New Yorkers deserve better than Andrew Cuomo.
Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander at the United Federation of Teachers’ New York City Mayoral Forum in 2025.
(Michael Nagle / Getty Images)
Though the City of New York has been operating under that name since 1664, it has been electing mayors only since 1834. Cornelius Van Wyck Lawrence, winner of that first election, was a Democrat; so was Robert Anderson Van Wyck, the first man elected by voters in all five boroughs. So were most of the others, though the greatest man (regrettably, so far they have all been men) to hold the office was undoubtedly Fiorello LaGuardia, who during his long career in national and municipal politics ran on the Socialist, Republican, and Fusion party lines.
LaGuardia’s example reminds us that this is an office that, in the right hands, can achieve remarkable progress—a fact easily forgotten in our present diminished circumstances. A historian would have to reach all the way back to Jimmy Walker, who resigned his office in disgrace in 1932, to find a mayor who can match Eric Adams’s capacity for living large and acting small.
Now, after four years of corruption and chaos, New Yorkers have a chance to end Adams’s compromised tenure—and, in his place, choose a mayor worthy of leading the country’s largest city. On June 24, Democratic voters head to the polls to select their party’s nominee—a choice that, in this Democratic city, is often tantamount to choosing the next mayor. When they do, they will use a ranked-choice voting system that, if ballots are cast strategically, can deliver a mayor who reflects this city’s progressive vision and values.
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New Yorkers are fortunate to have two strong contenders who are poised to meet this moment: Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander. Mamdani is a State Assembly member from Queens who has energized voters across the city with his disciplined, brilliantly executed, and genuinely inspirational campaign. Lander is a housing advocate turned politician—a City Council member for 12 years, now the comptroller—whose long record of progressive coalition-building and savvy policymaking has made the city a fairer, gentler place.
Both candidates would make principled leaders—mayors dedicated, wholly and without compromise, to the welfare of all New Yorkers, not to their cronies, their careers, or their personal comfort. Both would be fierce defenders of all residents against the predations of Donald Trump. And both would push a vision of New York that is affordable, inclusive, forward-thinking, and just.
It is for these reasons that The Nation is endorsing the two of them, and urging New Yorkers to rank Mamdani as their first choice and Lander as their second.
When Mamdani announced his candidacy for mayor, he was few people’s idea of a front-runner. At just 33 years old, he was widely dismissed as too left, too aspirational, too young. Yet during his campaign—and, for those paying attention, his four years in office—he has proved himself the rarest of political talents: a politician whose ability to communicate, connect with constituents, and articulate vital truths has the power to energize and even mobilize.
And now here he is, leading all the other progressive candidates in the polls and steadily gaining ground against the front-runner, Andrew Cuomo. He’s currently running more than 10 points ahead of Lander, and he’s raising more money ($8.4 million from contributions and matching funds as we went to press) from more donors (currently over 20,000, compared to 7,600 for Lander and 5,400 for Cuomo) than any other candidate. Like Bernie Sanders’s two campaigns for president, Mamdani’s candidacy is built on the power of small donors and large numbers.
It is also built on a candidate whose brief record of legislative achievement has been amplified by large measures of moral courage and personal charisma. In a city where unthinking and unstinting support for Israel has long been seen as a requirement for politicians, Mamdani is an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian cause and a fierce critic of Israel’s operations in Gaza. His “Not on Our Dime” bill would have barred tax-exempt charities operating in New York from funding Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. While it is contemptible to smear Mamdani as an antisemite because of his Muslim faith or his criticisms of Israel, such a smear is also, given the New York media environment, predictable. Which makes his immense personal charm all the more important. So, too, are his abilities to build alliances, and to stay the course—first demonstrated when he joined the city’s taxi drivers in their 15-day hunger strike for debt relief.
Building on his bases—his Astoria district, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the city’s South Asian community—Mamdani has summoned a generation of otherwise disillusioned young activists back to battle. But anyone tempted to dismiss him as a latter-day “Bernie bro,” or his supporters as simply “cool kids,” should take a look at the map of his donors, which shows that his appeal already reaches from Riverdale and the South Bronx to Bay Ridge and Sunset Park—and even into New Dorp and Great Kills on Staten Island. It may not yet add up to a movement, but it already has the ingredients of a new urban politics.
