After Mamdani Victory, Progressives Call for Primary Challenges to Democratic Establishment
After Mamdani Victory, Progressives Call for Primary Challenges to Democratic Establishment | Common Dreams
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I’ve been kind of confused about this whole thing. In the US, are even mayoral elections Democrat VS Republican? What happens if more than two people want to run for mayor?
This was a primary election so both major parties were fielding several candidates. The reality is no Republican is getting elected in NYC as long as we have free and fair elections in the USA so the democratic primary winner is the most likely person to win in November when the general election is held.
You are not obligated to run under a party in US elections. It just makes it easier to win.
My concern is that Cuomo is planning to run as an independent and my pessimism is telling me that somehow he might win. I mean no one thought Trump would win in 2016 or again in 2024, but here we are.
But the part of me that wants something to hold on to is desperately optimistic that this might be the start of the change.
If Cuomo runs as independent, I don’t think he comes close to winning but he definitely splits the vote which could push this Republican. Does the NY Mayoral race also use rank choice? If it does then evething should still be fine.
I read something yesterday that says no, it’s the usual FPTP. Only the primary was RCV.
The primaries did
If Cuomo runs independent, the democratic party loses any hope of keeping their progressive base and it might actually split entirely.
After bullying their base for the last 10 years to get in line behind their shit moderate candidates, if they were to suddenly decide that primaries don't mean anything then they'd never be able to convince progressives to vote against their interests again.
Cuomo is backed by the democratic establishment and the DNC's donor class. It doesnt matter if he's independent, he's the establishment pick and would be running with their funding.
That all sounds like Cuomo is going to run independent
Oh no, but see… this is different than the other cases… see, because…. *pulls pile of shit out of ass….. points See!!!!
Cuomo is a sex pest like Trunp so thats a big +1 for him in voters eyes /s
The general already has Mamdani, Adams, and Sliwa. Anyone voting for Adams or Sliwa probably wasn't voting for Mamdani anyway. So if Cuomo jumps in as an Indy, he won't take any votes from Mamdani, who's already beaten him once, so he'll have to shave votes from Adams (he can't be getting too many votes) and Sliwa (he never wins anything). Mamdani will end up with half the votes, and the other three will split the remaining half.
Alright that is great to hear, it makes me a little more hopeful.
some thought Trunk might win in 2016 due to Celebrity Power
Mayoral elections like most US elections are multi-party in principle, but usually there are the two major parties and the rest are marginal or fringe. Some offices are solidly enough controlled by one party that the primary essentially determines the general election winner. Example: AOC primaried out the incumbent in a solidly Democratic seat. She then ran in a general election against a Republican and others, but none of them really mattered.
I don't know whether the NYC Mayor election is like that these days. I know NYC has had Republican mayors in living memory, like Ghouliani. Bloomberg (I just checked) did two terms as a Republican, then a 3rd as an independent on the Republican ballot line. He later ran in the 2020 presidential primaries as a Democrat.
Right now there's a situation where Andrew Cuomo (anointee of the NY and maybe even national Dem establishent) just lost the primary but might run as an independent. If the Dem establishment keeps supporting him, maybe he has winning chances. Something like that happened with Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman, who lost a Dem primary but then got re-elected as an independent with Dem party support. His opponent (Ned Lamont, now governor of Connecticut iirc) wasn't even left wing from what I remember.
For his independent run, Lieberman started a new party "Connecticut for Lieberman" and ran as its candidate. After being reelected, the new party had served its purpose and became useless to him, so he forgot about it and the incorporation documents expired. Someone else then got control of it (I guess that's like domain squatting) and apparently used it for some entertaining pranks. I wasn't around for that though.
Huh, that kind of sucks to be honest. In Ontario (and I assume the rest of Canada), Mayoral elections don’t have parties involved at all. It’s just individuals and your city ward’s individual candidates. Truthfully, the candidates often have some former experience with a provincial or federal party (or at least an endorsement, but they don’t run under any party banners)
I think it makes more sense that way since local politics work a lot differently than state/provincial and higher politics.
It depends on the city. Mine (Madison, WI) doesn't officially list any party affiliation for mayor or city alders. We also use a runoff election system, so we're not stuck on two parties for local things.
In practice, candidates are often backed and/or endorsed by some political parties. Common ones are Progressive Dane (county level party) or Working Families (which has national reach and is basically a socialist party working within the Democratic party). When they move up to state or federal seats, they usually join the Democrats while continuing to work with the Working Families party.
It depends. Some cities do nonpartisan elections (usually with some form of "jungle primary"), some cities do partisan ones. For the ones with partisan elections, there are often more than two parties, but parties other than the Republicans and Democrats rarely have a shot at office.
NY has a unique system in that it has a lot of parties, but many of them just endorse a candidate from one of the big 2 parties rather than running their own. This is why Cuomo isn't entirely out of this thing yet, unfortunately; he conceded the Democratic nomination, but he still has the nomination from the Fight and Deliver party (which he, himself, founded specifically for this election) and may choose to continue to run as their candidate instead of dropping out.
Yes, very much so. Each party has their candidate. Some states might let multiple members of the same party run, and there have certainly been instances where people have run unopposed for certain offices, but generally most elected positions in the US are partisan.
It has been a key Republican strategy for several decades now to control as many states governorship as they can manage because it allows them to do things like gerrymandering and to pass state policies that favor Republicans.
That’s sad to hear honestly. I thought city politics would be the one place Americans could escape the two party BS
The whole two party system thing in general isn't really a rule per se, you're allowed to run as part of some other party or independent of one, for any office that I know of. In smaller local elections like town councils and such you can even be competitive that way. It's just that the way we do voting, most of the time, means that for any election in which a reasonable number of voters participate, only two parties can be competitive and any more would actually make their side less likely to win. It's a not originally intended side effect of the rules we use, that now serves to keep the existing parties' monopoly on most higher offices.
Cities and states sometimes have different rules for different races. Cities are often so Democratic, that elections sometimes end up being between two Democrats. I've even seen Republicans register as Democrats so they have a shot at getting people just to listen to them.
Often races like judges, school boards, etc. are officially "non-partisan," but you can usually figure out which is which by their positions on the issues.
