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Indian-American Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary election for New York City mayor on Tuesday (June 24), delivering a stunning defeat to party bigwig and challenger, Andrew Cuomo.
“I will fight for a city that works for you, that is affordable for you, that is safe for you,” Mamdani said in his victory speech early on Wednesday. “We can be free and we can be fed. We can demand what we deserve.”
On Tuesday, voters registered with the city’s Democratic Party voted in a ranked-choice system to select the party’s candidate for mayoral elections later this year. Cuomo, a heavy favourite until recent weeks, polled at 36.4% and conceded the race.
The result thus sets up the 33-year-old Mamdani to win the party’s nomination in the heavily Democratic city. While the election concerns an 8 million-strong city that is one of the world’s largest melting pots, the rather local political contest has grabbed widespread attention in no small part due to Mamdani’s campaign. A representative in the New York State Assembly, he is a self-described “democratic socialist” who has presented himself as the choice of progressive and working-class voters. He recently called himself US President “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare”, speaking of his background and ideology.
Zohran Mamdani is the son of India-born Ugandan academic Mahmood Mamdani and Indian filmmaker Mira Nair. Zohran was born and raised in Kampala, Uganda, and then migrated to New York with his parents at age seven. In 2018, he was naturalised as a US citizen, and he married Syrian artist Rama Duwaji earlier this year.
He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Africana Studies from Bowdoin College in the state of Maine. Before joining politics, he worked as a counsellor who helped low-income homeowners fight off evictions, according to his official profile on the New York Assembly website. Mamdani also dabbled in rap and writing before successfully running for assembly elections in 2020.
His assembly profile stated, “Zohran is proud to be the first South Asian man to serve in the NYS Assembly as well as the first Ugandan and only the third Muslim to ever be a member of the body. For too long, communities such as these have been left out of our state’s politics and priorities.” He said he would seek to “amplify” their voices.
What is his political platform about?
His messaging has focused on affordability for the working class, with policies such as capping rent and the cost of groceries in one of the world’s most expensive cities. These policies, he said, will be funded by taxing the wealthiest 1% of New Yorkers — those earning above $1 million annually (around Rs 8.6 crore) — a flat 2% tax. Other prominent democratic socialists, including Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, have also endorsed him.
Mamdani’s visibility has been credited to his network of on-ground volunteers, as well as the unique and approachable style of the well-edited short videos he has posted on social media platforms. One of them, simplifying the elections’ ranked-choice voting system, features references from Bollywood movies like Deewar, mango lassis, and has Mamdani speaking in Hindi and Urdu.
He described his social media strategy as the “politics of no translation” in an interview with The Guardian. “It’s when you speak directly to the crises that people are facing, with no intermediaries in between. We need a politics that is direct, that speaks to people’s own lives. If I tell you that I’m going to freeze your rent, you know exactly what I mean.”
Mamdani has been an outspoken critic of the federal government agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has led raids to deport illegal immigrants, resulting in countrywide protests in recent weeks. On Saturday, he criticised the arrest of New York comptroller and fellow progressive candidate, Brad Lander, by masked ICE agents.
Cuomo previously served as the governor of the state of New York — a position once held by his father. He resigned in 2021 after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment, but now plans to stage a revival. Former US President Bill Clinton and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg have supported his candidacy.
One major reason for Cuomo’s re-entry was that the current Democrat mayor, Eric Adams, was accused of bribery and fraud in an investigation by The New York Times earlier this year. He has denied the allegations and is running for reelection as an independent candidate.
This left the Democratic field empty. Cuomo has criticised Mamdani for his administrative inexperience and his pro-Palestine stand, alleging he has engaged in anti-semitism. Notably, New York is home to the largest Jewish community in the world, outside Israel.
Mamdani was asked in a televised candidate debate whether he’d visit Israel as a mayor, to which he said, “As mayor, I will be standing up for Jewish New Yorkers and will be meeting them wherever they are across the five boroughs, whether it’s at their synagogues and temples or in their homes or at the subway platform.” On his part, Mamdani has criticised Cuomo’s sources of funding, including the support from large corporations.
In contrast to Mamdani’s crowd-pulling rallies, Cuomo has been far less visible. The New York Times reported that Cuomo’s backers had raised $25 million in attack ads against Mamdani, a record for the city.
When will the results be known?
While the formal result will not be known until at least July 1, when New York City releases the ranked-choice results, Mamdani held an indisputable lead. The ranked-choice voting system allows voters to list up to five candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in the first round, as will likely be the case, several rounds of calculations will happen.
The winner of the primary will face Eric Adams and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in the November election.
Cuomo told The New York Times on Tuesday night that he may still contest the November mayoral election as an independent candidate. However, the city’s historic preference for the Democratic Party and the unpopularity of the incumbent Adams mean the current primary winner will likely win that vote.
Does it have larger implications for national politics?
If elected, Mamdani would be the city’s first Indian-American and first Muslim mayor. His victory will also signal greater acceptability among voters for progressive issues and socialist policies. On the other hand, Cuomo’s win would indicate a preference for more moderate, pro-establishment policies.
The results could help steer the future of the Democratic Party, which lost the 2024 US Presidential elections and saw the Republicans make inroads into its traditional voter base — women, non-White groups, and working-class voters. In the 2020 elections, Joe Biden won the state of New York by a margin of 23%, which fell to 12% four years later with Kamala Harris.
One criticism, following the drubbing, was that the party had become too progressive on social and economic issues. However, another view said the opposite, arguing the party should be more centrist.
