Two Socialist Mayors, Ninety Years Apart
What Fiorello LaGuardia Can Teach Us About Zohran Mamdani
History has a curious way of echoing across generations. As New Yorkers reckon with the election of 34-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as their next mayor, the answer to what this means for our city may lie not in the uncertain future, but in our remarkable past, specifically, in the tenure of a man widely considered one of the greatest mayors in American history.
The Republican Who Governed Like a Socialist
From 1934 to 1946, Fiorello La Guardia led New York through the Great Depression and World War II. The twist that confounds our contemporary political categories: La Guardia was a lifelong Republican who governed with such progressive zeal that he ran for Congress on the Socialist Party line in 1924. Victor L. Berger of Milwaukee, the only actual Socialist in Congress at the time, called La Guardia “my whip” with evident affection.
Contradictory? Perhaps. But this is New York, where labels have always mattered less than results.
Outsiders Against the Machine
Both men entered office as insurgents challenging entrenched power. La Guardia captured City Hall in 1933 with a mere 40% of the vote, inheriting a near-bankrupt city that had recently required a bankers’ bailout to avoid default. Mamdani entered the mayoral race polling at 1%—tied with “someone else”—and closed with 50.4%, earning support from over one million New Yorkers who believed his vision worth the risk.
In 1935, the New York Times editorial board scolded La Guardia for “toying with haphazard proposals that may be benevolent in intention but are dangerous or impossible in practice.” The paper noted with alarm that “He seems always to want to have in hand some socialistic plaything or other.” That “socialistic plaything”? A municipal power plant an idea that recently returned as New York’s Build Public Renewables Act.
The refrain sounds familiar. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo warns that “New York cannot survive as a socialist economy.” National Republicans call Mamdani a “radical socialist” whose victory represents “the Democrat Party’s surrender to the far-left mob.” Replace Mamdani’s name with La Guardia’s, and you could be reading newspapers from 1933.
The Architecture of Possibility
The parallels in their platforms are striking, almost uncanny.
On transportation, La Guardia forged a unified, publicly owned transit system and built the infrastructure connecting the outer boroughs. Mamdani proposes making city buses free and dramatically improving subway service.
On housing, La Guardia created the New York City Housing Authority and erected projects like the Queensbridge Houses at 3,100 apartments, still North America’s largest housing development. Mamdani envisions 200,000 new units of affordable, rent-stabilized homes over the next decade and a rent freeze for stabilized tenants.
On public infrastructure, La Guardia constructed nearly 200 playgrounds, two beaches, massive public pools, new schools, and fifteen neighborhood health centers. Mamdani proposes universal childcare, city-operated grocery stores to reduce food costs, and a Department of Community Safety focused on violence prevention rather than punishment.
On progressive taxation, La Guardia championed steeply graduated income taxes, declaring, “I do not want to destroy wealth, but I do want to abolish poverty.” Mamdani proposes raising the minimum wage to $30 per hour by 2030 and increasing taxes on corporations and individuals earning over $1 million annually.
The Landscape Has Shifted
Yet Mamdani inherits a fundamentally different city than La Guardia did.
La Guardia governed during the New Deal, with Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House and radical activists organizing the unemployed in the streets. The political zeitgeist favored audacious government action. Mamdani, by contrast, promises to make New York “the light” in “this moment of political darkness,” positioning the city in deliberate opposition to the Trump administration.
La Guardia secured vast federal appropriations for the city, collaborating seamlessly with Roosevelt. Mamdani may face federal funding cuts as the Trump administration threatens sanctuary cities.
La Guardia assembled a baroque coalition of middle-class German Americans, reform Democrats, Socialists, Jews, and Italians. Mamdani won decisively but with tepid establishment support, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand notably declined to endorse him.
La Guardia arrived at City Hall after years in Congress, though the mayoralty was “the first administrative job he had ever held.” Mamdani comes from the state assembly with limited experience managing anything approaching the scale of governing eight million people.
What the Past Illuminates
In 1993, sixty-nine scholars ranked La Guardia as the finest big-city mayor in American history. His vision placed New York “at the forefront of the politics of his day.” He sought, in his words, “justice on the broadest scale... justice that gives to everyone some chance for the beauty and the better things of life.”
La Guardia understood the rhetorical machinery arrayed against him. In 1933, he lamented: “The worst part of the entire matter is that when anyone raises a question about the existing order, he is called either a reformer or a radical.” As observers note today: first they call you radical, then they name an airport after you.
The projects once derided as dangerous socialist experiments, public housing, unified transit, neighborhood health centers, public pools and parks are now beloved fixtures of New York City life. They represent not radical departure but sound governance: deploying public resources to elevate quality of life for all residents.
The Unwritten Chapters
Yet La Guardia’s triumph does not guarantee Mamdani’s. A CBS News poll found that just 22% of Democrats nationwide want the party to move toward socialist positions, while 60% prefer a mixture of socialist and capitalist ideas. Mamdani has drawn criticism for years of tweets calling police “racist and wicked” and advocating their defunding, though he now says he would work with law enforcement rather than defund it and would apologize for describing the NYPD as racist.
Mamdani names Boston Mayor Michelle Wu whom he calls “the most effective current Democratic politician in the U.S.” as his model. Notably, Wu is progressive but does not identify as socialist, suggesting Mamdani may govern more pragmatically than his democratic socialist label implies.
Judgment Reserved
New Yorkers must approach this moment with clear eyes and long memory. We have elected an unabashed democratic socialist during turbulent times. His platform, rent freezes, universal childcare, free buses, city-owned grocery stores, represents the most significant progressive victory since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated a ten-term incumbent in 2018.
But we have walked this road before. Ninety years ago, another mayor with socialist sympathies assumed office amid economic crisis and political hostility. He was dismissed as a dangerous radical with impossible dreams. Today we consider him one of the greatest public servants in American history.
The question before us is not whether Mamdani is too radical for New York. The question is whether he possesses the skill, determination, and coalition-building ability to match vision with execution, as La Guardia did. Can he transform “socialistic playthings” into lasting infrastructure? Can he maintain public safety while expanding the social safety net? Can he unite a fractious city around ambitious goals?
In his victory speech, Mamdani told supporters: “Hope is alive.” La Guardia would have approved of the sentiment. But he also would have reminded the young mayor that hope without competent administration is merely noise.
New York does not need another radical. We need another builder, someone capable of taking expansive ideas and making them work in the messy reality of eight million people inhabiting 300 square miles. La Guardia proved that socialist-inspired policies can transform a city for the better.
Now Mamdani must prove it again.
The Test Ahead
The city’s future will not be determined by labels or ideology, but by whether our new mayor can deliver results. If history offers guidance, we should judge him not by the anxieties of his critics, but by the outcomes he produces. That is the real lesson of Fiorello La Guardia, and it is one every New Yorker should remember as Zohran Mamdani prepares to take office.
The projects La Guardia built still serve us. The institutions he created still function. The vision he articulated that government exists to improve lives, not merely to maintain order still resonates.
Mamdani inherits that legacy whether he sought it or not. The only question that matters is what he builds with it.