Chicago Democrats issue warnings about their mayor amid Zohran Mamdani's rise

Before New York City mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani made a splash, another big-city Democratic mayoral candidate with progressive bona fides unexpectedly burst onto the national political scene

Before New York City mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani made a splash, another big-city Democratic mayoral candidate with progressive bona fides unexpectedly burst onto the national political scene.

Two years later, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s tenure has captured so much negative attention (dubbed “America’s Worst Mayor” by The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board) that Mamdani’s campaign has taken note. Mamdani’s camp is tracking Johnson’s challenges and trying to avoid repeating Second City missteps, according to a person close to both Mamdani’s and Johnson’s teams.

Johnson isn’t the only progressive major-city mayor in the country, and his troubles wouldn’t automatically translate to ideological allies. Mamdani himself has “repeatedly cited” another progressive mayor as a role model, as The Boston Globe noted: Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.

But Johnson’s tenure in Chicago does serve as a useful early warning system for some of the issues Mamdani could confront in New York, whether in a multiway general election or as mayor, if he wins in November. Chicago Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor, a strong campaign ally who has also criticized some of the mayor’s early decisions, noted how critics often trot out the word “socialism” to cast blame on Johnson for long-standing issues facing the city. It’s a phenomenon, she added, that Mamdani could similarly face.

“People make this a bad word. People make this into something that it is not. Let’s just call all of this what it is: This is the way the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor, because they get us fighting on s--- that just does not even matter,” she said.