I was raised in Brooklyn. I serve in Emeryville.
And right now, I’m asking every New Yorker I know to vote Zohran Mamdani #1 for mayor of New York City, Brad Lander #2, and to not rank Andrew Cuomo at all.
From one coast to the other, I’ve seen how the Democratic Party speaks in two voices - one to its base, and one to its donors. One voice tells us it wants to excite young people, uplift working-class communities, and bring men of color into the fold. The other voice - the louder one, the one that calls the shots - tells us to wait our turn, lower our expectations, and get in line behind the same recycled powerbrokers who’ve failed us for decades.
This election isn’t just about picking the next mayor - it’s about choosing a future.
Zohran isn’t just another name on the ballot. He is the insurgent candidate the Democratic Party keeps pretending it wants: a young, principled, working-class socialist who has actually built something real. A candidate who organizes alongside tenants, who rides the MTA with us, who speaks multiple languages because his movement does too. A candidate who doesn’t take money from landlords or lobbyists, but from small-dollar donors who believe that politics should be about people, not power brokers.
His campaign isn’t about optics. It’s about justice. It’s about life in this city and whether it belongs to the working-class majority or the billionaire class.
That’s why the establishment is panicking.
They're trotting out Andrew Cuomo: a disgraced ex-governor who abused his office, presided over mass deaths in nursing homes, and treated critics and survivors with contempt…as their last, desperate defense against a rising tide of working-class power.
The same Cuomo who spent millions smearing the left as “dangerous.” The same Cuomo who once laughed off the idea of a rent crisis. And the same Cuomo whose return is being laundered through mainstream media editorials that sound more like panic attacks than policy arguments.
Let me be clear: ranking Cuomo anywhere on your ballot is a betrayal of our future.
If you're a New Yorker who wants rent control, worker protections, public transit that works, and a city that doesn’t just survive billionaires but serves those struggling to make it - then Zohran Mamdani is your #1 vote.
And to my fellow Bay Area progressives - especially those of us who fill our club meetings with the right buzzwords and resolutions - I want to say this: are we brave enough to follow where Zohran is leading?
Because we’ve got our own Cuomos out here too - cloaked in progressive branding, quietly defending the status quo, comfortable with symbolic politics that go nowhere.
So I ask you:
If this same race were playing out in the Bay Area, who would we back?
We talk about housing justice, but we still cater to developers.
We talk about uplifting youth of color, but sideline them when they ask for power.
We call ourselves a sanctuary for progressives, but recoil the minute populism gets too real.
If we had a Zohran in Oakland or San Francisco, would we lift them up - or tear them down for making the donor class nervous?
This is our moment to stop pretending and start practicing solidarity. The eyes of the nation are on New York City right now, but the soul of the movement is what’s truly on the ballot.
We can choose the past - its predators, its patriarchs, its polished betrayals.
Or we can choose the future - bold, multilingual, working-class, deeply human.
Vote Zohran Mamdani #1. Brad Lander #2. (For number #3 and #4 and #5, I'm in favor of Michael Blake, Adrienne Adams, and Zellnor Myrie). Leave Cuomo off your ballot. And let’s build a new political era - from Flatbush to Fruitvale.
Would we choose Zohran - the organizer, the truth-teller, the fighter?
Or would we find ourselves making excuses for a local version of Cuomo, rebranded and repackaged in progressive language?
This question is not hypothetical. It is happening now, in our clubs, in our counties, in our so-called “blue strongholds.” And if we’re not brave enough to name the pattern, we are complicit in its repetition.
Zohran Mamdani is exactly the kind of leader our party should be cultivating, not cannibalizing.
It’s time to stop asking young people, men of color, and working-class organizers to shrink themselves to fit into a party that claims to want them, but fears what they represent. Instead, we should grow into the kind of political home they - and all of us - deserve.
This moment calls for clarity. And solidarity. I choose both.
In struggle and in truth,
Kalimah Priforce
Councilmember, City of Emeryville
Delegate, California Democratic Party (AD18)
Brooklyn forged, Bay Area fighter