In the midst of joy at winning the nomination ticket from the Democratic Party last June 25, ahead of Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York State, the young Democratic candidate, Zahran Mamdani, said to his supporters, “Today we have made history… We won because the people of New York defended a city in which they could afford to live. A city in which they could do more than just struggle to secure their needs.”
In order for the cost of living in New York to become accessible to the widest possible base of the city’s residents, Mamdani (33 years old), who lives in an apartment whose monthly rent does not exceed $2,300, pledged to freeze rent increases for one million regularly rented apartments in the city, and to expand public services such as free transportation and providing comprehensive and free child care.
Mamdani, who does not own a car and uses public transportation, also promised his voters to establish municipal stores to sell goods at wholesale prices, and to raise the minimum wage to $30 per hour by 2030. To finance these proposals, he proposes to impose additional taxes on companies and people with high incomes exceeding one million dollars annually.
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Communist or socialist?
Mamdani’s speech raises some concerns among financiers and businessmen about activating his political program, especially on the financing side. US President Donald Trump said earlier that Mamdani’s campaign poses a dangerous threat to New York, and expressed his rejection of his election bid and threatened to withhold federal funding from the city if he wins.
As the countdown began to choose a new mayor for the city, President Trump somewhat changed his tone towards Mamdani, and said, “It appears that he will win… This is a revolution. This is also a revolution against bad candidates,” and added that he was ready to communicate with him if he finally won the ballot.
This statement reflects a radical shift in the position of President Trump, who at the height of the election campaign described Mamdani as a “little communist” who wanted to destroy New York, and pledged that “America will never be communist in any way, including New York City.”
Like Trump, many other opponents continue to describe Mamdani as a communist, but the person concerned does not miss any opportunity to define himself as something completely different from that and that he is a democratic socialist.
According to this perception, he believes that the government must play a role in reducing economic disparity among the city’s residents, without calling for the establishment of a communist system in which ownership is shared.
Thus, Mamdani gives a strong impetus to the socialist movement within the Democratic Party, which is in a state of labor after the major failure in the presidential and legislative elections in 2024. Mamdani enjoys the support of prominent figures from that movement, the most important of which are Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who were heavily involved in his election campaign.
In a reconciliatory characterization between the communist and socialist visions, Robert Wolf, a prominent member of the New York City administration and one of the most important fundraisers for the Democratic Party, sees Zahran as a progressive capitalist.
Wolf said in a statement to the New York Times that Mamdani recognizes the importance of a thriving private sector in New York and seeks to find ways to optimally use government in matters that promote equality and help marginalized groups.
Traditional politicians and billionaires
When Mamdani decided in October 2024 to enter the race for the mayor of New York, this came as a surprise to the Democratic Party elite, which replaced a number of its traditional figures in running the city, including Bill de Blasio (2014-2021) and Michael Bloomberg (2002-2013).
Mamdani’s nomination was the culmination of several years of representing the Queens borough in the New York Legislature, and he did not hesitate to challenge traditional names in the Senate. Democratic Party He was gradually able to turn his electoral campaign into a mobilization of a broad base of voters who had begun to become fed up with the dominant elite in the party due to its involvement in many corruption cases.
In the Democratic Party primary elections last June, Mamdani achieved an unprecedented achievement and became the first Muslim to be a candidate on behalf of the party to run in the final race for the position of mayor on November 4.
Mamdani advanced in that ballot over Andrew Cuomo (67 years old), a former governor of New York State for three terms, who resigned in August 2021 amid resounding scandals related to accusations of sexual harassment of female employees in the state, and the way his administration dealt with deaths in nursing homes due to the Corona pandemic.
Despite the severe defeat he suffered in the primary elections, Cuomo is running in the final stage of the elections as an independent candidate, and he enjoys the support of the financial and economic circles that do not want Mamdani to take over the management of the city’s affairs.
Campaign finance records indicate that 26 billionaires or ultra-wealthy families spent more than $22 million in total in the race, supporting Cuomo and seeking to prevent Mamdani from serving as mayor.
Cuomo seeks to rally moderates and disaffected Democrats, and is focusing his campaign on belittling Mamdani’s candidacy, accusing him of lack of government experience, “extremism” and anti-Semitism.
But Mamdani continued to direct strong attacks at Cuomo, especially in television debates, where he reminded him of the corruption cases in which he was involved, of his mismanagement of the state’s affairs during the Corona pandemic, and of the intertwining of his personal interests with the financial and business circles.
A few days ago, Mamdani shared with his followers on social media platforms a video clip in which he addresses Cuomo, “My beloved (in Arabic), reveal your clients,” commenting on a press report stating that Cuomo earned profits of $4 million in 2024 through a consulting services company, without clarifying the clients who benefit from his services.
The city’s current Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, was also supposed to run in the competition, who was involved in federal corruption scandals and investigations, and was subjected to extensive political pressure before the Justice Department fell, during the administration of President Trump.
On September 28, 2025, Adams (65 years old) decided to stop his election campaign for a second term, which he ran as an independent candidate, after withdrawing from the party’s primary elections. He justified his decision with a funding problem and in light of the decline in his popularity and the repercussions of the corruption cases in which he was involved, and he decided to support candidate Cuomo.
Also competing for the position of mayor is Republican candidate Curtis Siloa (71 years old), a public figure in the city, known as the founder of the “Guardian Angels,” a volunteer group to combat crime. This is the second nomination for this veteran media personality, and his electoral platform is based on public safety, respect for law and order, and financial stringency.
