Washington Times Weekly: New York’s Socialist rise and Virginia’s political battleground

[GERBO] We’ll start with a recent visit you took to New York City, this mayoral race for New York. Eric Adams, not running again, withdrew after this upstart candidate, Zohran Mamdani, self-described Democratic Socialist, has gained a lot of traction among a lot of people. You spoke with some of those people to gauge their views and why he’s been so popular. What are some of the reasons behind his surge in momentum? 

[PICKET] Well, you have a lot of young voters in New York who really loved a lot of what Assemblyman Mamdani had to say. You have Andrew Cuomo, who first ran against Mamdani in the ranked choice election, in the primary. That really helped Mamdani. Andrew Cuomo was sort of resting on his laurels. Lots of people figured he was going to beat Mamdani. In the early polls during the primary, it looked like he was going to beat Mamdani. Republicans fielded lots of candidates, and many Republicans figured, Cuomo — foregone conclusion — and they figured they weren’t going to run. So Curtis Sliwa was really their only choice, and he ended up simply being the choice for Republicans because other Republicans simply didn’t step up. And Mamdani ended up winning that particular ranked-choice voting primary. 

Now, he looks like he is way ahead, double digits, in this particular race. He has lots of DSA-ers, otherwise known as Democratic Socialists of America, young voters out there. And they’re saying that he is the future of the Democratic Party a la Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in that the Charles Schumers of the world are the past. 

[GERBO] Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor, thought he was going to mount an independent-style campaign. We’ve seen other candidates do it. He has since withdrawn, endorsed Cuomo. Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate. I don’t want to say New York is a bellwether for other Democratic races elsewhere in the country, but it’s kind of a unique microcosm because 8 million people in New York, I mean, it’s more than most states in the union managing this city of five boroughs. And Cuomo, Mamdani, I don’t want to say nothing new, but Cuomo was governor in New York, he’s a legendary name in New York politics. Mamdani, like you said with AOC, that’s kind of where these factions are at this point, which I would say is good on a national scale. If they were perhaps running against each other for the Senate would be interesting, but when you actually come down to managing a city in the ways that Ed Koch and Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani have done over the past two decades in New York, it seems like a proxy race for a national race. But in reality, they’ve got to run New York City at the end of the day. And it’s going to be interesting to see how either of their styles are going to fit that. 

[PICKET] Well, you bring up an interesting point. This is exclusively for New York City. I was talking to one very prominent Democratic consultant who pointed out to me that this may go down in New York City, but if someone like AOC were to run against Schumer, she’d have a very tough time beating him because of the suburbs as well as upstate New York. So anyone who has these fantasies that AOC is going to be running even nationwide, she’s going to have a likely tough time, even running statewide, for that matter. So she still has a lot of work to do. 

[GERBO] We’ll stay with election politics in this cycle. We’ll move to Virginia, where Democratic Attorney General nominee Jay Jones is running against incumbent Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares. And Jones has been embroiled in this text message scandal. Years ago, three years ago, he sent violent, threatening text messages to a fellow member of the Virginia State House at that point, threatening the lives of the then Virginia State House Speaker, Todd Gilbert and his family. Those have become public, and it’s dinged his candidacy, but Kerry, it’s also kind of been a focal point and crystallize these other statewide races that are going on in the Commonwealth. 

[PICKET] That’s right. You had Abigail Spanberger, who was at the top of the ticket running for governor for the Democrats, and it seemed like to many that she was going to just coast into the governor’s mansion over in Richmond. All of a sudden, now you have Jay Jones, who is running for AG. All these text messages came out, and it seems to be sort of pulling down the ticket because it has energized many Republicans to come out and vote early. We are looking at the statistics. We’re looking at the numbers. And the Republicans are energized in many counties all over the Commonwealth.