Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a 34-year-old state Assembly member representing Astoria, Queens, was handily elected mayor of New York City on a singular message of making America’s largest city more affordable.
Voters connected with Mamdani, born in Uganda to a Hindu mother and a Muslim father, and a campaign built on his own overlapping identities, social-media algorithms and an army of volunteers who door knocked, leafletted, designed logos and led scavenger hunts. Mamdani, who polled at less than 1 percent early in his campaign, remained tirelessly on message, whether during interviews with TikTok influencers, AKA creators4zohran, or at a queer dance party called Papi Juice or the Knicks game watched from the rafters, or before thousands at rallies reminiscent of rock concerts.
While fuller data will be released in coming weeks, Mamdani’s victory relied on South Asian, immigrant, young and new voters for the city’s highest turnout in decades; more than 2 million people cast their ballots, a number not seen since the 1969 reelection of John Lindsay. In recent days, New Yorkers confronted a barrage of racist ads and rhetoric as the campaign grew heated. Independent candidate and former governor Andrew Cuomo appeared to agree with a conservative commentator who said Mamdani would cheer if another 9/11 terror attack happened. In an emotional speech, Mamdani dug in, appealing to New Yorkers who had ever been called a terrorist or had their name mispronounced, and unapologetically asserted his faith.
“I thought that if I behaved well enough or bit my tongue enough in the face of racist, baseless attacks, all while returning back to my central message, it would allow me to be more than just my faith,” Mamdani said. “I was wrong. No amount of redirection is ever enough.”
Mamdani’s election has heightened the sense that the city faces a showdown with former president Donald Trump, who endorsed Cuomo on Monday and has repeatedly denounced Mamdani as a “communist.” Mamdani has said he’s willing to work with Trump on issues of affordability, but has vowed to resist the immigration crackdown Trump has focused on other Democratic-led cities. He used his victory speech in Brooklyn to speak directly to the president.
“New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant,” he said to thunderous applause. “So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: to get to ANY of us, you will have to get through ALL of us!”
Mamdani’s complex identity but assertive sense of self found resonance in a city where 70% of the population is not white.
“I actually never really vote … I kind of lost faith,” Aniqa Tasnim, a nursing student who lives in Woodside, told Epicenter on Election Day as she cast her ballot. “For once, I feel like there’s hope for the city.”
Mamdani’s candidacy, though, resonated far beyond his own communities and formed new coalitions. As The Haitian Times, a frequent partner with Epicenter NYC and fellow member of the URL Media network, reported recently: “Since he won the Democratic primary in June, he’s appeared at the BAYO concert at the Barclays Center, where he expressed solidarity with Haitians and promised to protect their rights. He’s made appearances in Little Caribbean, where he met with community leaders and residents. He’s also vowed to protect Haitians and other NYC immigrants from ICE raids. Mamdani’s promises are centered on a focus to make New York City affordable to all, including the Haitian communities who have been a significant part of it for decades.”
“He’s our man,” Haitian Times founder Garry Pierre-Pierre said. “We’re ride or die.”
Now comes the hard part. Mamdani will have to govern the complex bureaucracy that is New York City’s government. While he appears to have won a majority vote representing a diverse cross section, there are plenty of skeptics and holdouts, notably a portion of Jewish voters, Wall Street and the areas of the city where Trump did well in 2024, starting with Staten Island. And Mamdani will have to make good on big promises such as freezing the rent for many, making buses free, and offering universal childcare, that are dependent on policy changes at all levels of government – which he does not control. (Stay tuned: In Thursday’s issue of Epicenter, our civics writer Felipe De La Hoz will dive into just what it will take to implement his ideas. And stay in touch: We want to hear from you: What’s the New York you envision under a Mayor Mamdani? Email us at hello@epicenter-nyc.com)
In his victory speech, Mamdani acknowledged the road ahead and the scrutiny he will face: “When we enter city hall in 58 days, expectations will be high. We will meet them.”
When Mamdani won the June primary, Epicenter published this list of nine ways Mamdani’s victory had just upended New York City politics as we know it. We offer the following lessons, takeaways and questions as the story develops.
Listen to young people
While mainstream media and pundits have decried Mamdani’s lack of experience, what’s often missed is … that’s entirely the point.
“Young people have always pushed their movements forward and into new realms. They are not yet burdened by ‘how far we’ve come,’ so they see and fight for how far we can go,” according to Sonali Kohli, a senior recruiter for URL Media and author of “Don’t Wait: Three Girls Who Fought for Change and Won,” a young-adult nonfiction book about teen activists. “It’s the job of veterans to listen and adapt, and it’s young people’s job to learn their histories. That’s how change happens, ultimately.”
