Does Mamdani's Win Matter Elsewhere?

Does Zohran Mamdani’s win have implications for other Dems? “Nearly 20 incumbent House Democrats who are either running for reelection or haven’t announced their 2026 plans are facing at least one primary challenger,” reports Axios. Democrats across the nation and in Congress in particular are trying to figure out whether to read socialist Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral primary upset (against former governor Andrew Cuomo, who was embroiled in a sex scandal as he left office) as something with broader implications for the great battle between progressives and the establishment. “I think you’ll see about 30% of members face primary challenges,” one progressive in the House told Axios. “People have anxiety, rightfully so. Their hair is on fire.”

Others have advocated taking the Mamdani win with a grain of salt, noting the profound unpopularity of his opponent.

“It was an indictment of Cuomo, and it was an indication that people in New York, who are a very liberal crowd, want to see a lot of changes in government,” Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) told Axios. 

“It’s a national election, not just a New York City election,” said Democratic strategist James Carville. “Everybody will have to weigh in one way or another. Everybody is going to be asked, do they support him?”

The New York Times‘ postmortem on the primary also seems to suggest Mamdani’s win has big implications: “The national Democratic establishment on Tuesday night struggled to absorb the startling ascent of a democratic socialist in New York City who embraced a progressive economic agenda and diverged from the party’s dominant position on the Middle East.” Mamdani focused on cost of living (delivering all the wrong fixes, to be clear) and carved out a staunchly pro-Palestine, anti-Israel stance that diverges from most other Democrats (including other up-and-comers like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro). Interestingly, Mamdani also fared very poorly with black voters, suggesting that maybe that stronghold of support is breaking.

Your children belong to the teachers union: “[Activist James] Baldwin says the children are always ours. Every single one of them, all over the globe. And what comes next is ‘CTU thinks your children are its children.’ Yes, we do. We do. We do,” Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Stacy Davis Gates said in a speech at the City Club of Chicago on Monday. “‘CTU thinks all children belong to it. And they’re a socialist conspiracy ideology.’ Well, I don’t know about all that, but we like children. We educate them, we nurture them, we protect them, we support them, we negotiate for them, we create space for them. We even have them in our homes.”

Davis Gates seemed aware she was stirring the pot.

“The irony is glaring: if the CTU were a parent, it would lose custody for educational neglect and abuse, given the catastrophic failure of Chicago’s public schools,” responded school choice advocate (and former Reason Foundationer) Corey DeAngelis.

Davis Gates is wrong in more ways than one. The teachers union’s job, at a very fundamental level, is not to negotiate for the children; it’s to negotiate for the workers, the teachers. Those interests are sometimes aligned, sometimes at odds. Consider COVID-19, for example, when teachers claimed they needed no in-person learning for months at a time due to purported fears of contagion, which was directly at odds with the learning needs of their students. Or consider the many calls for higher wages, which are infrequently coupled with stricter metrics for results; in a more just world, teachers would only get pay raises if student performance were improving. But teachers unions aren’t making those stipulations, broadly speaking.

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Scenes from New York: “I feel like people misunderstood my $250,000 for Cuomo for real enthusiasm.”

Here’s a fun thing that a top donor to Andrew Cuomo’s super PAC just told me. pic.twitter.com/DhI8kvyvvz

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) June 25, 2025

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Source: https://reason.com/2025/06/26/does-mamdanis-win-matter-elsewhere/