"Hope is not naive when you have a vision and a movement behind it. Hope is in fact righteous," Zohran Kwame Mamdani, the 33-year-old legislator from Queens, said.
Mamdani declared victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday night. “I will work to be a mayor you will be proud to call your own,” he said. Contender Andrew Cuomo, the state's former governor, conceded the race.
If elected in the general elections due later this year— Mamdani would make history, he would become the first Muslim and first Indian American to become New York City’s mayor. He has left behind veteran politicians in this surprise victory.
His origin story is not just local, but a moment of national reckoning when put in context with current political whirlpool in the United States. For Democrats, Mamdani’s victory is defiant and hopeful, especially after the returning President Donald Trump took over office in January and has made Republican policies omnipresent.
“I will be the mayor for every New Yorker, whether you voted for me, for Governor Cuomo, or felt too disillusioned by a long-broken political system to vote at all,” Mamdani said.
His political campaign was anything but conventional — in both style and substance. Apart from making judicious speeches from behind the podium, he has collaborated with popular Instagram pages like 'subwaytakes', recreated viral memes, given interviews in Bengali and broke Ramadan fast on the subway.
His grassroots campaign was led by committed volunteers, including young activists from the Democratic Socialists of America. His ideas have struck a chord with voters in America’s most expensive city, as he succeeded in neighborhoods like Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights, Sunset Park, and Brighton Beach, which had a rightward trend in the 2024 presidential election.
From the get go, the mosque-visiting candidate made affordability issues in NYC the centre of his campaign.
“I’m freezing… your rent as the next mayor of New York City,” he said in a video he posted on social media as the suited candidate plunged into the Atlantic Ocean.
Mamdani — an advocate of multiculturalism in the increasingly intolerant Trump’s America — is the son of Mira Nair, an Indian-American filmmaker, and Mahmood Mamdani, an Indian-Ugandan and postcolonial studies professor at Columbia University.
Born in Kampala, Uganda, he migrated to New York with his parents at age seven. He was naturalised as a U.S. citizen in 2018, and married a Syrian artist this year, whom he met on Hinge.
“So the love of your life may currently be too stressed about whether they can afford the most expensive city in the United States to find you... affordability is about the romance,” he said.
"Zohran won New York’s first fare-free bus pilot on five lines across the city. As Mayor, he’ll permanently eliminate the fare on every city bus – and make them faster by rapidly building priority lanes, expanding bus queue jump signals, and dedicated loading zones to keep double parkers out of the way," his bright orange and blue campaign website reads, in a listicle stating various ways of bringing down prices for the working-class New Yorkers, zeroing in on housing, transport, childcare and groceries.
"Zohran’s revenue plan will raise the corporate tax rate to match New Jersey’s 11.5%, bringing in $5 billion."
Aided by catchy, authentic videos, he set himself apart from the former governor. Cuomo, 67, resigned in 2021 after reports found a “pattern” of inappropriate behaviour by him, including both “unwanted” touching and comments of a “suggestive and sexual nature.”
"Tonight is his night," Cuomo, who was the front-runner till recently, said, adding that "we are going to take a look and make some decisions".
Although initial results on Tuesday night showed Mamdani holding a strong lead, he appeared to fall just short of the 50 percent mark required for an outright victory.
Despite that, Cuomo conceded earlier than expected — a surprising move given that vote counting is set to continue into next week under the city’s ranked-choice voting system, which lets voters rank up to five candidates by preference.
The two have had a war of words over their disagreement about America’s involvement in foreign wars. Mamdani has been vocal about Israel’s war in Gaza. In 2023, he put forward legislation aimed at revoking the tax-exempt status of certain New York-based charitable organizations linked to Israeli settlements accused of breaching international human rights standards. The proposal was dismissed.
He has also supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Drawing distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, he had stated that there is no room for antisemitism in New York City. He refused to condemn the ‘globalize the intifada’ slogan in the final days of the campaign.
In a city often seen as a bellwether for broader political tides, Mamdani wore his ideologies on his sleeves, and with that he has made already made waves.
“I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City.”
