At 11:47 PM on June 24, 2025, Andrew Cuomo walked to the microphone at his campaign headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, the flesh sagging beneath his eyes betraying three years of scandal-driven exile from power. Around him, donors who had written six-figure cheques to resurrect a disgraced political career stood in stunned silence, their investment in damaged goods suddenly worthless. The man who once strutted through Albany like Caesar, who had covered up nursing home deaths and faced over a dozen sexual harassment allegations, could barely force the words through his lips: “The people have spoken.”
The people had indeed spoken—and they had rejected everything Cuomo represented. The former New York governor, married into the Kennedy dynasty through his union with Kerry Kennedy, had tried to buy his way back to relevance with billionaire money and the weight of two of America’s most storied political families. The political titan who had resigned in disgrace had just been crushed by a nobody. A housing counsellor from Queens. A 33-year-old democratic socialist whom most New Yorkers couldn’t have picked out of a police lineup six months earlier.
Across the city in Astoria, that nobody—Zohran Kwame Mamdani, son of Indo-Ugandan exiles, former rapper, sometime housing advocate – stood before a crowd of volunteers who had just rewritten the rules of American politics. They had not merely defeated a former governor; they had obliterated him, turning Cuomo’s 30-point lead into a seven-point rout that would make their candidate the Democratic nominee for mayor of America’s largest city.
This was not supposed to happen. Not in New York, where money and connections have long determined who gets to compete for City Hall. Not to Andrew Cuomo, scion of political royalty, armed with $33 million and the backing of Wall Street’s finest. And certainly not at the hands of an obscure Assemblyman whose campaign headquarters doubled as a community organizing centre in Queens, whose previous claim to fame was battling foreclosure notices in immigrant neighbourhoods nobody else bothered to visit.
Yet here was Mamdani, with 93 per cent of ballots counted, claiming 43.5 per cent of first-choice votes against Cuomo’s 36.4 per cent. His primary victory, powered by 50,000 volunteers and $8 million in small-dollar donations, represented something unprecedented in American politics: the emergence of a candidate who successfully translated policy prescriptions into cultural resonance, whose “exuberant economic populism” became, in the words of campaign observers, “a love song to a city yearning for change.” His victory positions him as the Democratic nominee who could become New York’s first Muslim, Indian-American, and millennial mayor—a symbolic breakthrough that extends far beyond representation to embody resistance against the nationalist currents of Donald Trump’s second presidential term.
Roots of Rebellion
To understand how Mamdani reached this moment, one must look to the inheritance that shaped him. Born on October 18, 1991, in Kampala, Uganda, to Indian parents, Mamdani grew up carrying the legacies of dislocation and resistance. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a renowned Gujarati Shia Muslim scholar at Columbia University, whose work on decolonisation reshaped how generations understood power and citizenship. His mother, Mira Nair, an acclaimed Punjabi Hindu filmmaker, gave voice to diaspora stories through her cinema.
The middle name Kwame, a tribute to Ghanaian revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, was entirely intentional. It was a signal. Mahmood Mamdani’s own life had been a study in resistance: expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin for being Indian and outspoken, he passed through London refugee camps before returning to a post Amin Kampala. His resignation from the University of Cape Town, after white faculty resisted efforts to decolonise the curriculum, led to his landmark book Citizen and Subject, which reframed Africa’s colonial inheritance as one that divided urban citizens from rural subjects.
That defiant, searching spirit filtered down. Zohran’s undergraduate thesis at Bowdoin, on Uganda’s expulsion of Indians, reflected far more than an academic interest but a personal reckoning. It brought him closer to immigrant communities whose lives echoed his family’s. The narrative of loss and return, of exile and belonging, lived in him.
After arriving in New York at age seven, Mamdani came of age in the city’s multitudes. At Bowdoin, he studied Africana Studies and co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine—his politics expanding beyond borders, his compass set to global justice.
From the Streets to the Statehouse
The path from Bowdoin College to City Hall was anything but conventional for Mamdani. After graduating with a degree in Africana Studies, where he co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine, he spent time pursuing an unlikely passion: hip-hop music. Under a stage name he now prefers to keep private, Mamdani briefly tried his hand as a rapper, before concluding that community organizing offered more direct routes to social change.
