Senator Bernie Sanders has a vision for a new American politics—one that meets the needs of working families instead of the billionaire class that uses its immense wealth to warp elections and governance. And where better to begin than in the nation’s largest city? If this new politics takes hold in New York City, Sanders says, it could inspire people across the country. That’s one of the reasons the independent senator from Vermont and two-time presidential candidate, whose name frequently tops lists of the most trusted political figures in the US, weighed in so boldly this week on behalf of mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani. Hailing Mamdani for building “a grass-roots movement fueled by everyday people, committed to fighting oligarchy, authoritarianism and kleptocracy,” Sanders declared, “At this dangerous moment in history, status quo politics isn’t good enough. We need new leadership that is prepared to stand up to powerful corporate interests and fight for the working class. Zohran Mamdani is providing that vision.”

Sanders told The Nation after making the endorsement that he has been powerfully struck by how Mamdani has transformed the New York contest with a volunteer-driven, small-donor-funded campaign that numerous polls have suggested is within striking distance of upending the political comeback of former governor Andrew Cuomo, one of the biggest—and most controversial—names in Democratic politics. Surveys still show former Cuomo as the front-runner in the June 24 contest, which will be decided under New York’s ranked-choice voting system. But where surveys once suggested that Cuomo would cruise to victory by 30 points, as other candidates struggled to get out of single digits, the most recent polls show Mamdani closing the gap—with strong support among young voters, who have consistently been enthusiastic about his bid, and a late-stage bump in backing from Latino voters. According to a Marist survey released this week, support for Mamdani among Latino voters has doubled since May, from 20 percent to 41 percent.

Under ranked-choice-voting scenarios, where votes for trailing candidates are redistributed, several polls have Mamdani moving to a clearly competitive position. Even as Cuomo clings to his lead, Politico writes this week that “his advantage is shrinking.” The New York Post, no friend to Mamdani, acknowledges that, based on the latest polling, “Andrew Cuomo’s comfortable lead over Zohran Mamdani [has been] cut by 50% in home stretch before Dem mayoral primary.”

This has Mamdani and his backers arguing that he can chart a path to victory in a race that once seemed impossible: by highlighting differences between Cuomo’s billionaire-funded and corporate-aligned mission and Mamdani’s democratic socialist agenda for making the city work for working people (with popular proposals to freeze the rent, invest in housing, open city-owned grocery to cut food costs, make bus transportation fast and free, and tax the rich to pay for basic services); by mobilizing thousands of volunteers for a final get-out-the-vote drive in parts of the city where their candidate is running strong (Brooklyn, parts of Queens, and, according to the latest polling, the Bronx); and by securing high-profile endorsements that might sway wavering voters to rank Mamdani first (or second, in cross-endorsement scenarios that take advantage of the RCV system’s potential to unite progressives).

Sanders is familiar with this trajectory. A Brooklyn native who got his start at the local level as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders has a long history of defying political expectations. At a critical juncture nationally and in New York, the senator suggested to The Nation that voters are waking up to the fact that politics as usual will not address crises facing urban centers—“in terms of affordable housing, in terms of childcare, in terms of crime…”

“I think that the status quo politics of the Democratic establishment is designed to fail. It cannot succeed. It won’t succeed,” argued Sanders. In contrast, he said, Mamdani has a vision that has the potential to succeed, both politically on the campaign trail and practically in power as a Fiorello La Guardia–style “people’s mayor” of New York. “I have been very impressed by the vision that Zohran has laid out, in terms of dealing with housing, dealing with raising wages, dealing with transportation, dealing with childcare, dealing with some of the major crises facing the city,” the senator explained. “Also, I have been very impressed by the grassroots movement that he has put together.”

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Sanders, better than anyone in American politics, knows that when a candidate seeks to break the political mold, there will be immense pushback from the economic and political elites that operate in and around both major parties. And that pushback is on full display in New York, where wealthy donors and corporate interests are mounting a multimillion-dollar campaign attacking Mamdani as too radical or too inexperienced to run the nation’s largest city.

But the anti-Mamdani campaign being waged by the pro-Cuomo Fix the City super PAC—with its heavy funding from billionaires such as former mayor Michael Bloomberg, and its craven attempts to stoke fear of the candidate who could be the city’s first Muslim mayor—is so transparent in its determination to maintain a broken status quo that Sanders hopes voters will see through the attacks and choose hope. “This is the same old story of the billionaire establishment supporting Cuomo; and it’s a grassroots movement supporting Zohran,” he explains. “The choice to me was pretty clear.”

The Sanders endorsement, coming just days before the election, cut through the noise of a closing week of campaigning in New York—where early voting has already begun. It earned newspaper headlines and extensive TV coverage at precisely the moment when voters are heading to the polls.

There are plenty of pundits who claim that endorsements do not matter. Yet New York’s mayoral race has become so cacophonous that signals from trusted political figures, such as Sanders, or US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—who’s been calling out extremist Republicans and overcautious Democrats with Sanders on the wildly successful “Fighting Oligarchy” tour—take on additional meaning.

Fresh endorsements for Mamdani came at a breathtaking clip in the final days of the race—with 2021 progressive mayoral candidate Maya Wiley, labor unions, and groups such as MoveOn and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee backing Mamdani. At the same time, a pattern of late-in-the-campaign developments shook up the race, especially the high-profile arrest Tuesday of another mayoral candidate, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, as he escorted a migrant worker to an immigration hearing. Lander, who is running third in many polls, has cross-endorsed Mamdani as part of a joint push to maximize the progressive vote and displace Cuomo.

Another contender, Michael Blake, a former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, cross-endorsed Mamdani on Monday—with Mamdani announcing that both he and Blake “seek to turn the page on the broken politics of the past and the corrupt leadership of Andrew Cuomo.” However, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who has been starkly critical of Cuomo, and who has registered considerable support among Black voters, has so far declined to cross-endorse in the race.

Endorsements and cross-endorsements are just pieces of any winning strategy in a mayoral race. But Mamdani is betting that he’ll get a citywide boost from late-stage shows of support for his candidacy—especially the one from Sanders, whom the mayoral candidate describes as “someone who continues to inspire New Yorkers across the five boroughs about the possibility of our democracy being something more than that which is bought and paid for by Republican billionaires.”