Zohran Mamdani’s election triumph in the mayoral election in New York has proved to be a bombshell. His resounding victory in the face of stiff opposition from Donald Trump has electrified the immigrant population of the USA and captured the imagination of young Pakistanis, too. The election to elect the mayor of the biggest city in the USA was held on 4 November, and it resulted in a decisive, resounding vote for the young Indian Muslim immigrant, just 34 years old, called Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani polled 50.4% of the votes, and his major opponent, Andrew Cuomo, could manage just 41.6% of the votes, followed by the Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, who could manage only 7.1% of the votes. The mayor-elect of New York City is a young man very proud of his Indian-Muslim origins and proud to represent the most ethnically diverse city in the world.
The most important single reason for his success is certainly his socialist beliefs and his show of sympathy and love for the poor and downtrodden people of New York. His election campaign resembled that of Z.A. Bhutto, with his slogan of Roti, Kapra, aur Makan. Like Bhutto, he dared to challenge the rich and influential segments of society and vowed to work for the homeless and jobless people of his city. The strategy was a spectacular success in the shape of a stunning victory, in the face of stiff competition and his rich and powerful opponents, with the complete support and backing of the powerful people of the country, including the US President Donald Trump.
Zohran Mamdani’s triumph was evident after the 24 June primary, when he trounced the Democratic Party establishment by defeating the former New York governor Cuomo by 56% votes to his 43%. There is no doubt that Mamdani’s socialist leanings resulted in his victory because he focused on the needs and requirements of the working class and dared to challenge the rich and powerful classes, including the all-powerful Zionist lobby in the USA. He did not spare even the establishment within the Democratic Party, but now we have to wait and see if he can deliver on all his election promises. Nevertheless, he has proved his democratic credentials by challenging the oligarchy that has a grip on the power structures of the country.
The young mayor-elect of New York is confident, disciplined, and has a wry sense of humour. He has called for a freeze in house rents and dared to plunge into the freezing waters on Coney Island beach fully clothed, which endeared him to the voters. Of course, his short and impressive social media posts also helped him to win votes.
His entire election campaign was based on specifics and not just vague promises. For example, he put forward specific policy targets like increasing the minimum wage to 30 dollars per hour, free buses, a freeze on house rents, and city-owned grocery stores for cheap groceries.
The Mamdani campaign and the Democratic Socialists of America are trying, and succeeding, in rebuilding this community and solidarity in rebuilding working-class political agency
New York City’s budget for the fiscal year 2026 is approximately $116 to $119 billion, which is roughly twice the annual budget of Pakistan and more than the yearly budget of many countries in the world. The New York City budget is used for housing, education, child care, public safety, and mental health. The city's expense budget is legally required to be balanced, meaning it cannot borrow money to cover its operational costs for city services. Mamdani will have 325,000 people working under him and will spend about $21 billion to educate more than 1.1 million students (the largest public school system in the United States) and will levy $27 billion in taxes.
Mamdani has vowed to tax the rich and pay more to the city, and his fiscal policy has been severely criticised as being impossible to implement. He has promised to raise the corporate tax rate and to levy a 2% tax on the wealthiest 1% of New Yorkers, or those with an annual income of more than $1 million.
Mamdani’s election campaign was a masterpiece and a state-of-the-art strategy. He had over 45,000 volunteers in the primary, which mushroomed to 87,000 volunteers during the election. This was the greatest grassroots campaign ever seen in the history of New York City and of America.
Mamdani won his election to the New York Assembly with the full support of New York’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which he has been an active member. Teachers, municipal employees, Teamsters, and service workers, New York City’s most powerful organisations, all lent support to Zohran Mamdani’s campaign.
During the election campaign, Mamdani bore the brunt of vicious attacks by Donald Trump and his billionaire friends and supporters. He was accused of anti-Semitism for voicing support for Palestine and criticism of the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. He was also called inexperienced and naive to be the mayor of New York. His socialist agenda was trolled, criticised, and condemned by the Trump camp.
His rich and powerful opponents spent millions of dollars on advertisements in the media to ridicule and criticise Mamdani and his socialist programme. In both the primary and the general election, Mamdani reshaped the electorate, bringing hundreds of thousands of non-voters to the polls—from young people to left-behind immigrant communities. For the first time, the electorate who came out to vote actually reflected the city’s demographics, rather than being predominantly older homeowners.
Mamdani also built a coalition based on class, winning the city across races, powered by lower-income renters and public transit users who make the city run, while losing among wealthy liberals and conservatives alike. But the most important number from Mamdani’s campaign is 100,000. That’s the number of people who actively volunteered for the campaign, knocking on doors, talking to their neighbours and co-workers. That’s one in every ten people who even voted for Mamdani.
They recognised politics as a living, breathing act of being in community, beyond just showing up to tick a box every few years. This has been foreign in this country for decades, but the Mamdani campaign and the Democratic Socialists of America are trying, and succeeding, in rebuilding this community and solidarity in rebuilding working-class political agency.