Mamdani’s big win is a huge loss for Democrats

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As socialists racked up wins in New York’s primaries this week, John Fetterman told Fox News, “The dirtbag left is surging.” Good for him: Pennsylvania’s common-sense senator is one of the few Democrats willing to tell the truth about the disaster befalling his party.

Zohran Mamdani is riding high, using his newfound political power as New York City’s mayor to recruit leftist candidates to run for Congress. He ran hard to get them over the finish line; two of them rocked the political landscape by knocking out well-known Democrat incumbents.

But while Mamdani is cheering, Democrats are weeping. They know the victories scored by Mamdani could be catastrophic for their party.

Some of Tuesday’s winners are loose cannons, embracing ludicrous ideas like shutting down all prisons and eliminating our borders. The idea that Democrats are nominating people who don’t even support incarcerating murderers will not play well on the national scene.

Meanwhile, the defeat of candidates backed by senior Democrats such as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) highlights the party’s weak leadership. Finally, the democratic socialists, while popular in a narrow sliver of solidly blue New York, will further alienate the working-class voters that Democrats have lost to President Trump.

One political analyst called it a “hostile takeover” of the Democratic Party “by the Democratic Socialists of America.” He was right.

First, some of the candidates who won on Tuesday, who will almost certainly be elected in their deep-blue districts come November, will prove an ongoing source of embarrassment to the party. Republicans are going to have a field day with Darializa Avila Chevalier, for example, who ousted five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, head of the Hispanic Caucus.

In a recent interview with The New York Editorial Board on Substack, community organizer and Ph.D. candidate Chevalier says she would ban all deportations, because they are an “incredibly cruel punishment.” She said she doesn’t believe in borders, which she describes as “a very modern construct.” Queried about her position as a “prison abolitionist,” the community organizer refused to agree that even murderers should go to jail. Rather, she wants to create a system “where that’s not even the possibility.”

Chevalier is not the only newcomer heading to Congress who will cause Democrats heartburn. There is also state Assemblywoman Claire Valdez (D), who beat out Borough President Antonio Reynoso to represent New York’s 7th district in Congress, which some are now calling “commie corridor” by some.

Valdez, like many of her fellow Democratic Socialists, is critical of Israel, and was called out by the Washington Free Beacon for having liked “an X post celebrating the massacre on the day of the Oct. 7 attack” and sitting for a “chummy interview  with a Twitch streamer who has called Jews a ‘‘’demonic ethnicity.'”

Senior Democrats were humiliated by Tuesday’s results. Jeffries had endorsed Espaillat, who had even backed Mamdani’s run for mayor and brought along Hispanic voters.

And Mamdani recruit Brad Landers defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who had been endorsed by Jeffries, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), labor unions and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the state’s senior senator, sat out the primaries entirely. He is panicked that Mamdani pal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) will try to oust him in 2028, if she doesn’t run for president. After the primaries, Schumer emerged to claim the elections show “a great united party.” Nice try.

Not surprisingly, the Democrats’ leadership looks lost. Public approval of the Democratic party plummeted to all-time lows last year, in the wake of their dismal showing in the 2024 election. It hasn’t recovered, and in fact is lower than Trumps approval.

Maybe that is because Democrats have funneled their energies into blocking everything Trump does, rather than trying to work with the administration to fix the country’s problems. Even after losing decisively in 2024 to Trump, who had campaigned on reining in the out-of-control illegal immigration unleashed by former President Joe Biden, Democrats continue to oppose any serious efforts to protect our border.

They are also against the White House’s efforts to reduce fraud and waste in the government. They are against tax cuts. They have shut down the government twice in two years, costing the economy billions of dollars and making air travel a misery for millions of Americans.

They have also let their party become, to quote Fetterman, the “anti-Israel party.”

Jews in the U.S. have historically been among the biggest backers of Democrats. Some 71 percent of them voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. Democrats’ increasing hostility toward the Jewish state is bound to erode at least some of that support.

Democratic leaders are now twisting in the wind, vulnerable to the socialist surge that is taking over in blue cities and states. That surge threatens Democrats’ hopes of capturing toss-up seats in the midterms and retaking the Oval Office.

Most Americans don’t like the tenets of socialism and are not on board with radical leftists, who won with tiny numbers of votes in low-turnout contests, even in deep-blue New York. Chevalier, for example, took her nomination with a mere 7 percent of the voters living in her district. Valdez won her nomination with just 8 percent of the voters in her district.

Mamdani’s socialists, who attract mostly young, college-educated white liberals, will not appeal to factory workers in Ohio or roughnecks in Texas. Most, including Mamdani, have never done a lick of manual work in their lives. Blue-collar workers tend to be patriotic and will not warm to candidates who view “eradicating” western civilization — the source of modern economic prosperity and democracy itself — as a worthy goal.

These are Ivory Tower left-wing ideologues, who have never seen their socialist vision put to the test. They want higher taxes, more regulations and wealth confiscation. As they gain power, productive New York residents and businesses will continue to exit the city and the state. Mamdani will be forced to raise more taxes to counter the loss in revenues needed to pay for his utopian programs.

Socialism doesn’t work and never has. Over the next several months, the young mayor and his gullible followers will become the last ones to learn.

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.

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2026 midterm elections

Adriano Espaillat

Adriano Espaillat

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Antonio Reynoso

Brad Landers

Chuck Schumer

Claire Valdez

Dan Goldman

Daniel Goldman

Darializa Avila Chevalier

Democratic primaries

democratic sociaists

Hakeem Jeffries

Joe Biden

John Fetterman

Kamala Harris

Kathy Hochul

Nancy Pelosi

New York City

Zohran Mamdani

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