“The sun may have set over our city this evening,” Zohran Mamdani said from a stage at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater late Tuesday night. “But as Eugene Debs once said, ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.’”

This was the first sentence of the new mayor-elect’s victory speech, which gave pride of place to a candidate who ran — and lost five times — for president between 1900 and 1920 under the banner of the Socialist Party of America. And each one of those times, the Forverts backed him.

Debs was core to the early history of this paper, which was a staunchly socialist rag with strong union ties; Debs helped to found the American Railway Union and was a major socialist leader, elevating the ideology’s profile, for a time, to the relative mainstream in the U.S. Founding editor Ab Cahan, himself an avowed socialist, used the Forverts to elevate the leftist ideology amongst American Jews, urging readers to vote the socialist line every single time Debs ran. The now-defunct Yiddish radio station run by the Forverts, WEVD, took its call letters from the candidate’s name.

Debs was arrested after leading a railroad strike in 1895; though he had not gone to jail as a socialist believer, he came out devoted to the political ideology. And, soon thereafter, he founded the Social Democratic Party, which split from the preexisting Socialist Labor Party; democratic socialism, the philosophy with which Mamdani identifies, grew out of Debs’ party.

The Forward’s founding editor, Ab Cahan, immigrated to the U.S. in 1882 from Russia. And though he had fled a communist country, he still had harsh critiques of American capitalism; barely a month after arriving, he attended a socialist meeting, and spoke at another only a month after that. Though meetings were often in Russian, Cahan advocated for using Yiddish within the socialist movement so that Jews of all education levels could participate. After Debs founded his new party, Cahan signed on and began to advocate for democratic socialism among American Jews.

In 1897, he founded the Forverts and shepherded a small, upstart paper into a titan that, for decades, was not only the largest Yiddish-language newspaper in the country, but also the socialist paper with the widest reach. Debs was core to that vision — and the Forverts was core to Debs’ success, and that of other Socialist Party candidates, using not only its pages but also its funds to support labor leaders and candidates. Meyer London, a socialist labor lawyer, won a seat in Congress in 1914; he appeared on a balcony of the newspaper’s building to thank his supporters.

And though Debs lost regularly, The Forverts celebrated his results — at their highest, about 6% of the popular vote — as a sign of socialism’s growing profile in the U.S..

“The 3 million citizens who have given their votes for the socialist candidate who sits behind iron bars because he fought courageously for his ideas and for the right of his ideas to be freely expressed — that powerful voice will echo in the ears of the capitalist reaction that so arrogantly raged across the country over these last years,” read one column.

Thanks in large part to Cahan’s support, Debs, though not Jewish, has remained beloved to Jewish liberals. Bernie Sanders even made a movie about the socialist leader in 1979. Now Sanders himself is the most famous democratic socialist in America, the heir to both Cahan and Debs. And their party seems to be making a comeback; Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was buoyed to her seat by the Democratic Socialists of America. And Mamdani, quoting Debs with Sanders by his side, is hoping to share that mantle.

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Zohran Mamdani clinched the New York City mayoral race in a decisive victory last night, but Jewish voters favored former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by a nearly two-to-one margin.

A CNN exit poll showed 63% of Jews voted for Cuomo, 33% for Mamdani, and 3% for Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.

Those numbers suggest Cuomo performed better among Jewish voters than New York City voters as a whole, 41% of whom voted for Cuomo and 50% for Mamdani. Jewish voters make up an estimated 10% of the city’s electorate.

Mamdani won decisively in Brooklyn and in younger precincts across western Queens and parts of Manhattan. Cuomo carried Orthodox and senior-populated neighborhoods in Borough Park and Riverdale.

The Orthodox-populated Borough Park saw record turnout, as did New York City overall, with more than 2 million voters casting ballots.

An outspoken critic of Israel, Mamdani’s stance on the conflict in Gaza resonated with a majority of voters, according to public opinion polls taken after his primary win. Nearly half of Mamdani voters, 49%, on Tuesday said his position was a factor in their support, according to a CNN exit poll. For Cuomo supporters, only 44% said his position on Israel was a factor in their vote.

Cuomo had banked on strong turnout from Jewish voters to boost his momentum in the general election, a bet that ultimately didn’t secure the win. In July, Cuomo said a key factor in his primary loss was Mamdani’s support from young, Jewish and pro-Palestinian voters. “I would wager that in the primary, more than 50% of the Jewish people voted for Mamdani,” Cuomo said at the time.

