The meaning of Zohran Mamdani
Will the New York mayoral favourite be a boon to the Democratic party, or a millstone around its neck?
Guy Chazan in New York
While even Mamdani’s rivals acknowledge his ability to grab voters’ attention in a fragmented media landscape, some view his leftwing positions as ammunition for Republicans © FT montage/BloombergWhen Zohran Mamdani addressed a crowd of 3,000 ecstatic supporters at the United Palace theatre in Manhattan last month, he insisted that there was “something special” in the room.
“It’s the power of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers united, ready to usher in a new day,” he said.
“It is the power of a movement that won the battle over the soul of the Democratic party.”
It was a typical rhetorical flourish from a mayoral candidate who has captured the imagination of millions of New Yorkers and reinvigorated an American left reeling from Donald Trump’s no-holds-barred presidency.
If the polls are right, Mamdani is on course for a historic victory in Tuesday’s election in New York, becoming the first Muslim mayor of America’s financial capital and most populous city.
For a 34-year-old state assemblyman whom most people in the five boroughs had never heard of even six months ago, it would be a jaw-dropping achievement.
A socialist of Indian descent who was born in Uganda, Mamdani has built his campaign on making New York more affordable for the people who live and work there, with promises of a rent freeze, free buses and free universal child care.
But for the more than 50,000 volunteers who have rallied to his banner, his run for mayor has come to mean much more.
For them, he is a beacon of hope at an increasingly bleak time for progressive politics in America.
“He’s an antidote to all the darkness and despair that people are feeling right now,” says Sarah Balistreri, an attendee of the October rally.
“He makes you feel like at least here, in New York City, we can have some control over our lives.”
Democrats could use a little optimism right now.
The party is still struggling to regain its footing after its defeat to Trump and the Republicans last November.
National polls suggest it is still seen as out of touch with ordinary voters, and that even some registered Democrats find it weak and ineffective.
But Mamdani’s meteoric rise has sharpened an already intense debate within the party about what path it should take to become relevant again.
Some say it should embrace the kind of progressive, populist politics personified by Bernie Sanders, the veteran leftwing senator from Vermont, and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Like Mamdani, she is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, a political movement committed to ending capitalism.
Others believe the Democrats must cleave to the political middle ground where US elections are so often fought and won.
Mamdani, who says he is running just as much against a broken Democratic establishment as against the Republicans, occupies a pivotal role in this argument.
There is no doubt the adulation he inspires in the liberal bastion of New York, particularly among younger voters, has given the party a boost.
But in the broader US political landscape, he is a more controversial figure.
Critics fear the politics of Mamdani, whom Trump has called a “100% Communist lunatic”, will be anathema to swing voters in moderate or conservative-leaning districts who are crucial to Democrat hopes for the midterms next year.
Many in the party see the 2026 vote as a make-or-break chance to stop — or at least slow — the Trump juggernaut.
As a result, opinion among liberals is split between those who believe Mamdani could serve as a model for the Democrats and those who consider him a millstone round the party’s neck.
For Andrew Cuomo, the former Democratic three-term governor of New York state who is standing against him as an independent, the verdict is clear: Mamdani is a liability.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV in September, he said the assemblyman was symptomatic of the “civil war” raging on the centre-left, “where the extreme left is pulling the Democratic party and the moderates are afraid”.
It is an argument that could persuade the many undecided voters who worry Mamdani is too leftwing, too inexperienced and too critical of Israel to be mayor.
One poll showed Mamdani’s lead over Cuomo narrowing ahead of election day, although he is still the clear frontrunner.
Jake Dilemani, a political strategist from New York, says that despite Mamdani’s popularity in New York, he could represent a “vulnerability” for Democrats elsewhere in the country, be it in races for mayor, state legislatures or Congress.
“Right or wrong, Republicans are going to use him as the new bogeyman,” he says.
They will “wrap Mamdani around whatever the candidates are that they’re running against”.
Already, some on the right are rubbing their hands in glee.
