Kyle Sammin: New York makes the mistake Philly avoided

New York Democratic primary voters did this week what sensible Philadelphians feared ours would do in 2023: nominated a rich socialist for mayor.

With nearly all of the votes in, New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has a comfortable lead over disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, 43.5 percent to 36.4. It’s not a done deal yet — New York’s primaries use ranked choice voting — but with most of the other candidates being more ideologically aligned with the far-left Mamdani, there is little likelihood that their votes will shift to Cuomo in subsequent rounds. The former governor, Clinton cabinet member, and Kennedy ex-in-law realizes this, and has conceded to Mamdani.

Mamdani, a “defund the police” guy in 2020, claims to be less radical now, but without any real evidence. He wants to establish state-run grocery stores, eliminate subway fares, and declines to criticize radical propaganda like “globalize the intifada.” Incumbent mayor Eric Adams is running as an independent and Cuomo may do the same in November, joining Republican Curtis Sliwa in what looks to be a wild race for the city’s top job. 

Philadelphia faced a similar challenge in its Democratic primary in 2023. Like in New York, the divide was between richer downtown Democrats (mostly white) and poorer Democrats in the neighborhoods (mostly black and Hispanic), with the poor and middle-class white Dems up for grabs. Philly was lucky to have Cherelle Parker, a well-known and accomplished City Councilmember as the leading moderate candidate (and only black candidate with a real chance of winning). 

Parker was able to consolidate votes along multiple axes. There was the racial polarization that is a factor in any city’s electorate, but also Parker’s savvy coalition-building with building trades unions that brought many white voters to her cause. Like New York in 2025, Philly’s electorate did not produce a majority winner — Parker had just 32.6 percent of the vote — but clearly elevated one candidate above the rest.

This was also, roughly speaking, Adams’s path to the nomination in 2021 in New York.

This time around, there was no prominent black or moderate candidate, let alone a black moderate like Adams. Part of this is Adams’s own fault: the scandals that he created by allegedly taking loads of bribes from the Turkish government forced him out of viability as a Democratic candidate, leading him to run as an independent. 

Candidate quality matters. Cuomo was also tarred by scandals, from his serial sexual harassment to the deaths of old people forced back into nursing homes during Covid. His career was dead, he just didn’t seem to realize it. Cuomo had enough juice left to squeeze all the endorsements from normal Democratic officeholders — including former President Clinton — and to scare off other candidates who might have appealed to moderates, but not enough to actually get New Yorkers to nominate him.

Part of this is down to the death of parties: one thing a party machine does well is endorse candidates who can win and discourage those who can’t. But parties have been declining for decades, and without them, primaries become a free-for-all and candidates are limited only by their own humility — of which Andrew Cuomo has none.

It’s no different in Philly. The local Democrats were lucky that Parker was electable and reasonable. They were also lucky that Derek Green and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez, two councilmembers hoping to appeal to the same constituencies, saw the writing on the wall and dropped out, endorsing Parker. The progressives, divided between Rebecca Rhynhart and Helen Gym, showed no such discipline, and divided their votes.

Does New York’s 2025 result hold any lesson for Philadelphians? That will depend on how the general election in November plays out. But it does demonstrate that the chaos of primary elections shows no sign of settling down.

Kyle Sammin is the managing editor of Broad + Liberty.