Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato
Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani looks increasingly like the one to beat at next week’s election. But he is up against more than the usual political challenges.
US President Donald Trump has referred to him as “my little communist” and called his nomination “a rebellion”. More recently there have been calls for Mamdani’s citizenship to be investigated.
Born in Uganda, and the first Muslim nominee for mayor of the biggest city in the US, the 34-year-old Mamdani is an obvious target. But it is his stance as a democratic socialist that has really invited the old-school “red-baiting”, aimed at discrediting him by invoking Cold War anxieties.
In fact, Mamdani’s approach to democratic socialism is less about an abstract political ideology than it is about practical solutions. As he has put it:
We want to showcase our ideals, not by lecturing people about how correct we are, but rather by delivering and letting that delivery be the argument itself.
Because of this, he has also been described as an heir to the historical tradition of “sewer socialism”, a brand of left-wing thinking that favoured incremental, practical reform over revolutionary rhetoric.
Delivering tangible results
Despite the long history of anticommunism in the United States, Milwaukee in Wisconsin was the nation’s socialist capital for decades.
A succession of socialist mayors focused on delivering basic services to the people of the city. Socialist candidates dominated city politics there for 50 years, from 1910 to 1960. It was the most successful political achievement for socialism in US history, largely because it appealed to the mainly German immigrant population.
The term “sewer socialist” was actually first used derisively by Morris Hillquit, national chairman of the Socialist Party, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York several times.
At the 1932 party convention in Milwaukee, Hillquit was almost replaced as leader by local mayor Daniel Hoan. Mayor from 1916 to 1940, Hoan was justifiably proud of the city-owned sewer system. But he also established one of the first public bus systems in America, and built the country’s first public housing project.
This repeated success in city politics – despite the national opposition to socialism and Hillquitt’s “sewer socialist” slight – was built on delivering tangible results to the voters.
And it’s that approach that is seeing sewer socialism making a comeback in city politics today, as urban dwellers face an affordability crisis and declining quality of life.
Mamdani is not the only millennial socialist candidate running for mayor.
In Seattle, over on the US west coast, 43-year-old Katie Wilson is a strong contender in a tight race with the incumbent mayor, 67-year-old Bruce Harell. Wilson is the founder of the local Transit Riders Union and has expanded her progressive activism to social housing, public safety and homelessness.
She doesn’t see the socialist label as a major issue on the campaign:
I’m a socialist. I’m fine being called a democratic socialist […] We’re in a moment where most people don’t care that much. People are not that hung up on labels and want to see results on issues that affect their daily lives.
Beautiful, contradictory, unfinished
Like Wilson, Mamdani lacks the experience of his opponent, former New York mayor Andrew Cuomo (67).
Cuomo played on this in the final debate of the campaign, telling the young challenger, “the issue is your lack of experience”.
Mamdani replied that his opponents “speak only in the past because that is all they know”.
Perhaps inevitably, some are saying Mamdani’s ability to connect with voters not only promises to deliver an improved quality of city life, but may also make him a viable presidential candidate who could “save” the Democratic Party in 2028.
Speaking on the 4th of July, Mamdani said: “America is beautiful, contradictory, unfinished, I am proud of our country even as we constantly strive to make it better.”
Vice President JD Vance responded the next day: “There is no gratitude here […] We should demand that our people, whether first or tenth generation Americans, have gratitude for this country.”
Intended as an insult, Vance also accurately described Mamdani’s surprise win in the primary: “Last week, a 33-year-old communist running an insurgent campaign beat a multi-million-dollar establishment machine…”.
But it might have been Fiorello La Guardia, mayor of New York during the Depression, who best described how such a turnaround could have happened: “There is no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage.”
In other words, basic municipal services don’t depend on party politics. And if neither major party cares enough about those essential quality of life issues to actually deliver, maybe a younger “sewer socialist” will be the one to pick up the trash.
Garritt C. Van Dyk has received funding from the Getty Research Institute.
