On a Thursday evening in early February, about forty Democrats gathered on the 10th floor of Brooklyn Law School to meet with candidates for New York’s Public Advocate and Comptroller. The room had a dated floral carpet, harsh artificial lighting, and bright green campaign flyers scattered across tables. Business cards changed hands. The mood was serious.
The candidates took turns answering the moderator’s questions.
Theo Chino, a socialist candidate for Public Advocate, spoke about free healthcare and tuition-free universities “like in France.” He even mentioned Lenin as part of the history of socialism—at the risk of alienating the room. Ismael Malave, Jr, a self-proclaimed “moderate Democrat,” tried to balance progressive ideals with a “more centrist approach.” Jennifer Rajkumar, a liberal candidate, emphasized abortion rights and trans rights. “We lost in November, and we lost big” she said, stressing that the Democratic Party needs a new strategy and new faces.
And there was Marty Dolan —67 years old, impeccable suit, glasses, gray hair. A former Wall Street executive, Dolan had run unsuccessfully against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress, branding himself as an opponent of the party’s socialist wing. Now he was bringing the same energy to the Public Advocate’s race.
“I want people to be able to buy a home between 25 and 30 without worrying,” he said to the general approval of the crowd.
But people grew a little tense when Dolan was asked about immigration and how he would push back against Trump’s restrictive policies. Dolan indicated that he wouldn’t.
“The law must apply everywhere, for everyone,” he said. “New Yorkers won’t understand why we’re giving money to people coming here illegally from Venezuela,” he added. A few people in the audience whispered to one another.
The candidates’ speeches revealed the fractures within the party and the positions of Marty Dolan
I had come to the forum to see what I could learn about the debate over the future of the Democratic Party. Once I saw Dolan speak–immediately alienating much of his audience–I realized he was the one I wanted to write about.
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Marty Dolan grew up in Irvington, New York, a small town in Westchester County, the son of a prominent town doctor. He did well in school and attended Union College, then Harvard Business School. He proceeded to have a long career on Wall Street as a risk analyst. Unlike many of his colleagues, he voted for the Democrats. But around 2017-2018, in the early years of the first Trump administration, he began to feel like the Democrats had lost their way. In his district, which included Westchester and the Bronx, two “radical” members of the Democratic Socialists of America–Jamaal Bowman and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez–rose to prominence and were elected to Congress in 2018. It was a “dramatic shift to the left” within the Democratic Party, Dolan said. And it was, according to him, “a disaster.”
He decided to run against AOC in the 2024 Democratic primary for New York’s 14th congressional district. He lost, securing just 17.7% of the vote, but for Dolan, the campaign was about more than winning—it was about standing up to a movement he saw as reckless. “She’s deeply invested in a philosophical cocoon of radical thinking,” he said of AOC. “She has no life experience to draw upon. She was a bartender. I worked for 40 years in the private sector. I earned much, I listened to fifteen different life experiences that allow me to talk about taxes, about the economy.” In his view, the congresswoman has become “a master of the art of the complaint” rather than a leader who can deliver real solutions. “Most politicians, who come up from the local political scene, never had any training to actually solve problems,” he said.
Dolan is now running for New York City Public Advocate, an office traditionally seen as a watchdog for city government. Dolan believes the city’s leadership is failing to address New York’s economic realities. “Young people can’t afford to live here anymore. Middle-class families are being pushed out. The cost of living is skyrocketing, and all we hear from City Hall is more taxes, more regulations, and more programs we can’t afford,” he said.
Dolan is quite a peculiar figure with all of his contradictions. He can name both Margaret Thatcher, a champion of neoliberalism, and Roosevelt, the architect of the New Deal and social rights, as his political references. He still calls himself a “economic progressive” while refusing high taxes and taking a hardline stance on immigration, echoing Republican rhetoric—even though he himself is the son of an immigrant from Argentina.
He runs as a Democrat, yet draws applause from conservative television host Greg Kelly — a friend and supporter of Donald Trump. “Marty, we like you a lot,” Kelly said admiringly during an October 2024 episode of his political podcast featuring Dolan as a guest.
