{"id":82592,"date":"2025-12-28T10:15:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T10:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/82592\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T10:15:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T10:15:08","slug":"zohran-mamdanis-journey-to-becoming-new-yorks-mayor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/82592\/","title":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani’s journey to becoming New York’s mayor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before Zohran Mamdani became a household name earlier this year, before he twice<\/a> toppled the Cuomo political dynasty<\/a>, before he was mayor-elect of America\u2019s most important city or even had launched a longshot bid<\/a> for City Hall, he\u00a0was a backbench legislator in 2021 joining\u00a0a hunger strike<\/a> outside City Hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was pretty weak. I think at times, maybe he had some Gatorade, or maybe some broth,\u201d said\u00a0Jabari Brisport,\u00a0a state senator from Brooklyn who ran for office with\u00a0Mamdani, who also has protested for other\u00a0causes: against Israeli policies, for Palestinian rights<\/a>, and against President Donald Trump\u2019s border czar and for immigrants’ rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The issue catalyzing the hunger strike: indebted cabbies<\/a>, sold on the supposedly solid investment of a medallion permitting a driver to pick up street hails, but who were plunged into crippling debt after\u00a0the introduction of Uber and other apps.<\/p>\n

After just over\u00a0two weeks hunger-striking, the cabbies and their allies scored a major victory<\/a> in getting the biggest owner of taxi loans to help restructure the debt, as well as the expansion of a relief program.<\/p>\n

WHAT NEWSDAY FOUNDZohran Mamdani will be inaugurated mayor of New York City on Thursday, promising to focus\u00a0on affordability \u2014 free childcare, fare-free buses, a rent freeze on regulated apartments and\u00a0government-run grocery stores.His disciplined campaign, starting with\u00a0barely 1% support in opinion polls,\u00a0will\u00a0segue into an administration with more than\u00a0300,000 employees and $115 billion budget.When Mamdani is sworn in, he\u2019ll become the city\u2019s first South Asian mayor and\u00a0first Muslim mayor, and the first foreign-born mayor in five decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Mamdani will be inaugurated the 111th \u2014 or possibly the 112th<\/a>, because of\u00a0a just-detected\u00a0record-keeping glitch by city historians \u2014 mayor of New York City.\u00a0He\u2019s promised to channel his past protesting and battling for left-leaning causes into a laser-focus on affordability<\/a> \u2014 free childcare, fast and fare-free buses, a rent freeze on regulated apartments, government-run grocery stores \u2014 that helped catapult\u00a0him to the mayoralty.<\/p>\n

His disciplined campaign, starting with barely 1% support in opinion polls,\u00a0will in days segue into an administration with more than\u00a0300,000\u00a0municipal employees and $118\u00a0billion budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you see is truly what you get, which is so not in the norm for post politicians,\u201d said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance<\/a>, with more than\u00a028,000 members. \u201cI think what motivates him is, he\u2019s deeply caring. He is genuinely a good person who deeply cares about poor people and about those that are oppressed and on the margins of power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani is a democratic socialist<\/a> \u2014 a sharp turn to the left from the incumbent, centrist and onetime Republican Eric Adams \u2014 and has spoken favorably<\/a>, in the abstract, about a key plank of communism:\u00a0\u201cseizing the means of production.\u201d<\/p>\n

His unabashedly left-leaning politics has drawn criticism from centrists, some Democrats, and Republicans who question the wisdom of his proposals, including one to raise taxes on the rich and the biggest corporations.<\/p>\n

“Mamdani is young, na\u00efve\u00a0and inexperienced. He\u2019ll learn on the job, or he won\u2019t. Socialists will share his success and the rest will suffer for his failure,\u201d said the political consultant Ken Frydman, a onetime spokesman for Rudy Giuliani’s mayoral campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani’s agenda faces headwinds: the state must greenlight most tax increases, Gov.\u00a0Kathy Hochul\u00a0is running for re-election in 2026 and has ruled out income tax hikes<\/a>, Mayor Eric Adams is leaving his successor \u00a0a $4.7 billion budget deficit<\/a>, and the\u00a0White House\u00a0has choked off federal funding<\/a> to cities, especially Blue ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani says expanding the social safety net and making the city affordable for the middle class\u00a0is critical to keeping New York a city for more than just the rich. And, in rebutting skeptics, he has cited his own unlikely victory in quoting<\/a>\u00a0his hero Nelson Mandela: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”<\/p>\n

In January, he told Newsday that a key way to prevent New York City residents from moving out to\u00a0suburbs like Long Island was to make childcare free, a plank of his ultimately successful campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we are serious about making the city more affordable for families, or making it easier for people to raise families here, what we need to do is make childcare universal, taking twenty- to twenty-five thousand dollars a year off the backs of working parents,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His rise from Uganda<\/p>\n

Mamdani is 34 years old and married to the artist Rama Duwaji<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mamdani, born and raised in Kampala, Uganda<\/a>, is part of the 38% of New York City\u2019s population that, according to a report last month by the Center for Migration Studies<\/a>, is foreign-born. He and his family \u2014 a filmmaker mother, Mira Nair, and academic father, Mahmood Mamdani \u2014 moved to America when he was 7, and was naturalized in 2018 as a U.S. citizen.<\/p>\n

