One sad thing about labor politics in contemporary America is that it’s taken for granted that union leaders will almost always back the establishment Democratic who is most likely to win, since endorsing the front-runner gives unions a “seat at table” from which they can then lobby for the interests of their members.

But the fact that this strategy is so common does not make it any less narrow-minded. At best, billionaire-backed electeds provide crumbs. At worst, such politicians actively undermine workers’ lives (and members’ trust in their unions). Despite Cuomo’s AWFUL track record for workers as governor, and despite his disgraced ouster due to sexual harassment charges, it seemed at the beginning of this race like politics as usual would reign in the House of Labor. Indeed, Andrew Cuomo launched his mayoral run in early March from the carpenters’ union hall.

Zohran’s rank-and-file backers knew from day one that they would have to get organized to avoid a repeat of the dynamic in 2018, when exactly zero unions endorsed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s primary challenge against Democratic Party leader Joe Crowley. Not only are unions unaccustomed to joining anti-corporate political insurgencies, but Cuomo, like Donald Trump, has a long history of using his political power to punish opponents. As the District Council 37 (DC 37) member Joshua Barnett put it to me, “Cuomo is a real vindictive son of a bitch. So if you don’t endorse and he wins, it could cost you.” Challenging a bully is risky.

With Zohran’s initial polling running in the low single digits, his earliest union supporters understood that it would take a lot of outreach and persuasion to get their unions on board. So they began by building up ad hoc rank-and-file organizing committees, starting in United Auto Workers (UAW) Region 9A and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ (AFSCME) massive DC 37, which represents city workers.

They had their work cut out for them even in a progressive union like the newly reformed UAW. “There were lots of doubts about Zohran’s viability early on,” one rank-and-file member told me. “But we knew we really needed an early UAW endorsement, to make it clear to the rest of labor — and the rest of the progressive movement — that he was a serious contender.”

Zohran’s supporters succeeded in mobilizing their coworkers to come out in large numbers to the union’s endorsement forum, highlighting his labor platform, including a plan for a $30 minimum wage by 2030, as well as his broader push for a rent freeze, fast and free buses, and free childcare. And they then pivoted to a concerted grassroots lobbying campaign to convince the members of UAW Region 9A’s Community Action Program.

This organizing worked. On December 4, 2024, Zohran got his first labor endorsement when Region 9A endorsed him on an unranked slate of three. Then on May 30, 2025, once Zohran had begun to surge, the union urged its members to rank him first.

“Some may say we took a chance,” explained 9A director Brandon Mancilla, “but the actual reckless gamble is to endorse status quo candidates that caused the crisis working families face in the first place.”

Such views are not widely shared among New York City union leaders. On April 14, Cuomo received the endorsement of two of the city’s biggest unions, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council (HTC) and 32BJ Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which, respectively, represent tens of thousands of hospitality and building service workers. These “highly sought” endorsements, noted Politico, solidified “Cuomo’s status as the clear frontrunner.” Though not surprising, 32BJ and the HTC’s decisions were particularly disheartening since both unions in 2021 pushed for Cuomo’s resignation over sexual harassment charges.

This type of realpolitik is, above all, selfish. It is personally beneficial for top union leaders to make nice with Cuomo, and doing so might occasionally benefit the narrow short-term interests of some of their members. But there’s a price to pay: throwing the rest of the working class under the bus, not just in New York City but nationwide. Everybody understands that this race has become a referendum on the future of the Democratic Party, a test of whether voters want a party that pushes for the old status quo or one that will vigorously champion workers and challenge billionaires.

It’s particularly disheartening to see working-class leaders continue with the same old political playbook at a moment of unprecedented crisis in America and the world. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained to the three-thousand-strong Zohran rally on June 14:

We will never get past Donald Trump if we continue to elect the same people and make the same decisions that got us here in the first place. And I will tell you there are people out there that say if you go out and if you make this [Zohran] endorsement . . . your political career will be over. And to that I say, “I don’t care.” We will never get to a better place if everyone’s just worried about themselves and making decisions that are selfish.

By late April, there were two big New York City union endorsements still up for grabs: DC 37 and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). The former is the city’s largest union, with 150,000 members and 89,000 retirees. A powerhouse of city and state politics, DC 37 had endorsed Cuomo for governor in 2018, despite the fact that in 2012 he had slashed public sector worker pensions through his much-hated “Tier 6” policy that raised the retirement age and raised employees’ retirement contributions.

Massive labor machines like DC 37 do not have much of a tradition of including members in political decisions. Joshua Barnett, a longtime DC 37 member who works in Local 375’s public housing division, explained to me that “during the last mayoral primary [in 2021], we all first found out over the news that the union had endorsed Eric Adams. That’s how little the leadership had tried to involve us members.” But this time around, “even though the process was technically still the same, our grassroots movement, all our vocal pressure, made things a bit more inclusionary.”

Like hundreds of other DC 37 members, Barnett had spent the preceding months rallying support for Zohran. Even so, on the eve of the union’s endorsement announcement in late April, Barnett was convinced the leadership was going to endorse Cuomo. “I was really surprised, pleasantly surprised, that [our union leaders] actually listened to us.”

