{"id":14802,"date":"2026-05-02T00:30:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T04:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/?p=14802"},"modified":"2026-05-09T02:39:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T06:39:42","slug":"mayor-mamdanis-program-in-peril","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2026\/05\/mayor-mamdanis-program-in-peril\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor Mamdani\u2019s program in peril?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

N<\/span>ew York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on an ambitious agenda that won him the enthusiastic support of a broad coalition of voters. His charisma and boundless energy has helped to raise the hopes and expectations of many. The agenda itself should be applauded, and the emergence of this coalition, with its hopes and expectations, is a positive development that has helped create a growing audience for socialist politics.<\/p>\n

Yet winning Mamdani\u2019s agenda requires more than the election of a progressive politician\u2014in this case a democratic socialist\u2014to executive office. Arrayed against it are New York\u2019s capitalist class, which includes the powerful real estate and financial interests based in New York City and the politicians who represent them. Without a countervailing force in the form of an organized popular movement capable of defending its own underlying class interests, and which is able, when necessary, to engage in targeted, disruptive action, strong and sustainable\u00a0 progressive reform is not possible.<\/p>\n

After almost four months in office, both Mamdani\u2019s governing style and strategy and political events beyond his control\u2014including the outcome of the budget battle currently being waged in Albany\u2014have revealed how unlikely it is that his agenda will be realized. In fact, some of it has already been abandoned. And Mamdani\u2019s responses<\/a> have illustrated that while he wants to establish his bona fides as a trusted and efficient manager of New York City, there is much less evidence that he has any interest in building a movement to defend the interest of New York City\u2019s diverse working class.<\/p>\n

The means to, and meaning of, \u201cTax the Rich\u201d<\/h4>\n

Mamdani\u2019s \u201caffordability agenda\u201d\u2014universal free childcare, free buses, a rent freeze for stabilized apartments, and an explosive growth in the number of affordable housing units\u2014has mass support but carries with it a hefty price tag. New York City is legally unable to raise its own taxes without approval from the state. Candidate Mamdani\u2019s explicit call to raise income taxes on the wealthy and on corporations in order to fund this agenda was (and remains) extremely popular, and was of course intended to put pressure on the New York State legislature and more particularly the governor. Without a revenue increase of many billions, achieving this agenda will be impossible.<\/p>\n

Whether increased taxes on the wealthy can actually be won by the usual political means is now playing out in Albany. On April 22 the state legislature passed its sixth \u201cbudget extender<\/a>\u201d of the season after negotiations to resolve the state\u2019s budget blew past the April 1 deadline. It\u2019s not unusual for the budget to be late\u2014last year it took until May 9\u2014but this year negotiators have not yet gotten beyond bitter struggles over implementing climate goals and reforming auto insurance laws to more fiscally significant issues. Prominent among these are (separate) proposals<\/a> by the state senate and state assembly to raise taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul has been adamant in her opposition<\/a> to such tax increases.<\/p>\n

Every year, New York State\u2019s governor and each of the two houses of its legislature devise separate budget proposals. The three proposals are a basis for the negotiations among the leaders of the two houses and the governor (a process formerly gendered as \u201cthree men in a room\u201d\u2014this year the only man among them is Assembly Speaker Democrat Carl Heastie). In recent years, it has become common for the legislature\u2019s \u201cone house budgets\u201d to include a proposal to raise taxes on high earners, and some form of such increases has occasionally passed. This year, though, those proposals have taken on increased significance.<\/p>\n

The revenue the city would receive under both senate and assembly tax proposals is somewhat less than under Mamdani\u2019s own<\/a>, but those amounts are nevertheless enough to have heartened his supporters. Governor Hochul, though, has not hesitated to repeat her strong opposition, and it\u2019s hard to see where pressure sufficient to move her can come from. She dismisses passionate chants<\/a> from crowds demanding these tax increases, unconcerned about any potential electoral weakness coming from their opposition, and is likely to remain firm as the budget negotiations drag on. (The pied-\u00e0-terre tax on luxury second homes that Hochul finally announced<\/a>\u2014and Mamdani applauded<\/a>\u2014on April 15 would only raise $500 million annually, while the legislature\u2019s proposals would raise $3 billion in city income taxes and an additional $1-2 billion in direct state funding for the city. By contrast, in a document<\/a> labeled \u201cHow to Pay for the Mamdani Agenda,\u201d the mayor-to-be offered a plan to raise $10 billion.<\/p>\n

It was never likely that a robust form of \u201ctax the rich\u201d would get over the hurdles that the State\u2019s power structure imposes. Mirroring the U.S. constitutional order as a whole, the structure of New York government is notorious for serving to insulate the powerful from democratic control. The \u201cthree men in a room\u201d is but one problem. The business lobby has made sure to fund lavishly the re-election campaigns of Hochul and others, and has made its objections to taxation publicly known. According to Crain\u2019s<\/em><\/a>, even the proposed pied-\u00e0-terre tax on second homes in New York City, \u201cis certain to prompt a massive fight in Albany from the real estate industry in particular and delay the already delayed state budget much further\u201d. Like the governor herself<\/a>, business leaders are predicting that businesses would leave New York if their taxes are raised. Predictably, in an April 6 letter<\/a> to shareholders, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon argued that cities and businesses needed to \u201ccompete,\u201d and blamed high local taxes for his own corporation\u2019s shifting of some jobs to Texas.<\/p>\n

Although it is technically possible that the legislature could pass tax legislation outside of the context of the budget process, the access of New York\u2019s capitalist class to the halls of power, and the usual nervousness of legislators looking over their shoulders in an election year, prevent any serious consideration of such legislation which would in any case require veto-proof majorities.<\/p>\n

The Mamdani administration has no real strategy to try to overcome these obstacles. The option of cohering a sustainable mass movement to disrupt business as usual, and grow popular participation and organization, has not been on the table. To be sure, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its sister organization, the nonprofit Our Time, have been consistent in their organizing efforts<\/a> on the issue, but the tactics they have used\u2014door-knocking and phone-banking\u2014have done nothing to move New Yorkers beyond the atomization of individual voters calling legislators. Tactics that worked, in a particular moment<\/a>, to get a democratic socialist elected are not sufficient to win a serious reform agenda.<\/p>\n