Luckiest
Polls still indicate that Mamdani maintains a wide lead over his two opponents, independent Cuomo and Republican Seloa, with Mamdani’s average support standing at 46.6%, Cuomo 30.1%, and Seloa 16.5%.
As of last Thursday, Mamdani held an average 16.5 point lead over Cuomo in eight major polls. A poll conducted by The Hill (Emerson College) from October 25-28 showed Mamdani with 50% support, compared to 25% for Cuomo and 21% for Selo, with a 25-point lead.
According to these polls, a large percentage of Mamdani’s strength in the electoral race is due to an alliance of young voters and communities of color, and it seems that this will strengthen in the final days of the campaign.
In the details of these polls, Mamdani’s support rate among black voters in the city rose to 71%, after it was around 50% just one month ago, while Cuomo’s support among the same group witnessed a decline of 10 percentage points.
Mamdani also dominates among voters under the age of 50, with 69% of them supporting him, compared to only 37% among those over 50.
Overall, Mamdani maintains the lead in the race, with 52% of likely voters expressing a favorable opinion of him, far ahead of Cuomo, who received 35%, and Curtis Siloa, who received 27%.
A unique phenomenon
Since his candidacy for this position, Mamdani has turned into a unique political phenomenon, according to the words of academic Sahar Khamis, a professor of media at the University of Maryland, and he has become rich material for various American media outlets that expect Mamdani to become the first Muslim mayor of New York.
Mamdani has a remarkable presence in traditional media, especially television stations, where he dominates with his attractive and spontaneous appearance, the presence of his wit, his constant smile, and the clarity of his political ideas, in addition to his great sense of humor.
The CEO described…Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Institution of Awad Mamdani described the breakthrough as a “political earthquake” and praised his political style and his ability to win over broad sectors of the electoral base who are angry with democratic leaders involved in cases of financial and moral corruption.
A pluralistic incubator
Mamdani achieved this meteoric political rise imbued with the values he was raised with in a pluralistic cultural environment haunted by questions of identity and belonging against the backdrop of the Indian and Ugandan origins of his father, historian Mahmoud Mamdani, a professor at Columbia University (New York), and his mother, the famous film director Mira Nair.
At the age of seven, Mamdani came with his family to New York after spending his early childhood years in his birthplace in Uganda and was influenced by his father’s political and intellectual experience and his mother’s artistic works. The family home was open to prominent names in thought and art, including the late Palestinian thinker Edward Said.
In that atmosphere, Mamdani’s interest in social and economic issues affecting marginalized groups began and he became involved in field work. During his undergraduate studies at Bowdoin College in Maine, he contributed to establishing a branch of the “Students for Justice in Palestine” organization, and participated in a campaign to persuade the college to join an academic boycott of Israel as an effective tool for peaceful pressure for respect for international law.
After graduating from university, Mamdani worked as a teacher and rapper, and in 2016 he helped his mother compose the music for her film “The Queen of Katwe.” His first full-time job was counseling distressed homeowners with a small non-profit organization in Queens.
During his work in that organization, his awareness of the needs of the population crystallized and he turned that into a political message that gradually found resonance with the residents of Queens, of Asian descent, and with the rest of the population of New York, which was experiencing the worst housing crisis in several decades.
Addressing communities
On Saturday (November 1), Mamdani shared a video on Facebook with his followers, presenting in a Levantine dialect the main lines of his electoral program: “Hello! My name is Zahran Mamdani and I am running for office to be the new mayor of New York City. I know what you are thinking. I look like I am your brother-in-law from the Levant. But my Arab woman needs some work.”
Mamdani added, “However, today I would like to ask for your support on November 4. Living in New York has become expensive for everyone… and it has become difficult to live there and raise children. As mayor, I will freeze rents for more than two million people, make buses fast and free, and guarantee comprehensive child care for all families… I am from you and to you.”
The phrase “I look like I am your son-in-law from the Levant” was mentioned in that clip, which is an allusion to his marriage at the beginning of this year to the Syrian-American artist Rama Dawaji, who was born in the United States to Syrian parents and studied at Virginia Commonwealth University and became a teacher of visual arts in New York.
In another video clip, Mamdani speaks in Spanish as he walks through the streets of the Queens borough, which he has represented in the New York Legislature for five years, and sends the same message to the city’s Spanish speakers.
In one of the most poignant moments, Mamdani appeared at a speech about a week ago outside a mosque in the Bronx, surrounded by a number of members of the Muslim community, and spoke with great emotion about the insults that Muslims have faced in the city for a long time.
Mamdani recounted how when he entered the world of politics for the first time, his uncle gently suggested to him that he “keep his faith to himself,” but he pledged to break this rule and speak out about his adherence to his Islamic identity in the face of the prevailing Islamophobic and racist discourse in the country.
These scenes embody significant features of Mamdani’s campaign, which addresses his potential voters from any possible platform within the framework of a coordinated and intense campaign that relies heavily on social media platforms and on direct engagement with people in public squares, public transportation, restaurants, parks, and other spaces.
This campaign, supported by about 90,000 volunteers, has a wide resonance with voters, as evidenced by opinion polls that indicate that he is the most likely candidate to assume the position of mayor of the city, which is inhabited by 8 million people and whose total gross product is about 2.3 trillion dollars.