Florida politicians react to New Yorkers picking democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to be their mayor

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani last Tuesday scored an upset victory in New York City’s high-profile mayoral campaign, securing more than one million votes in an election that featured the highest voter turnout for any NYC mayoral race since 1969.

While Tampa Bay has just one democratic socialist currently in local elected office, several other electeds and mayoral candidates told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay they nonetheless found validation in Mamdani’s victory, which progressives nationwide have latched onto as an undeniable repudiation of President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Mamdani, a 34-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America, will become New York City’s first Muslim mayor and the first of South Asian descent. His campaign, powered by more than 100,000 volunteers and social media savvy, centered a working-class agenda with proposals such as making public buses free (in a city that relies on public transportation), establishing city-owned grocery stores, freezing rent to prevent unaffordable hikes, and creating free, universal childcare—one of the costs that eats the most of families’ budgets.

“For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands,” Mamdani shared in his victory speech.

“Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns these are not hands that have been allowed to hold power,” the mayor-elect noted. “And yet over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands.”

Mamdani, who said he was at one point polling at just 1% with the catch-all “someone else,” handily beat former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, a former Democratic establishment darling who was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women and resigned from his gubernatorial office in disgrace in 2021.

Suffice it to say—God knows Florida’s MAGA Republicans won’t let anyone forget it—Florida is not New York. And it is certainly not New York City. Despite being ruby-red, the Sunshine State, like the Big Apple, is nonetheless home to one of the country’s largest populations of immigrants, many of whom toil in the state’s largely low-wage hospitality, service, construction, and agricultural industries. Florida, like NYC, is also a tourism hotspot, home to the so-called Happiest Place on Earth. 

It’s also home to at least one openly-socialist local elected official: St. Pete City Council member Richie Floyd.

“I think, you know, you’ll see people say, ‘Oh, it’s New York, it can’t happen here’— things like that,” Floyd told CL the day after Mamdani’s win. “But I’ve always believed that, in general, as people see that politics that actually cares about working people and doesn’t bend the knee to the billionaire class comes to power in different places, they’ll gravitate towards it. And over time, it’ll change things.”

Floyd’s place at the dais is living proof that a candidate who openly runs for local office as a democratic socialist  (albeit, for a seat that’s officially nonpartisan) is possible in a red state—if you have a solid agenda and can demonstrate that you’re not just all talk. 

Congressman Greg Casar of Austin, Texas—a former city councilman who has filed bills aiming to strengthen workers’ rights, enhance Social Security benefits, and prevent price-gouging at grocery stores—also won his seat openly campaigning as a democratic socialist. So did Kelsea Bond, a nonbinary DSA member, community organizer, and union activist who more recently won their bid for Atlanta City Council last Tuesday night, dispelling the notion that the “socialist” label will inherently crush any political campaign in the deep South.

“An agenda and a program that speaks to the needs of regular people is going to be popular,” argued Floyd, who will be up for re-election himself next fall. Floyd, like Mamdani, is a member of DSA. 

Notably, neither of them sprung out of nowhere as the odd socialist vying for a seat at the dais. Both had a history of community-based advocacy—Floyd, as a local schoolteacher, union activist, and community organizer; and Mamdani, as a former housing counselor, state assemblyman, and rapper (for what it’s worth) from Queens who earned the backing of NYC taxi drivers and nurses during his mayoral campaign by showing up for them years ago in their own fights for fairer pay and better working conditions. 

Both have embraced a populist, affordability-driven agenda. And other Central Florida candidates for local office, who don’t identify as socialists, acknowledge the appeal of that pitch. 

Alan Henderson, for instance, a 24-year-old candidate for Tampa mayor who identified himself to CL as “socially to the left, fiscally to the right,” said affordability has been a pillar of his platform since he first announced his mayoral campaign in January.

“Affordability was a top issue for me even before I learned about Mamdani’s campaign. And so, you know, [it] definitely was validating to hear that people are excited about that as a message,” Henderson told CL over the phone last Thursday. 

