Robert Hornak
Robert Hornak is a veteran political consultant who has previously served as the Deputy Director of the Republican Assembly Leader’s NYC office and as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail. com and @roberthornak on X.
Tuesday was election day, but when you read this we should al- ready know who the next mayor will be. According to all the polls, that will be Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani’s win will be due to his running the best campaign in this contest, with energy and a positive message. And while you can argue with his message on many levels, and I surely have, he had the only positive message in the race and that appeals more to people than just attacking the other candidates.
But win or lose, Mamdani’s unarguable success this year in coming from nowhere to become the Democrats primary winner over a former governor with a famous last name, poses many challenges for the Democratic Party.
Yes, it signals a changing of the guard for the party, but it also signals a potentially new direction for them, and that direction may not be one that many traditional democrats can accept. While generation- al shifts are inevitable, directional ones don’t happen without a big fight.
Mamdani is highly controversial, like AOC before him but much more so. As mayor of the biggest and most dynamic city in the country, he will be able to wield power like no other in his party. And he strongly represents the direction the Democratic Party has been slowly moving in, an anti-American and western values, and strongly pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel direction that makes many in his own party uncomfortable.
So much so that many major figures in the Democratic Party refused to endorse him, including most of NYC’s congressional delegation, the Queens Democratic Party, and major figures in the par- ty including Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama.
However, Mamdani’s success goes well beyond just his campaign, he has built a machine that the far left in the party tried to create through the Working Families Party but have not seen anywhere near the success that that the Socialist movement has had. Where the WFP was able to influence the Democratic Party to a small degree, the DSA has infiltrated and is taking over the Party in NY.
And there lies the problem, many Democrats do not hold the sentiments that Mamdani and his movement strongly believe in. And the movement they are building is not looking to peacefully coexist with the old guard.
They are already promising to primary a number of local elected Democrats next year and there are likely many more to come. And many moderate elected Democrats are in fear of the power of this radi- cal movement and their ability to mobilize younger voters and focus them on the races they can win.
As the Democratic Party is pushed to be more anti-Israel, many Jews and those who support Israel and our shared western values will be pushed out of power in the Party and possibly out of the Party altogether. Will this lead to most joining the Republican Party, becoming Independents and a swing voting bloc, or possibly starting a new par- ty remains to be seen.
Yes, the Republicans have had their internal conflicts as well, and are dealing with another one now with the likes of Tucker Carlson and a few influencers who harbor their own antisemitic views. But they are being quickly marginalized by republicans who are over- whelmingly pro-Israel and are not willing to accept people like Nick Fuentes into the party just like they pushed out David Duke, the former KKK Grand Wizard who switched from Democrat to Republican a few years earlier, in his 1981 run for governor of Louisiana.
This appears to be an existential crisis for the Democrats and will determine not only what direction the party will go in, but what it’s most basic and core values will be and what kind of country they will work toward. This goes way beyond the typical conflicts over spending priorities, fights over the debt, or any specific policy. This appears to be heading toward a divide between those who love America and what it currently stands for and those who don’t and want to radically change it into something very, very different.
