New York City is not a microcosm of the United States, nor is New York State. Our swing states are closer to microcosms of the United States — Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Still, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York Democratic primary for mayor illuminates a major tension in American politics.
The tension actually concerns independents and not the Democratic Party, although there is much to learn about the Democratic Party from the election.
There are approximately 1 million voters who are registered as independents in New York City. There are approximately 3.5 million registered Democrats and approximately half a million registered Republicans.
Since New York City has closed primaries, the independent voters were prohibited from voting in either the Democratic or Republican (uncontested) primary. There is a quite decent chance that Andrew Cuomo would have won the primary if the city and/or state had open primaries or semi-closed primaries. He lost by about 115,000 votes, and thus moderate independents could easily have given him a victory.
At the same time, anti-establishment independents would have been disillusioned by an old guard, scandal-plagued, disgraced former governor’s victory. This would have provided a setback for an independent movement and the potential for what I have called tripartisanship to emerge as our new political goal.
With a tripartisan rather than bipartisan ideal — namely a third force of a small group of independents on Capitol Hill, especially in the Senate — the two-party duopoly would be transformed into a system with three and not two main voices in American politics.
This is the tension: Some independents are happy or would be happy to vote in either Democratic or Republican primaries; other independents are, as Thom Reilly, Jaqueline Salit, and Omar Ali argue in “The Independent Voter,” anti-establishment.
They want to vote for independent or third-party candidates who buck the system, whether they are creative new centrists determined to overcome our deeply polarized political system or more progressive than progressive Democrats or more conservative than most Republicans or just libertarian.
In short, of the over 40% of Americans who Gallup reports do not identify as Democrats or Republicans, many want to be included in the establishment and many are opposed to the establishment. This makes up about 60 million voters.
There are another 80 million Americans who are eligible to vote but who are not registered. About 30 million of them are independents, too.
Mamdani has not won the general election yet, and he may be running against Cuomo again, this time as an independent. He is definitely running against current Mayor Eric Adams, who is an independent now, although he was elected as a Democrat.
Like Michael Bloomberg who has been a Republican, a Democrat and an independent, Adams is not wedded to any political party or movement.
In any case, the November election, which will not have ranked choice voting like the primary, could be a circus. It is really unclear who is going to win, although Assemblyman Mamdani is surely the front runner at this point.
For independents, the Democratic primary does reveal a stark battle between the establishment and anti-establishment independents. Anti-establishment independents lost out if they are broadly moderates or creative centrists of some sort — Mamdani is a far-left Democrat.
Since he says he is a democratic socialist, he is not really a Democrat anyway. Indeed, he does not support the defining feature of democratic socialism and socialism in general, namely the public ownership of industry and the means of production.
Supporting free buses and free child care and freezing rent does not make you a socialist. Progressive Democrats can support these policies.
Leaving the question aside of how to even identify Mamdani, many anti-establishment moderate independents must be very upset that Mamdani won the primary, whereas there also are many independents who must be very happy because they are left-wing independents.
The upshot is that an open primary may well have generated a Cuomo victory in the Democratic primary, and this victory would definitely have been disillusioning to anti-establishment independents.
Independents, therefore are as a group, pulled in different directions.
There is no easy way out of this dynamic as it is just reality that independents are not all the same. Reflecting on the dramatic victory for Mamdani in the primary is instructive, not only for New York City but for the United States overall.
Dave Anderson (dmamaryland@gmail.com) has taught political philosophy at five colleges and universities, is editor of the interdisciplinary volume “Leveraging,” and ran for Congress as a Democrat in Maryland in 2016.
