In a statement, the Vermont senator said, “We need the kind of visionary leadership that Zohran is providing in this campaign.”

cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/209042

Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders announced Tuesday that he is endorsing fellow democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani for mayor, giving the 33-year-old assemblymember another boost in his challenge to front-runner Andrew Cuomo.

In a statement, Sanders said Mamdani is running “an inspirational grassroots campaign” backed by small-dollar donors and praised his plan to pay for his platform of new affordable housing and free buses through an increased tax on the wealthy and corporations, a staple of the senator’s own political ideology. Sanders notably did not endorse in the 2021 primary and only backed Bill de Blasio during his reelection bid in 2017.

“At this pivotal and dangerous moment in American history, status-quo politics is not good enough. We need the kind of visionary leadership that Zohran is providing in this campaign. In my view, Zohran Mamdani is the best choice for mayor of New York City,” he said.

Mamdani acknowledged Sanders’s support on social media, writing that the veteran progressive senator “has been the single most influential political figure in my life.”

“As mayor, I will strive to live up to his example by fighting for the working class every day and hopefully make Brooklyn’s own proud,” he said.

Speculation about Sanders’s plans to endorse in the race grew after Mamdani received the support of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a longtime friend and ally of Sanders. The two recently embarked on the cross-country Fighting Oligarchy tour together, holding massive rallies in Republican strongholds in an effort to harness voters’ growing opposition to Trump between election years. Our Revolution, the progressive political organization founded by Sanders during his 2016 presidential bid, also announced its own endorsement in the primary, backing Mamdani and Comptroller Brad Lander, who have both cross-endorsed each other in the ranked-choice race.

It’s not yet clear if Sanders will join Mamdani on the campaign trail in the waning days of the race. A 2019 rally for Sanders’s presidential campaign with Ocasio-Cortez drew a reported 26,000 attendees to Queensbridge Park. Over the weekend, Mamdani rallied with the congresswoman at Terminal 5 in Manhattan, attracting thousands of supporters to the venue.

Related

Zohran Mamdani Crashes the PartyThe New York Times Leads the Movement to Stop Zohran MamdaniAndrew Cuomo Faces a Hard Road

From Intelligencer - Daily News, Politics, Business, and Tech via this RSS feed

  • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]OPEnglish
    6•4 days ago

    I don’t see what my age has to do with this. Do I think he’s going to get the IOF light to arrest Benny boy? No, but, it is what Mamdani implied and it is how rags like the NYPost and the Jerusalem Post have interpreted his answer. If there are electorates who align with Palestine, his position is in alignment with them based on his other positions regarding Israel.

    As I’ve stated, he calls it what it is, a genocide, something Burnie refuses to do. That puts him left of Burnie. That’s going to win him votes.

    Saying is one thing, doing is another, obviously. NYC is a very important mayoral race electorally. So it’s interesting that he’s doing as well as he is.

    • ICBMEnglish
      2•4 days ago

      More liberal zionist apologia.

      • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]OPEnglish
        3•4 days ago

        Ignore the changing conditions, comrade. It’s like Lenin said “Fuck electoralism!” Right?

        Even if only a fairly large minority of the industrial workers, and not “millions” and “legions”, follow the lead of the Catholic clergy—and a similar minority of rural workers follow the landowners and kulaks (Grossbauern)—it undoubtedly signifies that parliamentarianism in Germany has not yet politically outlived itself, that participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory on the party of the revolutionary proletariat specifically for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class, and for the purpose of awakening and enlightening the undeveloped, downtrodden and ignorant rural masses. Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.

        I’m simply engaging in the understanding of electoral politics. I’m not voting in the NYC Mayoral race. I’m not even advocating people do that. I’m saying, a guy who the JP and the NYP call “antisemitic” is polling better than the knownremoved and Israel lover Andrew Cuomo in Little Tel Aviv. He was polling better than Cuomo before an endorsement from Sanders.

        • ICBMEnglish
          3•4 days ago

          So the implication is that Lenin told you to vote for a LIBERAL, who is running for office in the 4th Reich and said to the entire world that the COLONIAL OCCUPIER ENGAGED IN AN ACTIVE GENOCIDE HAS A RIGHT TO EXIST. I know your brains are cooked over there, but holy shit, how is that not immediately disqualifying for a “ML” or “tankie” or "leftist"or whatever you think you are? Minimizing and ignoring contradictions does not solve those contradictions.

          Your problem, as with most of the amerikkkan “left” is the trap of so-called progressivism. Progressivism CAPTURES to the left to empower the bourgeois. It lures you with insinuations that it lacks the will or political capital to afford. The progressive trap allows you to project your will and political desires onto a vessel. It’s inherently dishonest and narcissistic. It’s a fantasty that has you licking the boots of TWO genocide apologists, who are CLEARLY just engaging in political opportunism. I saw the same baby brained arguments about your beloved AOC, who has been arming and funding a genocidal settler colony and literally fingerwags and arrests protestors who oppose that GENOCIDE.

          I don’t have hope for amerikkkans. But you can shove your liberal zionist apologia up your fucking ass.