His transition to housing advocacy proved formative. Working as a foreclosure prevention counsellor in Queens, Mamdani spent his days in cramped apartments with families facing eviction, navigating bureaucratic mazes to keep people housed. The work provided intimate knowledge of the housing crisis that would later inform his policy prescriptions, but more importantly, it connected him to the human cost of policy failures that most politicians encounter only in statistics.
By 2019, Mamdani was organizing tenant unions in Astoria. Renters, once isolated, began to act collectively. They fought back. And in those tight hallways and cramped living rooms, he learned what real power looked like. The power of platforms paled next to the power of listening, of showing up, of helping people see themselves as part of something larger.
His 2020 election to the New York State Assembly at age 29, defeating a four-term incumbent in Astoria’s diverse district, marked his formal entry into electoral politics. The victory, followed by unopposed re-election, established him as a rising star in progressive circles. His legislative record, including securing $100 million for subway service improvements and piloting fare-free bus programmes, demonstrated his ability to navigate Albany’s complex coalition politics while maintaining his progressive credentials.
The 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes offered another proving ground. Mamdani stood with the unions. His face became familiar on picket lines. His solidarity went beyond symbolism and built the trust that would carry him through a citywide campaign.
A City Crying Out for Bold Answers
When Mamdani unveiled his mayoral platform, critics immediately branded it “radical.” The label didn’t seem to bother him. “These policies reflect what working people demand,” he argued in response, “not what billionaire donors or real estate speculators prefer.” It was classic Mamdani—turning a potential weakness into a populist rallying cry.
His comprehensive agenda reads like a progressive wish list: freeze rents on over one million stabilised apartments, eliminate fares on city buses, fund universal childcare, raise the minimum wage to $30 by 2030, and establish city-run grocery stores to combat food inflation. The financing mechanism—a $10 billion tax on corporations and the ultra-wealthy—represents perhaps the most controversial aspect of his platform, prompting business elites to threaten a capital strike.
Mamdani’s housing strategy represents a particular departure from conventional wisdom, shifting emphasis from developer incentives to tenant-owned buildings—a approach he describes as informed by his years of tenant organising experience. “We’re not going to build our way out of this crisis by making developers richer,” he said during a campaign debate, a line that became a signature applause generator at his rallies.
His public safety vision, prioritising what he calls a “Department of Community Safety” over militarised policing, reflects progressive thinking on criminal justice reform but has drawn scepticism from centrists like Mayor Eric Adams, whose 2024 corruption indictment was ultimately dismissed. When pressed on specifics during a contentious radio interview, Mamdani argued that “public safety means people feeling safe in their homes from eviction, safe in their neighbourhoods from violence, and safe in their workplaces from exploitation.”
David Slays Goliath: How the Upset Happened
The mechanics of Mamdani’s campaign victory represent a masterclass in modern political organising. Defying 31 of 32 polls that favoured Cuomo, the campaign leveraged New York’s ranked-choice voting system with surgical precision. A strategic cross-endorsement with City Comptroller Brad Lander, who secured 11.4 per cent of first-choice votes, provided the crucial margin in reallocations that secured Mamdani’s seven-point victory margin.
The ground game was unprecedented in its scope and intensity. Fifty thousand volunteers conducted 1.2 million door-knocks, reaching diverse communities across the city’s five boroughs. The campaign’s ability to mobilise South Asians in Richmond Hill, Latinos in Jackson Heights, Chinese voters in Flushing, and even make inroads among Brooklyn gentrifiers demonstrated sophisticated targeting and messaging. Even in conservative Staten Island, traditionally hostile territory for progressive candidates, Mamdani narrowed the gap to just nine points.
The financial contrast between the campaigns tells its own story. Mamdani’s $8 million, raised from 21,000 small-dollar donors—75 per cent contributing under $100—stood against Cuomo’s $33 million war chest, including a $25 million super PAC, Fix the City, backed by billionaire Bill Ackman, a Trump supporter and Israel advocate. This David-versus-Goliath dynamic resonated with voters increasingly cynical about money’s role in politics.