Is this the future of the Democratic Party, or some weird ghost from its past? Theo Chino, the socialist candidate for Public Advocate, thinks Marty does not have a future with the Democrats. “Marty’s a nice guy, but he picked the wrong party. He shouldn’t be with the Democrats but with the Republicans.” Chino added that the former Wall Street executive isn’t the right messenger. “His pro-business rhetoric is more reminiscent of French President Emmanuel Macron, who is not liked by the left,” Chino said.
Even within his own campaign team, questions arise: could his lack of ties to New York’s Democratic establishment be a liability? “His weakness is his name recognition,” said Robert, a campaign staffer, who didn’t want his last name used. “I don’t think he’s well known in all the right circles.”
At least for now, Dolan disagrees.
Within Marty Dolan’s campaign team, many are Democratic activists, still shaken by Kamala Harris’s loss and deeply disappointed in their party.
“When I was campaigning, I could feel it when I talked to people—Trump was going to win,” recalled Wilbert Rodriguez, a retiree and campaign volunteer. “People are angry. They don’t believe the Democrats can meet their expectations.”
His impression reflects a broader trend. According to recent polling data and surveys, 57% of voters now hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, and more Americans identify as Republican than Democrat. Support for the GOP has grown among Hispanic voters (+9 points since 2021), low-income households (+5), non-college graduates (+5), and Black Americans (+5). Even in New York, a traditionally Democratic stronghold, Trump received 30% of the vote in the last election—up seven points from 2020. He made significant gains in working-class neighborhoods of the Bronx and Queens, home to large Black and Latino populations.
To win these voters back, Rodriguez said the party must take stronger positions on illegal immigration and tone down its focus on trans issues. “I don’t want people telling our kids they can change their sex when they might just change their mind later,” he said. For Rodriguez, rebuilding the party means following the example of figures like Marty Dolan. “Marty is great, realistic, focused on the problem of the communities.”
Rejecting identity politics, Rodriguez criticized AOC, whom he called a “socialist.”
“She did nothing for the Bronx. I vote for what people do—not for their skin color.”
This rejection of identity-driven discourse led many former Democrats to cast their vote for Trump in 2024, sparking deep political reflection among progressives.
Jamie Walker, a Harlem resident and military veteran, explained his shift. “When Democrats campaign, you can see their strategy—if you’re a minority, if you’re Black like me, you’re expected to vote for them. But what do we get in return? Is the economy getting better? Are they solving illegal immigration? They’re so focused on identity politics they’ve forgotten about working people—those raising kids, those who can’t afford a babysitter.” For Walker, Trump offered a different vision. “With him, it’s ‘forget subgroups and minorities—we’re one country, and we need to fix it.’ We send money abroad and forget Americans who can’t pay their bills. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to stay in Harlem with how prices are rising.”
Rodriguez and Walker are hardly the only ones disillusioned with the Democratic Party. Even among those who remain loyal to the Democrats and denounce Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, discomfort is evident.
Take Mark Lilla: an intellectual with round glasses, a Francophile, a center-left universalist, and a humanities professor at Columbia. As early as 2016, in his book, “The Once and Future Liberal,” he explained that a faction of the left had reduced politics to identity-based advocacy. His criticism extended to the neoliberal policies of Reagan and Clinton’s economic deregulation, which he saw as major contributors to the fragmentation of American society.
Lilla believes his assessment from nine years ago still applies today. “Even more, I would repeat that failing to win elections prevents us from helping all the groups that identitarians care about,” he said.“I support radical change: we need to stop talking about identity.”
He finds recent statements from Democratic figures like Senator Amy Klobuchar—who has urged the party to refocus on economic and material issues—encouraging, though still insufficient. Lilla remains pessimistic about a party still associated with the cultural elites of academia and Hollywood.
“The knee jerk invocation of identity, along with their position on immigrants, drowns their practical position out,” he said. “We should adopt a more radical anti-illegal immigration stand. If we could just get these things off the table, we would be in a very strong position.”
Not everyone agrees with Lilla’s harsh verdict on identity politics. Scholar Olivier Richomme offers another analysis. In his view, questions of race and economic inequality are deeply connected — and trying to separate them would be a mistake. For Richomme, Democrats need to lean into an intersectional approach, one that speaks to both racial justice and economic fairness. It's not just a moral argument, but a political one: as America’s demographics shift, building coalitions across racial and economic lines will be crucial to winning future elections, he said. The party has already been moving left since the 1990s, pulled by both pragmatic and progressive forces. Hillary Clinton’s strong support among Black voters in the primaries — winning 76% of the African American vote in 2016 — showed just how central these issues have become.