In recent polling of Florida voters by the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Lab, the issue of housing costs topped all others as the “most important problem facing Florida today” among respondents, at 14%. Behind that was property insurance at 12%, followed by property taxes, the economy, and jobs. U.S. layoffs last month reportedly hit a two-decade high, with tech jobs, and retail and service sectors being the hardest hit.

“I think that his [Mamdani’s] core approach to just connecting with the community and not listening to the same establishment voices that have [run] politics for so long in that city is also a great thing to take into our own politics here and implement,” Henderson, a political newcomer, added. “A sort of bottom-up approach to building as opposed to top-down.”

Orlando-area state representative Anna V. Eskamani, a 35-year-old Democrat running for Orlando mayor in 2027, similarly believes that Mamdani’s passion and dedication to economic concerns of the average working person is “refreshing” for voters. 

“The issues of housing affordability, universal childcare, public transportation, are not partisan issues,” Eskamani told CL. “It’s not left versus right, it’s the bottom trying to get to the top.” 

Like New Yorkers, Eskamani said folks she’s talked to on the ground in Central Florida are looking for politicians who aren’t beholden to corporate interests.“People are looking for elected officials who are willing to challenge utility companies, challenge developers, [and] challenge the tourism industry,” she said.

“Democrats need to show that we know how to fix things,” she said, instead of just offering constant negativity. That’s why she believes it’s “exciting” to see someone like Mamdani (who took the time to listen to Trump voters) in an executive position. “It’s going to show people that, like, young leaders are not just strong speakers or charismatic leaders, right? Like, we also know how to solve problems.”

Former Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn, a 67-year-old Democrat who’s reportedly considering a bid to return to his old office, similarly acknowledged the importance of affordability as a campaign pillar when contacted by CL. Still, he also emphasized that it would be “very hard” to draw conclusions from a “uniquely NY election” and apply that to the political landscape in Tampa.

“Affordability however is affecting Americans across the board and to the extent that a Mayor can impact it in a meaningful way should be a part of any campaign,” Buckhorn told CL in a text message.

Tampa City Council member Lynn Hurtak, a former teacher and union member who’s considered something of a progressive, said she found Mamdani’s victory “validating,” as someone who also makes an effort to listen to constituents across the aisle. Although she hasn’t made up her mind yet on what’s next for her own political future, she admitted she’s been getting “a lot more calls” since Mamdani’s race was called.

“I’m championing what people are asking me to champion,” she said, noting that the No. 1 issue her constituents have asked her to focus on is affordable housing. “To see someone win on a stage where they’re just talking about what they want to do for people, and having people buy in…It’s heartening to see that other people are doing the same thing and getting the same response.”

Is socialism a campaign killer?

Republicans in Florida have routinely disparaged any Democrat or policy they don’t like by describing it as “communist” or “socialist,” almost literally banking on the fact that the use of that term alone will be considered synonymous by voters with Satan (unless you’re like, literally a Satanist and that’s your vibe). 

“They’re going to try to label you, attack you, and throw you into boxes, and all you can do is just be your authentic self,” said Eskamani, an Iranian-American progressive who’s faced death threats and was recently dubbed a “communist bitch” by a critic on Facebook.

Even so, Florida hasn’t always shied away from socialism. According to Robert Steven Griffin, author of a historical paper titled “Workers of the Sunshine State Unite!” more Floridians voted for socialist U.S. presidential candidate Eugene Debs in 1912 than for either William Taft or Theodore Roosevelt. The city of Gulfport had a socialist mayor, E. E. Wintersgill, who was elected to office in 1910 with 75% of the vote.

“Rising out of the turmoil of Florida’s manufacturing boom of the early twentieth century, the Florida Socialist Party provided an outlet for Floridians’ discontent with the growing economic disparities that characterized the state’s rapid commercialization,” Griffin wrote.

