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Who is Zohran Mamdani?

Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman, is set to be the Democratic candidate for New York City Mayor, making history as the first Muslim nominee. 

With 95% of ballots counted, Mamdani leads former governor Andrew Cuomo - who resigned that post after sexual harassment allegations in 2021 - 43% to 36% in the Democratic primary, propelled by a wave of grassroots support and a bold left-wing platform.

"Tonight, we made history," Mamdani told supporters. "I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City."

New York's ranked-choice voting system means the final result could still evolve, but Mamdani's lead and momentum appear decisive. 

His victory over Cuomo - once a dominant figure in state politics - marks a watershed moment for progressives and signals a shift in the city's political centre of gravity.

From Uganda to Queens

Born in Kampala, Uganda, Mamdani moved to New York with his family age seven. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and later earned a degree in Africana Studies from Bowdoin College, where he co-founded the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. 

The millennial progressive, who would be the city's first Muslim and South Asian mayor, has leaned into his roots in a diverse city. He's posted one campaign video entirely in Urdu and mixed in Bollywood film clips. In another, he speaks Spanish. 

Mamdani and his wife, 27-year-old Brooklyn-based Syrian artist Rama Duwaji, met on the dating app Hinge.

His mother, Mira Nair, is a celebrated film director and his father Professor Mahmood Mamdani, teaches at Columbia. Both parents are Harvard alumni.

 

Reuters Zohran Mamdani reacts next to his parents Mahmood Mamdani and Mira Nair and wife Rama Duwaji during a watch party for his primary election
Reuters / Zohran Mamdani with his parents Mahmood Mamdani (R) and Mira Nair (L) and wife Rama Duwaji (C)
 

 

Mamdani presents himself as a candidate of the people and an organiser. 

"As life took its inevitable turns, with detours in film, rap, and writing," reads his state assembly profile, "it was always organising that ensured that the events of our world would not lead him to despair, but to action."

Before entering politics, he worked as a housing counsellor, helping low-income homeowners in Queens fight eviction.

He has also made his Muslim faith a visible part of his campaign. He visited mosques regularly and released a campaign video in Urdu about the city's cost-of-living crisis.

"We know that to stand in public as a Muslim is also to sacrifice the safety that we can sometimes find in the shadows," he said at a rally this spring.

"There's nobody who represents the totality of the issues that I truly care about that's running for mayor currently other than Zohran,"Jagpreet Singh, political director for social justice organization DRUM, told the BBC. 

Mamdani's affordability battle 

Mamdani said that voters in the most expensive US city want Democrats to focus on affordability. 

"This is a city where one in four of its people are living in poverty, a city where 500,000 kids go to sleep hungry every night," he told the BBC at a recent event. "And ultimately, it's a city that is in danger of losing that which it makes it so special."

He has proposed:

  • Free bus service citywide
  • Rent freezes and stricter accountability for negligent landlords
  • A chain of city-owned grocery stores focused on affordability
  • Universal childcare for children aged six weeks to five years
  • Tripling the production of rent-stabilized, union-built housing

His plan also includes "overhauling" the Mayor's Office to hold property owners responsible and massively expanding permanently affordable housing.

In his campaign, he linked these policies to highly visual, and viral, gestures. He plunged into the Atlantic to dramatize rent freezes and broke a Ramadan fast on a subway train with a burrito to underscore food insecurity. Days before the primary, he walked the entire length of Manhattan, pausing for selfies with voters.

While he insists he can make the city more affordable, critics question such ambitious promises.

The New York Times did not endorse anyone in the city's mayoral primary and criticised the candidates generally. Its editorial board said Mamdani's agenda is "uniquely unsuited to the city's challenges" and "often ignores the unavoidable trade offs of governance." 

His rent freezes would restrict housing supply, said the board.

Critics question experience

Cuomo and others frame Mamdani as untested and too radical for a city with a $115 billion budget and over 300,000 municipal workers. 

Cuomo, backed by big donors and centrist endorsements including Bill Clinton, insisted experience matters, saying: "Experience, competence, knowing how to do the job, knowing how to deal with Trump, knowing how to deal with Washington, knowing how to deal with the state legislature, these are basics. I believe in on-the-job training, but not as the mayor of New York."

 

Shutterstock Nine candidates stand at podiums on a stage, each behind a glass podium.
Shutterstock Nine candidates were running to be the Democratic nominee - here they appear at a mayoral debate in New York City 4 Jun. 

 

But Trip Yang, a political strategist, said "experience" isn't necessarily a game changer in this political era. And whether or not Mamdani wins, Mr Yang believes his campaign has done "the unthinkable."

"Zohran is powered by tens of thousands of volunteers, hundreds of thousands of unique donors. It's very rare to see a local Democratic primary New York campaign with this much amount of volunteer and grassroots excitement," he said.

"He understand us. He belong to us. He's from our community, you know, the immigrant community," added supporter Lokmani Rai.

Israel and Palestine 

At a recent Mamdani campaign event at a park in Jackson Heights, one of the most diverse communities in the country, children ran and played on swings, as Latino food vendors sold ice cream and snacks.

In many ways, the scene perfectly captured the city's diversity - what many Democrats consider New York's greatest asset. But the city is not without its racial and political tensions. Mamdani said he's received Islamophobic threats daily, some targeting his family. According to police, a hate-crimes investigation into the threats is underway.

He told the BBC that racism is indicative of what's broken in US politics and criticised a Democratic Party "that allowed for Donald Trump to be re-elected" and fails to stand up for working people "no matter who they were or where they came from".

The candidates' stances on the Israel-Gaza war was also likely on voters' minds.

Mamdani's strong support of Palestinians and staunch criticism of Israel goes further than most of the Democratic establishment. The assemblyman introduced a bill to end the tax-exempt status of New York charities with ties to Israeli settlements that violate international human rights law.

He has also said he believes Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, is an apartheid state, and that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested. Israel vehemently rejects accusations of genocide and apartheid.

Mamdani has been pressed numerous times by press in interviews to state whether he supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. In a response this month, he said: "I'm not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else, I think that in the way that we have in this country, equality should be enshrined in every country in the world. That's my belief." Israel says all religions have equal rights under the law. 

Mamdani has also said he accepts Israel's right to exist as a state, telling the Late Show on Monday that "like all nations, I believe it has a right to exist and a responsibility also to uphold international law".

Mamdani has also said that there is no room for antisemitism in New York City, adding that if he were elected, he would increase funding to combat hate crimes.

Cuomo, on the other hand, has described himself as a "hyper supporter of Israel and proud of it".

In many ways the issues facing New York Democrats are the same ones the party faces in future elections, and afterwards, the primary may be dissected nationally for what it says about the party - and how it should take on Trump.

Author: Nada Tawfik and Rachel Hagan BBC News Reporting fromNew York City & London

Source: BBC News:

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