For Tej Budhram, a junior at New York University majoring in politics, getting spit on for chatting up voters about Mamdani on election day (at the required distance from poll sites, he says) was worth it. He appreciated how Mamdani spoke directly to young people and backed it up with bills and dollar bills.
Budhram met the mayoral elect a few years ago, when Mamdani attended rallies hosted by the NYU Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapter of which Budhram was a member. Budhram cited Mamdani’s sponsoring of bills to provide more funding to public universities speaks to working-class kids like him.
In Mamdani, Budhram, who is Guayanese American, sees not just a member of the Indian diaspora but also “someone who is like, ‘life doesn’t have to be this hard, poverty isn’t inevitable, things can be better,’ ” he said, “rather than the status quo of being reactive — instead of always being against what Trump is doing, what the Republicans are doing.”
It’s a welcome change from the politicians he grew up watching, including in “overwhelmingly moderate” Southeast Queens, Budhram said, who “didn’t represent any of my views or ideologies, especially as a working-class kid, as a latchkey kid.”
The St. Albans resident says living in a transit desert also made the faster bussing Mamdani promises a big draw for him: “Shout out to our bus drivers — my dad is a bus driver — but goddamn, are they slow,” Budhram said. He also sees the potential for free buses to limit bus drivers’ involvement in “dicey situations” or assaults because riders can’t pay their fare.
Uniting the city and outreach to Jewish New Yorkers
While “Jews for Zohran” sported T-shirts and rallied support, many also voiced concern over Mamdani’s views on Israel. Mamdani has stood firm in his support for the Palestinian people, saying Israel has a right to exist but needs to follow international law. He, however, grew increasingly vocal about fighting antisemitism, vowing to protect all New Yorkers.
We received several thoughtful emails from Jewish voters saying they don’t know how to feel now. One Queens woman wrote: “With Mamdani, I really do understand why people feel proud — it’s meaningful to see a South Asian, Muslim New Yorker rise like that. Representation matters and is in many ways, a show of progress in NYC. But I can also admit it’s been painful to watch how his words — and silences — land for Jewish New Yorkers… We — Jews — have become pawns in other people’s ideological games, and it’s exhausting.”
How Mamdani might reconcile such viewpoints feels hard, maybe impossible. Asked about this, the woman wrote: “Honestly, I’d be thrilled if he just left Israel AND Gaza out of city politics.”
The algorithm helps campaigns; governance might be different
Social-media algorithms helped propel Mamdani’s unlikely rise; you know what happens once you watch one Mamdani video — dozens more quickly populate your feed.
But governing an echo chamber is not what’s about to happen. As Mamdani’s popularity grew, he took on celebrity status and will be sworn in on Jan. 1 on a virtual pedestal. How Mamdani reaches people not on social media, and those who don’t agree with him – in a time when the platforms favor fake AI videos over vetted news – will be a challenge. (A reminder to support community media like Epicenter NYC!)
Queens is ascendant
As we’ve often written here, as a Queens-centric publication, we think of our home borough, its diversity, abundance, excellent food, as a way of life. Given Mamdani’s base in Astoria and the communities that propelled his win, Queens is both ascendant — and under attack.
“That’s something we’ve been thinking about — and we love the city, we love Astoria, Queens, and we really want to stay here — and that’s been the challenge,” said Theresa Navalta, Astoria resident. “An option has been to move out to the suburbs or maybe a different state, but … I would like us not to have to do that.”
Young couples filled the afterparties on election night and voiced similarly. “Now that I’ve seen him, now that I see this hope, I feel like, ‘oh, maybe I can raise my kids here.’ I can still live here and raise our kids here. I have more hope for the city,” said Ravita Tareque, a Middle Village resident.
Look north to Boston
When asked to name a politician he admires, Mamdani has frequently offered up Michelle Wu, Boston’s mayor. Epicenter asked former Boston Globe editorial page editor and journalist Bina Venkataraman to contextualize what this moment means for New York, based on what she saw in Boston. (Stay tuned to Epicenter this week for her longer take.)
“Major American cities have become largely unaffordable for the young, creative, hungry people who are their lifeblood, the ones who come for the opportunities, culture and confluences of people, and who remake those cities anew,” she said. “The people who, irrespective of who is in the mayor’s mansion, are the drivers of the next waves of urban progress.”
This is a developing story.
