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Factions emerge among NY Dems: Zohran Mamdani’s socialists vs. Tom Suozzi’s capitalists
By
Brigid Bergin
Published Jul 2, 2026
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By
Brigid Bergin
Published Jul 2, 2026
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This column originally appeared in The Politics Brief, our weekly newsletter on the people, power and policies that shape New Yorkers' lives.
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Two days after Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s slate of endorsed candidates — many of them fellow democratic socialists — routed their primary opponents last week, Rep. Tom Suozzi decided it was time to send a message of his own.
The Democratic lawmaker, who represents Eastern Queens and Northern Nassau County, held a Zoom press conference with a handful of other moderates to announce their “Promise to America,” a set of six principles that Suozzi said defines their centrist lane within the party.
Principle number one: “We are capitalist, not socialist.”
Moderate incumbents like Suozzi are seeking distance from Mamdani and his brand of Democratic politics ahead of the general election. The “Promise to America,” is one way Suozzi hopes to remind voters in his decidedly purple district that not all Democrats are ready to overhaul the party.
“ There's a good chance that at some point in the campaign, regardless of how the primaries went the other week, Suozzi would've put out something like this,” said Larry Levy, executive dean of Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies. “For decades, he's staked out what he would consider the middle ground, the place where you find these moderate swing suburbanites.”
The 3rd Congressional District is very different from the places where Mamdani’s slate picked up its wins in the city. It’s whiter, wealthier and mostly suburban, with more homeowners and drivers.
It’s also a place where Suozzi’s political resume runs deep. He was mayor of Glen Cove on Long Island’s North Shore in the 1990s, years after his father and uncle both held the same role. He was elected Nassau County executive in 2001, ran two unsuccessful bids for governor and has been elected four times to the U.S. House of Representatives.
This year, he faces a challenge from Republican Mike LiPetri, whom he beat two years ago in the general election, after first winning the seat in a February special election. The Cook Political Report lists the seat as “Leans Democrat,” which favors Suozzi, but is far from a sure thing. After all, Republican George Santos was elected to represent the district in 2022. Suozzi won back the seat after Santos was expelled from Congress following an ethics investigation in December.
Democratic political consultant Trip Yang, who has worked for Suozzi’s campaigns as well as more progressive candidates, said the Mamdani-Suozzi Democratic divide is a reflection of their different electorates.
“ [Mamdani] is a messiah figure to young people in New York City, and he's extremely popular overall with New York City Democrats, but his numbers are not great in Long Island,” said Yang. “Suozzi, on the other hand, is the strongest possible Democrat that can win office in Nassau County.”
Yang said the larger question is whose message will resonate with more voters ahead of the open Democratic presidential primary in 2028. He predicted that the race to be Democratic nominee will come down to a progressive and a moderate.
Mamdani has said that the race for 2028 began last week and that the Democratic Party needs to change. His volunteer army has shown again that it’s willing to do the work to support candidates who focus on the needs of working people as part of a growing democratic socialist movement.
As Mamdani stood with his more moderate counterpart City Council Speaker Julie Menin to announce a budget deal Tuesday, the mayor could not resist inserting a pro-socialist jab into his celebratory remarks.
“If these past months have shown us anything, it is that socialists not only understand economics just as well as the capitalists who came before but that we can solve their years of mismanagement through an embrace of our principles. There is nothing fiscally responsible about balancing the budget on the backs of working people,” Mamdani said with a smile, previewing the kinds of critiques he is likely to make more forcefully as he continues pushing the Democratic Party to the left.
Suozzi said his moderate cohort is just finding its voice and has a lot more work to do.
“I think a lot of times people that don’t agree with the DSA, for example, or don't agree with MAGA, talk to each other and wring their hands at cocktail parties,” Suozzi said on the Zoom call. “So we've gotta just do a better job of organizing, and this is an effort to try and organize.”
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This week in New York politics
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the City Council struck a handshake deal on a $126 billion city budget on Tuesday, just hours ahead of a legally mandated deadline for the new fiscal year. Here are the details.
New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board approved a first-of-its-kind rent freeze. Tenants in about 1 million rent-stabilized apartments will not see their rents increased for the next two years.
Ahead of the rent freeze vote, a pro-landlord member of the Rent Guidelines Board resigned in protest and accused the board of crossing a “legal line.” Here’s what else she said.
New Jersey Rep. Tom Kean Jr. said he was hospitalized with depression earlier this year, speaking publicly for the first time after a monthslong absence. Here’s more about his absence.
The Trump administration is abandoning plans to convert a Roxbury warehouse into a New Jersey immigration detention center, according to a court filing Monday.
New Jersey state leaders plan to send Jersey City an unprecedented $120 million cash infusion to help stabilize the city’s finances as local officials grapple with a $255 million budget shortfall. But Mayor James Solomon warned that local tax hikes and cuts to city services are still coming.
A property tax break that incentivizes smaller developments is hurting New York City’s affordable housing goals. Here’s how it killed 538 affordable apartments in the city.
Tagged
Democrats
Tom Suozzi
Zohran Mamdani
democratic socialists
long island
new york city
Brigid Bergin
Brigid Bergin is an award-winning senior reporter on the People and Power desk. She is fiercely committed to telling stories that help people engage and support democracy. In 2022, she hosted a live, ten-week call-in politics show ahead of the midterm elections called The People's Guide to Power. Brigid's reporting in 2017 included some of the first coverage of a political newcomer now known as AOC. In 2016, she broke the news of a voter purge in Brooklyn just days before New York’s presidential primary, triggering city, state and federal investigations. Brigid also guest hosts The Brian Lehrer Show and All Of It. She graduated from the University at Albany and the CUNY Newmark School of Journalism. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-723-4719.
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