A Mamdani / Marcantonio Comparison? --- Time Will Tell. (Part One)

During the mayoral campaign of New York City in 2025, there were at least three articles published by online newspapers comparing and contrasting. Congressman Vito Marcantonio with Zohran Mamdani. One of them was obnoxiously critical of Marcantonio and appeared to warn Mamdani to avoid Marcantonio’s alleged mistakes. To his credit, Mr. Mandani didn’t take that bait. Instead, candidate Mamdani and his staff. apparently did some additional research on Marcantonio and Fiorello La Guardia and prepared a two-minute video filmed at the Lucky Corner. - East 116th St. and Lexington Avenue - where Mayor La Guardia and Congressman Marcantonio would hold political rallies on the evening before Election Day.

The Election Eve Appeal to La Guardia and Marcantonio

The two-minute video was released by Mr. Mamdani’s campaign on the evening before Election Day, thereby paying homage to the timing. of the La Guardia/ Marcantonio gatherings.

This video may have played an overt or subconscious role in reassuring some people that Mamdani will govern according to an American, and more specifically, New York. City frame of reference grounded in the City’s history. He did not use a Communist or Socialist frame of reference from another nation. He invoked two New York City, Italian American Progressives who were the children of immigrants and are Post-Modern Cultural Left.

Empathy for the Working Class

Whether Mamdani realized it or not, he drew attention to two very principled Progressives and Populists who didn’t just “talk the talk.” They “walked the walk.“ Moreover, LaGuardia and Marcantonio were not children of privilege or nepotism. They both lived lives of “grit and grime” struggles, resourcefulness, and resilience. Metaphorically, they were “nose-to-the-grindstone” and “dirt-in-the-fingernails” type of men. La Guardia Marcantonio were raised in the “upper-working-class.”

La Guardia

La Guardia’s parents were both educated in Italy but lived hard-scrabble lives during La Guardia’s formative years in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and, more significantly, in the Midwest in Arizona. During his childhood there, La Guardia experienced prejudice. However, his time there coincided with the rise of the Populist Midwestern Republicans advocating for American farmers against Wall Street bankers.

After returning to New York City, La Guardia would run for Congress in the very-Italian Greenwich Village as a registered Republican against Tammany Hall – the corrupt political machine of New York City’s Democratic Party. Despite their diminishing influence, La Guardia would align himself with the Midwest Populist Republicans and the Republican Progressive movement associated with Theodore Roosevelt while opposing the Wall Street Republicans.

When he cast his vote supporting a declaration of war to fight with the Allies in the “Great War” (later designated as World War I), a detractor challenged him to enlist. La Guardia resigned from Congress and did just that: he “put his money where his mouth is.” (Ask yourself which politician then and now supporting a war would send themselves or their sons to fight in it.)

Marcantonio

Marcantonio’s father was born in America, and his mother was born in Italy. Both were from Basilicata, which was one of the poorest regions of Italy. In fact, the title of Carlo Levi’s novel, Christ Stopped at Eboli means that Christianity and civilization went no farther south than the town of Eboli, literally and metaphorically leaving the rest of Southern Italy to poverty and neglect. Basilicata is south of Eboli.

Marcantonio’s mother was overwhelmed by American life in New York City as a new bride. Marcantonio’s paternal grandmother would play a vital role raising him and inspiring his decision to become a public servant through her own community engagement. His brother had a mental illness, shielded from the neighborhood. When Marcantonio was a young teenager, his father was struck and killed by a trolley, elevating the importance of Marcantonio’s grandmother, and subsequently his Italian teacher, Dr. Leonard Covello.

The Impact of Leonard Covello

Unlike most people who are lucky to encounter one important mentor in their lives, Marcantonio was fortunate enough to have La Guardia as his political mentor and educator Dr. Leonord Covello as his intellectual mentor. (Marcantonio’s wife and his grandmother would also prove to be important advisors.)

Leonard Covello immigrated poor from Basilicata, the same. impoverished region of Italy from where Marcantonio’s parents came. He was born Leonardo Coviello, but one day his elementary school teacher unilaterally changed his first name to Leonard. His father found that understandable. However, when Leonard Coviello’s report card said “Leonard Covello,” this was an emotional affront to his parents, who believed one doesn’t tamper with someone’s family name.

The social work of Protestant settlement house leaders like Anna Ruddy played a key role in Covello’s survival. and subsequent success along with his decision to dedicate himself to his local community. Covello embraced these opportunities and with determination, received an undergraduate degree from Columbia University and PhD from New York University. He would then become an Italian teacher at the prestigious DeWitt Clinton High School (located where John Jay College is now housed).

Covello successfully advocated to make Italian an official language of study recognized by the New York State Board of Regents. Teenager Vito Marcantonio was in his first Italian class.

When LaGuardia was Chair of the Board of Alderman, having returned from the Great War as a heroic major, Covello invited him to speak at the school assembly. The principal of DeWitt Clinton along with Covello thought it would be appropriate to designate a student to address the assembly with a speech and then have the student introduce LaGuardia. (DeWitt Clinton was an all-boys school at the time.) At the same time, as an homage to LaGuardia’s Italian heritage, they chose Vito Marcantonio as the student speaker.

Marcantonio gave such an impassioned speech about the need for old age pension, La Guardia tore up his own speech and picked up on Marcantonio’s thread. Thus, circa 1919, Covello would be responsible for connecting LaGuardia and Marcantonio and foster a lifelong collaboration between the two future historical figures, along with his own collaboration with “Marc”.