Cuomo’s campaign, by contrast, seemed to embody everything voters found objectionable about contemporary politics. Heir to a political dynasty through his father Mario Cuomo, who served as governor from 1983 to 1994, Andrew Cuomo relied heavily on name recognition but failed to qualify for public matching funds. His record—hiding nursing home deaths during COVID-19, discrediting over a dozen women who accused him of sexual harassment, and cutting a 2022 gerrymandering deal that aided Republican House gains—made him a symbol of status-quo failure, unable to withstand Mamdani’s populist surge.
When Identity Meets Authenticity
Mamdani’s relationship with New York’s 600,000-strong South Asian community exemplifies his sophisticated approach to identity politics. Drawing on his mother Mira Nair’s Sikh heritage, he engaged authentically with community institutions, speaking Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi at gurdwaras and community events. His support for India’s 2020-21 farmer protests and praise for Kerala’s Communist leadership demonstrated his ability to navigate complex subcontinental politics while maintaining progressive credentials.
His critique of Hindu nationalism, including calling Narendra Modi “the butcher of Gujarat” for the 2002 riots and condemning the Ram Temple consecration as majoritarian oppression tied to the Babri Masjid’s demolition, drew predictable criticism from BJP MP Kangana Ranaut but solidified his standing among progressive South Asian groups like DRUM. This willingness to take controversial positions on international issues distinguished him from conventional politicians who avoid diaspora controversies.
Perhaps no issue tested Mamdani’s political courage more than Palestine. His characterisation of Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” and his support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement became a litmus test for progressive authenticity. His pledge to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—an indicted war criminal—if elected mayor and Netanyahu visited New York represented a direct challenge to the Democratic establishment’s unwavering support for Israel. During a heated March 2025 confrontation with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, Mamdani demanded the release of detained activist Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian-American organizer arrested while protesting weapons shipments to Israel. The moment, widely shared on social media, further galvanized his support among pro-Palestinian groups and cemented his stance as a rare voice of solidarity within mainstream American politics.
This stance contrasted sharply with Cuomo’s offer to join Netanyahu’s defence team before the International Criminal Court, aligning him with establishment Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. Mamdani’s position, amplified through 135 mosque visits during the campaign, mobilised Muslim voters despite drawing antisemitism accusations from Representative Laura Gillen. The defence mounted by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, citing his clear condemnation of antisemitism as a “disgusting and dangerous ideology,” helped neutralise these attacks.
The Hard Part: From Nominee to City Hall
The transition from primary winner to governing will test Mamdani’s political skills in new ways. With the November general election looming, he must first survive what promises to be a bruising campaign against the Republican nominee while managing New York’s complex electoral dynamics. Should he win in November, governing the city’s $115 billion budget and 300,000 employees will require executive experience that his critics, led by Cuomo, have questioned. The New York Post and business elites, alarmed by his tax proposals, may support Cuomo’s rumoured independent run, creating additional political complications.
Federal budget cuts under Trump’s second term, combined with potential state resistance to progressive policies, will create fiscal constraints that may limit Mamdani’s ability to implement his agenda. However, some of his key proposals, particularly the rent freeze, appear feasible through existing mechanisms like the Rent Guidelines Board.
His electoral coalition—South Asians, Latinos, progressive young voters—provides a strong foundation for governance, but maintaining unity while making the inevitable compromises required for effective administration will require careful political management. His consultations with technocrats like Maria Torres-Springer suggest preparation for the practical challenges of potential governance, though media scrutiny and a Republican opponent in the general election will test his campaign from now until November. Should he prevail in November, potential opposition from figures like Eric Adams would test his administration from the outset.
If Mamdani reaches City Hall, he may join the lineage of American progressives who governed boldly: Milwaukee’s “sewer socialists,” Bernie Sanders in Burlington.
“It always seems impossible until it is done,” he said, quoting Mandela. Mamdani has done what many thought impossible. What remains is to prove it was entirely intentional.
Courtesy: The AIDEM