I don’t live in New York City, so I wasn’t eligible to vote for or against Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. It didn’t matter. My home’s mailbox in Oyster Bay — a good 15 miles from New York City limits — was overflowing with anti-Mamdani campaign literature. Suddenly, every Democrat running for office in my suburban community was being equated with Mamdani. Moderate local officials were portrayed as Mamdani acolytes, working hand-in-hand to create some kind of dystopic socialist nightmare. It’s guilt by association, even when there’s little to no association.
The question is whether the strategy will be used by Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections. Having led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in two cycles, I’m familiar with this playbook. Midterms are always a referenda on the president and his party; and with a president at historically low job approval levels, they have to change the subject. Find the bogeyman.
I campaigned through a version of the strategy in 2010, when I learned from the flyers attached to almost every utility pole in my swing district that I’d “voted with Nancy Pelosi 95% of the time!” (True, I guess, if you include legislation naming post offices and declaring national apple pie day.) The strategy was to villainize a prominent left-of-center leader and weaponize their image to destroy downballot candidates’ unique ideological profiles.
Now, the pundits are fixating on how Mayor-elect Mamdani will be similarly weaponized by Republicans — who are certainly eager to portray him as emblematic of a radicalized Democratic Party that has embraced communism. I have no doubt that they will try. But Democrats can learn key lessons from this past election going into the midterms.
The debate engulfing the party basically boils down to this: is the face of the Democratic Party someone like Mamdani or someone more like centrists Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, who were just elected governor in Virginia and New Jersey respectively? The answer should be: both.
Mamdani has demonstrated a powerful talent for generating energy on the streets, revolutionizing digital campaign strategies, building a ground game, and harnessing the anxieties of young voters. By contrast, candidates like Sherrill and Spanberger won competitive races by fashioning a message that appealed to crossover voters who feel the pain of the rising cost of living and resent President Trump’s partisan excesses. If Democrats can fuse both of these strategies — campaign operations that can win Brooklyn, New York with messaging that can win Brooklyn, Iowa — they will have found the path to victory in the midterms.
Hyper-online progressives and centrists are going to continue to argue on X and Bluesky, but the secret is that Democrats need candidates of all ideologies to win seats and check Trump’s power. The candidates that are able to channel voters’ economic frustrations into messaging that feels authentic and responsive — especially on digital platforms — will win. In Virginia, that means a more moderate candidate like Spanberger. In New York, it’s Mamdani. You need both.
Of course, a big part of this story hasn’t been written yet. The extent to which the Mamdani-as-boogeyman strategy will work for Republicans will be shaped by how his administration fares. If he governs responsibly, by focusing on the cost-of-living issues that propelled him to office — rent, bus fares, grocery prices — Republicans won’t succeed in making him seem all that scary to voters far afield of the city. If he goes a more radical route, focusing more on events in the Middle East than the Midtown Tunnel, he’ll penetrate headlines in moderate districts across the country and play into Republicans’ hands.
No matter whether Mamdani is a success or failure as mayor, Republicans will try to leverage his political image across three concentric circles around New York. First, the moderate districts in the city’s suburbs and exurbs — especially on Long Island, where Democrats have been pummeled by Republicans on crime and immigration in recent cycles. Second, the remaining districts just outside of New York’s media market, stretching upstate. Third, the competitive battleground districts across the rest of the country — where their electoral mileage will vary considerably. As you move in both time and geography away from New York City, the impact is far more limited.
People in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District in Maricopa County aren’t going to be swayed by attack ads lumping Democrats in with the mayor of New York City. Voters in Florida’s 27th Congressional District — which includes Little Havana — might well find anti-socialist messaging more compelling. But the key to winning these races is for the candidates running in them to define themselves, and for the Democratic Party to accept them as they are.
To win the midterms, Democrats must be willing to be in contradiction. We are the party of both Mamdani and Spanberger. To win nationally, we have to remember that all politics is local.
Steve Israel represented New York in the House of Representatives for eight terms and was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015.
