NY Republican Lawler Says A Mamdani Win Would Be 'Catastrophic' for NYC

Republican Representative Mike Lawler said electing Zohran Mamdani as the next mayor of New York City would be a catastrophe for city and for Democrats nationally.

Zohran Mamdani’s lead heading into the New York mayoral election has withstood a furious push from Republicans, establishment Democrats and a coalition of Wall Street dealmakers, leaving Democrats to face a familiar question should he win on Tuesday.

If Mamdani can make it there, can he — or a candidate like him — make it anywhere?

Aspects of Mamdani’s campaign that some thought would doom his candidacy — his vociferous criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza, his past calls to defund the police and his refusal to flee from the political label of socialist — haven’t turned off a plurality of New York voters, despite a torrent of campaign spending from some of the city’s wealthiest residents.

Instead, the 34-year-old assemblyman’s campaign — with its focus on core economic concerns combined with an online charm offensive and occasional searing barb at his critics — is working well enough that some political observers see a model for future Democratic candidates and races.

“His campaign is not really about him,” but hammers on the theme of lowering the cost of living for average New Yorkers, said Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of the nonprofit Run for Something, which recruits new progressive Democratic candidates. “He really clearly answers the question why voters should want him to win.”

emocrats who’ve struggled to find a message that will stick are calling in the party’s top star, former President Barack Obama, to help flip a governorship from red to blue and set an example for candidates trying to win back Congress next year.

President Donald Trump, whose nearly unimpeded control of Washington is at stake next year, has largely stayed out of the Virginia race — but with just days until the election and facing the prospect of a quartet of GOP defeats here and in three other key elections Tuesday, is now making last-minute calls to ensure they don’t.

Welcome to the midterms.

November 4 effectively marks the unofficial kick-off to the 2026 election season. That’s when three states and the biggest city in the US will go to the polls for the first major ballots since Trump was elected.

Together, they’ll form an early referendum on the president’s second-term, and a test of what campaign messages are moving voters in Trump’s second term when he isn’t on the ballot. Midterm elections historically tend to favor the party out of power, and polls entering the final weekend showed Democrats ahead in the night’s marquee elections.

The stakes in 2026 are striking. Trump currently holds nearly unfettered control of the levers of power in Washington, backed by narrow but deferential majorities in the US House and Senate and a Supreme Court where Republicans appointed six of the nine justices. It all adds up to an environment where Trump can, for the most part, do whatever he wants. And he has.

Yet if Democrats were able to crack that support by winning back either the House or Senate a year from now, they’d get to set the agenda for votes that could pressure Trump or embarrass the White House, while preventing Republicans from being able to unilaterally pass legislation on the president’s top policy priorities. They’d also be empowered to launch subpoena-backed investigations into an administration they’ve criticized for operating with impunity.

In both the Virginia and New Jersey’s governor’s races, Democrats are fielding a pair of veteran Washington lawmakers with center-left voting records and national security backgrounds, whose campaigns have centered on the economy while hoping to court a potential Trump backlash.

In New York City, self-described democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani comes from a different wing of the party entirely, but has likewise focused his campaign on affordability issues.

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