The recent New York City (NYC) Democrat mayoral primary indicated that NYC’s once-mighty labor unions have been relegated to little more than ‘paper tigers.’ Despite endorsing Andrew Cuomo, they failed to mobilize voters—leaving a glaring void that Zohran Mamdani’s grassroots campaign swiftly filled.
“Clearly, the support of some of the largest NYC unions for Cuomo… did not do much for the former governor (nor for the unions themselves),” wrote CUNY Graduate Center labor historian and professor Joshua Freeman. His analysis confirms what insiders already knew: union leadership’s clout no longer translates into votes.
A veteran labor insider admitted bluntly, “The unions were paper tigers… Their get‑out‑the‑vote operations are diminished. They’ve been living off past success.” That failure hit hard when former Gov. David Paterson lamented, “The unions don’t work like they did years ago for a candidate. There was not a lot of street activity.”
Union density also dropped—just 20 percent of NYC wage earners belonged to a union in 2024, down from nearly a quarter a decade ago. With members increasingly living outside the city, the day-of turnout collapsed. As CUNY’s John Mollenkopf noted, the unions “did not seem to mount a particularly strong canvassing and GOTV,” unlike Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) volunteers.
Indeed, in the aftermath of Mamdani’s win, the labor movement’s muscle appeared to erode before voters, and NYC politics faces a new landscape where enthusiasm, not endorsements, wins.
