Zohran Mamdani wows New York – what did the mayoral candidate get right?

“It’s an awkward moment to be an American billionaire,” says The Times. Zohran Mamdani, who has just won the Democratic candidacy to become the next mayor of New York City, is calling for their extinction. “I don’t think we should have billionaires,” he told NBC News. Even the merely wealthy are in his crosshairs. Mamdani, 33, plans to partly fund a radical raft of pledges – including a rent freeze and a scheme for government-run grocery stores – by raising income taxes on New York’s millionaires by two percentage points.

As a progressive Muslim immigrant, the young firebrand bills himself as “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare”. Yet, just a few months ago, few people outside the district of Queens he represents had even heard of Mamdani, says The Economist. His unexpected victory over former state governor Andrew Cuomo has “delighted” fellow travellers, but “scared the living daylights out of many well-heeled New Yorkers”. Although unabashedly left-wing (he belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America, an activist group that believes “working people” should run things), the former rapper’s most effective calling card is his likeability. His success isn’t “primarily about his ideology. It’s about his talent as a new media-savvy politician,” says Jesse Arm of the Manhattan Institute think tank. Some compare Mamdani’s approachability to that of Ed Koch, a charismatic mayor in the 1970s and 1980s. “New Yorkers deserve a mayor who they can see, they can hear, they can even yell at,” he says.

It’s easy to understand the frustration of Mamdani’s opponents, says The New Yorker. “Most have spent years carefully plotting their mayoral runs, building their resumes, political connections and fund-raising networks. Now the kid with the nice eyebrows is running circles around them.” Mamdani’s opponents have tried to nail him for his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict and “tried to make him a bogeyman”. Indeed, the Trump administration has “raised the prospect of stripping Mamdani of his US citizenship” as part of a crackdown on foreign-born citizens, says The Guardian.

MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up

Born in Kampala, into an intellectual Ugandan Asian family, Mamdani arrived in New York at the age of seven, grew up in an artistic, radical circle, and became an American citizen only in 2018. He credits his parents for providing him with a “privileged upbringing” – he was educated privately at the Bank Street School for Children in Manhattan (a redoubt of New York’s progressive elite) before attending the Bronx High School of Science and later Bowdoin College in Maine, graduating in 2014 with a degree in Africana Studies. Before he entered politics in 2020 – when he was elected to the New York State assembly – Mamdani “dipped his toe into hip-hop”, under the name of “Mr Cardamom”, says The Economist. He was not successful. He then put in a stint as “a foreclosure-prevention counsellor” in Queens. He recently married artist Rana Duwaji, whom he met on dating app Hinge.

Can Zohran Mamdani become New York's mayor?

Even those fully supportive of Mamdani’s politics might baulk at his lack of experience. But if he beats his Republican rival – Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels – in November, he will become the first Muslim mayor in New York City’s history, as well as the youngest and the first immigrant in decades. “More importantly, he will be the first political star of the left to emerge during Trump’s second presidency.” Mamdani is “the sort of refreshing politician that Democrats have been looking for as an answer to the Visigothic vim of the Maga movement”. But Republicans may be just as delighted by his victory as progressives are. Mamdani is “a 100% communist lunatic”, says Trump. Let’s see if New Yorkers agree.

This article was first published in MoneyWeek's magazine. Enjoy exclusive early access to news, opinion and analysis from our team of financial experts with a MoneyWeek subscription.