On Sept. 14, Governor of New York Kathy Hochul endorsed Queens assemblyman Zohran Mamdani to be the mayor of New York City. In my opinion, this is no more than a publicity stunt from the governor. Hochul needs to be re-elected next year if she wants to remain governor, and her approval ratings over the past year haven’t been stellar. With Mamdani leading in the NYC mayoral race polls by 20 points, it makes sense for her to endorse him now, take some heat from the rest of the party and keep her seat next year during the elections.
However, Hochul’s views don’t necessarily line up with Mamdani’s. Hochul is a centrist democrat, whereas Mamdani is a democratic socialist. His proposals include making all NYC buses free, raising the minimum wage to $30 by 2030, opening city-owned grocery stores and providing universal no-cost childcare. Hochul expressed their shared priorities of affordability, safety and standing up to the Trump administration in her endorsement. But I still have my doubts about this partnership.
These two politicians operate very differently. Hochul has been a staunch supporter of Israel. She called the starvation of children in Gaza “unconscionable,” but has not pledged to do anything about it. Mamdani, on the other hand, vowed to order the New York Police Department (NYPD) to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel. This issue alone seems like enough to create a large rift between the two of them, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Mamdani has been critical of removing current Mayor Eric Adams from office but Hochul wasn’t as adamant as him. Hochul didn’t want to remove him from office because of the “will of the voters,” which I find rich because there were numerous alarmed civic leaders and elected officials urging Hochul to remove Adams from office.
Mamdani, on the other hand, called to defund the NYPD, until a mass shooting happened in July, where a gunman shot multiple citizens at the New York headquarters of the NFL. When this happened, he went back on his statement, but maintained his support for police reform. If you ask me, he was not wrong to say what he said in the first place; I don’t think the NYPD should be this militarized or have a $5.6 billion budget, a shift that has been occurring since 9/11.
Going beyond Hochul’s moderate stance, Mamdani criticized Adams’ corruption case, calling it “pay-to-play” politics, something he had to overcome in order to win the democratic primary earlier this year. He beat Cuomo by 12 points and showed the power of a grassroots campaign, leaving a lot of New Yorkers and young voters, like myself, across the country feeling optimistic about the future of the Democratic Party. His victory shifted what the party could look like, but some prominent Democrats from New York, namely Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, are still reluctant to endorse him for NYC mayor.
Regardless, Hochul’s endorsement didn’t really move Mamdani’s agenda forward much, but it did raise questions from her allies and from the White House. President Donald Trump refers to Mamdani as a “communist,” and he’s a far cry from that; in my opinion, he’s trying to change the city for the better.
With the tension between these two officials, the endorsement comes as a shock; they don’t necessarily align with each other, and it puts Hochul at risk with the rest of the party. Her supporters and donors don’t like Mamdani since he wants to raise taxes on the wealthy and make the city affordable for all. The endorsement ties Hochul to Mamdani’s actions, even if she criticizes them later on.
Hochul’s endorsement, from the looks of it, seems to be both a risk and a way to secure her spot as governor again next year in the election. She has to burn some bridges here to remain in her position, and she will have to answer to both moderate democrats and Trump, who already doesn’t like Mamdani.
Gabriel Capellan, FCRH ‘28, is a journalism major from the Bronx, New York.