Mamdani’s positions on Israel have roiled Jews across the country, and he’s often had to defend himself against allegations of antisemitism for: refusing to outright condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada;” reiterating support for Palestinians in his statement on the Gaza ceasefire; vowing to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York; and saying he doesn’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Yet Mamdani simultaneously built a coalition of Jews who support him. That included a surprise last-minute endorsement from a faction of the Satmar Hasidic community, though Cuomo had the backing of most Orthodox groups that helped swing the 2021 mayoral race for Eric Adams.

Jacob Kornbluh contributed reporting and writing.

The post The Jewish vote for NYC mayor went to Cuomo, but the Israel vote went to Mamdani, exit polls show appeared first on The Forward.

The personal belongings of festival-goers are seen at the site of an attack on the Nova Festival by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Oct. 12, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Many of today’s non-profit humanitarian organizations — well-funded, well-staffed, and highly visible — aren’t built for crisis. Their models are too slow. Their structures are too rigid. Their priorities are often disconnected from the realities on the ground. Most critically, too many are consumed by internal processes and fundraising goals that make real-time agility almost impossible.

This isn’t a condemnation of every non-profit — many do vital work. But there’s a growing gap between donor intentions and impact. People give from their hearts, yet their money often fails to reach the people or places they hoped to help — or doesn’t arrive in time to make a difference.

That gap became painfully clear after October 7, when Israel faced a national trauma that shook the Jewish world. Innocent civilians were attacked, families torn apart, and a nation’s very existence threatened. In those first few hours and days, the need for immediate aid — medical gear, protective equipment, trauma support — was overwhelming. And yet, the legacy systems of philanthropy couldn’t keep pace with the urgency of the moment.

The Jewish world, and Israel specifically, cannot afford to depend solely on these legacy systems. Too many aid dollars disappear into operations distant from the field and too removed from the moment. At a time when donor fatigue is real and scrutiny of nonprofits is higher than ever, transparency and efficiency aren’t just ideals — they’re survival tools.

This is not a call to tear down the existing ecosystem of aid organizations. It’s a call to evolve it. Large institutional NGOs play an important role, especially in the long-term recovery and rebuilding processes. But they cannot be the only model. The future of humanitarian response must include leaner, more nimble, and more accountable organizations that treat urgency as a core operating principle, not a marketing term.

Two years ago, when we launched Israel Friends, it wasn’t the result of a lengthy strategic planning process or a carefully crafted brand vision. It was a reaction and a necessity. A response to an absolute crisis. Our guiding question was simple: What can we do that will matter right now?

We come from the world of supply chains and logistics, not traditional philanthropy. Before starting an NGO, we used those skills in the private sector, and later, during moments of crisis, to get personal protective equipment to hospitals during COVID-19 and deliver trauma kits to frontline medics during the invasion of Ukraine. Those experiences shaped our approach: keep overhead low, move fast, cut red tape, and deliver aid directly where it’s needed most, as quickly as possible.

After October 7, that meant getting gear, medical supplies, and protective equipment to soldiers on the front lines — not months later, not after a funding cycle or committee review — immediately. We even invested our own money into purchasing aid at the start, and didn’t expect or want anything in return. Today, those needs have shifted. Mental health has become one of the most urgent and overlooked aspects of recovery, and we’ve shifted with it. Flexibility and responsiveness aren’t just features of our model; they are the model.

Operating this way isn’t easy – it runs counter to the grain of much of the nonprofit world, where large infrastructure and high administrative costs are often seen as signs of sophistication rather than inefficiency. But when lives are on the line, we believe the opposite is true: the ability to act quickly, with minimal overhead and maximum impact, is the defining measure of success.

We didn’t plan to build a new non-profit. We built it because, at that moment, it felt like we had no other choice. But now, two years in, we see this is bigger than one crisis. It’s about changing how we think about aid altogether. The future of philanthropy depends on the willingness to act first and fundraise later — to measure success not by size, but by speed and impact.

The next time tragedy strikes — whether in Israel or somewhere else — we hope there are more organizations ready to act without delay, to deliver without waste, and to serve without ego. Because that’s what the moment demands. If October 7 taught us anything, it’s that bureaucracy saves no lives. Agility, compassion, and courage do.

Teddy Raskin and Jordan Fried are co-founders of Israel Friends, a grassroots organization founded in the aftermath of October 7th, which has raised tens of millions in direct aid with minimal overhead since its launch.