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"Assemblymember Mamdani has demonstrated a real ability on the ground to put together a coalition of working-class New Yorkers that is strongest to lead the pack," Ocasio-Cortez said.
Progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday threw her weight behind democratic socialist state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in the final weeks of New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, which will take place on June 24.
Mamdani has gained ground in the race with his bold proposals such as taxing the rich to fund free buses, a rent freeze, and city-run grocery stores; his engaging social media presence; and his success at fundraising and mobilizing volunteers. Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) toldThe New York Times in an interview that she thought Mamdani was the best choice to unite progressive voters to defeat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who, she said, "belongs to the hedge funds."
"Assemblymember Mamdani has demonstrated a real ability on the ground to put together a coalition of working-class New Yorkers that is strongest to lead the pack," Ocasio-Cortez told the Times. "In the final stretch of the race, we need to get very real about that."
"It's almost like fighting for the working class unapologetically is a likable trait, and proposing bold new ideas is better than maintaining the status quo."
Mandani, who is currently polling second behind Cuomo, welcomed the news.
"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a once-in-a-generation leader who has led the fight for working people in Congress," Mamdani wrote on social media Thursday morning. "In 2018, she shocked the world and transformed our politics. On June 24, with @AOC's support and this movement behind us, we will do the same."
Mamdani, a 33-year-old who represents Queens, now polls at 23% to Cuomo's 35% in the first round of the New York City Democratic primary's ranked-choice voting system. A simulation of a 10th round of voting showed Mamdani finally losing to Cuomo by only eight points, at 46% to Cuomo's 54%.
While Cuomo has greater name recognition, he has several scandals to his name. In 2021, he resigned as state governor following a report documenting his harassment of several women, claims he has denied. But constituents had called for his resignation even before over a cover-up of the amount of deaths caused by Covid-19 in state nursing homes.
AOC advised progressive voters to make strategic choices in order to defeat Cuomo, recommending that they rank Mamdani first, followed by New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, City Comptroller Brad Lander, former comptroller Scott Stringer, and New York Sen. Zellnor Myrie (D-20). The progressive Working Families Party and the United Auto Workers (UAW) region 9A have also both urged voters to rank Mamdani in the No. 1 slot.
"Even if the entire left coalesced around any one candidate, an ideological coalition is still insufficient for us to win," Ocasio-Cortez told the Times. "We have to have a true working-class coalition."
The Democratic congresswoman's endorsement came the day after the first televised mayoral debate, and three days after Mamdani won the backing of UAW president Shawn Fain.
Several other progressive organizations and leaders celebrated AOC's endorsement.
"Mamdani-mentum. We love to see it," the youth-led Sunrise Movement, which has also endorsed Mamdani, wrote on social media.
Progressive Michigan State Rep. Dylan Wegela (D-26) wrote: "Zohran Mamdani can win this thing! It's almost like fighting for the working class unapologetically is a likable trait, and proposing bold new ideas is better than maintaining the status quo."
New York Communities for Change posted simply, "Let's goooo!!!"
Julian Gerson, the political director for Mamdani's campaign, promised, "On June 24, we're making history."
The lawmaker announced in late April that he was stepping down from his ranking member position on the powerful House Oversight Committee.
Three weeks after announcing he would not run for reelection and would step down from his leadership role on a powerful U.S. House committee, Rep. Gerald Connolly died Wednesday at the age of 75.
Connolly (D-Va.) announced in November just after winning his reelection campaign that he'd been diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
Connolly's family stated that he "passed away peacefully at his home this morning surrounded by family."
"Gerry lived his life to give back to others and make our community better," said the Connolly family. "He looked out for the disadvantaged and voiceless. He always stood up for what is right and just. He was a skilled statesman on the international stage, an accomplished legislator in Congress, a visionary executive on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, a fierce defender of democracy, an environmental champion, and a mentor to so many."
His death came five months after he won the role of ranking member on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) also ran for the position, saying the role of the top Democratic lawmaker on the panel was a "profound and consequential one," with the ranking member empowered to subpoena members of the Trump administration should Democrats win the 2026 midterm elections.
A number of lawmakers and political observers expressed support for Ocasio-Cortez's bid, with former Obama administration staffer Dan Pfeiffer calling her "probably the best communicator in the Democratic Party right now."
Connolly signaled that he would take a reserved approach to the powerful position, suggesting in one interview that his colleagues who go "on cable television" to denounce the Trump administration were "performative"—comments that frustrated many progressives who believed Ocasio-Cortez would wage effective attacks on the Trump administration and would keep the crucial committee in the spotlight.