Marty Dolan shares Lilla’s point of view. His ideas stand in stark contrast to those of his main opponent, incumbent Jumaane Williams — a progressive on the party’s left wing who calls himself a democratic socialist and backs AOC. Dolan’s campaign is indeed built on a promise: abandoning identity politics to promote a return to the economic progressivism of Franklin D. Roosevelt. But to understand Dolan’s stance, we need to go back in the history of the Democratic Party. That’s exactly what political scientists John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira do in their book “Where have all the Democrats gone?” published a year before the 2024 presidential election.
The authors trace the decline of the Democratic Party’s connection to its traditional base: working- and middle-class Americans.
From its origins, the Democratic Party built its appeal on representing “the common man and woman against the rich and powerful,” as Judis and Teixeira describe it. Andrew Jackson’s “Jacksonian democracy” sought to mobilize new immigrants and laborers, a legacy that evolved into the economic populism of FDR’s New Deal. Roosevelt’s policies were not framed as handouts but as tools for empowerment, ensuring that “the forgotten man, the little man, the man nobody knew much about, was going to be dealt better cards to play with,” as Frances Perkins, Roosevelt’s labor secretary, put it. The Democratic Party, under Roosevelt, was progressive on economics while maintaining a sense of cultural moderation and patriotism. It was a party that appealed to workers across racial and ethnic lines, offering tangible economic policies.
By the late 20th century, the Democratic Party’s priorities shifted. The economic crises of the 1970s, coupled with rising inflation and global competition, weakened the New Deal consensus. Ronald Reagan’s presidency reinforced the idea that government intervention was a problem rather than a solution. In response, Democrats—particularly under Bill Clinton—embraced a centrist economic vision with a plan to “end the welfare as we know it,” as he said. For the authors, this was the “break-up of the New Deal coalition.” Clinton’s administration championed free trade agreements like NAFTA and normalized China’s entry into the global market, which, as economists David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson have shown, led to the loss of 2.4 million American manufacturing jobs between 1999 and 2011. Clinton also embraced financial deregulation, further distancing the party from its working-class base. This shift had consequences. Between 1992 and 1994, support for Democrats among white, non-college-educated men dropped 15 points, from 57% to 37%.
As John Judis and Ruy Teixeira argue, “Clinton’s neoliberal policies on trade and finance set a trap for the nation and the Democrats that Barack Obama would be unable to elude.” Obama’s election in 2008 was, for many, a moment of hope. He spoke to both working-class voters and college-educated liberals, presenting a vision of unity, “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America—there is the United States of America,” Obama said. He avoided identity-based politics and instead framed his campaign around broad economic issues and a promise of renewal.
But in power, Obama struggled to reconnect with the working-class voters who had once formed the backbone of the Democratic coalition. His stimulus package was met with skepticism from many middle- and working-class Americans who viewed government intervention with suspicion. “They saw the rising unemployment and foreclosures as proof that the stimulus money had been wasted, as Judis and Teixeira note. By the 2010 midterms, Obama had lost seven points among working-class voters overall, and 23 points among white working-class voters.
Democratic strategists, meanwhile, remained convinced that demographic changes would secure their dominance, as minorities, young people, and college graduates became a larger share of the electorate.
In 2016, Democratic consultants largely dismissed the concerns of working-class whites. Hillary Clinton ultimately lost this group “by a greater margin than any Democrat since 1984.” Meanwhile, Donald Trump—who mixed economic nationalism with cultural conservatism—flipped Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, states that had been Democratic strongholds since 1992.
Judis and Teixeira argue that Democrats must reclaim the economic liberalism of Roosevelt and abandon the corporate-friendly policies of the Clinton-Obama eras. They explain Kamala Harris’s defeat, as her failure to shake the perception of the Democratic Party as elitist and disconnected from working-class voters. Judis advocates for a party that is more progressive on economic issues while taking a centrist stance on cultural debates.
That’s why Dolan advocates a return to the core principles of Roosevelt’s New Deal, which he sees as compatible with the American narrative of the self-made man. “He transformed American society by establishing Social Security, unemployment insurance, and banking regulations, while also developing infrastructure and creating jobs. His approach aimed to provide opportunity rather than encourage dependence,” said Dolan. Ultimately, he wants the Democratic Party to become “the party of the people” once again.
