President Donald Trump, figures in his administration, and his top billionaire supporters have shown that Tuesday’s elections across the nation are making them nervous. Their grip on the federal government notwithstanding, they still have to face voters at the ballot box, and they are not happy about it.
Zohran Mamdani, the young member of the New York State Assembly and leading contender to win the New York City mayoral race, really has them worried. They don’t want a self-described Democratic Socialist using his place as mayor of the nation’s largest city to push a vision of progressive politics.
Trump, relying on the age-old weapon of anti-communism, has endorsed Andrew Cuomo, the lifetime Democrat running as an independent against Mamdani. Trump said on Monday that “a bad Democrat is better than supporting a Communist.”
Cuomo has also been scoring endorsements from top figures in the Trump administration. On Monday, the extreme right-wing architect of Trump’s immigration policy, Stephen Miller, also came out in favor of the governor, giving him the support of one of the highest-level fascists in the White House.
Then, of course, there are the tens of millions of dollars that some of New York’s richest billionaires have poured into the race in an effort to stop a Mamdani victory.
The thing all of them fear most is that a decisive vote for Mamdani would reflect a clear popular mandate for progressive politics and a verdict against the fake mandate for racism and attacks on workers that the Trump administration falsely claims it has.
In two states, New Jersey and Virginia, voters are electing a new governor. In both, the Democratic women running, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, are leading going into Election Day. Trump and his allies fear the outcomes in these races because, given that the elections in them follow by one year the election of the president of the United States, their results are often taken as a judgment on the policies of that president’s administration.
In California, a victory for Proposition 50 would allow for a major redrawing of election district boundaries. The issue at hand in this referendum is that all the right-wing gerrymandering encouraged by Trump in Texas could be nullified. In addition, Democrats in other states, including Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, will be encouraged to do the same thing if Proposition 50 wins. The outcome could well go a long way toward countering GOP congressional gerrymandering maneuvers.
In Pennsylvania, the Democrats now have a 5 to 2 majority on the State Supreme Court. Three of those Democratic justices are up for retention—meaning that Pennsylvanians have the choice of voting “yes” or “no” on keeping them in office. Republicans hope to unseat them, while the labor movement is putting all its efforts into the “yes” vote.
Pennsylvania is a key “swing state,” so control of the State Supreme Court there could have a major impact on the next national election in 2028. Progressive activists have to contend with the fact that it is traditionally more difficult to turn out people for “off-year” votes than it is for national elections.
Back to the municipal level, Mamdani’s race is not the only mayoral contest in the country where progressives are engaged in tough battles.
In Jersey City, N.J., former Gov. Jim McGreevy is trying to win the mayor’s seat, also on a platform of affordability, especially reduced electricity costs.
In Minneapolis and Seattle, progressive candidates have had to combat not just MAGA supporters but, like Mamdani in New York, with some of the so-called “mainstream” Democrats.
In July in Minneapolis, Democrats, meeting in a convention, dumped incumbent Mayor Joseph Frey and chose instead State Sen. Omar Fateh. The party, under pressure from right-wing business interests, later dumped Fateh and went back to Frey.
Fateh, however, is leading in the polls and has put together an impressive coalition, including the backing of Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and the state’s biggest union, the Service Employees (SEIU).
In Seattle, progressive community organizer Katie Wilson is running against Mayor Bruce Harrell. Here, as in Minneapolis, conservative forces in the Democratic Party have resisted giving their support. Both Wilson and Fateh have put forward a brand of politics similar to Mamdani’s in New York.
Leading corporate Democrats want to avoid coming out of the elections with the notion that people like Mamdani were elected because they were not fighting hard enough against the Trump agenda.
If turnout is on the progressives’ side Tuesday, though, the outcomes in all these races will stand as not only a verdict against MAGA but also a template for the kind of positive politics that can inspire people and win.
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