Zohran Mamdani’s influence grows as Democrats eye 2028 strategies

Democrats have notched their strongest showing in decades in the 2026 midterm elections, taking control of both chambers of the United States Congress, as well as a share of the country’s gubernatorial races.

In the aftermath, television networks scrambled to book the night’s biggest winners and most recognisable faces to comment on the results.

But one of the most sought-after figures was not a longtime Democratic leader like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer or House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. It was Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City – and a figurehead for a burgeoning progressive movement.

At New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s re-election watch party in Midtown Manhattan, a newly shaven, moustache-wearing Mamdani took the stage to celebrate what he described as a victory for the broader left-wing political movement.

“We have begun the work of transforming our party and making it belong to working people once again,” Mamdani told a roaring crowd.

In the days that followed, Mamdani appeared on networks ranging from left-leaning MS NOW to the more conservative Fox News to discuss the growing clout of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the organisation with which he is affiliated.

Several DSA-backed candidates succeeded in the November 3 midterms, including the Mamdani-endorsed politician Claire Valdez, who won New York’s seventh congressional district.

Democratic socialists also triumphed in mayoral elections from Washington, DC, to Providence, Rhode Island, and Los Angeles, California. Elsewhere, progressives captured key races around the country, including toss-up Senate contests in Maine and Michigan.

Supporters of the progressive movement see this year’s midterms as a turning point for Democratic politics overall. They credit Mamdani with setting the landslide in motion.

“On the candidate and campaign side, we now have a path – cleared by Zohran and now being paved by others – for this kind of authentic, populist and competent progressive leadership,” Adin Lenchner, founder of New York-based political consultancy Carroll Street Campaigns, told Al Jazeera.

Lenchner called figures like Mamdani “a real model nationally” for the left wing.

New York City’s mayors have long occupied a prominent place in US politics, commanding a national profile well beyond the city’s limits.

Rudy Giuliani, for example, was dubbed “America’s mayor” after the attacks on September 11, 2001. Bill de Blasio became a fixture on national television during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Mamdani’s ascent has been different.

At the start of 2025, Mamdani was a relatively unknown state assemblyman from Queens. His mayoral bid was widely regarded as a long shot. But his grassroots organising, social media operation and economic message quickly turned his campaign into a national phenomenon.

That message – focused largely on affordability – resonated with political strategist Nomiki Konst, who worked on the 2016 presidential campaign for US Senator Bernie Sanders, another democratic socialist.

She remembers connecting with the Sanders campaign in a way she had not with mainstream Democrats.

“I couldn’t necessarily articulate my frustration with the Democratic Party and what they were not providing for me,” Konst said.

“But then suddenly Bernie Sanders started talking about student loan debt, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s the thing that’s killing me right now. That is why I feel like I can’t get by, like I’m just constantly on a hamster wheel.'”

Konst is currently organising for other progressive candidates to compete in the 2028 elections, building on this year’s midterm momentum.

She anticipates campaigns like Mamdani’s – that focus on the “crushing weight of this monopoly-driven crony capitalism” – will continue to be relevant in 2028, just as they were this year.

For Lenchner, the success of progressive and democratic socialist candidates in the 2026 midterms hinged on affordability issues. Voters consistently ranked the cost of living among their top concerns in pre-election polls.

He pointed to the parallel with Mamdani’s 2025 campaign, which included videos explaining how street food had become so expensive.

“Understanding that the same forces that make halal trucks expensive and limit immigrants from being able to run food carts are the same forces that are keeping people off healthcare and keeping their rent high,” Lenchner said.

“I think that is the connective tissue that Zohran has so expertly told the story of and connected for voters.”

Political insiders say Mamdani’s victory in 2025 also offered a lesson for midterm candidates today: that the political establishment is not invincible, and candidates willing to challenge it can win.

In 2025, Mamdani’s main opponent was former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a candidate who had name recognition, political connections and institutional backing.

Despite resigning his governorship in 2021 over sexual misconduct allegations, Cuomo was long thought to be the frontrunner.

Instead, he lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani, 56 percent to 44. He ran in the general election as an independent, only to lose again, with Mamdani taking just over 50 percent of the vote to Cuomo’s nearly 42 percent.

Progressive operatives see that willingness to stare down long odds as one of the biggest takeaways from Mamdani’s dark-horse campaign.

Early in his campaign, the future mayor was polling at barely 1 percent in pre-election polls, with Cuomo by far the frontrunner. At the time, his identity as a democratic socialist was seen as a weakness.

To Konst, the lesson is that political affiliation matters less than overarching questions of economic inequality.

“The people who are holding up this country are the corporate class, which likes to divide us based on its designation of what left and right is,” Konst said.

“It’s up versus down. There’s no left or right in this country, and people are changing their minds every day.”

Mamdani’s campaign also demonstrated the appeal of small-dollar fundraising, with the vast majority of its contributions coming in amounts under $250.

In 2026, DSA candidates in New York also banked on a lot of small donors.

Political insiders trace Mamdani’s strategy of redirecting attention to the economy to some of this year’s most surprising victories.

In Texas, James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton in the Senate race, becoming the first Democrat to win statewide office in the state in more than 30 years.

In Michigan, another Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, faced repeated questions about his position on Israel and Gaza, but instead centred his campaign on a pledge to redirect money for the war towards domestic priorities.

Konst, the political strategist, said she has already started to look at how to leverage last week’s midterm success into future races.

“I think, on the left, we need to take the momentum out of our wins on Tuesday and channel it into something,” Konst said.

In her case, that has meant scoping out potential 2028 presidential candidates. She is co-chairing a draft committee urging US Representative Ro Khanna of California, an outspoken progressive, to run.

Whether Mamdani’s influence can translate into a lasting national movement remains to be seen.

Critics warn that the 2026 midterm victories may reflect more the backlash to US President Donald Trump than support for a progressive political surge.

But Konst hopes that, on election night in 2028, she might find herself experiencing the same anticipation and enthusiasm she felt during the midterms.

Only this time, her eyes are not on the halls of Congress or city hall, but the White House.