But first, he needed more than 3,700 signatures to qualify for the ballot deadline on April 3. Dolan is hoping to make a name for himself among New Yorkers, attending local meetings to pitch his political platform. On his calendar Tuesday, March 11, was blocked off — he planed to spend the evening at a community meeting in the heart of the Bronx.
The Pelham Parkway Neighborhood Association had invited residents to gather at the Bronx House community center. Every second Tuesday of the month, they met in a room filled with cardboard boxes and black plastic chairs to discuss local politics. Marty Dolan had been expected that evening, but he didn’t show up. He sent me a text that said he was “curled up in a ball” from food poisoning.
Other candidates had made the trip.
Officials in charge of the upcoming local elections handed out flyers encouraging people to vote in the New York City municipal races. They had made a point of coming to present the stakes of the various elections — mayor, public comptroller, public advocate — often opaque to the public.
One of them spoke up. “These elections are crucial. I know it’s confusing for a lot of people, but you need to educate yourself to have a voice, look at the different elections, the ballots process.”
“You should meet people and explain the process to them, do some education,” a veteran in the audience to the official.
“That’s not our job,” she replied. “We have a lot to do. As poll workers, our job is to make sure everything runs smoothly, technically.”
A man sided with the veteran. “But we don’t really understand the different positions!”
Had he been there, maybe Marty Dolan could have explained the role of public advocate, laid out his proposals, and taken the pulse of the room.
That evening, no one brought up Roosevelt’s New Deal or analyzed the state of the Democratic Party. Instead, concerns were concrete: the library that had been closed for a year for renovations, the garbage problem, the abandoned car parked in front of a synagogue where people were drinking and using drugs.
“We’re on it,” a neighborhood police officer said.
When the meeting ended, some people stayed a little longer to share a soda and talk. I asked the organizers if they knew Marty Dolan.
“No,” they all replied.
*
The 161st Street Yankee Stadium subway exit was packed on March 27, Opening Day. Engines roared, horns blared, and the metallic hum of the train filled the air. A crisp wind cut through the crowd, but the sun was shining. Music blasted from a nearby concert, people danced, and a table stood with campaign flyers for the upcoming New York City mayoral race. One flyer featured a picture of Mayor Eric Adams with the words: “Have you seen our mayor?”
A sea of fans in Yankees blue and white flooded toward the stadium gates for the opening season of the club. The atmosphere was chaotic—street vendors sold hot dogs and energy drinks, a man held a sign that read “Join the King of Kings and Jesus,” and activists handed out flyers advocating for the full legalization of marijuana. “You seem stressed. Do you want some weed?” a woman asked me.
For political candidates, Yankee Stadium is an opportunity to meet potential voters. With the petitioning deadline approaching, mayoral hopefuls and public advocate candidates paced the area, colored leaflets in hand, searching for signatures to secure their spot on the ballot.
“Are you a registered voter in New York?” Marty Dolan repeated over and over. Most people ignored him.
He wasn’t alone in his efforts. George Marsh, the only Republican present, was there without his campaign team. He called out desperately, “Hey guys! Are you able to vote in New York?” A young man shook his head but said that he does not vote. “Oh, man! Why?” No answer. Marsh laughed. “Doesn’t matter anyway—everyone here’s a Democrat. Yankees fans are Democrats!”
Despite their efforts, politicians failed to hijack the day’s energy. Fans were focused on baseball, spring weather, and cold beer. Take Whitney Tilson, a Democrat running for mayor—wearing a bright blue beanie, he weaved through the crowd, green petition sheets in hand. Most people declined.
“I’m running as an outsider,” he said. “I want to work with Democrats, Independents, even Republicans. I want to focus on building houses, public safety, and economic growth.” Then he cut the conversation short. “Excuse me, I have a campaign to run and signatures to collect.” After being ignored, he turned and walked away.
Two days after Yankee Stadium, Marty Dolan called a meeting with his campaign team at a restaurant in Harlem. He booked a private area, ordered rice, chicken, grilled vegetables, and a few bottles of wine. Seated on a black leather bench, glasses perched on his head, the collar of his white shirt sticking out of his jacket, he set the tone of his campaign.
“I don’t care about Israel. I don’t care about Trump, ICE, or racial equality. I’m running for the city. I’m running to fix the schools and the subways that are dirty,” he said.