"He was a skilled statesman on the international stage, an accomplished legislator in Congress, a visionary executive on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, a fierce defender of democracy, an environmental champion, and a mentor to so many."
But much of progressives' ire over the Oversight battle was reserved not for Connolly but for Democratic leaders like Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who reportedly made "calls" to Democratic lawmakers urging them to join her in supporting Connolly.
Political organizer Max Berger, co-founder of the Jewish-led Palestinian rights group IfNotNow and the labor-focused media organization More Perfect Union, said Wednesday that Pelosi's interference ensured the victory of a lawmaker who was in frail health "over an up-and-coming Latino woman"—as then-President-elect Donald Trump and his billionaire ally, Elon Musk, were gearing up to dismantle federal agencies, fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers, secure financial benefits for Musk's aerospace company, and gut the social safety net in order to secure tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
"Have the past five months been an important time for congressional oversight?" Berger asked rhetorically on Bluesky. "As Trump and Musk were ransacking the federal government, congressional Democrats put a 74-year-old cancer patient in charge of providing oversight. He died within five months of taking the job. It's a form of political negligence that borders on criminal."
Amanda Litman, president of Run for Something, said Connolly "was a good guy, a good leader, and a committed public servant."
"It's so deeply sad on many levels that his final months of life were spent fighting to hold on to power," said Litman.
In the last two-and-a-half years, eight members of the U.S. House have died while in office. All have been Democrats, and three have died since Trump took office for his second term.
Both before and after his diagnosis and the Oversight fight that garnered national headlines, Connolly was a fierce defender of federal workers, including those at the U.S. Postal Service. In March he demanded a public hearing on the Trump administration's threats to privatize the USPS. He was also a fierce critic of Trump's plan to strip federal employees of job protections, and sponsored a bill that passed in the House in 2021 to block federal job reclassifications.
He sponsored the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act in 2014, which was credited with speeding up processing times for and Social Security beneficiaries and veterans needing services, strengthening cybersecurity at hospitals, and expediting federal emergency responses—"his major legislative legacy to date," Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, toldThe Washington Post.
"It did transform a part of the operations of the federal government in what is considered by experts to have been profoundly important," said Rozell.
Connolly also led the Democrats' successful fight during Trump's first term against the addition of a citizenship question to the U.S. Census, saying it would provoke "real and palpable" fear in many households. In a memorable CNNinterview in 2019, he said he would "go to the max" to ensure the administration complied with court orders and threatened jail time for officials who resisted subpoenas.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), a member of the House Oversight Committee, called Connolly "a tireless champion of effective oversight, a brilliant legislator, and a cherished presence in the House."
"We need to return the Democratic Party to its roots," said one attendee of Sen. Bernie Sanders' Fighting Oligarchy Tour, hoping for a party not beholden to "the corporate interests and the megadonors and the oligarchs."
Polling released Wednesday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows Democratic voters are cynical about the state of politics in the United States and how leaders are chosen under the political system, and they are increasingly pessimistic about their party's future.
The poll—conducted earlier this month, six months after President Donald Trump won a second term and Republicans narrowly claimed both chambers of Congress—found that 55% of Democrats are pessimistic about how political leaders are selected. Seventy-three percent said the same about the state of politics in the country.
Additionally, 36% of Democrats are pessimistic about the future of the party, compared with 35% who are optimistic and 29% who said they are neither. That's a major shift from July 2024, when just 26% were pessimistic, 57% were optimistic, and 16% were neither.
"I'm not real high on Democrats right now," said poll respondent Damien Williams, a 48-year-old Democrat from Cahokia Heights, Illinois and a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, which notably did not endorse in the 2024 presidential contest. "To me, they're not doing enough to push back against Trump."
Williams told The Associated Press that he likely won't feel good about the Democratic Party again "until somebody steps up in terms of being a leader that can bring positive change—an Obama-like figure."
The poll also asked all 1,175 respondents—including Independents and Republicans—about a few political leaders affiliated with the party: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.); Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020; and progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
A plurality of all voters (43%) have an unfavorable view of Schumer, with 36% not knowing enough to say, and just 21% viewing him favorably. Among Democrats, 31% see him negatively, 34% don't know enough, and 35% have a positive opinion.
