Abdul El-Sayed, Texas Democrats sold voters a soft-spoken seminary student with a moderate streak.
With the ballots counted, New York’s socialist mayor went on NBC to talk about him.
And Zohran Mamdani described James Talarico in words the Texas campaign spent months keeping off the airwaves.
The Mayor Who Refused the Script
The postelection spin arrived right on schedule. Cable panels looked at the Democrat wins in red and purple states and crowned the moderates as the heroes of the night.
NBC’s Kristen Welker brought that exact theory to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) during an appearance on Meet the Press NOW. Outside of Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate win in Michigan, Welker said, “nearly all of the Democrats’ biggest statewide victories were more moderate candidates.”
But Mamdani wasn’t buying it.
“Well, I want to push you a little bit on that, Kristen, because when we’re thinking about James Talarico, we’re talking about somebody who campaigned on universal pre-K,” Mamdani said.
And he didn’t stop with Texas. Annie Andrews (D-SC), the incoming Senator from South Carolina, ran on ending endless wars, according to Mamdani. Georgia Governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms (D), in his telling, ran on speeding up construction of affordable housing.
Then he tied all three together with a bow. “And those are all the hallmarks of what progressive governance also looks like in this country,” Mamdani said.
Read that one twice. The most famous socialist in American politics just claimed the Democrats’ red-state winners as his own.
A Moderate Costume, Tailored for Texas
Senator-elect James Talarico (D-TX) spent the general election dressed as something he isn’t. He talked about faith, about bringing people together, and about Texas being purple at heart.
But voters who paid attention during the primary heard a different man. In a debate against Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, Talarico took aim at ICE. “It’s time to tear down this secret police force, and replace it with an agency that actually is going to focus on public safety,” he said.
By the fall, the tune had gotten softer. A CNN town hall audience heard Talarico flatly deny any plan to abolish the agency. “No, and I never have,” he said, before reaching right back for the same “secret police” label in his next breath.
That’s a denial that leaves the old insult fully intact.
Even some voices on the Left never bought the costume. MS NOW analyst John Heilemann told a Morning Joe panel during primary season that the press kept casting Talarico as a moderate, then cut straight through his own industry’s framing. “He’s not a moderate,” Heilemann said.
Now Mamdani has signed the same verdict from inside the movement.
And that tribute carries a price tag for Talarico. Republicans spent months warning Texans that he belonged to the same wing of the party as the New York mayor. His campaign brushed it off as a scare tactic. Mamdani just confirmed it himself, on national television, without a single Republican in the room.
The Georgia piece of the list deserves a closer look too. Bottoms, a one-term Atlanta mayor who later advised Joe Biden in the White House, campaigned on universal pre-K and expanding Medicaid, according to the Grio. Mamdani picked her housing plank to brag about. He skipped the part where Georgia taxpayers take on a bigger slice of government-run health care.
Why the Mayor’s Scorecard Should Worry Texans
Democrats have run this play before, and the last time ended exactly the way anyone could have predicted.
In 2018, dozens of Democrats flipped House seats in districts President Trump had carried two years earlier. Many of them promised to be a different breed of Democrat. Some swore they would oppose Nancy Pelosi for Speaker.
Pelosi got her gavel anyway. And when the partisan Ukraine impeachment came to the floor, all but a handful of those so-called moderates lined up behind it.
But the label worked as packaging, not policy. It got candidates through the door in places an open progressive could never win. Once inside, they voted with the bosses.
Mamdani’s comments suggest the party has quit bothering with the disguise. A few years ago, a Texas Democrat would have run from a New York socialist’s praise like it carried a rash.
Mamdani belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America, an openly Marxist outfit whose platform calls for abolishing ICE, putting the largest corporations under public ownership, and ending the capitalist system altogether. When the DSA’s best-known officeholder looks at the new Democrat Senate class and sees the hallmarks of his own agenda, voters in Texas and South Carolina ought to take him at his word.
New York offers a preview of where the road leads. Mamdani’s city already faces a $5.4 billion budget shortfall, a figure Welker pressed him on in an earlier Meet the Press interview. Free programs always cost somebody. And the bill usually lands on the same working families the programs claim to help, because governments don’t create wealth. They just move it from a paycheck to a bureaucracy.
There’s one plank on Mamdani’s list that Republicans should study, though nobody in the GOP establishment wants to hear it.
Andrews ran against what she called “endless, unnecessary billion-dollar-a-day wars.” She took that message into a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in this century, and it carried her across the line.
The neoconservatives who pushed President Trump into the war with Iran handed Democrats that issue on a silver platter. Exit polling points the same direction. Voters who called immigration enforcement crucial broke for Republicans 58-40, which means the border agenda held up just fine.
So the Republicans, now itching to blame ICE, mass deportations, or MAGA for the losses, are aiming at the one issue the party actually won.
But don’t expect Talarico to read the results that way. He’ll arrive in Washington, DC with a “secret police” line already polished and a socialist mayor vouching for his credentials.
Welker saved one more question for the end of the interview. She asked whether a progressive candidate has a path to the White House in 2028.
“Absolutely,” Mamdani said.
Sources:
Breitbart News, “Mamdani: Dem Wins Weren’t More Moderate Candidates, Look at Talarico, Andrews, Bottoms”
The Dallas Express, “Welcome Mat or Open Door? Why Talarico’s Border Front-Porch Talk Doesn’t Match His Anti-ICE Past”
Texas Public Radio, “Talarico says he doesn’t support abolishing ICE but criticizes their work under Trump as ‘secret police’”
Fox News, “MS NOW analyst admits Talarico may seem moderate, but has progressive agenda like Crockett”
Upstate Today, “Graham, Andrews set to face off in November”
TheGrio, “Keisha Lance Bottoms wins primary election in path to become Georgia’s first Black woman governor”
Mediaite, “NBC’s Welker Presses Mamdani On Whether He Still Has Faith in Democratic Socialism Amid NYC’s $5.4B Shortfall”