Julien, wearing an orange tie, and Francesca, a beret on her head, nodded as they finished their chicken wings. “When we’re petitioning, I see and feel the deep distrust among Democrats,” said Julien, a consultant and member of the Democratic party.
Another member of the campaign added, “The party hasn’t reformed itself—that’s why we ended up with that idiot Trump in the White House! People are fed up. Marty, you need to set yourself apart from the Democratic Party.”
Marty agreed. That’s why he was running as a “New Deal Democrat,” someone who could bring the party back to economic policies that uplift working people, he said. But the phrase sparked debate among his team.
“When you say ‘New Deal,’ people think of the Green New Deal,” Francesca argued. “It turns them off. It only resonates with old people or dead ones!”
As dinner wrapped up, Wilbert Rodriguez approached Marty and shook his hand. “Thank you for what you’re doing,” he said.
The group finished their wine, grabbed their coats, and headed out. “Marty! Let’s win!” Rodriguez called out.
Marty grinned. “I can’t wait to be public advocate.”
*
He’s on the ballot!
Dolan is proud of himself. On April 5, he posted a video on Instagram — hair blowing in the wind, the ocean behind him. He got almost grandiloquent. “We’re gonna turn the Public Advocate office into something that no one has ever seen before,” he said.
The rest of the campaign still has to be planned, all the way through to June — the date of the Democratic primary.
Watching the Democratic primary up close was a real lesson in how different American politics can be from those of my home country, France. On one hand, it’s incredibly bureaucratic — candidates like Theo Chino struggled just to get enough signatures to make the ballot. But at the same time, it felt chaotic, even surreal, to see people as different as Marty Dolan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez belong to the same party. For a French observer, it was like imagining Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise, a left-leaning party, and Emmanuel Macron, a business-friendly liberal, campaigning under the same banner.
For outsiders like Marty Dolan, these dynamics make campaigning even harder. Not being well known within the Democratic establishment in New York, Dolan struggled to get attention compared to someone like Jumaane Williams, the incumbent and a familiar figure for many voters. It raised a real question: Can a party as broad and ideologically stretched as the Democrats stay united? By the end of the balloting season, even Dolan didn’t seem so sure.
*
On April 15, Marty Dolan had been invited to a gathering with other Democratic outsiders who had qualified for the ballot in various New York races. Activists and candidates met in the lobby of a slightly run-down hotel on the Upper West Side to mark this first step in the campaign. There were beers, prosecco, and red wine, amid plastic chairs, stained carpet, and tables that looked like they came from a local community hall. Around fifteen people chatted while a cracked door let in a bit of spring air. A cake, covered in white and blue frosting, had been brought to celebrate the 41st birthday of James S. Li, a devoted supporter of Dolan, who didn’t want to see “NYC turn into Venezuela.”
Then, the speeches began.
Martha Flores Vazquez, Democratic District Leader for the 40th State Assembly, who had helped many of the people in the room get on their ballots and who had organized this gathering, addressed the group. “It’s going to be a long campaign, covering all of New York’s boroughs,” she said. “But we all got on the ballot, it was done grassroots. Thank you!” Vasquez added that she believed the Democratic Party needed new faces and new ideas. She was hoping that some of these candidates could provide that.
While the other candidates were physically present to speak with supporters, Dolan joined from his kitchen. He logged onto Zoom at 6:23 p.m., not without a few technical glitches. The image shook slightly, but he appeared on screen—seated, wearing a striped shirt, glasses on his balding head.
“Hey guys!” he said.
Applause followed.
And then Dolan announced something a little out of the ordinary. He said that if he lost the Democratic primary, he would run as an independent candidate under the banner of the Unity Party—a centrist group described as “neither left nor right.” This determination to win at all costs, even if it meant switching parties, echoed Michael Bloomberg’s trajectory: in 2001, after being a longtime Democrat, Bloomberg ran for mayor of New York as a Republican to avoid a tough Democratic primary. “I’m a good manager, so I should be running the city,” Bloomberg once said.
It’s far from certain that Dolan will share the same political future. For now, he seems to have proved that if there is space for people like him in the Democratic Party, it is shrinking. If, as is likely, he loses the primary, he’ll be running in November outside the Party–for the first time, and possibly for good.