Schumer has come under fire for his response to the Trump administration and Republican control of Congress—particularly his March decision to help advance the GOP's stopgap funding bill, which led to calls for his resignation and for Ocasio-Cortez to launch a primary challenge against him for the 2028 cycle.
Across party lines, only 29% of respondents have a favorable view of Ocasio-Cortez, but that jumps to 55% among Democrats. While 65% of Republicans have an unfavorable view of the "Squad" member, 50% of Independents don't know enough.
Sanders—who has been traveling the country for his Fighting Oligarchy Tour, with appearances from House progressives including Ocasio-Cortez—has the highest favorability of the three. The full survey class was split: 43% favorable, 40% unfavorable, and 16% unsure. While 72% of Republicans have an unfavorable view, Independents were divided in thirds across the three categories, and 75% of Democrats have a positive view of the senator, with only 13% seeing him negatively and 12% unsure.
Sanders on Wednesday released a video from recent Fighting Oligarchy stops in which Pennsylvania residents shared critiques that align with the poll results. A man named Matthew Bennet said, "I'm not happy with the state of the Democratic Party. We need to return the Democratic Party to its roots, unbeholden [to] the corporate interests and the megadonors and the oligarchs."
Leading up to the November election, officials across the Democratic Party's ideological spectrum worked to reelect then-President Joe Biden, who was ultimately replaced as the nominee by then-Vice President Kamala Harris after a disastrous debate performance raised concerns about his fitness for another term.
Writing about Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's new book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, for The Nation on Tuesday, Norman Solomon noted:
Partisan denial transcended ideology. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were outspoken in favor of Biden's reelection effort until he withdrew from the race. Progressive legislators were no better than their centrist colleagues in resisting pressure from the Biden White House to pretend that the president was fit to run again, while the Democratic Party's power structure insisted on a position opposed by a sizable majority of the party's voters.
[...]
The operative mentality of Democratic Party leaders is not much different now than it was during the protracted cover-up of Biden's cognitive decline. Today, like a political ghost, Joe Biden haunts the party, with leadership that prefers hagiography to candor.
Since the election, polling has shown that registered Democrats and Independent voters who lean Democratic are frustrated with the party, see no clear leader of it, and want to see elected officials fight harder for working people—and elected progressives, including Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, have been more critical of the party.
In November, Sanders said that "it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them," and predicted that "the big money interests and well-paid consultants" who control the party probably wouldn't "learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign."
Sanders' comments were met with swift backlash from then-Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, who called his take "straight up BS." Six months later, as Wednesday's survey results make clear, voters aren't happy with the party.
"I just feel like the majority of the old Democratic Party needs to go," Democrat Monica Brown, a 61-year-old social worker from Knoxville, Tennessee, told the AP. "They're not in tune with the new generation. They're not in tune with the new world. We've got such division within the party."
That division was on full display last December, when Ocasio-Cortez ran for ranking member of U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, but lost to Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.)—a 75-year-old soon leaving the post due to his battle with cancer.
Ocasio-Cortez left the panel, and the 35-year-old confirmed last week that she will not return to seek the leadership role, telling reporters, "It's actually clear to me that the underlying dynamics in the caucus have not shifted with respect to seniority as much as I think would be necessary, so I believe I'll be staying put at Energy and Commerce."
On that committee, Ocasio-Cortez called out Republican members early Wednesday for rushing ahead with their proposal to cut Medicaid "at 2:38 in the morning, when everyone is asleep, when we've asked for the opportunity to do this in the light of day so that people can call their representatives' offices in order to stop this disaster."
While there was a clear age gap with Ocasio-Cortez and Connolly, people of various generations fall into the Democratic Party's different factions. For example, 48-year-old Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) was sharply criticized for suggesting last month that Americans don't know what oligarchy means, so Democrats should stop saying it—as 83-year-old Sanders' tour centered on that term has drawn more than 250,000 people across several states.
Last week, 42-year-old Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) said he refuses to hold town halls because of Indivisible, a grassroots movement "with a mission to elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump agenda."
Both Indivisible and Sanders are now working to mobilize voters nationwide against Republicans' emerging reconciliation package that would provide tax giveaways to wealthy individuals and corporations by gutting programs like Medicaid that serve the working class and raising the national debt they so often complain about by trillions of dollars over the next decade.
"If Trump's 'big, beautiful' reconciliation bill goes through, 13.7 million people will lose their health insurance and even more will become underinsured," Sanders warned Tuesday. "Make no mistake, thousands of low-income and working-class Americans will die unnecessarily if it passes. We must not allow it."