\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/0925cover.png\"\/)
\n <\/a>
\n This article is from the
September\/October 2025<\/a> issue.<\/p>\n
Commentators have pointed to Cuomo\u2019s exceptional weakness as a candidate: He has a scandal-ridden background and ran a dour campaign. They also point to Mamdani\u2019s exceptional skills as a communicator, including his savvy use of social media, his massive volunteer field operation (powered in no small part by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America), and the electorate\u2019s desire for generational change. There is some truth in all of these points. But there can be little doubt that Mamdani\u2019s appeal was due in large part to the substance of his campaign. Unlike the other candidates in the race, Mamdani put forward a bold populist platform of solutions to New York City\u2019s cost-of-living crisis. That platform included, among other planks, freezing rents on the city\u2019s rent-stabilized apartments, making buses fare-free, providing universal childcare, and piloting a handful of city-owned grocery stores. Mamdani has pledged to fund his proposals by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations.<\/p>\n
Despite (or maybe because of) the Mamdani campaign\u2019s clear resonance with New York City voters, he has come under fierce attack from elite opinion-makers and moneyed interests. One of the most colorful condemnations came from Larry Summers, the former White House economist who for decades has advised Democratic politicians to embrace neoliberal economics. In the wake of Mamdani\u2019s primary win, Summers commented on the social media platform X that he was \u201cprofoundly alarmed about the future of the @DNC and the country by yesterday\u2019s NYC anointment of a candidate who \u2026 advocated Trotskyite economic policies.\u201d (What makes his proposals specifically \u201cTrotskyite\u201d as opposed to some other flavor of Bad Leftist is anyone\u2019s guess.) And in late July, the New York Times reported that corporate leaders had launched no fewer than five Super PACs to try to stop Mamdani in the general election.<\/p>\n
Yet Mamdani\u2019s platform has received praise from prominent voices in the economics profession as well. In an open letter published by The Nation on June 20, just ahead of the primary election, several leading progressive economists\u2014including Isabella Weber, James K. Galbraith, and Ha-Joon Chang\u2014came out in favor of his economic proposals. \u201cHis platform proposes targeted, responsible interventions that would immediately improve millions of lives while building a fairer and prosperous New York,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n
So what, exactly, is Mamdani proposing to do to address the city\u2019s affordability crisis? Here\u2019s a quick rundown of his major platform planks.<\/p>\n
A Public Sector-Driven Approach to Affordability<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s platform is ambitious and wide-ranging, encompassing everything from massive expansions of the public sector to somewhat wonky tweaks to municipal governance and regulations. His proposals around housing, the biggest driver of affordability concerns for most in the city, is at the center of his program. Mamdani has pledged to freeze the rent on New York City\u2019s roughly one million rent-stabilized apartment units. (That leaves about 1.3 million market-rate apartments to which the rent freeze would not apply, according to the New York City Rent Guidelines Board.) This measure would offer immediate relief to many New Yorkers and help prevent displacement due to rising rents.<\/p>\n
Mamdani also advocates a number of policies to supercharge the construction of new affordable housing. He has promised to put public funds to work building 200,000 new units of affordable housing over the next 10 years, and to double the city\u2019s capital investment in preserving existing public housing stock. Recognizing that public development alone is not sufficient to meet the demand for new housing, Mamdani is also planning to facilitate more private development by increasing zoned housing capacity and loosening restrictions like requirements that new buildings have a minimum number of parking spaces.<\/p>\n
Besides his housing plans, undoubtedly the most ambitious part of Mamdani\u2019s platform is free childcare for children six weeks to five years old\u2014another attempt to tackle one of the city\u2019s biggest cost pressures. This would be a game-changer for many working-class families. The New Yorker\u2019s John Cassidy, reporting on a conversation with the economist Isabella Weber, said she \u201cpointed to studies showing that child-care programs\u2014which already exist in places like France, Sweden, and her native Germany\u2014generate positive outcomes for parents and children alike.\u201d Free childcare, as Weber points out, would help families who would otherwise be priced out of New York to stay in the city. And in addition to helping working parents (especially mothers) stay in the labor force\u2014benefiting parents and boosting economic growth\u2014family policy expert Elliot Haspel has argued that high-quality childcare programs contribute to communities\u2019 \u201csocial infrastructure,\u201d promoting children\u2019s well-being as well as social connections and solidarity between adults.<\/p>\n
