Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed eight candidates in New York’s 2026 Democratic primaries. On June 23, all eight won. City and State reconstructed how the newly elected mayor spent months after his victory building what it calls the strongest political machine any New York mayor has had in generations.
The mayor’s own advisers and allies say Mamdani is now a kingmaker. He backed three congressional candidates and five state legislative candidates, and all eight won. So did all but one of the candidates endorsed by NYC-DSA, the socialist group Mamdani belongs to and worked alongside to pull it off. These were not paper endorsements. Mamdani appeared in videos, spoke at fundraisers, ran rallies and selfie lines, and joined canvasses and phonebanks for his picks.
Shortly after Thanksgiving, Assembly Member Claire Valdez, a Democratic Socialists of America organizer and former union leader in her first year in the Legislature, was invited to Union Square Cafe with Mamdani’s inner circle, including top political adviser Morris Katz, former campaign communications director Andrew Bard Epstein and policy adviser Sam McCann. Halfway through, the mayor-elect himself showed up. He wanted Valdez to run for Congress to replace Rep. Nydia Velazquez, the 17-term Brooklyn and Queens veteran who had just announced her retirement. He told her she was a leader of great integrity who could represent both DSA and organized labor, and promised to be with her every step of the way. Valdez, who told City and State she was more used to talking politics in Ridgewood dive bars than fancy Manhattan restaurants, said no at first.
She was not the obvious successor. Velazquez was widely expected to hand the seat to one of her “godchildren,” the younger Latino officials she had mentored, and over roughly half a dozen meetings she floated names Mamdani might accept, including state Sen. Julia Salazar and City Council Member Tiffany Caban. Mamdani wanted Valdez, who had served as NYC-DSA’s volunteer membership coordinator and was beloved inside the organization. Valdez told City and State she initially wanted to back Salazar. “I had already told multiple people that I was not interested, and that I was really excited to throw my weight behind a different candidate, Julia Salazar,” she said. “So I said no in that initial call.” She agreed to run in early December. Mamdani endorsed her on day one without giving Velazquez a heads-up on the timing.
Velazquez was not pleased. A week after Mamdani’s endorsement, she formally backed Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and told The New York Times that the mayor’s involvement in local primaries risked splitting his own coalition. “Honeymoons are short, and people need to pay attention to the work at hand,” she said. The race turned into a proxy war between the DSA-aligned socialist left behind Valdez and the older institutional progressive left. The Working Families Party endorsed Reynoso in February, breaking with the mayor after his team lobbied, per the Times’ reporting, first to win the nod for Valdez and then to keep the party on the sidelines.
Mamdani’s first congressional move, though, was aimed at a different seat. He backed former mayoral rival Brad Lander’s challenge to Rep. Dan Goldman in the 10th District, spanning lower Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn. He endorsed against a sitting member of Congress, but a Data for Progress poll commissioned by Demand Progress Action had shown Lander leading Goldman by 19 points before he even entered. NYC-DSA had already endorsed Council Member Alexa Aviles for the seat. Lander launched on December 10 with a day-one Mamdani endorsement and a launch video from Katz, and Aviles dropped out the same day.
Another socialist council member wanted a bigger target. Chi Osse was looking for DSA’s backing to challenge House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Mamdani, worried an all-out war on the likely future speaker could imperil his affordability agenda, walked into NYC-DSA’s Electoral Working Group forum at a Greenwich Village church and personally argued members out of it. DSA narrowly voted not to endorse Osse, who then declined to run.
Mamdani cut against his own left. Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado was mounting a primary challenge to Gov. Kathy Hochul, and some progressives wanted to use it to pressure her on taxing the rich. Mamdani instead struck a deal with Hochul, agreeing to endorse her reelection in exchange for state money, most notably for his free childcare plans, and his team worked to block the WFP from endorsing Delgado. Delgado dropped his bid on February 10. Two DSA lawmakers, state Sen. Jabari Brisport and Assembly Member Emily Gallagher, had already endorsed Delgado, and NYC-DSA put out a rare statement distancing itself from the mayor’s move.
After winning the mayoral primary, Mamdani had cut a deal with Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair: Espaillat would endorse him in exchange for Mamdani backing Espaillat’s 2026 reelection. Then Justice Democrats recruited a challenger, Darializa Avila Chevalier, DSA endorsed her in January, and the mayor’s base got loud. Mamdani delayed, then flipped. NYC-DSA co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo told City and State the mayor “cares about retaining the support and the trust of our members and leaders, because he knows how important that was to his election.” Both Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James called Mamdani to talk him out of it, according to the reporting. On May 28 he announced his endorsement of Avila Chevalier on MS NOW. “She grew up with a commitment to the very people that politics have left behind, and what I see in her is that commitment fulfilled,” he said.
Mamdani stopped short of endorsing the full DSA slate. His own list included socialists running for open seats but not those challenging incumbent state lawmakers, a line he drew to avoid crossing Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. He declined to formally endorse David Orkin, a DSA candidate he had helped recruit, and Eon Huntley, whose earlier challenge he had backed in 2024. He still showed up at their events, and Orkin put a photo of the two of them on his campaign mailers.
His allies say he built an alliance with the machine that elected him, not his own machine. “He doesn’t really have, like, a huge independent organizing apparatus,” Gordillo told City and State. Katz called DSA “probably the most powerful political organization in New York right now by a pretty wide margin” on a post-election panel with Citizens Union. Valdez, now headed to Congress, drew the boundary herself. “The mayor is not DSA,” she said. “He’s a member of our organization, he’s an incredibly important part of our organization, but we also have the right to criticize him, to hold him accountable in various ways.”
Featured image: Courtesy socialists.nyc
