If there was any hope New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani would inch towards the middle or appeal to moderate Democrats as he launched his administration, it vanished in the bitter January air that ushered in the start of his term.
During his inaugural address Thursday, Mamdani sought to send a clear message: That the left had won the hard-fought race for mayor, and his administration is now intent on showing the rest of the country that progressive liberals can, in fact, govern.
At a time of deep political division across the US, Mamdani stuck to his political identity and ideology, reminding the crowd he had been “elected as a democratic socialist,” promising to “govern as a democratic socialist” and castigating the politics of complacency and the political establishment for failing its constituency.
It was an unapologetically progressive speech, in which Mamdani framed the mainstream Democratic party as one that lacked imagination and ambition. Then, he vowed to not “abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical.”
It’s a high bar for a new mayor who is taking the reins of a complicated city in a political landscape that often demands compromise.
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