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WHAT CALIFORNIA HISTORY HAS TO SAY ABOUT THE NEW YORK MAYOR’S RACE
 
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Fred Glass
July 13, 2025
The Stansbury Forum
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_ If Mamdani loses, the leadership of the Democratic Party will
redouble its push to field empty neoliberal suits in 2026.
Harriman’s defeat in LA in 1911 set back the cause of working-class
politics for decades. _

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One hundred and fourteen years ago a democratic socialist was poised
to become Mayor of Los Angeles. Not yet the sprawling megalopolis of
today, the city nonetheless ranked second largest in California, and
was growing fast. A socialist in the top municipal office? The idea
sent the L.A. ruling class into a freakout of red-baiting, lies,
half-truths and an occasional accurate depiction of Job Harriman’s
progressive positions.

The Socialist Party candidate—a labor attorney, and former
vice-presidential running mate of Eugene Debs—had come out on top of
an open primary, just short of the majority he needed to win outright.
Now he faced off against the incumbent, a champion of the interests
that had earned Los Angeles the moniker of “scabbiest town on
earth” within the city’s unions. Adding spice to the mix, this
would be the first major election in the Golden State in which women
could vote, Proposition 4 having just squeaked by in a state
referendum the same day Harriman won the mayoral primary.

The business elites threw everything they could muster into their
effort to stave off the Apocalypse. The _Los Angeles Times_—a
virulently anti-union publication owned by Harrison Gray Otis, leader
of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association, a close friend and
business associate of corrupt Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz—warned
every day with a creative variety of arguments that if Harriman were
elected, the sky, along with the economy, would crash onto
Angelenos’ heads. He editorialized that this election represented
“the forces of law and order against Socialism; peace and prosperity
against misery and chaos; the Stars and Stripes against the red
flag.” What program so enraged and frightened the capitalist class
of southern California? Harriman promised to:

·      Reverse an anti-picketing ordinance that had filled Los
Angeles jails with peaceful union members for the crime of walking on
sidewalks with signs, singing labor songs, while on strike 

·      Investigate the real estate deals that had brought giant
payoffs to Otis and his friends when the Owens Valley aqueduct
terminated on land they had purchased via insider information (the
real life backdrop to events depicted in the film CHINATOWN
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·      Municipalize city services to save the taxpayers money
and improve efficiency;

·      Invest in building community centers, public pools and
baths, and increase support for public schools;

·      Oh, and modestly raise taxes on the rich and large
businesses to pay for these reforms.

Pretty radical stuff.

Ultimately none of these political ideas or the opposition’s
counters to them defeated Harriman. What did was an early historical
appearance of the “October Surprise”. A year before the election,
a bomb ripped through the _Los Angeles Times_ building, killing twenty
workers. When brothers James and John McNamara (a national leader of
the Ironworkers union) were arrested and put on trial, Harriman, the
top labor attorney in southern California, defended them, believing in
their innocence. When he decided to run for mayor, he turned the
defense over to crusading lawyer for the damned Clarence Darrow.
Darrow had previously proven that labor leaders in Colorado accused of
a bombing had been framed, and like Harriman thought the McNamara
brothers trial was a rerun.

But the McNamaras were guilty, as Darrow ultimately found out. After
secret negotiations with Otis and other Los Angeles business leaders,
Darrow—a fervent opponent of the death penalty— unexpectedly
changed his clients’ plea to “guilty” just days before the
election. The timing was key to the agreement. In exchange the
prosecution agreed to ask for prison instead of death sentences. 

Although left out of the loop, Harriman suffered the consequences.
Heavily favored to win a week before the election, but firmly tied in
the public’s mind to the McNamara’s defense, he and the entire
Socialist slate went down to defeat. 

Today democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani is in good position to win
the New York City Mayor’s race. With a ferocious ground game, smart
media, charisma to spare and a set of goals clustered under the
umbrella of “AFFORDABILITY” popular with the working class and
youth, his coalition will be a formidable force between now and
November. He’ll likely confront a Republican rival, incumbent Mayor
Eric Adams and perhaps the disgraced former governor, whom he just
defeated in the Democratic primary. If both run the latter two will
split the anti-Mamdani vote sufficiently to get him elected. 

But the climb will be slippery. The mud is already being flung by the
usual suspects. One shouldn’t be surprised by Trump’s
characterization of Mamdani as “a one hundred percent Communist
lunatic.” That won’t be the deciding factor, as the unpopular
former New Yorker POTUS will probably add more votes to Mamdani’s
column than he removes. 

The two biggest problems will come from the right-wing of the
Democratic Party—intransigent Zionists and the city’s Wall Street
and real estate sectors. Alongside mountains of cash from billionaire
bank accounts, the leading edge of the anti-Mandami campaigns will
comprise red-baiting and spurious charges of antisemitism. 

What does card-carrying DSA member Mamdani actually stand for?

·      A freeze in rents for stabilized apartments

·      Free city busing

·      Raising the city’s minimum wage to something close to
livable:  $30/hour by 2030

·      A community safety department separate from police to
deal with mental health related issues

·      City-run grocery stores to bring down food prices

·      Free childcare for children six weeks to five years old

·      Oh, and modestly increasing taxes on corporations and the
wealthiest New Yorkers to pay for the above.

Like Harriman’s wish list, not exactly the Bolshevik revolution
here, but you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from what the
other side is already saying, and what they will flood the airwaves
with for the next few months. It’s the last item, of
course—raising taxes on the rich and corporations—that, as in L.A.
in 1911, especially infuriates the city’s plutocrats. 

