While Zohran Mamdani was trouncing his opponents in the New York City mayoral election, Tanmay Shah, a twenty-nine-year-old Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member and South Asian immigrant, who ran on a platform of affordable housing, affordable groceries, and reliable city services, won the Ward 12 City Council seat in Cleveland, Ohio.
It took three weeks of counting provisional and mail-in ballots to certify the victory, but as of November 25, 2025, it was official: Shah had unseated the establishment-backed incumbent by just nine votes. It was a squeaker, but a victory nonetheless — and one that begs a question that hasn’t been examined as much as the implications of Mamdani’s victory: What should municipal socialism look like in the Rust Belt?
In a recent piece on how Mamdani can help rebuild the labor movement in New York City, Eric Blanc proposed a broad set of specific policy goals and actionable communications imperatives for local governments that seek to empower working-class constituents. Because of New York City’s unique characteristics, like its size, diversity, and global importance as well as the particularities of its labor law and its legacy of union activity and influence, Mamdani has many tools at his disposal when it comes to implementing his commitments to working-class New Yorkers.
And despite the Democratic political establishment’s antipathy to his ascendence, he is operating in a deep-blue state. As such, he should be able to implement at...
In a combative interview with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson made a host of contentious and often demonstrably false claims that quickly went viral on...