It’s been a month since the far left’s banner Primary Day. Mayor Mamdani’s endorsees swept their primaries. The DSA slate went nine for 10. Two incumbent congressmen and three Assembly members lost their seats.
The Democratic establishment has failed New York, and voters are seeing red. NYC-DSA now has more than 15,000 members, while the city swung 17 points towards Donald Trump between 2020 and 2024.
Voter ire makes perfect sense. Rents and homelessness are at all-time highs, subways are unsettled, deodorant is locked up. Democrats can’t seem to deliver lower costs or quality of life, let alone take on the existential threats of climate change and authoritarianism.
It’s not just the establishment being rejected in favor of the far left. On Primary Day, the Working Families Party foundered (including in Lower Manhattan, where I was the WFP endorsee for Assembly). Why would disaffected Democrats choose candidates from the mainstream progressive “lane” when the far-left lane promises to get them to a better future, faster?
The last month has been abundant with hand-wringing. New York moderates are strategizing. National commentators are posing hard questions for a failed center-left or telling Democrats to expel DSA “parasites” altogether.
But punditry about conflict between the ascendant DSA left, wounded WFP progressives, and the soul-searching center misses a key point and leaves out a key question.
New York Democratic voters dislike their party — at a rate of nearly 2-to-1 — but they like leaders who are delivering results.
Moderate Gov. Hochul is polling up 20 points over Bruce Blakeman. Her job approval is 11 points in the black, five full years into her term. Socialist Mamdani is six months deep into managing the city. His job approval is at plus 16, even as 59% of voters say the city is on the wrong track.
Politicos are plotting how to win voters to their slice of the political spectrum. Instead, they should be thinking about how Hochul and Mamdani have managed to earn respect across it.
The key point? What Hochul and Mamdani have in common is Abundance.
At Abundance New York, which I co-founded in 2024, we support politicians and policies targeting an end to scarcity: the 1.4% vacancy rate that’s led to skyrocketing rents, the paucity of renewable energy driving up costs and emissions, the hamstrung public sector that struggles to distribute housing vouchers and food stamps — let alone universal childcare or healthcare.
These crises cross ideological lines, and (to paraphrase the mayor) for far too long, New York leaders left, right, and center have rejected the solutions New York needs.
Centrists have said no to bigger government, from public renewable energy to universal social programs. Leftists have said no to private sector and supply-side interventions, from market-rate housing to new nuclear power. (Centrists often say no to those, too, but because of concerns about “neighborhood character” rather than corporate power).
Abundance is committed to the progress and pluralism that are the best of cities, imagining a future of radical plenty. Abundance wants to build skyscrapers, subway lines, and solar farms, and it demands tearing down the walls of nativism and NIMBYism. That requires saying “yes, and” to both strong public and private sectors, and to focusing on outcomes rather than the size of a check written or the brashness of a press release.
Hochul and Mamdani have each been at their best when acting from Abundance. They’ve joined together to reform outdated environmental reviews, defend congestion pricing, and lay the groundwork for universal childcare.
Hochul is speeding public sector hiring to provide government services more effectively, while Mamdani is slashing red tape for small businesses to help working people thrive.
While the DSA celebrates its wins at the ballot box, Abundance should be taking a victory lap, too. Zoning and permitting reforms have led to record new home construction. Congestion pricing is saving lives. The mayor’s COGE charter revision agenda is straight from the Abundance playbook.
Some recent punditry has declared that Abundance lost the battle for the Democratic Party’s future. But that view wrongly supposes that Abundance was meant to be its own electoral lane. Instead, across lanes, more leaders are driving in an Abundance direction.
Our Abundance Agenda to lower costs and improve quality of life is neither a centrist response to the left nor a watered down democratic socialism. It’s not a point on the left-right spectrum at all: it’s a different axis.
That’s why Mamdani’s “sewer socialism” and “pothole politics” can resonate with Hochul’s “Let them Build” agenda. Both leaders are focused on breaking chokeholds, improving performance, and delivering for New Yorkers.
This might sound like common sense; who doesn’t want to cut red tape? But New York built the Empire State Building in a fraction of the time it now takes to hold public hearings for one new mid-sized apartment or pay McKinsey to study trash containerization. We’ve lost our ability to dream big and make those dreams come true.
We must grow the bloc of New Yorkers who want to change that — whether they’re members of the DSA or the Partnership for New York City.
But because Abundance cuts across the conventional left-right axis, New York politicians left, right, and center can all be on the wrong side of it.
And that’s the big question left amidst the DSA’s rise and centrists’ regrouping: Will Mamdani and Hochul’s fellow travelers be equally inclined to say “yes, and”?
Will the new socialists in the Legislature follow the mayor in embracing market rate housing and prioritizing public sector excellence? Will Wall Street and state Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs follow the governor’s lead in supporting the mayor when Abundance is on the agenda?
Or will we focus more on factional fights than on the fight for a better future?
Kessler is the co-founder of Abundance New York. He was an unsuccessful candidate in the June Democratic primary for a Lower Manhattan Assembly seat.