It helps that the issues he’s running on—freezing rents for stabilized tenants, making all city buses fast and free, and providing free childcare for working parents—have broad appeal. It could be argued that the money spent on sending free buses down Fifth Avenue might be more effectively used to repair the city’s rotting infrastructure. But while the details can be debated, Mamdani’s disciplined focus on cost-of-living issues demonstrates a commitment to making New York a city that all its residents can thrive in, afford, and even enjoy.
That’s a commitment that Lander shares—and one that has been the driving focus of his career for over three decades. From his earliest days as the executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee—a community-based affordable housing organization—Lander has been a dedicated warrior in New York’s progressive trenches. A prescient critic of gentrification, he worked tirelessly in the City Council to counter the Bloomberg administration’s gilded vision for New York City—and he has been an effective politician on causes ranging from paid sick leave (which he got passed over Bloomberg’s veto) to fossil fuel divestment. Crucially, he has always understood that the only way to build a more progressive city is to build long-term power—which is why he cofounded the City Council’s Progressive Caucus during his first term.
On issue after issue, Lander has done the work and put in the time. The evidence is reflected not just in his past policy achievements but also in his campaign commitments—among them his promise to advance workplace fairness and union power through a Mayor’s Office of Workers’ Rights and his vow to declare a housing state of emergency that will enable the city to build 500,000 new, affordable units. As a liberal Jew who has long called out Israeli apartheid, Lander has shown courage and leadership on even the most contentious issues. And his experience as comptroller is arguably the best training for a would-be mayor.
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Crucially, during these first dramatic months, both Mamdani and Lander have shown real boldness in opposing the Trumpian onslaught: After discovering that DOGE had grabbed $80 million from municipal bank accounts in February, Lander succeeded in pressuring the city to sue the Trump administration. Mamdani has also stepped up, confronting border czar Tom Homan and demanding, “How many more New Yorkers will you detain?” Again and again, they have proved themselves to be among the city’s most reliable defenders.
They also offer the clearest alternative to another would-be strongman looming over the city: Andrew Cuomo. Of all the candidates, Cuomo poses the biggest threat to the shared progressive vision that Mamdani and Lander have put forward. Yet name recognition and money have made him the leading contender. Sadly, it appears that more people remember the former governor’s reassuring daily press conferences during Covid than the thousands of New Yorkers who died in nursing homes because of his policies—deaths that he directed his aides to cover up. They also seem to have forgotten the determination—by both New York Attorney General Letitia James and the Biden Justice Department—that Cuomo abused his power as governor by sexually harassing 13 women. Both of these scandals make the former governor unworthy of office; in fact, they make it crucial not to rank him or Adams at all.
Fortunately, New Yorkers who wish to fill out all five slots on their ranked-choice ballot are lucky to have additional worthy choices to add to their roster, including other three candidates who came into The Nation’s office for interviews. Zellnor Myrie, whose focus on affordable housing and public safety appeals to the concerns of working-class New Yorkers, also has a record of fighting for voting rights in Albany. Jessica Ramos has been a champion of the city’s immigrants and has a strong labor record in the state Senate. And Scott Stringer was a progressive comptroller with a streetwise savvy reminiscent of his cousin Bella Abzug. While The Nation was not able to speak with Adrienne Adams, her record of holding the line against the mayor as speaker of the City Council has won her respect.
Indeed, if there’s a lesson to be gleaned from this primary season, it is that the dream of a kinder, more humane city—one where “the government’s job is to actually make lives better,” as Mamdani has said—is strong among our elected officials. Another New York is possible. On June 24, by voting for Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander—and strategically ranking Mamdani first and Lander second—New Yorkers have a chance to reclaim our beloved city.
Correction: An earlier version of this story, which relied on reporting by The New York Times, stated that Zohran Mamdani had raised more money from New Yorkers than any other candidate. Although that was true when the Times published it in early May, since then both Andrew Cuomo and Brad Lander have raised more from New Yorkers than Mamdani. We have revised the story to reflect the latest filings with the New York City Campaign Finance Board.
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