Mayor Mamdani: Gracchus Resurrected?

By Paul M. Esber

“New York, tonight you have delivered. A mandate for change. ​​A mandate for a new kind of politics. A mandate for a city we can afford. And a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that” – Zohran Mamdani, 04 November 2025.

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani has come under fire from among his voting base recently for deviating from script on two issues. First, was his endorsement of incumbent state Governor Kathy Hochul for the upcoming gubernatorial election scheduled for November 3 this year. The second was a clandestine White House visit seeking assistance from President Trump on a City-led affordable housing development, the Sunnyside Yards. From a particular angle, both moves convey the image of a mayor siding up with the establishment; a far cry from the heady campaign days where Mamdani made a point of criticizing both the Governor and the President.

Mayor meets President at the White House. Public Domain

Is there a lesson to learned here from history in the form of Tiberius Gracchus, a Tribune of the Plebian Assembly in Republican Rome? Politics in institutional settings where institutional decentralisation and/or a division of prerogatives exists inevitably requires politicking, and collaboration with opponents, and those who are neither friend nor foe. No elected official let alone a mayor, can operate unilaterally in the pursuit of fulfilling their electoral mandate. Mamdani in this light is demonstrating his determination to fulfil his mandate for change a new city politics for New York.

Institutional realities require that Mayor Mamdani collaborates, and while collaboration is especially difficult for a politician claiming a more radical change to the business-as-usual model, this should not be cynically reduced to a rescinding of the platform for which he was elected. History is replete with examples of elected officials such as Gracchus, whose crash or crash through attitude to political brinkmanship brought about more than just policy change.

Tiberius Gracchus: Radical, and Harbinger of Chaos?

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (169/164 - 133 BC), was a Tribune of the Plebian Assembly (133 – 133 BC) in Republican Rome. He is remembered by history for his agarian reform law (lex agraria), implementing a platform of land redistribution for Rome’s working poor. After ensuring the passage of the law, Gracchus was murdered and his body dumped in the Tiber River. No less than luminaries of the historical record Cicero, Appian and Cassius Dio identified Gracchus’ Tribunate as a catalyst for the fall of the Republic, citing what they perceived to be his lack of restraint and respect for the established political process. By this, they mean the customary division of labour between the Plebian Assembly and the Aristocratic Senate on the one hand, and between the two officeholders of the Tribunate who governed in tandem.

Gracchus, they argued scoured the institution of mos maiorum - the normative system of compromise and restraint that shaped the Republic’s politics, and, in Dio’s words “brought about unusual things more appropriate for war than peace”. In short, all because Gracchus refused (or perhaps could not? That is a question for historians) to collaborate within established channels with existing personnel. Subsequently the Gracchi name was remembered by Roman historians as something synonymous with radicalism and institutional chaos.

Mayor Mamdani and the Art of a Deal

If there were hopes following Mamdani’s election to City Hall of a similar Gracchian crash or crash through mentality, then his strategizing since taking office would certainly have dashed them on the shoreline of pragmatism. First, the endorsement. The dust had barely settled on the mayoral campaign before attention turned to the question of how Mayor Mamdani would implement his platform. Pundits identified Albany (New York State Capital) as the next “big battle” for the Mayor-elect. Fast-forward to February 2026, and the landscape appeared quite different, with Mayor Mamdani publicly endorsing Governor Kathy Hochul’s bid for re-election in the November run-off.

The endorsement came even though Hochul has repeated her opposition to increasing taxes on the State’s wealthiest residents, which puts her at odds with many of Mamdani’s voters. Furthermore, her administration responded to the largest strike by nurses in NYC by extending an executive order, making it easier for hospitals to hire non-unionised replacements. The optics look especially negative from the electorate given both Mamdani and Hochul belong to the same Party. The discord between discourse and action, Governor and Mayor, feeds into an already well-established frame of electoral let-down: big promises, little to no progress.

At the same time, Hochul has played ball with Mamdani, authorising the State’s support for New York City’s universal childcare program. As the Mayor wrote in an Op-ed outlining the reasons for his endorsement, “it would not have happened, just eight days into our administration, without Governor Hochul moving to provide more than $1 billion in state funding”. Under these circumstances, endorsement appears as a tit-for-tat trade, and signals City Hall’s willingness to engage constructively with the state government if it ultimately advances the implementation of the former’s agenda.

Itidem – likewise - the mayor’s meeting with President Trump On February 26, is indicative of Mamdani’s end justifies the means attitude. Trump, even more than Hochul has been criticised by Mamdani to much fanfare, and yet, analogous with the Governor, the President’s support would make the realisation of campaign promises easier. There are good reasons to attempt cross-institutional alignment. Homeownership in New York is the lowest in the United States of America. For the State a little over half (53.6%) of residents owned a home in the second quarter of 2022. This contrasts with the national average of 65.8% in the same period. In New York City, the numbers are worse, with a 2024 report showing that slightly over 30% of all households in the city owned their homes.

Be that as it may, both politicians, recognising the unpopularity of any sign of coordination and collaboration with their electoral bases, kept their meeting off record until it had happened. If Zohran Mamdani did not attempt to strategically engage with both New York Governor Hochul and President Trump, then it is possible that he would maintain the aura of socialist purity endowed upon him by some of his vocal base. However, this would be less than a pyrrhic victory. His mandate for change would be largely unfulfilled, and the hope his election instilled in New Yorkers across the boroughs would be dashed. More broadly for the Left and Socialists in particular, the Mamdani experience would be one the Right would bring against them during future election campaigns. In short, Mamdani needs to succeed in order to rejuvenate the political process, restore voter confidence, and demonstrate what democratic socialists can do when elected.

Hence Mamdani, perhaps heeding the ghost of Gracchus, appears ready to work within existing channels and expectations, utilising his appeal in the electorate as leverage against less popular politicians whose support is needed to enact the City’s agenda. Or perchance, Mamdani’s overtures are signs that the institutional framework of the United States is not as broken it has appeared to be, and that what it requires is elected officials prepared to focus on tangible public-centred outcomes. No pressure Mr. mayor.