(2025-07-29) Lina Khan A Secret To Zohran Mamdanis Success

Lina Khan: A Secret to Zohran Mamdani’s Success. One of the most underappreciated aspects of Zohran Mamdani’s successful primary campaign for New York City mayor was its connection to small business. He stopped by halal carts and bodegas and asked what challenges they faced. It is the kind of outreach that teaches policymakers about real problems in our economy and can help build trust and lasting relationships.

Fighting for an economy where small businesses can thrive was once core to the Democratic Party.

During the New Deal, small businesses were a key part of Democrats’ coalition, with President Franklin Roosevelt championing “economic freedom for the wage earner and the farmer and the small-business man.” (He also (a) reduced competition (multiple companies) because he thought it was wasteful, and (b) left sharecroppers out of the "farmer" rescue.)

Since President Bill Clinton, however, the mainstream of the Democratic Party has too often treated small business as little more than a talking point. Mr. Clinton may have heaped praise on “the entrepreneurial spirit” of small-business leaders, but his embrace of President Ronald Reagan’s “big is better” antitrust policy fueled industry consolidation and allowed monopolists to squeeze out smaller rivals. Clinton-era deregulation also spurred a soaring number of bank mergers, reducing the number of places where an entrepreneur could get a loan.

From 1980 to 2020, as the share of the economy accounted for by small businesses fell, big business interests began spending heavily in elections, bending the ears of many Democrats and sometimes skewing how they saw the economy

During the first three years of the Biden administration, the United States saw more new business applications than in any other period in American history, but it wasn’t enough to fully integrate small businesses into the mainstream of the Democratic coalition.

This is a mistake — and it’s time to fix it.

Small businesses are critical for our economy. They drive more than half of American job creation, power breakthrough innovations, create strong local economies and make our markets more resilient. They are also good for our democracy, giving communities more local control and creating checks against concentrated power.

As chair of the Federal Trade Commission, I often heard small businesses talk about how dominant middlemen squeeze them out, how exclusionary contract terms keep them from reaching customers and how noncompete clauses block them from hiring the talent they need to grow. Many said that powerful trade associations didn’t represent their interests and that they had given up on Washington a long time ago.

Pharmacists came to the F.T.C. desperate for help. They described how pharmacy benefit managers — powerful middlemen owned by health care giants like CVS and United Health Group (United Healthcare) — can effectively dictate which drugs they can offer and how much they’ll be reimbursed.

opposing monopolies isn’t a niche policy for a single federal agency. Democrats at every level of government can do the same, using the levers at their disposal to push for a more fair and competitive economy.

Democrats with a range of ideological commitments have found success by making the needs of small businesses an important part of their policies and politics. Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat who serves a district in rural Washington State also won by President Trump, has focused on how farmers are worse off because of market consolidation and championed “right to repair” policies that would make it easier for small businesses to fix their equipment.

She and Mr. Mamdani have different politics, but they both demonstrate a deep understanding of the economic challenges their constituents face and an unusual fluency in the specifics of what these struggles look like day-to-day

Democrats can win back the trust of small businesses, but it will require more than better messaging or showing up for a photo op. We need more officials in the party to make it crystal clear that fighting for a level playing field is a core value of the Democratic Party — even when it means standing up to big business and corporate abuse.