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The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) organization has endorsed New York City’s mayoral frontrunner Zohan Mamdani. They expect him to fall in line with their anti-capitalist, collectivist agenda, which Mr. Mamdani is all too happy to oblige.
At a New York City DSA chapter meeting, a chapter leader said, “Our endorsed candidates are expected to follow the will of the membership.” He explained how DSA and the Mamdani campaign are so intertwined. “We work very closely with Zohran,” he said. “A lot of Zohran staff are DSA members and leaders. Zohran running for mayor would not have happened without the DSA.”
Mr. Mamdani has emphasized during his campaign his plans for enormous redistributionist giveaways to New York City residents who supposedly need them, at the expense of successful New Yorkers. While Mamdani has not laid out a detailed plan about all the specific changes he would like to make regarding New York City’s public school education programs, what he has said proves that he is a limousine socialist.
Zohan Mamdani was privileged enough to be able to attend private school from kindergarten through eighth grade and then to secure entry to the elite public Bronx School of Science. However, as mayor, he would oppose expanding privately run but publicly funded charter schools, which provide children whose parents cannot afford to send them to an expensive private school with the opportunity to still receive a superior education. Mr. Mamdani would also phase out the current gifted program for especially talented public-school kindergarteners.
Charter schools have proven records of success as compared to standard New York City public schools. According to the results of the Spring 2025 English Language Arts and Math assessments for district school students compared to the test score data for charter schools, charter students once again outperformed their district school counterparts. New York City’s charter school sector’s student population is 90% black and Hispanic. Underserved minority students would have the most to lose if there is an insufficient number of charter schools to meet their increasing demand for a better education than offered to them in the city’s public schools.
The charter schools must be doing something right. However, Mr. Mamdani puts his socialist ideology above the needs of minority students who, the evidence shows, would benefit significantly from a charter school education. He would rather side with the United Federation of Teachers union, which endorsed him in the November general election and vehemently opposes expansion of charter schools.
“I oppose efforts by the state to mandate an expansion of charter school operations in New York City,” Mamdani declared in a candidates’ questionnaire before the June 24th Democratic primary. “I also oppose the co-locating of charter schools inside DOE [Department of Education] school buildings, but for those already co-located my administration would undertake a comprehensive review of charter school funding to address the unevenness of our system,” he added.
Mr. Mamdani’s opposition to charter schools mirrors the position of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Zohan Mamdani wants to shut down the gifted and talented program for public school kindergarten students, which could be the first step in his taking away such programs from gifted students in New York City’s public schools altogether. Yiatin Chu, the co-founder of Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, said that Mr. Mamdani’s plan could end up “hurting the people that he talks about helping: the working class and the middle class.”
In the name of equity, Mr. Mamdani also supports eliminating selective admissions standards in middle schools, replacing merit-based selection criteria with lottery admissions.
Even the liberal Washington Post in an editorial warned that politicians “tread on dangerous ground when their pursuit of equity comes at the cost of children’s opportunities.”
But Socialists like Zohan Mamdani cannot help themselves. It is in their DNA to sacrifice the real needs of individuals, including school children, on the altar of their Marxist equal outcome ideology. It is also in their DNA to push government-run collectivist programs such as universal childcare that include publicly funded early childcare centers. DSA and the mayoral candidate it endorsed, Zohan Mamdani, support such centers.
Promoting the “rights” of self-identifying transgender students is also a priority for Mr. Mamdani. As part of his plan to declare “New York City a sanctuary city for LGBTQIA+ people and families,” Mr. Mamdani wants to spend millions of taxpayers’ dollars to fund LGBTQIA+ “educational liaisons” in every Department of Education public school district. He wants to codify the “NYC Transgender and Gender Expansive Guidelines,” which call for a student to generally be “permitted to participate in physical education, intramural sports, and competitive athletic activities and contact sports in accordance with the student’s gender identity asserted at school.” These guidelines also state that “Transgender and gender expansive students must be provided access to facilities (restrooms, locker rooms, or changing rooms) consistent with their gender identity asserted at school.”
DSA also believes that self-identifying transgender students should have “full access to facilities reflecting their gender.”
The Democratic Socialists of America see in Zohan Mamdani their ideal kind of political leader. “As DSA member Zohran Mamdani gets closer to the mayorship of the wealthiest city in the world,” the DSA’s September National Political Committee newsletter said, “DSA chapters around the country are running candidates to expand socialist power on city councils and in state houses, and through our work in housing justice, labor organizing, and campaigns grounded in ecosocialism, socialist feminism, abolitionism, trans and queer liberation, and more.”
If Zohan Mamdani is elected to become New York City’s next mayor, as seems increasingly probable, his socialist government policies will most likely prove to be as spectacular a failure as previous socialist regimes’ policies worldwide have been. Perhaps then the socialist/communist movement in the United States will be firmly discredited, even in the eyes of the young people who have been attracted to Mr. Mamdani’s siren song of free stuff.
