We’ve been saying this for years, but Zohran Mamdani’s victory last night in the New York City mayoral election made it abundantly clear: economic populism is the way forward for Democrats to win back the affections of working people.
New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani handily won the race to become the next mayor of New York City. In an election with decades-high voter turnout, he secured over 50% of the vote and became the first NYC mayoral candidate in more than 50 years to win over a million votes.
Democrats also had a good showing in other key places as well. In New Jersey and Virginia, Representative Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11) and former Representative Abigail Spanberger (VA-07) won their respective races for governor. Also, in St. Paul, Minnesota, State Representative Kaohly Her (64A) became the first Hmong and woman mayor in the city’s history. While these victories are to be celebrated, for this week’s Closer Look we’re focusing on Zohran, as his victory has attracted the most energy and attention from people here at home and around the globe.
Click here or the image above to watch Zohran Mamdani give the Patriotic Millionaires a shout-out
A few weeks ago, we spoke at length about the ways in which Zohran’s electrifying campaign provided a blueprint for Democrats to follow to turn their electoral fortunes around and win back the affections of voters, particularly those of working people. Zohran is comfortably on the liberal side of things when it comes to social issues, but he made it a point to primarily focus his campaign on bread-and-butter economic issues and proposed simple and straightforward policies to help New Yorkers grapple with the rising cost of living. At every turn, Zohran was quick to redirect any conversation about his candidacy back to his economic platform.
Given his performance last night, it’s safe to say that Zohran’s strategy paid off. He didn’t capitulate to voters on social issues like some pundits seem to think Democrats should. For example, he didn’t pretend to be anti-choice or against expanding protections for LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers to appeal to more conservative voters. He didn’t make social issues the focal point of his campaign because he rightly understood that the sky-high cost of living was what mattered most to city residents and kept the spotlight there. He did manage to “broaden the tent” and attract a diverse coalition of support from voters of different races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The trick to doing that, though, was putting a big economic populist sign in front of his tent to entice as many people as possible to get under it.
Zohran’s victory also reaffirms our belief in the popularity and viability of two of his policy proposals: instituting a 2% tax on the top 1% of New Yorkers and raising the city’s minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030.
As we predicted over the summer, Zohran’s proposal to tax the rich was met with cries from anti-tax naysayers that millionaires would leave the city and move to lower-tax jurisdictions, creating fiscal havoc for a legislature left without their tax revenue. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo relied heavily on this outdated idea, going so far as to say during the first debate, “You would see New Yorkers on I-95 fleeing to Florida.”
Judging by the way they cast their ballots, New Yorkers didn’t buy the millionaire migration myth. And we like to think we had something to do with it. Besides the Closer Look we put out in July thoroughly debunking it, our members have been incredibly vocal about dispelling the idea that millionaires are going to run for the hills if you tax them more.
Our Chair, Morris Pearl, spoke to Agence France-Presse and pulled no punches in tackling the myth head-on. More recently, two more of our members, Marc Baum and Andrew Tobias, were quoted in a UK outlet, The i Paper. Andrew put his thoughts on the matter this way: “If you’re already making a fortune, what difference does [Zohran’s tax proposal] make? If you’re making $50m a year, are you really going to say, I can’t stay in New York City because I have to pay 2 per cent more of the $50m? If you’re living comfortably and other people are suffering, it’s got to make you do something about it.”
Two weeks ago, Morris went viral after filming a video walking around the streets of NYC taking on the millionaire migration myth. As of this writing, it’s gotten over a million views on Instagram and hundreds of thousands of views, likes, comments, and shares on X, Threads, Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
In his plan to address NYC’s affordability crisis, Zohran also proposed raising the city’s minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, the minimum wages needed to afford basic essentials—i.e. the “living wages”—across the five boroughs of NYC for a single adult with no children are the following: $32.85 for Manhattan, $29.25 for Brooklyn, $30.96 for Queens, $25.48 for the Bronx, and $30.66 for Staten Island. Considering that the current minimum wage in NYC is $16.50, a $30 minimum wage would certainly be a huge step forward in helping New Yorkers afford their exorbitant cost of living.
If you remember, last year, Morris and another of our members, John Driscoll, co-authored a book, Pay the People! Why Fair Pay is Good for Business and Great for America. In the book, John and Morris make the argument that raising workers’ wages to meet the cost of living is a win for workers, businesses, and the whole economy. Earlier this year, Morris had the opportunity to give Zohran a copy of Pay the People!
Order your copy of Pay the People! from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop.
Zohran may have won the race for NYC mayor, but that doesn’t mean the fight to tax the rich and pay the people is over. For Zohran’s tax and wage policies to become a reality, he will have to work to win over other local and state officials. The Patriotic Millionaires are ready to lend our voice and expertise to these inevitable battles when the time comes.
We’re happy that Zohran has sparked important conversations about taxes and wages and given Democrats a solid blueprint to follow for winning back the hearts and minds of voters. Billionaires fought hard and spent big to defeat Zohran, but his campaign showed that a winning message centered on economic populism really is priceless.