Bernie Sanders on Zohran Mamdani: ‘That’s How You Win Elections’

Without Bernie Sanders, there might not be a Zohran Mamdani.

The 33-year-old democratic socialist who triggered a political earthquake by moving toward a decisive win in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary race has called Sanders “the single most influential political figure in my life.”

Sanders returned the favor with an endorsement of the underdog in the runup to the election, and on Wednesday, the Vermont senator and longtime fellow democratic socialist reveled in Mamdani’s victory.

“Take on the billionaire class, take on oligarchy. That’s how you win elections,” he said in a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO Magazine.

Sanders said the Democratic Party that he has long allied with but never joined should take serious lessons from Mamdani’s victory — but he was skeptical it would. He also weighed in on whether incumbent Democrats should be worried about a Tea Party of the left, Larry Summers’ concerns about Mamdani and what the young socialist can learn from Sanders’ own experience decades ago as mayor.

This interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

There are a ton of competing narratives about why Mamdani won. Is it his progressivism? Is it his focus on affordability, his age, his messaging tactics? What’s your big takeaway here?

I think it's his hair, myself. The consultants haven't figured that out. That's why I make the big bucks. I think it's the hairstyle myself. I don't think there’s much else to be said about it. Good guy. Photogenic. The hair.

Look, he ran a brilliant campaign. And it wasn't just him. What he understood and understands — campaign’s not over — is that to run a brilliant campaign, you have to run a grassroots campaign. So instead of taking money from billionaires and putting stupid ads on television, which the people increasingly do not pay attention to, you mobilize thousands and thousands of people around the progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of working-class people and you go out and you knock on doors. And if somebody like a Kamala Harris had not listened to her consultants and done that, she would be president of the United States today.

So number one, he ran a strong grassroots campaign around the progressive agenda. They go together. You cannot run a grassroots campaign unless you excite people. You cannot excite people unless you have something to say. And he had a lot to say. He said that he wants to make New York City livable, affordable for ordinary people, that the wealthiest people in New York City are going to start to have to pay their fair share in taxes so that you can stabilize the outrageously high costs of housing in New York, which, by the way, is a crisis all over this country. That you could deal with transportation in a sensible way, deal with child care, deal with health care, deal with the needs of ordinary working-class people. So you come up with an agenda that makes sense to people. They get motivated in the campaign. They are prepared to knock on doors. That's how you win elections.

You do not win elections, in my view, by begging billionaires for huge amounts of money. That's what Cuomo did: put stupid ads on television that nobody pays attention to. We need an agenda that speaks to working-class people, activates millions of people around this country to get involved on that agenda. Take on the billionaire class, take on oligarchy. That's how you win elections.

Should establishment-oriented and older Democrats be worried now about primaries from younger, more progressive candidates?

I think they have a lesson to learn, and whether or not they will, I have my doubts. If you look at the dynamics of this campaign, what you have is older folks voting for Cuomo, the billionaire class putting in millions of dollars into Cuomo, all of the old-time establishment candidates and politicians supporting Cuomo, and he lost. So either you learn a lesson that says, hmm, the other guy, Mamdani, got young people excited. He got young men excited. He created a strong grassroots movement.

What is the way forward for the Democratic Party? To me, it seems fairly obvious. Whether the current Democratic leadership is prepared to learn that lesson or not, I have no idea. Probably not. They're probably more willing to go down with the Titanic than to move in a new direction. But I think whether they like it or not, what we are doing right now is going to support progressive candidates, whether they have to primary incumbent Democrats or not does not matter. And we are going to develop — we are doing that right now, we've got organizers around the country. Obviously, that’s what “Fighting Oligarchy” is about. The Democratic leadership has got to make a choice. They're probably not going to make the right choice, and therefore we just have to go forward and bring new energy into the party in terms of working-class people, young people, people of color, etc.

You know Democratic presidential primaries. What do the results last night tell you about the Democratic electorate and who might benefit in 2028 from that kind of energy?

I'm not going to get into individuals. But it tells me that the future of the Democratic Party is around a progressive agenda. And one thing I want to say also is that if Democrats keep running in fear of AIPAC, they will continue to do badly. Because I think the overwhelming majority of Democrats, and the majority of the American people, do not want to continue to give billions of dollars to the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government, who, as we speak right now, is starving Palestinian children in Gaza. So if Democrats think supporting taking money from AIPAC and continuing to support Netanyahu is good politics, in my view, they are absolutely wrong.

Mamdani is going to likely be running the nation's largest police department. And for all his faults, Mayor Eric Adams has overseen crime going down. You were a mayor. What does Mamdani need to do to not let crime, which is admittedly somewhat out of a mayor's control, create a national vulnerability for the left?

I was a mayor, and you know what? When I ran the first time, I won the endorsement of the Burlington Patrolmen’s Association. When I ran for reelection, I won the support of the Burlington Patrolmen’s Association. My third term I ran, got the support of the Burlington Patrolmen's Association. My fourth term. Why? Because we recognize that being a police officer is very difficult work, and our police officers got to be treated with respect. They do enormously important work.

Now it goes without saying that we want to rid every police department in America of racism and brutality. It also goes without saying that it is a very complicated job, and I think we want to rethink some of what police departments do in terms of dealing with people who are mentally ill or drug addicted, etc., etc., and how we can bring outside expertise to help them deal with the kind of outbursts that sometimes take place. But having a strong police department dealing intelligently and humanely with crime problems, I think that's an issue that every mayor in America has got to deal with.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers tweeted this morning in reaction to Mamdani’s victory that he was “profoundly alarmed” by “yesterday’s NYC anointment of a candidate who failed to disavow a ‘globalize the intifada’ slogan and advocated Trotskyite economic policies.” What’s your reaction?

Larry was the guy who helped bail out Wall Street, as I recall. Look, Summers represents the billionaire wing of the Democratic Party. So of course that's what he's going to say. But I am alarmed that there is any Democrat who would be sympathetic to a Netanyahu government that is right now, according to the United Nations and international aid groups, not only blocking humanitarian aid and causing starvation in Gaza, but shooting down people who are desperately in need of food.

Do you think that we are on the verge of a Democratic Tea Party? We see poll after poll where Democratic voters are saying they want new leaders, and Mamdani’s victory seems to be an example of that. Are we going to see lots of primaries next year?

I think that the Democratic leadership is way out of touch. That’s not just me. As you indicated, that's what the polling shows and it's true. The American people — Democrats, independents, Republicans — understand that there is something fundamentally wrong when we have massive income and wealth inequality, massive concentration of ownership. We're in the richest country in the history of the world. Sixty percent of people live paycheck to paycheck. Elderly people can't afford their prescription drugs. Kids go hungry.

I think the average American noticed that the economic and political system, a political system dominated by billionaires and their super PACs, is broken. The system is broken, and people want change.

What Mamdani and I and others are talking about is the kind of change that benefits the working class of this country and is prepared to take on the billionaire class that has never, ever had it so good. That's what the fight is about. I think that's where the American people are. Whether or not the Democratic leadership will understand that or not, I don't know. But that is the future of the Democratic Party and politics in America.