Currently most New York City residents pay around 3% of their income
in city taxes. The wealthiest income earners pay closer to 4%, with an
absurdly flat cap for people making $500K and above. New York City at
last count is home to 350,000 millionaires. The richest 1 percent of
New Yorkers _TRIPLED_ its share of the city’s total income from 12
percent in 1980 to 36 percent in 2022. 

These statistics represent a flashing red sign about the city’s lack
of affordability—along with an “X marks the spot” for the buried
treasure that can pay for decent public services for the 95 per cent
of the city’s inhabitants who aren’t millionaires. The slight tax
increase Mamdani is calling for—2% on individuals making a million
dollars a year—will not crimp the lifestyle of the rich in the
least. 

When socialists run for public office, or when measures to reduce
economic inequality are placed before the voters (e.g., taxing the
rich, a raise in the minimum wage, help for renters), you can count on
the most reactionary sectors of the ruling class to spend freely to
convince everyone to see the world through the same warped lens they
do. You can also bank on the same tired tropes at the core of their
argument. Behold:  these tax increases are going to hurt everyone;
small business can’t afford it; the wealthiest New Yorkers
(mislabeled “job creators”) will flee the city and go to a more
welcoming business environment; and all the jobs will leave with
them. 

In the real world, these things never happen. Take the California
example, 101 years after Harriman’s defeat. In 2012, over the dire
predictions that the “job creators” and their jobs would flee
California, voters passed a progressive tax bumping top income earners
up a couple percentage points. The tax, Proposition 30, has brought in
seven to nine billion dollars a year, and prevented public services
from going over a fiscal cliff in the aftermath of the Great
Recession. In the years following its passage, the state minted ten
thousand new millionaires, and 1.4 million new jobs.

In New York, where much of the wealth is clustered in finance and real
estate, the former creates relatively few working-class jobs and the
latter can’t move. The lies may be countered with clear messaging
explaining the real problems, how to address them, and who should pay
to fix them. Which is what Mamdani has been doing. 

But there is another weapon in the anti-Mamdani arsenal: the charge of
anti-semitism—which for AIPAC and its candidates means the
duplicitous conflation of ‘anti-Zionist’ with ‘antisemitic’. A
deluge of these talking points and ads in support of Cuomo failed to
take Mamdani down in the primary, but that doesn’t mean that the
stream of invective will stop during the next stage of the campaign.
For a recent example we could turn our gaze across the Atlantic to
England, where another democratic socialist, Jeremy Corbyn, who
achieved a surprise momentary capture of leadership in the Labor
Party, was brought low principally by a combination of the highly
organized repetition of the lie (mostly by the right-wing of his own
party) and a fumbled response to it. 

Two big things are different in this regard in New York 2025 compared
with the England of a few years back: the war in Gaza and its impact
on Jewish opinion about Israel, which means the deception in the
equation of Jewish and Zionist is much clearer to many more people;
and the charismatic Mamdani is not the curt Corbyn, despite
similarities in their democratic socialist politics. 

What would a Mamdani victory mean at this moment in our history?

A democratic socialist mayor in the largest city in the United States
would be a tremendous boost to anti-fascist morale as the mass
movement to oppose Trump and MAGA is slowly gaining steam. It would
arguably provide a programmatic roadmap to victory in the 2026
elections (presuming they are going to be held, and held fairly).

Yes, we are aware that New York City is not the rest of the country.
But the largest urban centers are farther to the left than any other
stash of votes, and they are where the resistance to Trump and MAGA
has been and will likely continue to be strongest—an important
indicator of possible electoral victory, _if_ the coalitions emerging
from organization of the mass demonstrations are able to develop the
necessary synergy between street and ballot box forms of activism. A
sclerotic neoliberal politics as usual will not mobilize this base. 

Here in California municipal democratic socialist politics have gained
ground over the last few election cycles. In all, there are more than
three dozen DSA-affiliated officeholders in the state—the most since
the heyday of the Socialist Party more than one hundred years
ago—including four mayors, fifteen city council members, a state
assembly member, a county supervisor, and occupants of various down
ballot offices, all of whom push for progressive policies shunned or
feared by the rest of their fellow officeholders.

If Mamdani loses, the leadership of the Democratic Party will redouble
its push to field EMPTY NEOLIBERAL SUITS in 2026. Harriman’s defeat
in LA in 1911 set back the cause of working-class politics for
decades. A high-profile loss like that today would make it that much
harder to remold the Democratic Party as a majoritarian progressive
force.  Alternatively a win will provide wind in the sails to the
anti-MAGA movement, on the strength of which Democrats can reclaim
power. That’s why it’s necessary to forcefully demonstrate the
viability of Mamdani’s politics now. 

California DSA members may be three thousand miles away from this
historic battle but we can nonetheless help. Mamdani needs every penny
he can raise to fight the onslaught of right-wing lies propelled by
billionaire funding. Send him your hard-earned dollars HERE
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_Fred Glass is the author of From Mission to Microchip: "A History of
the California Labor Movement" (University of California Press, 2016).
He is the editor of California Red, the newsletter of California DSA,
and the former communications director of the California Federation of
Teachers. _

* Zohran Mamdani
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* socialist electoral strategy
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* Job Harriman
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* LA Times Bombing
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* DSA
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