Last week, 33-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani made history by becoming the first Muslim and Indian American to win New York City’s democratic mayoral primary, defeating the long-favoured winner, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who conceded the race a mere hours after the polls closed.
How did the young, little-known assembly member shoot to fame seemingly overnight? Let’s take a look at the political rise of the man who might be overseeing America’s largest city for the next four years.
Who is Zohran?
When Mamdani announced his run for mayor last October, he was a state assembly member for district 36 in New York City. He was the first south Asian man in the state assembly and its third Muslim. At the time, he was relatively unknown to most New York City residents.
Announcing his candidacy, he said, “There is a representation of sets of voters that typically, in the very best scenario, have been erased from the political fabric, and in the worst scenario, have been persecuted by the political system in the city.”
“I represent Steinway Street – the same street that Michael Bloomberg created the demographics unit within the NYPD to illegally surveil Muslims on the basis of our faith [after 9/11]. And now the representative of that street is going to run for the same position that created that department.”
He spent years working in local leftist politics, engaging in campaigns for Democratic candidates in Queens and Brooklyn.
In 2020, he was elected to the New York Assembly for a Queens district covering Astoria and surrounding neighbourhoods and has since been reelected twice. One of his most notable legislative accomplishments so far has been accelerating a pilot program that made some city buses free for 12 months.
Before that, he worked as a foreclosure prevention counsellor in Queens, helping residents avoid eviction by negotiating with lenders and the city on behalf of low-to middle-income homeowners who were delinquent on their mortgage payments and facing eviction. It was a role he credits as inspiring him to run for public office.
“What I will bring to this race is an explicit and relentless focus to the number one issue of importance to New York City voters,” Mamdani said of the job last year.
“They can’t afford their rent. They can’t afford their childcare. They can’t afford transit. They can’t afford their groceries. The mayor has an incredible set of powers to provide relief in each of those areas, and yet, at every opportunity that has been given is almost always taken the decision to exacerbate the cost of living crisis, and that’s why working-class New Yorkers are being pushed out of the city that they built, the one that they call home.”
His criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has incited accusations of antisemitism that he continually rejects.
In 2021, he attended a rally against the Israeli occupation in the aftermath of violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Speaking into a loudspeaker in Astoria Park, he told fellow protesters, “We are here to say these struggles are interconnected – whether it’s BLM or BDS, it’s all about justice. We are here to say you cannot disentangle this fight for freedom. You will not scare us away from this call for justice.”
In February this year, he proposed legislation forbidding nonprofits from “engaging in unauthorised support of Israeli settlement activity.”
In 2021, Mamdani went on a 15-day hunger strike in protest of predatory loans that singled out the city’s taxi drivers who bought “medallions” — the mandatory physical certificate drivers need to operate a yellow cab.
He was one of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) most vocal advocates, drinking nothing but water for over two weeks and insisting that his hunger strike was a much-needed escalatory tactic to change policy public.
“By going on a hunger strike in front of City Hall, there was no way you could ignore what we were doing to our bodies in the service of this fight,” he said at the time. “It’s infectious – the courage, the belief. Then it all culminated in today and I just haven’t felt the emotions that I felt today in a long time.”
“I woke up on Monday of this week and I wasn’t sure if I could go on. It had been 12 days at that point and I just wasn’t sure where we were and how long it was going to go. I was just so tired and I was so tired of being hungry.”
City officials eventually caved and struck a deal with medallion loan guarantors, obtaining $450m in transformative debt relief for taxi drivers.
In 2023, Mamdani participated in another hunger strike, this time, lasting five days — calling for a ceasefire in the war in Gaza.
“President Biden horrifically—and incorrectly—called into question whether the death toll in Gaza could even be believed,” he wrote on Instagram. “It’s long been the norm in Washington to disbelieve Palestinians in their life, but he was now saying that we must disbelieve Palestinians in their death too.”