Mike Lawler, a Republican congressman representing a constituency north of New York City, describes Mamdani as a “radical, self-avowed socialist” who wants to “raise taxes by $9bn” — a plan he says would “lead to a mass exodus out of New York, both of businesses and people”.
That makes him a handy prop in the left-right political struggle.
“Mamdani will be the face of the Democratic party,” the congressman says.
“And that’s going to be a real problem for them heading into next year’s midterms.”
For months, Republicans have been highlighting Mamdani’s most inflammatory statements, most of which predate his campaign.
There is, for example, the tweet he posted during the George Floyd protests in June 2020 in which he accused the NYPD of being “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety”.
They have also dwelt on his passionate advocacy for Palestinian rights.
Mamdani has vowed, if elected, to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he comes to New York.
He has also refused to condemn the phrase “globalise the intifada”, and has accused Israel of conducting genocide in Gaza, funded by “our tax dollars”.
Even some fellow Democrats have been appalled by his rhetoric.
Laura Gillen, a congresswoman representing a swing seat just east of New York, said this summer that he was “too extreme” to lead the city, accusing him of “unacceptable antisemitic comments”.
Others think the criticism of Mamdani, particularly from Republicans, is overdone.
Patrick Gaspard, a former White House director of political affairs under President Barack Obama who has been advising the 34-year-old since last autumn, says Republicans have always seen his party as extreme.
Even party establishment figures such as Joe Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were routinely depicted in Republican attack ads as communists, he notes.
“The charge that they’re too progressive, too left, too out of step with mainstream politics in the US — that’s literally the story that’s been told about Democrats since the age of Ronald Reagan,” he says.
“We need to stop being afraid of our own shadow.”
There is also a strain of liberal sentiment that says the lesson from Mamdani’s candidacy is not about whether his policies go too far, but about the kind of politician he is.
Even his rivals acknowledge his mastery of social media and almost Trump-like ability to grab voters’ attention in a fragmented media landscape.
“What he really teaches the Democrats is — find a charismatic candidate!” says Larry Sabato, founder and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
“Someone who people like.”
It also helps that he is young. Mamdani entered politics 10 years ago and was only elected to the New York state assembly in 2020.
That has set him apart from the Democratic old guard — people such as Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who is 74.
“It’s so nice to support a politician who is too young to have been friends with Jeffrey Epstein,” says Gianmarco Soresi, a stand-up comic who hosted the October rally in upper Manhattan.
Mamdani has also worked hard to project himself as a good listener with an ear for the kinds of problems facing grassroots voters.
Shortly after Kamala Harris lost to Trump, he interviewed Black, Muslim and Latino New Yorkers, asking why people in their neighbourhoods had voted Republican.
Many cited high food and energy costs and exploding rents.
“He was learning from them and then channelling their concerns,” says Gaspard.
“And we need to learn from that.”
It was from such conversations that Mamdani honed a campaign tightly focused on bread-and-butter issues, with progressive policies that his opponents say will be impossible to fund without massive tax rises.
However, some observers say it would be churlish to try to extrapolate from New York’s election to the US as a whole.
“It’s not a fair snapshot of the country,” says David Greenfield, head of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty and a former Democratic member of the New York City council.
“Most of the country is purple, but New York City is the bluest city in a deeply blue state.”
The circumstances of this year’s election are also highly unusual, leaving New Yorkers much more receptive to the overtures of an upstart politician with near-zero name recognition than they might have been in previous races.
Mamdani was, until recently, running against two establishment Democrats badly tarnished by scandal.
Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor, became a hate figure for many in New York after agreeing to help Trump with his crackdown on illegal immigrants in exchange for having federal corruption charges against him dropped.
Under a cloud, he bowed out of the Democratic primary in April and then quit the mayoral race for good in September.
Meanwhile, Cuomo, who resigned as New York governor in 2021 amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment, faced off against Mamdani in the primary, was soundly beaten by him and is now running as an independent.
“The dynamics [of this race] are very unique and are unlikely to be emulated elsewhere,” says Dilemani, the political strategist.