During a time when few Italian Americans attended or completed high school, Covello convinced Marcantonio to continue his education and remain involved in this community. Consequently, after graduating from New York University Law School, rather than seek out an upwardly mobile socio-economic status, Marcantonio immersed himself volunteering in his East Harlem neighborhood, including work at the Haarlem House community center.

As a campaign manager, Marcantonio would be responsible for getting La Guardia elected as the Congressman of East Harlem. He would run La Guardia’s constituency office. And when La Guardia became Mayor, Marcantonio would win his Congressional seat. And they would campaign together at the Lucky Corner – East 116^th Street and Lexington Avenue - the evening before Election Day, as underscored in the video of Mr. Mamdani at the Lucky Corner released the evening before Election Day.

Note: Dr. Covello’s methodologies for teaching and learning might very well represent the model of “best practices” needed for the education system today, including home-schooling. I will have more to say on Covello in Part 2.

Living by Espoused Principles: Practicing What is Preached

LaGuardia and Marcantonio built a track record of serving their community with their physical presence and effective constituency services prior to running for Mayor themselves. (Marcantonio was Congressman LaGuardia’s aide-de-camp, running LaGuardia’s constituency services.) Marcantonio, in particular, lived his whole life in East Harlem within a four-block radius of where he was born, deeply involving himself in his community and learning from its residents and merchants of all backgrounds.

Marcantonio came to understand the individual needs and wants of the residents and business owners of his district, treating them all like neighbors. While having perfect attendance in Washington DC during the week, he met directly with over three hundred households per weekend in his districts office hearing and helping them with their needs.

As playwright, Michael Aquilante put it, “Marcantonio and La Guardia sought to unify Americans under the umbrella of equal rights and opportunities...not divide them into combative camps.” Many of the groups Mamdani mentioned in his victory speech have their similarly maligned equivalents. Some of these antecedent groups were mentioned in Mamdani’s two-minute video. However, a more complete group would include Italians, Puerto Ricans, Caribbeans, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians, Filipinos, Germans, and Irish of Catholic of Jewish persuasion.

La Guardia and Marcantonio did not seem to know Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism, including church clergy as the “opiate of the masses” discouraging revolt against their wealthy oppressors (i.e., the bourgeoisie) and having them look towards a happier afterlife in heaven. (Ironically, Italian Catholic immigrants had a skepticism towards hierarchical structures and their intermediaries, to the dismay of the Irish-dominated Catholic Church in America). However, La Guardia and Marcantonio were keenly aware intellectually and intuitively that race, gender, and other forms of identity politics can become an “opiatic distraction” from the economic concerns that unite people across demographic groups of working families.

They would have tried to defuse the types of religious conflicts we see today where, depending on what part of the United States or globe referenced, one sees religion imposing itself on another. In some instances that religion is the perpetrator of hate and violence or political subjugation, and in other instances it is the target of this behavior. While the plight of Jews and Muslims are emphasized, this targeting includes Christians, whether they be people of color in Nigeria or white moms at school board meetings in America.

Conclusion

Mr. Mamdani’s appeal and advocacy for “affordability,” evocative of former Mayor Giuliani’s emphasis on “quality-of-life” issues, cut across demographic groups to place the focus on standard of living. However, there are factors besides the differences in the socio-economic biographies of Mamdani, on one side of the ledger, and Marcantonio and La Guardia (along with Covello) on the other side of the ledger, that raise questions Mamdani must address for himself and New Yorkers in order for comparisons to these historical phenomena to make sense and in order for the city to thrive.

End of Part One.

Relevant Bio about the Author

Since 1994, Roberto Ragone has academically and artistically promoted the stories of Congressman Vito Marcantonio and his two mentors, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and educator Leonord Covello. He has dramatized the speeches of Vito Marcantonio and portrayed the Congressman in a short film he wrote entitled, The Final Covenant of Vito Marcantonio. In 2023, Ragone performed a legitimate, Equity-sanctioned, Off-Broadway one-man show he wrote entitled, The Purgatory Trial of Vito Marcantonio, now being produced into a film. He is developing a full-length script entitled, Vito’s Last Penance: The Vindication of Vito Marcantonio. Ragone remains Chair of the Vito Marcantonio Forum.

Caveat and Disclaimer

I seek to use an educational and hopefully, at times, creatively entertaining approach to writing political articles, with the intention of motivating American voters, including myself, to register as independents. That way, we’ll all be on the record as “swing voters” whose ballots cannot be taken for granted. We, as “swing voters,” would also be on the record as denouncing any situation where someone falsely claims to be us and recorded as such – as a form of de facto identity theft enabled by the lack of requirement for Voter ID. This concern for vigilance and due diligence applies regardless of whether the “mistake” was willful (e.g., due to Tammany Hall-style “premeditation”), or innocent and unintentional (e.g., from. bureaucratic oversight., laziness, or carelessness).

With my writing, I also hope people move past viewing the world in terms of partisan or ideological dichotomies (although there does seem to be a Manichean-good-versus-evil dynamic playing out in the world on the matter of child trafficking and the surveillance state).

The three articles I allude to in my article are:

PressReader.com - Digital Newspaper & Magazine Subscriptions

When the Capitals of Capitalism Go Socialist

The Most Successful New York Socialist Has a Lesson for Zohran Mamdani - POLITICO

Mamdani Campaign Video on Congressman Vito Marcantonio and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia (Two minutes)