Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has been travelling around the United States on his Fighting the Oligarchy Tour — a series of town halls aimed at engaging progressive voters nationwide.

On Saturday evening, he brought that message to his alma mater, Brooklyn College, for a joint town hall with New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

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Seated beside the longtime progressive politician, Mamdani drew 1,700 people as the clear frontrunner in the city’s mayoral race — a contest now drawing national attention as progressives view him and candidates like him as a way to energise their movement and also fuelling the ire and concerted attacks from the right, including from President Donald Trump.

“Politics can be powered by ordinary people,” Mamdani told the packed auditorium.

The event, part of Sanders’s tour that has already reached 21 states and more than 300,000 people, underscored the growing national spotlight on New York’s mayoral race and the increasingly hostile rhetoric from the White House towards the progressive assembly member.

On Friday, Trump inaccurately referred to Mamdani — a Democratic socialist — as “a communist”.

Mamdani has long faced criticism from more moderate Democrats and Republicans for his policies, which they have labelled as unrealistic and extreme, particularly his approach to economic issues, contrary to Al Jazeera’s analysis.

But the message that resonated strongly with supporters was about the growing income inequality and the consolidation of wealth in fewer hands.

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Sanders focused on national issues, directing sharp criticism at billionaire owners of major media companies, including David Ellison, who now oversees Paramount, which owns CBS News, and whom Sanders argues are not being critical enough of the White House under their new ownership.

The network, which recently merged with Skydance Media, paid $16m to settle a lawsuit alleging that an interview with then-Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris had been altered. Earlier this week, CBS also announced that it would no longer edit interviews on its Sunday political show Face the Nation following complaints from the Trump administration.

Sanders also took aim at Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla. On Friday, Tesla shareholders approved a $1 trillion compensation package for the world’s richest man.

“We are living in a crazy world,” Sanders said.

“Millions of people are struggling to put food on the table, and they [Tesla shareholders] are making one guy a trillionaire.”

Mamdani focused his attention on big businesses like the delivery service DoorDash, which spent $1m in efforts to defeat Mamdani, calling it out twice in the town hall.

“New York City is not for sale,” Mamdani said.

Even as criticisms of that campaign are not friendly to the larger business community, Mamdani has been taking on those concerns. In July, not long after clinching the Democratic nomination, Mamdani met business leaders from across New York to address their concerns about his policy stances, which The Partnership for New York City — a business advocacy group — said was “productive”.

Even so, the core of the message that Mamdani and Sanders tapped into was a sentiment outside the business community, issues that resonated with working- and middle-class supporters, which have driven Mamdani’s campaign.

Childcare was among the topics brought up by locals at the town hall, which, according to the New York City Council, can cost as much as 25 percent of household income.

One in the audience, a working mother, said she spends $36,000 on childcare a year.

“We have to feel the depth of the statistics we have grown numb to,” Mamdani said in response to a teacher who asked about his plan on childcare.

Mamdani has proposed free childcare for children aged between six weeks and five years.

Trump’s thumb on the scale

But his efforts come amid concerns that the Trump administration may be trying to meddle in the New York mayoral race after allegedly offering support to incumbent Eric Adams, currently in fourth place in the polls, trailing Mamdani, who holds a double-digit lead over Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York state and his nearest competitor, according to all major polls except one from the right-leaning Manhattan Institute. Republican Curtis Sliwa follows behind Adams.

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Adams is reportedly being considered for a role in the Trump administration. The New York Times reported that Trump is considering nominating him to be the ambassador to Saudi Arabia, citing four people familiar with the matter. On Friday, Trump denied the claims that he is considering Adams for the role.

It comes days after Adams denied he was in talks with the Trump administration to be considered for a post in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Adams told reporters on Friday that he would not drop out of the race amid another New York Times report that the controversy embroiling the mayor is also being considered for suspending his re-election bid.

Representatives for Adams’s campaign did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Cuomo also pushed back on the president’s alleged involvement in the race.

“I don’t want him [Trump]  involved in anything to do with my race,” Cuomo told reporters on Friday.

Cuomo, who is in second, still believes that the Mamdani camp is concerned that if Adams or Curtis Sliwa, another Republican, were to drop out of the race, voters would flock to his campaign.

While Mamdani holds a commanding lead in the polls, he has not broken the 50 percent mark on any of them.

Cuomo’s campaign did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Mamdani also pushed back on Trump’s involvement in the race.

“This is a city where we will choose our own mayor,” Mamdani said.

Mamdani also called out Bill Ackman, CEO of the hedge fund Pershing Square, who posted on X that Mayor Adams should step aside from the race. And when Mamdani clinched the Democratic nomination, Ackman promised to fund a more “centrist” candidate.

A national push

New York’s mayoral race has drawn outsized attention as the nation’s largest city and a global hub for finance and media, but it is far from the only place where progressives are gaining ground. Across the US, left-leaning candidates are mounting challenges in cities both large and small, often centred on widening income inequality, housing costs, and worker protections.

Sanders pointed out that Mamdani’s surge and the backlash from the White House are, in his view, because the progressive wave has momentum.

“What they are afraid of is Mamdani becoming an example of what could happen all over the US,” Sanders told the supporters.

In Minneapolis, state Senator Omar Fateh, a progressive Democrat, is running for mayor against incumbent Jacob Frey. His campaign, echoing themes raised by Mamdani in New York, emphasises affordable housing and stronger protections for workers.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Alex Uballaz is running on a “housing for all” platform, pledging tougher rental protections and more transitional housing for residents struggling with addiction.

In Seattle, Washington, Katie Wilson, a progressive organiser, is challenging Mayor Bruce Harrell with a platform focused on the rising cost of housing, homelessness, and support for small businesses.

But the movement faces obstacles, including at the federal level. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson has clashed with Trump, who has called for federal intervention to address violent crime. Trump has described the city as a “killing field” despite crime rates trending downwards. Chicago’s homicide rate in the first half of 2025 was 33 percent less than the same timeframe the year prior.

Back in New York, Mamdani said the city must be prepared if Trump does the same thing in the city.

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“We have to prepare for the inevitability of that deployment. We cannot try to convince ourselves that because something is illegal, Donald Trump will not do it,” Mamdani said.

He emphasised the need for coordination with state officials, citing California as an example: there, the mayor of Los Angeles, the state attorney general, and Governor Gavin Newsom successfully challenged a national guard deployment in court, which was ruled as illegal.

Still, if Trump were to send in the guard under the banner of fighting crime, he would not be the first. Just last year, Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul deployed the national guard to patrol New York’s subway system in the name of public safety, even though crime there had already been steadily declining.

New York police data released last week showed that the city recorded fewer shootings in the first eight months of this year than during any comparable period in its history.