Mamdani under My Liberal-Zionist Gaze

Back on June 24, 2023, this New Yorker first heard of (and heard) Zohran Mamdani, now my city’s Mayor-Elect, on a public radio show called “Capitol Pressroom.”  A cordial 22-minute segment highlighted the young NY State Assemblyman’s bill to stop tax-deductible donations to State-registered charities that support “settlement operations” in the amount of “more than $60 million a year” — causing the State of New York to “effectively subsidize war crimes.” Why “war crimes”? Because, he argued, West Bank settlements are illegal under international law.

Be assured that I have my differences with him, but Mamdani came across as remarkably intelligent and articulate.  His impressive campaign for mayor has made him a national and even international figure.  If he were not foreign born — an immigrant from Uganda of Indian parentage — there would be premature Presidential buzz.

Nevertheless, the press has latched onto a narrative that’s a little too breathless.  For one thing, he barely won a majority of the vote; the Associated Press reported Mamdani’s total as 50.4 % to Andrew Cuomo’s 41.6%, and Republican Curtis Sliwa’s 7.1%.  If Sliwa had dropped out as many urged (including the country’s top Republican, Donald Trump), this could have been a very close contest.  Cuomo got more votes as the losing candidate than Mayor Eric Adams did as the winner four years ago.

Mamdani’s margin of victory is far less impressive than those of the two other prominent winners on Election Day, the victorious Democratic candidates for governorships, Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey (over 13 percentage points) and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia (over 15 percentage points).  Republicans will do their best to paint all Democrats as “far left,” given Mamdani’s stance as a socialist (a member of the Democratic Socialists of America), and as “an antisemite,” because of his record since student days as an anti-Israel activist, including his advocacy of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).

Mamdani now joins Bernie Sanders and AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) as the three most prominent leaders of the Democrats’ progressive faction.  Still, the more substantial wins nationally were for the moderates Sherrill and Spanberger (a veteran Navy helicopter pilot and a CIA analyst respectively) — especially since Sherrill broke a 60 year-pattern in New Jersey of the two-term party in power failing to win a third consecutive term in the governor’s mansion.

Brad Lander

I cast a write-in vote for Brad Lander, the City’s outgoing Comptroller and the third-place finisher in a ten-person field in June’s Democratic primary contest.  He’s very Jewish in the way that he presents himself, and he identifies as a liberal Zionist — although he goes too far for my taste in characterizing Israel’s brutal response to October 7th as a “genocide.”

In contrast to Mamdani’s meager resume, Lander is a solidly experienced public servant, who has embraced Mamdani for the general election and shlepped him along to a number of Jewish community events, including one that I attended in Union Square, mourning the victims of October 7th and the two years since.   It is my hope and expectation that Lander will serve the new mayor in an important capacity, maybe even as First Deputy Mayor.

I got to speak with Mamdani at that event in Union Square about the attempt to force retired City employees like myself onto a privatized Medicare scheme known as Medicare Advantage.  He seemed to tell me what I wanted to hear, that he’s against it, but he didn’t actually tell me what he’s for, and he’s not yet responded to the appeals of the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees to meet.

If I thought Cuomo had more of a chance, I might have considered holding my nose and voting for the disgraced former governor.  As it was, I could not bring myself to vote for either of the two main candidates.

Unlike many New Yorkers who voted for him, I’m not entirely impressed with Mamdani’s major policy proposals.  While universal free or affordable child care would be a good idea, free public buses probably would not; for one thing, they would drain revenue away from mass transit as people choose buses over the subways that would remain fare-driven.  And while I would benefit from a rent freeze for rent-stabilized tenants, this would not be a remedy for homelessness.  The clincher for me was Israel.

Mamdani’s Anti-Zionism

I don’t regard Mamdani as antisemitic, but I know that he doesn’t appreciate what Israel means to most Jews; sadly, this is true for many young Jews as well.  Mamdani says he supports Israel’s existence, but not as a “Jewish state,” which he and many others interpret as necessarily meaning “an ethno-state” that unjustly empowers Jews at the expense of Palestinians.  Nor does he take into account how unlikely it is for Israelis to coexist with all Palestinians in one binational state with equal rights for all, given their ongoing history of bloody conflict.

Unlike Lander, he doesn’t accept the conception of Israel as “a Jewish and democratic state,” with full civil rights for its non-Jewish minorities, which will hopefully be at peace one day with a new Palestinian-Arab state.  (An innovative effort toward this end is the concept of a confederation of two sovereign states, as proposed by “A Land for All.”)

It is estimated that Mamdani gained the support of about one in three Jewish voters; typically, 70-75% of American Jews vote for Democratic candidates.  Yet, in his victory speech, he declared to cheering supporters:

We will build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism.

I trust that this is his intention.  I hope that Brad Lander and the continued tenure of the current (Jewish) Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch (who has not yet announced her acceptance of Mamdani’s offer) will provide wise counsel in this regard.