Shameless Key Dems Hold Their Noses and Endorse Mamdani

The other day, after resisting doing so for months, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries endorsed Zohran Mamdani for Mayor. So, as of this writing, the holdouts among top Democratic leadership in New York is U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, the U.S. Senate Minority Leader and N.Y.S. Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs.

Governor Hochul, N.Y.S., Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and N.Y.S. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins previously endorsed Mamdani, who except for Stewart-Cousins, all delayed in endorsing. And did we mention that N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat and fanatical enemy of Donald Trump, also endorsed Mamdani soon after he won the Democratic nomination?

In fact, though, while their endorsements will likely loom large in the election, the rationales of Hochul and Jeffries reveal more about how far they are prepared to put their personal politics and robotic anti-Trumpism ahead of principle than they might have liked.

Jeffries had long been considered a political left to moderate politician whose serious concern about the hard left Mamdani agenda reportedly caused him to go slow on an endorsement. Indeed, his strained endorsement seemed to acknowledge it:

“As with any mayor, there will be areas of agreement and principled disagreement. Yet the stakes are existential. Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have unleashed an unprecedented assault on the economy, ripped healthcare away from my constituent, weaponized the Department of Justice against our state’s Attorney General and ordered masked agents to callously target law-abiding immigrant families.”

But what he left unsaid was whether Mamdani had come around to his way of thinking on the nuts-and-bolts issues of what is, after all what the mayoral campaign should be all about and which caused Jeffries to hold back for so long.

That is, issues like antisemitism, contempt for law enforcement and disrespect for the rule of law, promotion of racial politics and delegitimizing American traditions, history and achievement thus undermining the glue that keeps us together as a country.

This calls to mind Governor Hochul’s endorsement of Mamdani in September, months after Mamdani won the Democratic nomination, an endorsement we labelled “bizarre” at the time.

The Hochul endorsement came in a Guest Essay in The New York Times and significantly did not report that Mamdani – of whom she had previously been sharply critical – had undergone an epiphany, although she implied as much through very careful phrasing – sometimes artfully and misleadingly. In fact, she actually only said, that she and Mamdani exchanged views with each other and perhaps going only so far as agreeing to disagree.

One illustrative example that we noted went as follows:

“In the past few months, I’ve had frank discussions with him [i.e., Mamdani]. We’ve had our disagreements. But in our conversations, I heard a leader who shares my commitment to a New York where children can grow up in their neighborhoods and where opportunity is within reach for every family. I heard a leader who is focused on making New York City affordable – a goal I enthusiastically support.”

But surely, the issue is not just a commitment to desired goals but rather how to reach them. And there is more:

“I also shared with him my priorities, making it very clear that our police officers should have every resource to keep our streets and subways safe. I urged him to ensure that there is strong leadership at the helm of the NYPD – and he agreed.”

However, note that while she carefully said she made it very clear to Mamdani that police should have adequate resources and also separately urged him to ensure strong leadership at the NYPD, Mamdani’s purported agreement only came with respect to the sentence pertaining to strong leadership.

Similarly, Hochul said, “We discussed the need to combat the rise of antisemitism urgently and unequivocally. I’ve been glad to see him meet with Jewish leaders across the city, listening and addressing their concerns directly. I look forward to working together to make sure New Yorkers of all faiths feel safe and welcome in New York City.

1. But where is anything about Mamdani’s agreement on any of this?

Did the self-described socialist Mamdani agree? Tellingly, the governor does not tell us.

So, Jeffries’s endorsement of Mamdani follows the shameful Hochul script. Even The New York Times said that it was, “the latest sign that skeptical party officials are swallowing concerns about their nominee as Election Day nears.”

We think Mamdani would be a terrible choice for mayor. Hopefully, come election day, voters will get the message that Democratic leaders who endorsed Mamdani don’t really want him either.