Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images
The mayoral endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be one of the most arduous to get. For the past few months, the campaigns of several hopefuls have had to submit polling and strategy memos to her team, outlining how they plan to beat Andrew Cuomo. Those who have been through it say that they are not asked about ideology or specific policy questions — presumably anyone asking for her endorsement has already passed that threshold — and that the congresswoman herself stays out of it until the very end, when she speaks with the candidates who want her support.
But it is worth it because, with the Democratic primary less than a month away, few moments are left that could change the trajectory of a race in which the well-funded former governor is leading his progressive challengers by more than 20 points. Ocasio-Cortez’s final decision is expected in the next couple of days.
Four years ago, liberal leaders in the city believed there was a progressive majority waiting to be activated, but progressives failed to coalesce around a single candidate or a single strategy, and Eric Adams — a former police captain and former Republican — eked out a narrow victory as the Democratic nominee. This time, left-wing groups like the Working Families Party have often endorsed not one candidate but several, hoping to use the ranked-choice voting system to their advantage to see who will ultimately emerge as the best chance to defeat the moderate front-runner.
Most political observers believe Ocasio-Cortez has narrowed her choice to two candidates: Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist assemblymember from Queens who represents a district that overlaps with hers, and Brad Lander, the comptroller who has been a leader of New York’s progressive movement for more than a decade. Mamdani’s rise to second place in polls has taken even many of his allies by surprise, while Lander has been mired in third place, trailing Mamdani in polls by ten points or more and more than 30 points behind Cuomo.
In 2021, candidate Maya Wiley’s own polling had her in the mid-single digits when Ocasio-Cortez announced her support on June 5, an announcement that was so sudden Wiley had to step off the campaign trail and buy a suit jacket to join her for a press conference later that day. Her support nearly tripled as progressive New Yorkers flocked to her in droves. That endorsement, however, came just 17 days before the primary — not enough time for the Wiley campaign to cut a television ad and barely enough time to print out mailers touting the congresswoman’s support.
Lander has spent years cultivating an alliance with Ocasio-Cortez, who had few friends when she ousted ten-term congressman and Queens Democratic boss Joe Crowley in 2018. Lander has been a regular at her town-hall meetings, including one earlier this month at a middle school in Jackson Heights, after which he posted on social media that she “brought down the house at her town hall in Queens. It was a pleasure to be there and hear about the work she’s doing to lead our country forward.” In 2021, she backed his underdog campaign for comptroller after his opponent, Council Speaker Corey Johnson, had received the backing of most labor unions and members of the city’s political Establishment. Lander won the nomination by three points.
Ocasio-Cortez’s base is the sort of voter Lander needs. Although he was one of the founders of the City Council’s progressive caucus and has been endorsed by several progressive groups, he has failed to generate the kind of excitement among left-leaning young New Yorkers that Mamdani has. And while Lander has been running on his managerial competence, pledging to hire more police officers and end street homelessness, Mamdani’s policies have proved more exciting to the base: universal child care, free buses, and city-owned grocery stores. On the polarizing issue of the war in Gaza, Lander describes himself as a “liberal Zionist,” but Mamdani has called for a boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel and has said if Benjamin Netanyahu comes to New York he should be arrested, all of which has thrilled the young left vote in the city.
A Mamdani endorsement may seem like a given owing to their politics, but Ocasio-Cortez was slow to endorse him when he first ran for the Assembly against a 42-year-old female incumbent who held similar left-leaning views. A number of DSA-aligned lawmakers have likewise been slow to endorse him in his mayoral campaign, but more have come onboard as he builds momentum. So far, he has been endorsed by DSA, Jamaal Bowman — a member of Ocasio-Cortez’s so-called Squad in Congress until he was defeated by a moderate in the Democratic primary last year — and progressive Bronx state senator Gustavo Rivera.
“In a borough dominated by machine politics, where Andrew Cuomo currently enjoys a prohibitive advantage, AOC’s top-two local allies coming out strong for Zohran Mamdani are tea leaves that should not be ignored,” observed local political analyst Michael Lange in a recent Substack post that ricocheted around the city’s political circles.
Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsements have tended to come late in campaign seasons, after much of the progressive infrastructure has already settled on a candidate. By the time she endorsed Wiley in 2021, the campaigns of the other progressive favorites, Scott Stringer and Dianne Morales, had already imploded. This time, there is a divide on the left as many have been thrilled to see the excitement and energy Mamdani has generated but fear that there is a hard ceiling on his support and that Lander, the technocratic comptroller, is a far more electable choice.
But whom she ultimately chooses may have less to do with the politics of the mayoral race and more to do with her own political ambitions. Ocasio-Cortez has been working to expand her support from beyond her far-left base in recent months as she continues to be talked about as a candidate for a future statewide, or even national, campaign. She supported Joe Biden for reelection even as many on the left began to call him “Genocide Joe” for his support of Israel. She is eschewing further support for left-wing primary challengers to sitting members of Congress, and last year the national DSA unendorsed her for not being more supportive of the Palestinian cause.
Lander’s supporters see this as an indication that she may end up backing him, not only because of their long relationship but because she is looking to appeal to a wider variety of liberal voters. “Does she really want to run for president or run for the Senate and have people ask her why she thought a 33-year-old who has never run anything bigger than a State Assembly office should be mayor?” asked one.
For Mamdani’s campaign, the choice is equally clear: He is the only candidate in the race who has caught fire, meaning he is the only one with a path to victory against Cuomo. “I’m sorry, but it just can’t be Brad Lander,” says one activist and longtime ally of Ocasio-Cortez. “There is the whole Palestine thing. Young voters don’t support him. Who is excited by the prospect of Brad Lander as mayor?”
There remains a fear among those on the left who want to stop Cuomo that Ocasio-Cortez will delay an announcement this time, too, as she waits to see if either Lander or Mamdani can expand their coalition. (Early voting begins on June 14.) Given the ranked-choice ballot, she could choose to endorse both candidates and not state a preference for who should be ranked No. 1 and who should be ranked No. 2 — a strategy some of her allies, like the WFP, have adopted.
“I think people on the left feel like they have this ownership over AOC and can make demands on her as if she is theirs and not just a member of Congress who has to represent her district like every other member of Congress,” says one activist close to the congresswoman. “But on the other hand, like, what is going on here? Why hasn’t she endorsed yet? We are all waiting.”
