Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushed Democratic Party leadership to endorse New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani Wednesday night during a town hall event broadcast by CNN.
The pair of progressives even suggested that candidates in the same mold as Mamdani may be the antidote to the “doldrums” Democrats currently find themselves in.
“The guy is running an extraordinary campaign,” Sanders said. “He has something like 80,000 volunteers knocking on doors. He is bringing people out who never voted. He is bringing Blacks and whites and Latinos and Asians — everybody together around a really strong agenda talking about affordability in New York. What is not to like?”
“This should be the kind of candidate that Democrats want in every state in the country — strong grassroots campaigns, a willingness to take on the oligarchs and the big money interests and stand up for working class people,” he added.
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Host Kaitlan Collins asked Sanders, “Are you speaking directly to [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries and [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer when you deliver that message?”
He responded, “Sure, I am. Hakeem, you watching this?”
NOTUS previously reported that Mamdani met with Schumer in September — and Jeffries earlier in the summer — but neither have issued a formal endorsement of the self-proclaimed democratic socialist.
When asked by Collins what she thought about Jeffries and Schumer’s decision to hold back from endorsing Mamdani, Ocasio-Cortez repeated her previous public statements that she believes it is crucial for the party to endorse its candidate once a primary has ended.
“Democrats have primaries for a reason,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We may have our differences amongst one another within the party — some may be more conservative, some may be more liberal, or any other number of differences. That’s what we have primaries for. I believe in endorsing the nominee of the party after a primary has resolved itself.”
Ocasio-Cortez gave a related example: her decision to endorse former President Joe Biden after he won the Democratic primary in 2020.
“We all had to come together and do the work of supporting our party’s nominee in order to make sure that we win,” she said. “So I do worry about the example it sets when our leaders do not support the party nominee, because in the future, we will need folks to rally behind the presidential nominee.”
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez spent the majority of the town hall discussing the ongoing government shutdown. During one particularly heated exchange, the pair called out their Republican colleagues for refusing to negotiate on measures that would end the standoff — namely, extensions to Affordable Care Act subsidies that would stave off massive increases in health insurance premiums.
Ocasio-Cortez said Republicans need to get to work, pointing out that House Republicans have been absent from Capitol Hill while House Speaker Mike Johnson keeps the chamber in an extended recess period.
“It is actually an unconscionable abdication and refusal to work,” she said. “I’ve never seen people who hate working so much in my life.”
She added, “Mike Johnson, you should be in that office negotiating with Hakeem Jeffries every damn day until we reopen this government, and any day that you don’t do that is a failure.”
Sanders echoed the sentiment, stating, “In the Senate, they need 60 votes. They don’t have 60 votes. They’ve got 53 or maybe 52 — that means you have to sit down and talk to the other side. It is not complicated. They are not doing that.”
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This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS, VTDigger and The Maine Monitor.
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