Ruskin, a suburb of Tampa, was actually inspired by and named after socialist English philosopher John Ruskin when first established by George and Adeline Miller in the “wilderness of central Florida” in 1908. Considered a social reformer and critic of Victorian capitalism, Ruskin ironically viewed America with contempt. 

“Though I have kind invitations enough to visit America,” he reportedly wrote in 1871, “I could not, even for a couple of months, live in a country so miserable as to possess no castles.” (Since he’s long gone by now, it’s unclear whether Tampa’s infamous goth nightclub, formerly a union hall, would have counted.)

Several local politicians CL spoke to, including Floyd, Eskamani, and Henderson, all agreed that labels (including ‘socialist’) don’t matter as much as what you’re fighting for. “It’s less about labels and more about values,” said Eskamani, who doesn’t identify as a socialist herself.

“I don’t think it’s a campaign killer, per se,” agreed Henderson, who also doesn’t affiliate himself with socialism. “I do think that it is a loud signal that when we’re in uncharted times and uncharted territories, unconventional solutions are definitely up for consideration… The labels end up mattering a lot less than the actual character and platform the person is running on.”

Asked before the election to wring his hands over what it means to be a democratic socialist, Mamdani told The New Yorker that a core tenet of democratic socialism is about dignity. Voters, he explained, should not be priced out of the things that they need.

Using rent-stabilization as an example, he said that “housing is a human right,” should be less of a pullquote and more of an ideal that a candidate is willing to fight for. 

“There are many people who will say housing is a human right. And yet it oftentimes seems as if it is relegated simply to the use of it as a slogan, as opposed to it being something, as a framework,” Mamdani said. “What separates [democratic socialism] from other styles of ideology or politics or theory, to me, in practice, has been a separation also of whether you are willing to reckon with the broken nature of the system we have around us and taking on the entrenched interest necessary to deliver these kinds of ideals in practice.”

A movement beyond Election Night

Nobody with a bare-bones familiarity with Mamdani’s campaign is of the belief that Mamdani’s ambitious policy agenda will come to fruition single-handedly without collaboration with other elected officials, or without challenges from those who oppose his ideas.

“It will be a rocky road going forward, because, like, the billionaire class and Donald Trump himself are going to be throwing everything they can at him to make sure he’s not successful,” said city council member Floyd.

Pundits have warned that NYC’s wealthy elite would flee to the so-called “free state of Florida” if Mamdani were elected (although there’s evidence to suggest this won’t be the case). Florida Republicans, for their part, have offered refuge. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has reportedly joked that Mamdani would become Florida’s “realtor of the year,” while Republican state Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia called Mamdani’s victory on Tuesday “a sad day for NYC.”

DeSantis on Tuesday night told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he believed NYC voters were “shooting themselves in the foot” by voting for Mamdani.

“I mean, this is a guy who has embraced Marxist economics, he claims he’s going to lower everyone’s costs by having the government run grocery stores,” the governor scoffed, “And the only people who would think that would work are people who have never studied a lick of history.”

Mamdani has been smeared by critics as idealistic, anti-Semitic due to his support for Palestinian people, as well as anti-cop.

“The $5k recruitment bonus we give to new officers will be utilized by a number of these NYPD officers,” DeSantis quipped on social media. “There is no reason to risk your life serving when the mayor hates you and believes your department shouldn’t even exist.”

Mamdani, regardless of the alienating characteristic assigned to him by his critics, has moved to embrace Big Apple residents of all backgrounds as mayor-elect, even those who voted against him. “To every New Yorker, whether you voted for me, for one of my opponents, or felt too disappointed by politics to vote at all, thank you for the opportunity to prove myself worthy of your trust,” he said in his victory speech. 

Floyd, for his part, believes this isn’t the end of conversations around socialism in politics, especially with Mamdani’s success as a candidate openly embracing it.

“Socialism is here, it’s part of American politics,” he added. “And in my opinion, it’s only going to get bigger and bigger, as long as people learn more about what we’re about and who we really stand for.”

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This article appears in Nov. 6 – 12, 2025.