Public safety may be the one issue that could destroy Zohran Mamdani’s hopes in the New York City mayoral race — which is why the once-proud Democratic Socialist has spent the last few weeks distancing himself from his own party’s radical platform.
Mamdani, a two-term state Assemblyman , won his seat in 2020 as part of a far-left contingent of socialist anti-police agitators whose radicalism knew no bounds.
“Defund the police” and “abolish jails” were far from empty slogans to Mamdani and his comrades, but core elements of their political identity .
But central as anti-police radicalism has been to the mayoral frontrunner’s political rise, it’s not a brand that has the kind of mass appeal needed to win over a majority of New York City voters.
So Mamdani has been carefully ambiguou