‘Is this a leader that truly represents me, or will this leader discard me when people think I’m too progressive?’ House Dem tells Axios
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) is facing growing pressure from his party’s progressive wing for not endorsing Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race, according to a report.
One left-wing House Democrat said nationwide progressives are “100%” frustrated with Jeffries, Axios reported, while a second lawmaker asked, “Is this a leader that truly represents me, or will this leader discard me when people think I’m too progressive?”
A third member of Congress told Axios that party leaders are being “inconsistent and hypocritical” for “saying we have to stand with our Democratic nominees and then make exceptions when we think they’re left of us.”
The House members are not the only Democratic politicians to blast party leaders for not endorsing Mamdani. “Many Democratic members of the Senate and the House representing New York have stayed on the sidelines,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) said Saturday. “That kind of spineless politics is what people are sick of. They need to get behind [Mamdani] and get behind him now.” Like Jeffries, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) has not endorsed Mamdani.
Many moderate Democrats, meanwhile, worry that Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who won the Democratic primary for New York City’s mayor in late June, could alienate voters and deepen the party’s internal turmoil. New York Democratic representatives Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen, who represent swing districts, have publicly refused to back Mamdani ahead of the November election.
Mamdani has long faced scrutiny over his anti-Semitic rhetoric and far-left agenda, which includes government-run grocery stores, massive tax hikes, and a $30 minimum wage. In June, the candidate defended the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a popular chant at anti-Israel protests that calls for violence against Jews worldwide. His campaign said Monday that, as mayor, Mamdani would drop the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism, leading to sharp criticism from Jewish organizations.
“A government that disavows IHRA isn’t serious about defeating anti-Semitism,” Brandeis Center for Human Rights senior counsel Rory Lancman told the New York Post, “but rather allowing it.”
Jeffries has “assiduously deflected questions about if and when an endorsement of Mamdani is coming—even after meeting with him multiple times,” Axios reported. “I’ll have more to say about the mayor’s race when I have more to say about the mayor’s race,” he told reporters on Monday.
This isn’t the first time that Democratic Party leaders have faced pressure from Mamdani’s allies. The Democratic Socialists of America, for example, has repeatedly floated the idea of launching primary challenges against Jeffries and other Democratic incumbents, according to reports.
Top congressional Democrats were in “absolute panic and fear” immediately after Mamdani’s primary win, torn between endorsing a candidate many privately call “toxic” and risking primary challenges from his energized socialist base, the Post reported in July.
“Mamdani is the greatest threat to Democrats probably since Ronald Reagan because he’s everything Democrats have been accused of being and in fact is—to the extreme,” longtime Democratic operative Hank Sheinkopf told Politico this month.
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