Another top-line platform plank is making public buses fare-free. As a state assembly member, Mamdani spearheaded a program piloting fare-free buses on five lines across New York City, which ran from September 2023 to September 2024. That pilot was a success, with ridership on those lines increasing by 30% on weekdays and 38% on weekends; the fare-free lines also saw a 38.9% decrease in assaults on bus drivers. (Many altercations between passengers and bus drivers start with interactions at the fare box.) Mamdani\u2019s proposal to make all city buses fare-free is a logical step to build on this success.<\/p>\n
Almost all discussions of Mamdani\u2019s platform (pro and con) have taken note of his unorthodox proposal for a pilot of five city-owned grocery stores. The idea here is to provide nutritious, affordable food for residents living in \u201cfood deserts.\u201d Because the stores would run as nonprofits on city-owned land and not have to pay rent or property taxes, the campaign claims that they can charge lower prices than privately owned grocery stores. The plan is an innovative attempt to experiment with a \u201cpublic option\u201d for groceries, as the economists who wrote in support of Mamdani in The Nation put it, adding, \u201cThe economic data is clear: When the public sector steps in to correct market failures in the provision of essential goods, consumers benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s proposals around public safety and policing have also been a point of controversy. While he once advocated for \u201cdefunding the police,\u201d Mamdani has since backed away from this rhetoric. He has campaigned for mayor on working with the police and freeing them up to focus on solving violent crimes. Rather than calling on police to play the roles of social service workers or mental health professionals, he plans to invest more heavily in mental health programs and other social services to help address the root causes of violence.<\/p>\n
Mamdani has also pledged to raise the minimum hourly wage in the city to $30 by 2030. And\u2014perhaps more surprising for a socialist\u2014he has a platform plank devoted to helping small business. This plank includes promises to cut fines and fees for small businesses and speed up permitting, which the campaign hopes will \u201cdecrease dramatically\u201d the time and money that businesses spend on navigating the byzantine permit approval process. (The campaign points to a similar recent initiative by the state of Pennsylvania that reduced the licensing and approval process for small businesses from eight weeks to just two days.) <\/p>\n
Plans to loosen zoning restrictions and ease regulations on small businesses aside, though, at the heart of Mamdani\u2019s platform are calls for a significant expansion of the public sector and major increases in government spending. This has prompted the usual semi-rhetorical question from centrists and conservatives: How will he pay for it? But as Weber, Galbraith, Chang, and the other authors of the June letter in The Nation observe, Mamdani\u2019s proposals are \u201cresponsibly costed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The campaign says a Mamdani administration would raise $10 billion in additional revenue a year. Five billion dollars of that would come from an increase of the top state corporate tax rate to 11.5% a year (the same as New Jersey\u2019s), and $4 billion would come from a new 2% income tax on those making more than $1 million a year. (These tax increases would need to be passed by the state legislature and approved by the governor, \u2014something New York Governor Kathy Hochul has said she will not do. For more, see the sidebar, \u201cHow Will He Pay for It?\u201d) Mamdani has also said he would bring in an additional $690 million a year by collecting money the city is already owed. And, in a nod to the sort of good-governance practices associated with past socialist mayors like the \u201csewer socialists\u201d who held the mayoralty for 50 out of 60 years between 1910 and 1960 in Milwaukee and Bernie Sanders in Burlington, Vt., Mamdani intends to institute \u201ccommon sense procurement reform,\u201d including instituting competitive bidding for government contracts and thereby reducing wasteful spending. (See Shelton Stromquist, \u201cMamdani\u2019s Municipal Socialist Inheritance,\u201d D&S, September\/October 2025.)<\/p>\n
