The election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York caps an extraordinary rise for the local leftist lawmaker who emerged from relative obscurity to lead a supercharged campaign for the American megacity’s top job.
Since his surprise victory in the Democratic Party primary in June, New Yorkers have grown accustomed to seeing his bearded, smiling face on television and on the badges proudly worn by his supporters.
The election winner, 34, was born in Uganda to a family of Indian origin and has lived in the United States since he was seven years old, becoming naturalized as a US citizen in 2018.
He is the son of filmmaker Mira Nair (“Monsoon Wedding,” “Mississippi Masala”) and Mahmood Mamdani, a professor and respected expert on Africa, leading some of his detractors to call him a “nepo baby.”
He followed a path paved by other young men from elite liberal families, attending the elite Bronx High School of Science and then Bowdoin College in Maine, a university seen as a bastion of progressive thought.
Under the alias “Young Cardamom”, he entered the world of rap in 2015, influenced by the hip-hop group “Das Racist”, which had two members of Indian origin who played with references and tropes from the subcontinent.
Mamdani’s attempt to break into the competitive world of professional music did not last, with the performer-turned-politician calling himself a second-rate artist.
He became interested in politics when he learned that rapper Himanshu Suri, who performed under the alias Heems, was supporting a city council candidate and joined that campaign as an activist.
Mamdani became a foreclosure prevention consultant, helping financially challenged homeowners avoid losing their homes.
He was elected in 2018 as a legislator from Queens, a melting pot of predominantly poor and immigrant communities, representing the area in the New York State Assembly.
‘Dissatisfied voters’
The self-proclaimed socialist, re-elected three times, put at the center of his campaign the goal of making the city affordable for everyone who is not rich, the majority of its approximately 8.5 million inhabitants.
He has promised more rent control, free childcare and buses, and city-run grocery stores.
Mamdani is also a long-standing supporter of the Palestinian cause, although his positions on Israel (which he has called an “apartheid regime” while calling the war in Gaza “genocide”) have drawn the ire of some members of the Jewish community.
In recent months he has made an effort to openly denounce anti-Semitism, as well as the Islamophobia he has suffered.
Playing the race card, President Donald Trump, who calls Mamdani a “little communist,” denounced him Tuesday as “a proven, self-proclaimed enemy of the Jews” as New Yorkers headed to the polls.
Mamdani is something of an establishment “outsider,” according to Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University.
“He has managed to galvanize support from disaffected voters and others in New York City who are dissatisfied with the status quo and with an establishment that they perceive ignores their political needs and preferences,” he said.
Mamdani, an avid football and cricket fan, recently married American illustrator Rama Duwaji and has harnessed his experience of activism in a strategically coordinated campaign of promotional campaigns and leaflets that he has combined with extensive and often humorous use of social media.
“It’s really kind of a hybrid between a big 1970s campaign and a big 2025 campaign,” said Lincoln Mitchell, a professor at Columbia University.
