Sawant or Mamdani

How Should Socialists Use Elected Office?

Jason Thiel

In 2013, before either Bernie or AOC hit the scene, Kshama Sawant was elected as an independent socialist to Seattle City Council. Six months later, Seattle became the first major city to pass a $15 minimum wage. Seattle’s minimum wage rose from not much higher than the federal minimum wage at $9.19 to the highest minimum wage in the nation at $21.30.

Last year, Mamdani was elected as mayor of New York City, trouncing grandma-killer former-Governor Andrew Cuomo and cop-loving incumbent Mayor Eric Adams. Mamdani ran on working class demands for free transit, a rent freeze, and universal free childcare. His election was a show of the historic anger that workers have for the billionaires and both of their parties.

But we’re now over six months into Mamdani’s term as mayor, and what does he have to show for it? Mamdani campaigned for a $30 minimum wage, so where is that? Instead of universal free childcare, Mamdani has produced a “pilot program” which will provide care for just 2,000 of the city’s 60,000 two-year-olds, with no guarantee of expansion. Unlike Kshama’s first six months in office, which involved channeling the energy of her election into a massive grassroots campaign that won $15, Mamdani has spent his first 6 months running defense for Democrats. 

His first act was to keep Jessica Tisch as the NYPD chief. Tisch was responsible for the brutal crackdown on anti-war campus protestors in 2024. He endorsed Hakeem Jeffries, who has taken over $1.5 million from AIPAC. He endorsed Kathy Hochul at the same time that she was hiring scab workers to break the largest nurses strike in NYC history. He has backed off of his support for the No More 24 campaign led by immigrant home healthcare workers fighting to end mandatory unpaid 24-hour shifts. He “balanced the budget” by delaying payments into city workers’ pension funds (well, all of the city workers except the cops). Speaking of cops, he moved forward with giving $4 billion to developer Tutor Perini (which has contracts with Israel) to build the tallest jail in the world right in the middle of Chinatown.

Mamdani defenders respond to this criticism by saying he fixed potholes, plowed snow, and passed the pied-a-terre tax on the second homes of rich people. All of these things are low-hanging fruit that really don’t make the billionaires all that mad. They’re happy to let those things go if it means Mamdani will launder his progressive reputation to help Hochul break the largest nurses strike in NYC history. In fact, the Democrats are happy to let those small wins through if they help sell the snake oil that socialists and workers can reform the Democratic Party. It’s giving life support to a genocidal party facing its lowest approval rating in decades.

In fact, Kshama and the George Floyd Rebellion won the Amazon Tax in 2020, which raises about the same amount of money from the wealthy in Seattle as Mamdani’s pied-a-terre tax, in a city 1/10 the size. But she certainly didn’t have the Democrat governor of Washington signing off on it. Why did they fight the Amazon Tax movement tooth and nail, but give the pied-a-terre tax to Mamdani? Because Kshama didn’t bargain to help them break a strike with a “socialist” smile on her face, but Mamdani did! Mamdani’s tax is a 10% consolation prize for being a good boy and not fighting for more.

Mamdani is not a socialist. Socialists that win any kind of elected office cannot be there to just try to manage the capitalist state. They have to use their offices to organize workers to fight for working class demands. Mamdani had 100,000 volunteers, which he should have mobilized into mass rallies, walkouts, and protests to shut down the city until the City Council passed his demands. But he ran as a Democrat and chose to protect his relationship with the Democratic Party over the movement that defeated AIPAC for him.

Kshama ran as an independent socialist, and her election victory represented a real tangible threat to the power of the Democrats because she wasn’t one of them. It made them scared that more Kshamas could win seats on the City Council and run the Democrats out of town. Her election forced the Democratic Party to concede to the demand that was already the focus of protests and walkouts around the city. Instead of negotiating backroom deals with Democratic Party notables, Kshama exposed the Democrats’ attempts to water it down to $11 or $12. She mobilized hundreds of people to City Council meetings and helped organize protests, walkouts, and collected thousands of signatures for a ballot initiative. If the Democrats didn’t pass 15, voters would pass it in November. 

That is the pressure that forced the Democrats to unanimously pass the $15 minimum wage. It was seeing the beginnings of a new party that ripped power away from the Democrats, who had controlled the city for decades, that forced their hand. Not asking nicely and trying to beg the wealthy businesses for crumbs.

Kshama is not free from criticism. The final bill that was passed did raise the wage to $15 an hour and included cost of living adjustments that continue to raise it every year, keeping Seattle’s minimum wage the highest. But Kshama was not able to consolidate the 15 NOW movement into a lasting organization. Instead, she demobilized the movement and focused on recruiting a handful of people into her organization, Socialist Alternative. 

In the 13 years since Kshama’s election we have seen progressive Democrat after progressive Democrat rise to prominence and win nothing. They do not change the party; the party changes them. AOC won her first election five years after Kshama, and her resumé consists of breaking a railroad strike, voting against cutting $500 million in military aid to Israel, and washing over Harris’ genocidal record by claiming that Harris was “working tirelessly for a ceasefire.” We need to take the lessons from Kshama’s ten years on the City Council forward, both positive and negative. Socialists must run openly against the Democratic Party, take home the average worker’s wage, and use their campaigns to build movements. We can’t rely on a single politician or a small organization: we need to build a united front, discuss our disagreements openly, and take real steps towards building a new working-class party.