On a bright Sunday afternoon at the end of March, at least 2,000 people packed the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in the Bronx to hear Bernie Sanders urge Kathy Hochul to raise taxes on the richest New Yorkers. “I would ask Governor Hochul, ‘Listen to where the people are at,’” the Vermont senator said. “The people of the city, the people of this state, the people of this country, they do not want to see our kids go hungry. They do not want people to sleep out on the street or lack health care. They want the very rich to start paying their fair share of taxes.”

Progressive and democratic-socialist politicians joined Sanders onstage. They were hoping to pressure the centrist Democratic governor, who has repeatedly said she won’t raise taxes on millionaires to close any budget deficits and is just as wary about adding any new tax burdens to corporations. The rally was an impassioned appeal effectively aimed at one person. “She is a public servant, and she owes us the decency of listening to us,” Grace Mausser, the co-chair of New York City’s DSA chapter, told the crowd.

Notably missing from the festivities was DSA’s biggest star, and maybe the biggest political star anywhere: Mayor Zohran Mamdani. It was the second “tax the rich” rally the mayor had skipped, after missing one in Albany in February. Mamdani very much supports taxing the rich — he campaigned on a 2 percent increase in income taxes on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million and wanted to nudge up the corporate rate as well. But he has taken a quieter approach to making it happen, one that will either pay dividends in a few weeks or prove to be the first major disappointment his base will have to swallow.

Rather than pressure Hochul in public, joining rallies and wielding his massive........

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