Earlier this year, he was one of ten people arrested at Hunter College, while picketing and blocking an entrance to the school’s Assembly Hall. He was part of a group demonstrating the city’s rent guidelines board vote to increase the rents of rent-stabilised tenants 2.75 per cent on one-year leases and 5.25 per cent on two-year leases.
“All of us who are here today are making it clear that this is unconscionable, this is unacceptable, and if it means that we get arrested in order to make that explicit, so be it,” Mamdani said at the time. If elected, Mamdani has promised to freeze these tenants’ rent when he assumes office.
Background
Mamdani was born in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, in 1991 to Indian parents. His mother is the Oscar-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair, who directed several films including The Namesake, Salaam Bombay!, Mississippi Masala and Monsoon Wedding. His father is Mahmood Mamdani, a professor of post-colonialism at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1999.
The family lived in Cape Town, South Africa, before moving to New York City when Mamdani was seven years old.
Mamdani attended the Bronx High School of Science, where he cofounded the public school’s first cricket team. In 2014 he graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine, earning a degree in Africana studies. While a student, he cofounded his college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. In 2018, he became an American citizen.
In the past year, his mother has been canvassing for his campaign, cooking biryani and chicken for him and his staffers. He has previously credited his parents with giving him a “privileged upbringing” that involved frequent discussions about politics and global affairs.
Having a filmmaker mother means that he often brushed shoulders with Hollywood stars. He had a cameo in his mother’s 2016 movie, Queen of Katwe starring Lupita Nyong’o, and also worked on the movie’s soundtrack.
When he was three months old, he was held in the arms of Denzel Washington, during a red carpet event for his mother’s 1991 romantic comedy Mississippi Masala.
When asked if he thinks himself a nepo baby, Mamdani told a reporter last year, “I’ll leave that to others.”
“There have definitely been opportunities that have been afforded to me,” he said. “But in local politics, I don’t think it has meant that much to the people of Astoria and Long Island City.”
He has garnered support from high profile politicians, including fellow Queens democratic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. He has also gained the support of celebrities including model and author Emily Ratajkowski, actress Laverne Cox, comedian and actors Bowen Yang and Ramy Youssef.
Earlier this year, the millennial married 27-year old Syrian American artist and animator Rama Duwaji, whom he met on the dating app Hinge.
He was also once a budding rapper, performing under the name Young Cardamom and Mr Cardamom. Launching and failing to find success in that career, he has said that his experience in the local hip hop scene helped prepare him for public office.
“I would stand and rap with this guy in the equivalent of a 14-seater public bus,” he said. “As we waited for the bus to fill up, we would try and sell our CD. Once you’ve done that, it’s a lot easier to ask people on the Broadway platform of the N/W train if they’ll sign your petition to get on the ballot.”
Policies
Throughout his campaign, Mamdani has focused on bread-and-butter economic issues, including housing affordability, raising taxes on the wealthy and making promises such as a rent freeze, free buses and universal childcare. He has also committed to boosting funding for anti-hate crime programming by 800 percent, and lowering the cost of living for everyday New Yorkers.
In his victory speech last Tuesday, Mamdani promised to work closely with those who don’t share his views on certain key issues.
“While I will not abandon my beliefs or my commitments, grounded in a demand for equality, for humanity, for all those who walk this earth, you have my word to reach further, to understand the perspectives of those with whom I disagree, and to wrestle deeply with those disagreements,” he said.
Last October, he had promised to work every day to make New York more affordable. “We all love this city, and yet it doesn’t mean much if we can’t afford to stay here,” he said. “We don’t want New York to be a symbol. We don’t want it to just be something that is unattainable for so many. We want it to be where people live, grow old and raise families.”
He has continued to be outspoken about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, calling it a “genocide”. During an interview on CBS’s The Late Show on the eve of the democratic mayoral primary last week, host Stephen Colbert asked Mamdani if he believed the state of Israel had the right to exist.
“Yes, like all nations, I believe it has a right to exist — and a responsibility also to uphold international law.”
Over the weekend, he declined to condemn the phrase “globalise the intifada” but promised he would be a mayor “that protects Jewish New Yorkers” if elected in November, when he faces off against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
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