The Hostile Takeover: Mamdani’s Purge of the New York Democratic Party

A mayor with no race of his own on the ballot used his office to take out three sitting Democrats who wouldn’t move further left. The party may not recognize itself by morning.

A Just the Facts dispatch based on election calls in three key NY Congressional races

I registered as a Democrat the week I turned eighteen. My first presidential vote, cast in San Francisco in 1972, went to George McGovern. I didn’t think much of it at the time — in the San Francisco I grew up in, there wasn’t really a Republican Party to speak of, so being a Democrat wasn’t a choice so much as the only option on the table. McGovern’s 49-state loss to Nixon was the first time I understood how badly out of step my hometown was with the rest of America.

I stayed a registered Democrat for nearly thirty more years, until shortly after September 11, when I became an independent. I’ve been there since, watching for whatever remains of the vanishing middle in either party.

I haven’t had to watch very hard on the Republican side. What began as the Tea Party insurgency in the early 2010s became, under Donald Trump, a hostile takeover of the party I grew up around. The Bushes were pushed out. Mit…