Zohran Mamdani and Jay Jones, two Democrats noted for their extreme views, policies, and actions, both won major electoral victories on Tuesday night. Mamdani will lead America’s most populous city, and Jones will be the chief law enforcement officer in one of America’s most influential and prestigious states — a stark reminder that the left’s most radical elements are in the driver’s seat.
Despite Mamdani’s and Jones’ extremism, much of the right’s (and the left’s) attention in the final days before the 2025 election centered on Nick Fuentes’ appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast. The furor over Fuentes’ appearance and Carlson’s approach to the interview threatens to obscure the key difference between radicalism that is purportedly right-wing and radicalism on the left: The radicals Democrats label right-wing do not hold positions of power or influence on the right, even as the left-wing radicals are now leading the Democrat Party, along with some of America’s most important cities and states.
A few examples highlight this difference. The leading concern with Fuentes is his blatant antisemitism and his racism more broadly, and the traction these views are supposedly gaining among some elements of the right. But Fuentes isn’t leading the city with the largest Jewish population in the United States (and second largest of any city in the world). That would be Mamdani, a man with a long history of hostility to Israel and, apparently, to Jews more generally.
Mamdani has refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” and would not say Hamas should lay down its arms. He has asserted that the Israeli Defense Force laced the boots of the New York Police Department “when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck” and posted glowing praise of a Muslim imam whom prosecutors designated an “unindicted conspirator” in the 1993 terror attack on the World Trade Center. Mamdani has also associated with podcaster Hasan Piker, who once stated that “America deserved 9/11” and called it unfortunate that the Soviet Union was defeated in the Cold War.
Mamdani has also praised the terrorism-funding “Holy Land Five” and been arrested while taking part in a “pro-Palestine” protest at Sen. Chuck Schumer’s residence. He has presented Muslims as the true victims of the 9/11 terror attacks, while painting Americans as bigoted and discriminatory in the process. Mamdani excoriated Andrew Cuomo for not visiting mosques more often, and he has proposed skewing tax rates to target wealthier citizens, particularly those who are white (a policy that would presumably penalize a not-insignificant number of Jewish New Yorkers), in addition to numerous other socialist policies.
It remains to be seen which extreme policies Mamdani will actually have the authority to enact, but he will wield considerable power as mayor, while continuing to utilize the influence of his prolific social media machine and enjoying voluminous coverage from legacy media outlets. Fuentes and those like him wield no such power.
While Mamdani is projected to garner more votes than Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa combined, Jones won a nearly 6-point victory over incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares in Virginia. The win proved wrong those who thought Jones’ text messages fantasizing about violence against political opponents and death to their children might keep Democrats from electing him to statewide office. It didn’t.
Jones managed to keep the support of many Democrats who would readily condemn Fuentes for his infamous praise of Hitler and Stalin. (Fuentes noted that he was a “fan” and “admirer” of Stalin in his interview with Carlson.) But Jones has a different kind of radical view about mass-murdering autocrats like these. In his text messages and comments to a former legislative colleague, he expressed the belief that Republicans are even more evil and deserving of death than men who tortured and murdered millions during the horrifically violent 20th century. Moreover, he suggested that their children need to die in their mother’s arms so that GOP politicians would change their policies, while labeling these children “little fascists.”
Jones didn’t make these statements on a podcast or in a chat room in his teens or twenties — he made them three years ago, after he had already served as a state legislator. And these statements were not isolated “mistakes.” Jones also allegedly suggested that killing police officers would help improve policing and campaigned with a group that favored defunding the police just a few days before his election.
If that weren’t enough, “Jones’ campaign was further marred by a 2022 speeding incident, in which he was charged with reckless driving for going 116 mph in a 70 mph stretch of highway,” The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood reported. Exacerbating the egregious nature of his conduct, Jones reportedly got off with a fine and a light sentence of community service before proceeding to perform half of his community service hours for his own PAC.
Now Jones will be responsible for a host of important duties, including overseeing criminal prosecutions, proposing legislation, advising the Virginia executive, and enforcing the law.
The massive political power Mamdani and Jones will soon exercise decisively undermines attempts to portray purportedly “right-wing” radicals as an equal parallel to members of the radical left. Despite Fuentes’ recent increases in social media followers, contentions that he is the “successor” to Charlie Kirk (Michelle Goldberg at the New York Times) or somehow a mainstream figure in conservative politics are fallacious and, indeed, ridiculous. Kirk may have been the main driver behind Trump’s 2024 victory, and he ran an organization that has more than 2,000 chapters across the nation (the number could soon be in the tens of thousands). He was a “frequent” guest at the White House and had ready access to President Donald Trump.
Fuentes met with Trump once (and Trump apparently had no idea who Fuentes was). Fuentes views the “conservative movement” as the “enemy,” and Carlson’s interview didn’t magically eliminate all the factors that mitigate Fuentes’ ability to exercise something akin to real political power or influence on the right (neither did Carlson’s interviews with Vladimir Putin and Masoud Pezeshkian automatically crown them accepted figures on the right).
There is also no comparison between Mamdani and Jones and the now infamous members of the obscene-edgelording “Young Republicans” group chat. Those members included a single elected official (who has since resigned) and, apparently, a single member of the administration — and though these chat participants were politically involved and active, 99 percent of Americans who follow politics wouldn’t know their names, let alone the average American.
But to imply that the problem of leftist extremists in political office is limited to Mamdani and Jones would be inaccurate. There is, of course, Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, “a big supporter of infamous anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan,” who has been accused of physical abuse by multiple women. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat congresswoman from Minnesota, has blamed Charlie Kirk for his assassination and said that on 9/11 “some people did something.” Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Maxine Waters have been anything but shy about inciting intimidation and violence against their political opponents. These are only a few examples among many.
Yet many on the left (and some on the right) would have Americans believe that Fuentes’ appearance on Carlson’s show is just as concerning or more concerning than the radical leftists in political office. Interestingly, Fuentes’ proximity to Carlson seems to have caused as much (or more) concern across the political spectrum as did the fact that Hunter Biden (the womanizing, drug-using, con man extordinare) was attending White House meetings with President Joe Biden and “talking to senior White House staff members” during the summer of 2024. But those two “proximities” are nowhere near equal.
Neither are the problems of extremism on the right and the left. The radicals Democrats label “right-wing” are on podcasts. The left-wing radicals are in office.
Joshua Monnington is an assistant editor at The Federalist. He was previously an editor at Regnery Publishing and is a graduate of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
