After Historic Midterm Wins, Can New York Democrats Come Together?

NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was kept at arm’s length by Democrat Cait Conley and embraced by Gov. Kathy Hochul. Both won.

The election showed Democrats can take sharply different approaches to the party’s resurgent left and still prevail. The harder question is what those relationships demand now that the campaign is over — and the first real test will be in Albany. The democratic socialist bloc in the state Legislature is set to nearly double, and they and Mamdani will start dialing up the pressure on Hochul to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

“The moderates understand they don’t have this party to themselves anymore,” former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “They have to share it with the progressives.”

How Hochul navigates the tension over taxes will have sweeping consequences for the fragile Democratic coalition. Her blowout win over Republican foe Bruce Blakeman came after she campaigned alongside the popular but polarizing Mamdani — a victory augmented by his leftist allies.

The governor has offered carefully worded answers to questions over whether she would acquiesce to raising taxes — one of the mayor’s signature campaign proposals — and her statements haven’t quite closed the door to the idea, giving her flexibility if revenue is needed. Her intentions will become more clear in the coming months when she submits her first budget plan of her second term.

The year-long, mutually beneficial partnership between Mamdani and Hochul is a blueprint for how the differing ends of the party can work together. A rupture in that alliance has the potential to be a harbinger of Democrats' governing woes in the months to come.

From Albany to Washington, New York Democrats will ascend to powerful, consequential roles next year. That newfound influence will turn up the klieg lights on the party’s disparate factions, threatening to rip apart the delicate truce between establishment party leaders and a surging left flank. Neither faction appears to be in the mood to cede ground.

The national blue wave smashed into the Empire State, consuming swing seat Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in the Hudson Valley and swelling Democrats’ margins in the state Legislature to levels not seen in a century. Hakeem Jeffries, currently the House minority leader, is poised to become the first Black House speaker. Chuck Schumer is set to return as Senate majority leader.

These high-water mark results, though, come without resolutions to the key internal fissures Democrats will continue to wrestle with in the coming months — especially as the left digs in on complex policy priorities like tax increases, abolishing the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and ending all U.S. aid to Israel. Those pressure points will make it all the more difficult for party brass to find a middle ground palatable to both sides.

Tensions will be closely monitored in New York, where the Democratic tent is at its most expansive — a party represented simultaneously by institutional figures like Jeffries and Schumer as well as two of the nation’s most prominent leftists, Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

And the mayor wants to keep his foot on the gas.

“This is the moment where we are seeing people across this country vote for a politics that will mean something,” Mamdani told reporters this week. “For a long time politics has felt like a hobby only some people can afford. We want politics to mean the deliverance of dignity into working people’s lives.”

One key to this unity test is Jeffries, who has clashed with his party’s left flank.

After Democrats flipped dozens of House seats Tuesday, the Brooklyn lawmaker is on a glide path to become House speaker, one the most powerful posts on Capitol Hill — and one in which he'll need to oversee an unwieldy caucus with many competing interests. The New York congressional delegation alone is a minefield of ideological rifts, with its members comprising some of Congress’ most progressive and most centrist Democrats.

Conley, one of its newest prospective members, unseated Lawler by limiting her exposure to Mamdani, who is less popular in the New York City suburbs. She forcefully denounced the mayor’s statement on the Oct. 7 attacks, which was maligned for the way it criticized Israel’s war in Gaza.

The incoming House lawmaker, set to represent a district just north of New York City, will typify the increasingly wide ideological range among Empire State Democrats.

When asked how she’ll work with those further to the left, she replied: “We have to focus on the shared objective and the shared responsibility, which is delivering for working people and lowering costs.”

“We’ve got to stop focusing on stuff that divides us and focus on our responsibilities and what we share — and that, that has to be the absolute focus,” she continued.

The state Working Families Party endorsed Conley in the general election — even after some progressives in the district griped about her moderate stances on Israel and immigration. The group’s head, Jasmine Gripper, said Conley will be a “great addition to the New York delegation” and cited an “alignment” in priorities when it comes to supporting a public option for health care and taxing the ultra-wealthy.

Enforcing this sentiment is the left’s eagerness to primary moderate incumbents. Leftist Democrats are champing at the bit to replace Schumer, whose term ends in 2028.

Ocasio-Cortez, whose 2018 primary victory over former Rep. Joe Crowley stunned the political world, traveled the country this year to boost Democratic candidates in swing Senate races. She also took a tour of upstate cities far from her Bronx-Queens House district, stumping for Democrats in competitive state and federal races.

She has not ruled out a bid for Schumer’s seat in two years or a White House campaign.

Her political team in a pre-Election Day memo this week touted the influence Ocasio-Cortez can wield in a race — either national or in her home state.

“The Congresswoman has emerged as one of the most powerful endorsements in the United States and New York State specifically,” the memo stated. “Candidates from rural districts and battleground seats see her as an asset for their general election campaigns.”

The rise of DSA-backed candidates at the federal and state levels has complicated governing for moderate Democrats — and Hochul has been no exception. The governor will be under pressure to raise taxes next year on rich people and large corporations — measures favored by Mamdani and the growing cadre of democratic socialist lawmakers in the state Legislature and on Capitol Hill.

Left-leaning Democrats and supporters of raising income taxes insist there is still leverage to be had over the governor, who will now remain the state’s chief executive until 2030. Albany Democrats will hold supermajorities in both legislative chambers — clout that will improve their negotiating hand in closed-door talks with Hochul.

The socialists’ ranks are expected to grow in Albany next year from nine state lawmakers to 16 in the 213-member Democratic-dominated state Legislature. That growth will further enhance the hard left’s platform and influence.

“The governor is not the only one who was elected to represent New Yorkers,” said Erica Vladimer, a state Democratic committee member. “There are senators and assemblymembers as well, and we know voters support raising taxes on the wealthy.”

Hochul, though, has a strong hand to play.

Her win Tuesday was far more fulsome than four years ago, a 20-point drubbing of Blakeman. The governor’s allies want hard-left Democrats to help focus on a tangible to-do list and set aside fighting.

“No matter what side of the party you’re on, the priority has to be respecting each other in the party, lowering the temperature and having open conversations respectfully and respecting other opinions and doing the best to move an agenda forward that shows people progress on the issues important to them,” New York Democratic Chair Jay Jacobs said.