His mother\u2019s films include \u201cMississippi Masala\u201d<\/a> and \u201cThe Namesake\u201d<\/a>; his father is a Columbia University professor<\/a>, expert at decolonial studies and critic of Israel who, as does his mayor-elect son, calls<\/a>\u00a0for a secular state where all have equal rights, not a Jewish state.<\/p>\n

Since\u00a0Mamdani skyrocketed to popularity in the past nine months, his roots have been a source\u00a0of pride<\/a> \u2014 for Muslims, for South Asians, for immigrant Americans broadly, including on Long Island.<\/p>\n

When Mamdani is sworn in Thursday, he\u2019ll become the city\u2019s first South Asian mayor, first Muslim mayor and the first foreign-born mayor in five decades. (Abe Beame, who took office in 1974, was born<\/a> in London to Polish parents.)<\/p>\n

Mamdani’s\u00a0ascent has also been met with scorn, including\u00a0initially from President Donald Trump, who channeled some voices on the right in musing<\/a> over the summer that Mamdani might not be a legitimate citizen,\u00a0and Trump threatened to arrest and deport him. (In November, the two men met and appear to have come to a rapprochement<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The pronunciation<\/a> of Mamdani\u2019s name \u2014 or mispronunciation \u2014 throughout the election\u00a0became a prism and Rorschach blot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe name is ‘Mamdani’:\u00a0M-A-M-D-A-N-I. You should learn how to say it, because \u2014 we gotta\u00a0get it right.\u201d Mamdani scolded the opponent\u00a0he would go on to defeat, Andrew Cuomo, who had\u00a0repeatedly mispronounced Mamdani\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

In the U.S., Mamdani attended private school until scoring high enough on the ultra-competitive admission test to attend the prestigious Bronx High School of Science, where he co-founded its cricket team which went on to compete in the city\u2019s Public Schools Athletic League.<\/p>\n

That experience, his\u00a0Assembly biography says, \u201cthough not ostensibly a political one, taught him how coming together with a few like-minded individuals can transform rhetoric into reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was at Bronx Science that Mamdani ran for one of his first political offices \u2014 which he did not win \u2014 for student vice president. It was \u201cultimately an unsuccessful run\u201d and his opponent \u201cwhooped\u201d him, he later said on a podcast<\/a>\u00a0in 2017.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u00a0recalled that a social studies teacher told him that a rap-themed campaign video \u2014 he sometimes went by Mr. Cardamom<\/a> \u2014 was to blame for the loss.<\/p>\n

Among his campaign promises then: fresh juice for everyone, using locally sourced fruits,\u00a0and credits for attending after-school games in lieu of gym.<\/p>\n

He graduated in 2014\u00a0from Bowdoin College\u00a0in Maine\u00a0with a degree in Africana Studies with a minor in government and co-founded the school\u2019s first chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After Bowdoin, Mamdani flitted between various passions \u2014 rap, film, writing. He was also a foreclosure-prevention housing counselor to help poor homeowners avoid eviction, and he managed the ultimately unsuccessful state Senate candidacy of Ross Barkan<\/a>, who ran as a Democrat, in\u00a0a Brooklyn district far from solid blue in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the district we were running in was held by a Republican \u2014 and the Democratic primary we had to compete in featured many registered Democrats who were effectively Republicans \u2014 Zohran had to try to sell progressive ideas to an electorate that could be, at times, hostile to them,” Barkan said.\u00a0“He had to be in dialogue, constantly, with voters. Zohran and I knocked many hundreds of doors together and I do believe these kinds of conversations helped shape him. He understood that voters could be persuaded but also had to be met where they were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years later, Mamdani ran, and won<\/a>, a state Assembly seat representing northwest Queens.<\/p>\n

In the run-up to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, and a few days after Trump’s victory in 2024, Mamdani filmed himself talking to Trump supporters in the Bronx and Queens, where he heard the concerns of working-class New Yorkers who had cast their ballots for Trump.<\/p>\n

A year later, Mamdani recounted that experience \u2014 on Fordham Road in the Bronx and Hillside Avenue in Queens, near Trump\u2019s childhood home<\/a>, in Jamaica Estates \u2014 when meeting with Trump at the White House last month.<\/p>\n

\"President<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump meets with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office of the White House on November 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.\u00a0 Credit: Getty Images\/Andrew Harnik<\/p>\n

Still, Mamdani has always been, at heart, a leftist, with sympathy for the Palestinian cause, an advocate for a stronger social-safety net, changes to the criminal justice system, advocacy for tenants, Barkan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI believed he developed his political views when he was much younger. His parents were very influential. I haven’t seen much change, truthfully, from 2018 until today. He was earnest then and earnest now,\u201d Barkan said.<\/p>\n

Back then, even earlier this year, few could have predicted that Mamdani would catapult to the New York City mayoralty, surmounting a dynastic ex-governor and politicians with decades more experience.<\/p>\n

Even some of Mamdani’s\u00a0closest allies \u2014 at first \u2014 didn\u2019t believe it possible for him to win the mayoralty.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was totally a surprise. When he first told me he wanted to do that, I told him he couldn\u2019t win, and it would be a waste of time and money to go for it,\u201d Brisport said.\u00a0\u201cSo, he proved me wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Matthew<\/p>\n

\n\tMatthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.\n<\/p>\n