Municipal Socialism for the 21st Century?<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s proposals may be both popular and economically sound. It is another question whether they are politically feasible, given the mayor\u2019s limited powers and the considerable forces arrayed against his program. Many of the policies Mamdani is championing would require approval by the state legislature and the governor, for instance, most notably the tax increases needed to fund big-ticket items like universal childcare and publicly funded housing. Other plans like the rent freeze or changes to the city\u2019s procurement system could be enacted more or less unilaterally, though enacting even those policies would likely meet with backlash from corporate interests.<\/p>\n
What is clear is that Mamdani\u2019s platform has captured the public imagination, and depending on what happens in the coming months and year, it could very well become a blueprint for progressives and socialists running at the local level elsewhere. It is already to Mamdani\u2019s credit that he has powerfully recaptured the issue of affordability for the left. He is presenting the cost-of-living crisis not as a reason to attack labor unions and demand austerity\u2014as politicians in both parties typically have done over the past several decades\u2014but as a rationale for reducing inequality and building out the public sector.<\/p>\n
Nick French is an associate editor at Jacobin magazine and a member of the Dollars & Sense collective.<\/p>\n
Sources: John Cassidy, \u201cThe Case for Zohranomics,\u201d The New Yorker, June 30, 2025 (newyorker.com); Various contributors, \u201cEconomists Support Zohran Mamdani\u2019s Plan for New York City,\u201d The Nation, June 20, 2025 (thenation.com); J.W. Mason, \u201cWhat Can Zohran Accomplish?,\u201d Dissent, July 4, 2025 (dissentmagazine.org); Robert Kuttner, \u201cEzra Klein Meets Zohran Mamdani,\u201d The American Prospect, July 3, 2025 (prospect.org); David Dayen, \u201cMamdani and Lander Combined Two Strands of Progressive Politics,\u201d The American Prospect, June 30, 2025 (prospect.org); Nick French, \u201cIn Zohran Mamdani\u2019s Win, Socialism Beat the Status Quo,\u201d Jacobin, June 25, 2025 (jacobin.com); Peter Dreier, \u201cHow Zohran Mamdani Can Succeed as Mayor,\u201d Jacobin, June 30, 2025 (jacobin.com); Ezra Klein. \u201cMamdani, Trump and the End of Old Politics,\u201d New York Times, June 28, 2025 (nytimes.com); Sam Mitchell, \u201cLarry Summers Is Not Your Friend,\u201d Jacobin, July 2, 2020 (jacobin.com); @LHSummers, X post, June 25, 2025; Zohran for New York City, \u201cThe Platform\u201d (zohranfornyc.com); Zohran Mamdani and Michael Gianaris, \u201cA Year Without Fares: Lessons From New York\u2019s Free Bus Pilot,\u201d The Nation, September 6, 2024 (thenation.com); Zohran for New York City, \u201cMamdani Revenue Proposal: How to Pay for The Mamdani Agenda;\u201d David Moberg, \u201cHow Bernie Sanders Put Socialism to Work in Burlington: A Profile from 1983,\u201d In These Times, January 29, 2016 (inthesetimes.com); Dana Rubinstein and Nicholas Fandos, \u201c\u2018Anybody but Mamdani\u2019: 5 Groups Emerge to Raise Millions in Attack Funds,\u201d New York Times, July 30, 2025 (nytimes.com); Elliot Haspel, \u201cChildcare Is Not Just an Economic Fix. It\u2019s a Social Good.,\u201d Jacobin, August 8, 2025 (jacobin.com); New York City Rent Guidelines Board, \u201cHousing Types\u201d (rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us); State of New York, Office of Rent Administration \u201cFact Sheet: Rent Stabilization and Rent Control,\u201d January 1, 2024 (hcr.ny.gov); New York City Rent Guidelines Board, \u201cAbout the RGB\u201d (rentguidelinesboard.cityofnewyork.us); New York City Rent Guidelines Board, \u201cRent Guidelines Board Apartment Orders #1 through #57\u201d (nyc.gov\/rgb); Ginia Bellafante, \u201cNew York, Finally, Taxes the Rich,\u201d New York Times, April 9, 2021 (nytimes.com); Tax the Rich (taxtherichny.com); Peter Sterne, \u201cMamdani promised to tax the rich. DSA is already mobilizing to make that happen.\u201d City & State New York, July 11, 2025 (cityandstate.com); Mia Hollie, \u201cHow Zohran Mamdani Answered Every Question in THE CITY\u2019s Meet Your Mayor Quiz,\u201d The City, June 25, 2025 (thecity.nyc); @ZohranKMamdani, X post, December 19, 2024; Branko Marcetic, \u201cBernie\u2019s First Political Revolution,\u201d Jacobin, December 12, 2019 (jacobin.com); Ross Barkan, \u201cCan Zohran Mamdani Buy the NYPD\u2019s Support?,\u201d The Intelligencer, July 2, 2025 (nymag.com).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a shocking upset, socialist Zohran Mamdani bested former governor Andrew Cuomo in the June 24 New York…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":225055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-225054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115200240033671959","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}