When it comes to describing his political beliefs, New York’s journalist corps has spent the past year quietly giving slack to now-mayoral frontrunner Zohran K. Mamdani. Now they’re tangled in it.
The Queens assemblyman calls himself a “democratic socialist.” The New York Times last week, however, assured readers that Mamdani’s socialism means something other than the traditional collectivist policies. “Mr. Mamdani’s plan to pay for his proposals borrows from a traditional Democratic method: increase taxes on the rich. He would also increase the top corporate tax rate, but has proposed nothing remotely close to a socialist-like takeover of private companies,” wrote the Times’s Jeffery C. Mays.
It is hard to be reassured by Mays, however, given Mamdani’s long record of statements.
Put aside Mamdani’s calls for making things such as college or childcare or buses “free.” Even if one limits the definition of “socialist-like takeovers” to involuntary government control of businesses, Mamdani has endorsed things that fall in that category.
In the state assembly, Mamdani has backed a “social housing” proposal, for example, that would let state government seize properties and convert them into public housing. In an old video, he equated “the abolition of private property” with a statewide housing guarantee, saying that either formulation would be preferable to the status quo.
He has also called for “democratic control” of gas and electric utilities—something he and others euphemistically describe as “public power.” And don’t forget—as the Times did—that Mamdani has called for city government to open its own grocery stores.
Mamdani, along with most of his fellow legislative Democrats, supports creating a state-run, single-payer health-care system that would effectively eliminate private insurers from the New York market. He has also strongly backed putting the state into the renewable electricity–generation business, among other ventures.
Beyond utility companies and real estate, Mamdani has even expressed interest in a general seizure of private property. In a 2021 video for the Young Democratic Socialists of America conference, Mamdani urged attendees to be “unapologetic about our socialism” and expressly identified “seizing the means of production” as a socialist end goal. Yet, according to the Times’s Mays, “The closest Mr. Mamdani gets to socialism is in his belief in treating people more equitably.”
His beliefs, it seems, go beyond that. A review of his statements fails to reveal any sort of limiting principle with respect to private property or the extent to which Mamdani thinks the economy should be market-driven, if at all.
This kind of equivocation about the candidate is nothing new. After President Trump and others called Mamdani a “Communist,” Politifact stepped in, rating the claim “false.” When the video surfaced of Mamdani reciting what is arguably Communism’s most recognizable mantra—“seizing the means of production”—Politifact stuck to its position. “I had the impression that Mamdani intended that phrase as lighthearted hyperbole,” said one professor. “I see no reason to assume that the phrase conveys anything precise about what he thinks.”
And therein lies the problem: no one seems to know what Mamdani wants, though he hasn’t been shy about telling us.
Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
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