Ahead of the Feb. 14 deadline for voters to pick a party affiliation in time to vote in June’s New York City primary, socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has been racing to get his supporters registered as Democrats — and one group opposed to him has been doing the same thing.
Only Democrats can vote in the party’s primary, which has effectively decided the city’s mayor in every election since 2013, with fewer than 750,000 party voters choosing on behalf of eight and a half million New Yorkers.
While many voters are just beginning to tune in to the city’s election, those who want to switch parties have only until Thursday to register online in time to vote in this year’s primary, or until Friday to do so in person.
About 67% of New York City’s 4.5 million active voters are Democrats, 10% Republicans, 20% unaffiliated with any party, and the rest with the Working Families or Conservative parties or registered as “other.”
The early deadline has emerged as an issue in previous races. In 2016 and 2020, many Bernie Sanders supporters registered as Working Families Party members or unaffiliated with a party were unhappily surprised to find out it was too late to support his presidential primary campaigns.
This year, Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who frequently cites Sanders as an inspiration, has seen his mayoral campaign generate a surge of early fundraising and organizing enthusiasm — much of it from people who hadn’t previously been engaged in the city’s politics.
His campaign is predicated in part on inspiring new voters to turn out in a primary that generally draws not even 1 million voters. To help ensure that, he’s been racing to make sure his supporters are eligible to vote in June, including pitching voters to “be my Democrat” in a Valentine’s Day-themed social-media post. (DSA-NYC posted their own vote-cute video on Tuesday, calling on its voters to register as Democrats even if they loathe the party so they can vote for Mamdani.)
“What we want to do is to make sure that every single New Yorker knows now that if they want to see a different New York City, a more affordable New York City, and they want to vote for our vision to make it so, then they need to be registered as a Democrat in time to participate in that primary,” Mamdani told THE CITY in a phone conversation on Friday — as he was headed to the City Clerk’s office to get his marriage license.
Party-switching was woven into the campaign’s messaging, Mamdani said, “as we met more and more New Yorkers who thought that their first vote for us was going to be in November, and who wanted to see our approach to politics in New York — But [they] didn’t know that in order to bring it forth, they had to vote ‘yes’ in June.”
Andrew Epstein, spokesperson for Mamdani’s campaign, told THE CITY they are not tracking how many New Yorkers they’ve prompted to register as Democrats.
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‘They Get Frustrated’
While his campaign has centered on promises to freeze rents, provide free bus service and universal childcare, Mamdani has also been a fierce and prominent critic of what he’s called Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza.
In November he said that as mayor he would have the NYPD arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, who he’s called “a war criminal,” if the Israel prime minister comes to New York, which has the largest Jewish population of any city in the world.
That was just after the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, the first ever for a leader of a modern Western democracy. The United States has never accepted the court’s jurisdiction, and President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order sanctioning the ICC for what he called its “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and Israel.
Mamdani reaffirmed his pledge to arrest the Israeli leader earlier this month, saying that “we need to see a city that is in line with its values” by “making clear that that person is not welcome in a city such as this.”
That drew pushback from David Greenfield, a former Brooklyn City Council member who’s now the CEO of Met Council, a nonprofit organization focused on reducing poverty in the Jewish community. Greenfield, a lifelong Democrat, has charged Mamdani with “trying to fan the flames of hatred and antisemitism solely to propel fundraising in his campaign.”
While Greenfield, as the leader of a nonpartisan group that works to register new voters in low-income communities of all backgrounds, isn’t engaging in party politics, he observed generally about closed primaries that “a lot of folks, what ends up happening is they show up at the primary and realize they can’t vote and they get frustrated.”
He added, “honestly, it prevents them from voting in the general election as well because they feel like the vote doesn’t matter.”
A partisan pushback to Mamdani has come from the Jewish Voters Action Network started by Maury Litwack, who is also the CEO of the Teach Coalition, which advocates on behalf of yeshivas and other non-public schools. The Action Network backed George Latimer in his successful challenge to “Squad” member Jamal Bowman in a Westchester Democratic contest that turned out to be the most expensive Congressional primary ever — one defined in large part by the candidate’s clashing views on Israel.
“The DSA positions on antisemitism and on things that the Jewish community cares about are in complete contrast to what the Jewish community cares about,” Litwack said on Friday about his group of about 250 volunteers pushing to get voters registered as Democrats.
“I would say that a tremendous amount of Jewish voters are looking and saying, “‘How do we stop the DSA?’
Litwack said his organization does not have any numbers to share on how many New Yorkers have registered as Democrats through its efforts.
A spokesperson for DSA, Jeremy Cohan, said in a statement responding to Litwack’s comments that “It is no coincidence that there has always been a deep tie between Judaism and this movement, indeed between Judaism and all movements for justice — workers’ rights, civil rights, women’s rights, immigrant rights — because Jews have emerged from the experience of our own oppression with a deep moral commitment to the fight against poverty and injustice and for all of humanity.”
Which Voices Get Counted
While the various groups racing to register new Democrats have their own agendas, the issue of voters who aren’t registered in a party having no say in elections that matter is a broader one, said Lisa Blau, executive director of Be Counted NYC, which has been calling on Republicans and non-affiliated voters in New York City to switch their party registrations.
“The system that we have right now disenfranchises a large group of voters, and I don’t think that’s fair. I’m not interested in changing anyone’s ideology, but I believe deeply that everyone has a right to vote and have their voice be counted,” said Blau, who’s married to Jeff Blau, the CEO of New York real estate giant Related Companies.
“And in order to do that in the system the way it currently works, you need to be registered as a Democrat to vote in the closed primary.”
Blau stressed her support for changing to an open primary system, where anyone could vote regardless of their affiliation.
“I am sick of saying it. I will say that because I did it four years ago, and I’m doing it again,” said Blau. “And it would be great if in four years, I didn’t have to do this because we had open primaries and every citizen could vote.”
As to Mamdani, who’s not taking contributions from the real-estate industry, he said the push to register new Democrats is part and parcel with everything else he’s doing, so that “when I’m talking to uncles and aunties about the campaign. I make sure to remind them about the voter registration deadline.”
And sometimes, he said, they remind him:
“I was standing outside of a mosque the other day” in Jamaica, Mamdani said, “and I had an uncle come up to me. He switched his party registration, and he did so because he wanted to be a part of the collective that makes the decision about this coming primary.”
That, he said, “was very, very exciting to see: both the potential of political education and the fact that the New York City primary election is going to look more like New York City as a whole.”
Socialists, Zionists Race to Register New Democrats Ahead of Friday Deadline added by NewBlackVoices on
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