On April 23, DC 37 made political waves by not only refusing to back Cuomo, but by endorsing the young democratic socialist second on its slate. Laura Pirtle Morand, a member of DC 37’s electoral endorsement committee, explained to a local reporter that she and other union leaders were “inundated” with calls by their members to support Zohran. “It did help to make sure that we thoroughly considered him. It made me take a second look at him.”

DC 37’s backing was a major breakthrough. Crucially, DC 37 members tend to be older black and brown workers — the key working-class demographics to which Zohran’s disproportionately college-educated movement, like the Left generally, needs to expand to win. The union’s endorsement has already translated into systematically emailing, calling, and sending mailers to its enormous membership, as well as participation in official campaign events. Praising Zohran’s “understanding that keeping this city affordable is the most important thing a mayor can do now,” DC 37 treasurer Maf Misbah Uddin brought down the house at the June 14 rally: “God bless Zohran. God bless all you. Enjoy! Fight harder! Win bigger! Together we can win together.”

Similar grassroots efforts also emerged in the UFT, though these arose later since the union’s activists were focused on internal union elections for much of this year. Again it took bottom-up pressure to move the needle up top. Various teachers I spoke with were very worried that the union leadership was preparing to endorse Cuomo despite his vociferously pro-charter-school policies as governor.

“We all deserve so much more from our government and our unions,” explained Sonia Silva, a recently retired teacher. “But that’s going to take each of us standing up.” Along those lines, Silva on her own initiative wrote and proposed a pro-Zohran resolution to the union’s retirees’ meeting. Though the resolution was not allowed to be debated in the meeting, it nevertheless sparked discussion among members and contributed to shrinking the space for a potential Cuomo endorsement.

With so many members making their voices heard, UFT’s leadership sent out a survey to try to get a broader read on members’ views. Though the poll results were never made public, the UFT leadership ended up endorsing neither Cuomo nor Zohran, citing the widespread support both candidates had among their ranks. Anti-Cuomo forces saw this as a significant victory.

Momentum has continued to spread in recent weeks. A rank-and-file movement has sprung up in 1199SEIU, where members are demanding the newly elected leadership rescind their predecessors’ Cuomo endorsement. John Samuelsen of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU) spoke at the June 14 rally, declaring that “every mayoral candidate thinks they know something about public transit, and they don’t know shite. But Zohran reached out, talked to the workers, talked to worker leaders, and he’s firm in his understanding of what working people, riders, and New York City transit workers need to make this system better.”

And just yesterday, Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 153 announced it was backing Zohran, growing a now-respectable list of labor endorsers, which also includes Doctors Council SEIU, CIR/SEIU, UNITE HERE Local 100, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 161, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY), and Teamsters Local 804. In an era when unions routinely endorse candidates beholden to the bosses, Zohran’s inroads within organized labor constitute a significant step forward. And in an exceedingly tight race, they could be a crucial tipping point.

It would be hard to exaggerate the stakes of this mayoral election. AOC put it well at last week’s campaign rally:

This can no longer be a city of pieds-à-terre for the rich and the global elite. New York City is a union town; New York City is a town of the working class. If we can turn the page in the biggest and best city in the United States of America, we can turn the page in our country too. But it takes courage, New York, because we are up against the Goliaths.

Even those unions that have so far failed to show any signs of political courage could very soon get another chance. According to political tradition, all unions should line up behind the Democratic nominee after June 24. But Cuomo has already announced that he will run on an independent ballot line for the November 4 general election if he loses the primary. If Zohran wins the primary, union leaders would again have to make a choice: act on fear and narrow self-interest — or on hope and a fighting vision for all working-class New Yorkers.

Labor support would be even more decisive in the general election since a Zohran primary win will inevitably spark a scorched-earth scare campaign of epic, unprecedented proportions. Despite the fact, as Ezra Klein yesterday noted, that democratic socialists regularly get elected to run European cities, real estate tycoons, Trump-supporting billionaires, corporate CEOs, and Cuomo sycophants will stop at nothing to scare New Yorkers into thinking that a Zohran mayoralty will result in fiscal bankruptcy, not to mention crime sprees and anti-Jewish persecution.

Unions are the only force in New York City with the reach and power to decisively counter such cynical scaremongering. They can point not only to Zohran’s actual program, but also to the strong historical precedent for effective socialist urban governance, from New York City under Fiorello La Guardia to Milwaukee’s “sewer socialists.”

It’s no coincidence that fighting labor unions were the central pillars of each of those successful urban precedents. When you’re going up against the most powerful people on Earth, just winning an election is not enough.

To actually win ambitious social democratic policies in the face of intense employer and political obstructionism, officials normally need a large amount of people power outside of the state, in workplaces and neighborhoods. We don’t yet have that level of organized working-class power in New York City. But Zohran’s campaign is helping bring it into being by jump-starting rank-and-file activity within organized labor, by raising working people’s political expectations, and by recruiting thousands of new young activists into a pragmatically radical movement for change.