Zohran Mamdani began campaigning to be be Mayor of New York City in October 2024. He was 34 years old, and had lived in New York since he was 7, having been born in Uganda. From the outset, he played things differently to the establishment politicians, and outmaneuvered Andrew Cuomo to win the Democratic Primary on June 24. (Cuomo ran as an independent in the Mayoral election proper.) Mamdani’s campaign was unusual, as he devoted at least as much time and effort to online media as traditional media, and ran on a program of outspoken socialism.
It turned out that, in Donald Trump’s America, there was an audience for that message. There was a massive swing against the Republican Party in almost all votes held in November 2025, with governorships and state seats being won by Democrats in various parts of the country. And in New York City, Mamdani won a mayoral election that had the biggest voter turnout since 1969 – and he was the first candidate to receive more than a million votes since that same election.
Zohran Mamdani is the first Indian-American, first Ugandan-American, first Muslim, first millennial, and second democratic socialist New York City mayor-elect (after David Dinkins), and will assume the office of Mayor on January 1, 2026.
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