“So I’d caution anyone from drawing too many conclusions.”
Meanwhile, Mamdani has been working hard since the primary to broaden his appeal and prove to New Yorkers that he is no firebrand, assiduously courting constituencies that were initially hostile to his campaign such as big business and Wall Street.
He initially scared the moneyed elite by promising to raise taxes on New York’s wealthiest residents and businesses, proposing a 2 per cent tax on incomes over $1mn that would generate $4bn in tax revenue, and an increase in the state’s corporate tax rate to 11.5 per cent — the same level as in neighbouring New Jersey — producing about $5bn annually.
But since the primary, “his message has become much more nuanced”, says Kathryn Wylde, head of Partnership for New York City, an advocacy group representing some of the city’s biggest private-sector employers.
Wylde played a key role in helping Mamdani build bridges with the business community.
In July she organised two get-to-know-you sessions for the candidate with 400 chief executives and business leaders — “a mostly polite but very sceptical group”.
Those went exceptionally well, she says.
“He convinced them that his focus wasn’t on socialising their businesses or defunding the police,” she says.
In the end, they all agreed with Mamdani on one thing — “that the city has become too expensive for talent and business investment” — and that something needed to be done about it.
Mamdani also impressed his interlocutors by ruling out any “ideological litmus test” for his administration, and stressing that he is not wedded to raising taxes: these could be replaced by spending cuts in other areas or technology to make government run more efficiently.
“He told them I know what I want to get done but I’m wide open on how to do it,” she says.
However, many on Wall Street remain sceptical.
In July, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon described Mamdani’s policy proposals as “ideological mush”. Financiers such as Third Point founder Daniel Loeb, billionaire Ronald Lauder and Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Pacs opposed to Mamdani’s candidacy.
Mamdani has also had mixed success in his efforts to win over the Jewish community.
He has said that antisemitism has “no place” in the city and said he would discourage use of the term “globalise the intifada”.
But last month more than 850 rabbis and cantors from across the US signed an open letter opposing his candidacy, saying his rhetoric on Israel would “encourage and exacerbate hostility towards Judaism and Jews”.
New York’s near 50,000-strong police force has also been subjected to a charm offensive.
Over the summer he met a large group of rank-and-file police officers in a closed-door session, during which he apologised for the June 2020 tweet.
He has also said he intended to ask Jessica Tisch to stay on as New York police commissioner if elected.
Tisch, a billionaire heiress who was appointed by Eric Adams, has been a bugbear for some on the far left, despite her wider reputation for competence and professionalism.
By keeping her on, Mamdani signalled that he “wants the best and brightest”, says Wylde.
“Diverse viewpoints. It’s the Team of Rivals concept.”
His lack of government experience remains a vulnerability.
In the second TV debate on October 22, Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, told him his “résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin”.
Cuomo said he had “never had a job”, and would struggle to run a city with 300,000 employees and a $115bn budget.
He would also be no match for Trump who “thinks he’s a kid”, the former governor added.
Mamdani himself has brushed off that criticism.
“What I don’t have in experience I make up for in integrity,” he said in one debate.
Turning to Cuomo he added: “And what you don’t have in integrity you could never make up for in experience.”
Mamdani remains a tough sell to many moderates.
But there is no doubting his ability to connect with groups that Democrats have lost touch with — young and working-class voters and ethnic minorities — and who will be crucial to its hopes of regaining control of the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms.
Their enthusiasm was on full display at last month’s rally in Washington Heights, held in a famous vaudeville and movie house built in 1930 that was filled to capacity with volunteers and fans.
“Fundamental change only comes from the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future,” Mamdani said.
“Together, that is exactly what we have done.”
Among the attendees was Ergene Kim, a recent arts graduate.
“Since the elections last year there’s been a lot of cynicism and pessimism,” she says.
“A lot of my friends want to leave the country.”
Mamdani, a “symbol of change and optimism”, was turning the mood around.
“It would be a huge symbolic victory for the left in this country if he wins,” she adds.
“It will show we’re still fighting. It will show we’re still here.”
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