New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday followed the lead of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in distancing himself from left-wing positions that trended among progressives at the start of the decade.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests that marked 2020, many Democrats espoused left-wing views on race, defunding the police, censorship, lockdowns, vaccines, and other positions. In the years since, some progressives, including Mamdani, Ocasio-Cortez, and former Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, have backpedaled on some of those positions following accusations from Republicans that the “woke” policies are out of touch with mainstream voters.
This week, Mamdani was pressed on whether he believes “Woke 1 was crazy,” after Ocasio-Cortez used the phrase on Sunday to defend Hong’s reversal of controversial positions, borrowing it from New York City Councilman Chi Osse, a staunch socialist. Mamdani replied that “sometimes what you believe can change” and said he “has made very clear that I do not believe in defunding the police,” while at an event breaking ground on the Tremont Avenue busway in the Bronx.
“Look, I think that each person has a responsibility to tell New Yorkers, to tell Americans when they’re running for office what they believe, and sometimes what you believe can change, can develop, it can grow,” the mayor told reporters.
“I’ve made very clear that I do not believe in defunding the police, that I will not be defunding the police, and that to me, delivering critical public safety also looks like working with our police department alongside many other partners,” Mamdani added.
Before he was elected as New York City’s first socialist mayor last November, Mamdani had called to “defund the police” and, in 2020, labeled the New York City Police Department “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.”
In 2020, Mamdani wrote that his support for the “defund the police” movement was a “feminist issue,” saying that “especially trans women are disproportionately impacted by police violence & the violence of incarceration.” The same year, he argued that “queer liberation means defund the police.”
Republicans sought to capitalize on such positions in the 2024 election by framing Democrats as radical, a move that ultimately helped the GOP win the presidency and Senate majority.
Across swing states, 25% of all voters believed that then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris was out of touch and “focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class,” according to polling following President Donald Trump’s victory.
AOC, 2028, AND THE COMING OF ‘WOKE 2’
In the years since, the GOP, and even more centrist establishment Democrats, have continued to seek to capitalize on what they believe to be radical positions, particularly ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“We’re not Right versus Left or Republican versus Democrat. We’re literally capitalist versus communist — and that’s terrifying,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) told USA Today earlier this week in comments weighing in on Hong’s 2020 support for abolishing Thanksgiving and other controversial positions.