Can a 33-year-old cricket-playing socialist, who wants to freeze rent, make city transport free and once aspired to be a rapper win an already turbulent election to become the next mayor of New York?
Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assembly member in Queens, has been the surprise package in the Democratic primary and is now poised to take on the frontrunner in the race, ex-state governor Andrew Cuomo, who is mounting a political comeback after being forced from office in the face of a series of sexual harassment claims.
A recent poll of Democratic voters placed Cuomo at 64%, supported mainly by older New Yorkers, and Mamdani at 36%. But with scandal-plagued incumbent Eric Adams sitting out the primary– he may run as an independent – the Ugandan-born Mamdani is in with a chance under a new ranked-choice voting system.
“Zohran is breaking away as a clear second place and the alternative to the disgraced ex-governor Andrew Cuomo whose campaign is a house of cards,” Mamdani spokesperson Andrew Epstein told the Gothamist news site last week.
He added that the campaign has been successful so far by “being everywhere all of the time,” with more than 10,000 volunteers knocking on more than 100,000 doors, and by pushing out a platform of affordability, of rent freezes, free metro transport and city-run grocery stores – as well as the creation of a department of community safety to invest in citywide mental health programs and crisis response.
Mamdani’s emergence as a viable candidate comes as another New York Democrat Socialist, congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, currently on a packed-out “Fighting Oligarchy” tour of the US, is being touted as the new face of the national party.
Mamdani “represents the city of the future – a more Asian city, a more Muslim city, and what could be a more leftwing city,” says Democrat campaign veteran Hank Sheinkopf.
With New York City containing about 800,000 Muslims, with 350,000 believed to be registered to vote, this could be the year that they show their power. “Every group shows its power in New York at some point because urban power in the US is all about competition for resources,” Sheinkopf adds.
Mamdani is the son of Mira Nair, the Academy Award nominated film director of Salaam Bombay!; his father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a professor at Columbia who studies colonialism. Around the family dinner table they would discuss Darfur and other political topics. Before running for office, Mamdani worked as a counsellor, a rapper under the name “Mr. Cardamom” and as a cricketer.
As a lawmaker, he’s introduced a bill to eliminate tax exemptions for the city’s biggest universities, Columbia and NYU, arguing that the tax funds should go to underfunded public universities; and has said there is a “ceiling” on the power of representation in identity politics because “people cannot feed themselves and their family on someone looking like them”.
When the Observer caught up with him at an anti-Tesla protest, he said “it was important that when we turn the page on Elon Musk, we also turn the page on all those who empowered and emboldened the accumulation of this kind of wealth through public policy and public subsidy”.
Mamdani said New Yorkers “have a role to play in fighting back against the wealthiest man in the world, who has purchased the president of the United States. It’s critically important that we do so, and we show ourselves standing alongside New Yorkers from all walks of life who are saying that this cannot happen on our watch and our dime.”
But key to Mamdani’s candidacy may be that he’s a good communicator, appearing in comedy clubs, grocery stores, diving into the freezing Atlantic on New Year’s Day to illustrate his rent freeze proposal and talking to New Yorkers about why they voted for Trump; and going virtually anywhere to meet young voters that, as Gothamist noted, “need a jolt to stop doomscrolling”.
In short, he’s on a mission, alongside Ocasio-Cortez, to revive the Democrats as the Trump presidency marks 100 days in office next week.
But New York is also home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel, and Mamdani has faced criticism for accusing Israel of committing American-funded genocide in Gaza. Cuomo, a moderate Democrat, has gone to great lengths to portray antisemitism as a central campaign issue, calling it “the most serious and the most important issue” in New York , and portraying himself as a “hyper aggressive supporter of Israel and proud of it”.
Mamdani has the capacity to win, says Sheinkopf, but his anti-Israel stance could be a problem: “Is Mamdani’s run a worthwhile demonstration of how healthy a democracy is? Yes. But he’s got to convince people his behaviour is within the bounds of what [they] consider appropriate.”
