Hunter Biden said Democrats should take a hard look at their political strategy after a group of progressive and socialist candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won Democratic primaries in New York this week.
In Biden’s view, the results showed that voters are responding less to cautious, establishment-style campaigns and more to candidates who take clear positions on the issues shaping people’s daily lives.
“The middle is not a strategy,” Biden wrote in a post on X, where he shared his takeaways from Tuesday’s primary results. “Voters reached past the establishment to grab someone who actually believes something.”
Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, argued that the winning candidates connected with voters because they spoke plainly about issues such as affordability, housing insecurity and the war in Gaza. He said the cost of living should be treated as the central issue for Democrats.
“Conviction beats caution,” Biden wrote. “The candidates who said hard things about rent, about who pays for what, about Gaza, they won. The triangulators lost.”
He also praised Mamdani’s approach to politics, saying the New York mayor did not wait for approval from party leaders before trying to shape the direction of the party.
“If you want to lead a party you have to be willing to fight inside it,” Biden wrote. “Mamdani didn’t ask permission. He took the field.”
His comments came after a strong showing for Mamdani-backed candidates in several New York congressional primaries. The results were seen as a sign of Mamdani’s growing influence inside the Democratic Party, especially in New York, where his chosen candidates defeated opponents supported by Gov. Kathy Hochul and senior House Democrats.
All three of Mamdani’s endorsed candidates in the House primary contests won.
Former New York City mayoral candidate Brad Lander defeated Rep. Dan Goldman in the 10th Congressional District. In the 13th District, political newcomer Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a five-term incumbent. Democratic socialist Claire Valdez also won the primary in the 7th District, where Rep. Nydia Velázquez is retiring.
The victories immediately raised questions about whether the party’s left wing is gaining strength at the expense of incumbents and more traditional Democratic candidates.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries downplayed concerns that the results could hurt Democrats in the midterm elections. Jeffries, who also represents New York, said he has a “very good” relationship with Mamdani, even though the two do not see eye to eye on every endorsement.
“The mayor and I agree to strongly disagree about some of his endorsements,” Jeffries said when asked about Mamdani’s decision to back challengers against sitting members of Congress.
Still, Jeffries suggested Mamdani will need to navigate those relationships carefully after helping defeat Democratic incumbents.
“He’s got work to do in terms of the conversations that he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward,” Jeffries said.
For Hunter Biden, though, the larger lesson from the night was clear. He argued that Democrats should stop trying to win by blurring their positions and instead make a sharper case around the issues voters feel most directly — especially rent, wages, affordability and foreign policy.
The message, as Biden framed it, was not simply that progressives won a few races in New York. It was that voters rewarded candidates who sounded certain about what they believed and punished those who sounded too careful.
