already in Mamdani’s sights. Mamdani told another democratic socialist city councilwoman not to run because he would be backing Brad Lander, who ran for Congress after he didn’t give Lander the job he originally wanted as first deputy mayor.

“I guess easy enough for him to make Brad my problem, not his problem,” Goldman told CNN outside a polling place in Brooklyn a few hours before polls closed.

For all their past issues, Mamdani threw himself into Lander’s campaign. Less than an hour after polls closed, he was on stage with Lander, celebrating a very lopsided win.

The race for Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat was more fraught.

Velázquez backed Mamdani early in his primary campaign and was cheered as she spoke at his boiling-hot primary victory party last June. Now asked if she regretted supporting him, the congresswoman said she only supported his agenda and saw him as the better choice at the time.

“He made a strategic error of judgement not to see what it means to have relationships at the different levels of government. For a city that relies on federal funding and the state, you try to expand your tent, not diminish it because you’re going to need help from everyone,” Velázquez said.

The outgoing congresswoman at first wanted a woman to succeed her — specifically, a woman of Puerto Rican descent, like her. According to multiple people familiar with what happened, Mamdani was clear that two people who fit that bill with deepest ties to the district, city councilwoman Tiffany Caban and state senator Julia Salazar, were not acceptable because despite their own DSA ties, they’d initially been skeptical of his mayoral run, worried he would lose and set the democratic socialist project back.

As he did, Mamdani warmed to Claire Valdez, a one-term assemblywoman without much of a legislative record but who’d been out early for him in the mayoral race. He knew by then that Velazquez would be backing Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

Mamdani kept asking Velázquez to hold off in going public for Reynoso, including the day before an interview he had conducted was published in which he was endorsing Valdez, which he didn’t tell her about.

Velázquez found out about the endorsement the next morning. She canceled a dinner they had scheduled for that night.

Three months later, Velázquez said she’s still too mad to talk about it.

“All I can tell you is the dinner didn’t happen,” she said.

Frayed relationships beyond Tuesday night

Before and after being elected mayor, Mamdani has struggled with many Jewish voters in the city over his critiques of Israel. Wounds were reopened among some when at a rally for his three candidates last week, Mamdani suggested the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was among “monsters,” as part of a critique of AIPAC’s spending in political campaigns. He received condemnation from an array of Jewish leaders who accused him of engaging with antisemitic tropes.

“What has emerged with the mayor is he appears to care most about the Middle East, which of course is not part of his job,” Goldman told CNN before polls closed. “But it seems to motivate just about every single thing he does on a political level, and certainly he has invested much more time in the political aspect of things than in the governing aspect of things. And he is creating an increasingly toxic environment, especially for Jews.”

Mamdani may have also done damage with some key Black and Latino leaders.

One particularly notable critic of his endorsements in Tuesday’s primaries was New York Attorney General Letitia James, a key backer during his campaign.

“Some of the candidates that he has supported are individuals who do not understand the politics of New York City, the cultural differences from district to district, who have not been part of the history and the struggle of some of these districts, and are relatively new to the body politic,” James told CNN, pointing particularly to what she said was Mamdani’s lack of understanding of race and class issues that run deep.

Standing in Brooklyn on Tuesday with James and Reynoso, Jasmine Gripper, the state director of the Working Families Party — the powerhouse pushing New York politics to the left for 25 years until Mamdani’s win elevated the DSA — tried to be diplomatic, including when acknowledging the annoyance at DSA supporters who felt the WFP should have gotten behind Valdez and Avila Chevalier.

“DSA has a project to elect socialists. The Working Families Party has a project around building governing power on a broad coalition to deliver for working families. There are times where that project is parallel and aligned and united, and that’s great. And then there are times when we differ,” she said. “I hope we can learn to fight cleaner races. I think this one got a little bit too personal, too dirty. And so I hope that’s a lesson we all learn.”

In his last scrapping for votes against Valdez outside a senior center on Tuesday afternoon, Reynoso —who himself entered politics as an insurgent against the longtime Brooklyn Democratic machine — said he’d spent time thinking about the fork in the road from these elections.

“If I win, I think he’s going to have a lot of talking to do,” Reynoso said. “If we lose, maybe he dismisses us.”

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