Some point to his viral social media clips. Some say it’s the dimples. But Mamdani won with a disciplined campaign across all five boroughs.
Zohran Mamdani wins NYC mayor’s race
Mamdani, 34, will be NYC’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor.
- His winning message offered easily understood ideas for cutting the cost of living.
- Mamdani won segments of the traditional Democratic base, including Black and Latino neighborhoods, that he had lost to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June primary.
- The campaign touted 3 million doors knocked and 90,000 volunteers.
- From the start, Mamdani was seemingly everywhere, and posting about it.
NEW YORK − Some point to his viral social media clips. Others cite his Obama-esque profile, giving young voters something to believe in. Maybe it’s just his dimples.
Zohran Mamdani shocked political and business establishment by winning the Nov. 4 New York City mayoral election as a democratic socialist, leading many to wonder how it happened.
In interviews with allies, strategists and observers, Mamdani, a 34-year-old state assemblyman from Queens, ran a disciplined campaign across all five boroughs, flanked by an unusually large army of volunteers for a municipal race.
His winning message offered easily understood ideas for cutting the cost of living in the notoriously expensive city and his universal outreach helped win over skeptical constituencies.
It’s a dramatic shift from moderate Mayor Eric Adams, who won just four years ago, and a flashback to Adams’ progressive predecessor Bill de Blasio, who ran on addressing economic inequality.
“New York is accustomed to a pendulum swing,” Christina Greer, a political science professor at Fordham University and co-host of the politics podcast “FAQ NYC,” told USA TODAY.
“This is the time time to be bold,” Greer said. “This is the time to try something new, because, clearly, whatever we have been doing is not working, right?”
‘Relentless’ campaign on affordability
Leading up to the June Democratic primary, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, from a storied Democratic dynasty, was the prohibitive favorite to replace Adams, whose tenure had become mired in corruption scandals.
But like de Blasio did 12 years earlier, Mamdani identified the growing crisis of unaffordability as the city’s most pressing problem and grabbed attention − especially from the young and online − by promising to address it.
Housing and child care costs have been rising, contributing to inflation in the New York metropolitan area that outpaces the national average, Gothamist reported. The United Way of New York City found costs have increased 131% across the boroughs since 2000, while incomes have only risen 71%.
State Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, the Brooklyn Democratic Party boss who endorsed Cuomo in the primary, said Mamdani was a “relentless” and “principled” campaigner on cost of living issues.
“Zohran won on an unapologetic working-class agenda,” said Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, which counts Mamdani as a member. “He showed that, by choosing a side between the billionaire class and the working class, you can create a broad coalition of working-class voters.”
The reality is more mixed. In the primary, Mamdani won in many upper-middle class areas and gentrifying neighborhoods while Cuomo carried working-class Black, Latino and white areas. Mamdani, who will be the first Muslim mayor and first South Asian mayor of New York, did better among those communities.
As the Democratic nominee, however, analyses by the New York Times and the nonprofit news outlet The CITY found Mamdani won in most lower- and middle-income precincts on Nov. 4. He had a strong showing across most income levels.
In the general election, Mamdani also won segments of the traditional Democratic base, including Black and Latino neighborhoods, that he had lost to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June primary, when he defeated Cuomo in a remarkable upset.
Showing up around town
From the start, Mamdani was seemingly everywhere, and posting about it.
“He wasn’t cautious,” Democratic strategist Trip Yang said. “He continued doing the things that made him good.”
After Trump won in 2024, Mamdani interviewed New Yorkers in the Bronx and Queens who voted for the president because of the cost of groceries, then told them he was running for mayor. During the primary, he walked the length of Manhattan. He showed up to a Wu-Tang Clan concert in July at Madison Square Garden.
That continued into the general election. The Thursday before Election Day, he canvassed taxi drivers after midnight at LaGuardia airport, before eating biryani with them in Jackson Heights, Queens. Hours later, for jummah congregational prayer, his campaign canvassed 210 of the city’s roughly 300 mosques, according to Hamaad Najam, a campaign spokesperson. He later showed up at Brooklyn clubs and in the nose bleeds at a New York Knicks game next to Bronx-native comedian “The Kid Mero,” who has supported Mamdani.
Cuomo, by contrast, sat courtside with Mayor Adams at the Knicks’ opening night. Cuomo appeared briefly to events, as if he were still in the governor’s mansion, despite resigning in 2021 due to sexual harassment scandals. He came often by car, sometimes parked illegally in a city where many don’t even have driver licenses.
Grassroots organizing early
Mamdani was relatively unknown when he launched his campaign to lead the nation’s largest city. The third-term state legislator had polled only 1% in a crowded field.
His outreach began right after he announced his candidacy in October 2024, according to Jagpreet Singh, political director at DRUM Beats, an organization that engages South Asian and Indo-Caribbean New Yorkers. Mamdani had established roots in South Asian and Muslim communities, including from work at Chhaya Community Development Corporation, a Queens nonprofit, where he was a foreclosure prevention counselor and Singh worked on tenants’ rights.
The campaign started early outside of Hindu temples, mosques and weekly street and cultural events, Singh said. By the time other candidates visited, Mamdani had already amassed support. His campaign energized Muslim and South Asian New Yorkers to vote.
Mamdani didn’t just focus on his identity as a Muslim born in Uganda to parents of Indian descent. He focused on his signature three-part platform that people could easily recite or write down, both lovingly and in spite: a rent freeze, free buses and universal child care. (That he can only freeze the rent in rent-stabilized apartments, which are less than half of those in the city, seems not to have dampened the enthusiasm of his supporters in market-rate rentals.)
“He had a clear, compelling message,” Ross Barkan, a political analyst whose 2018 state Senate campaign Mamdani managed, previously told USA TODAY. “People point to his social media and his natural charisma − and I think that all matters − but it was an affordability message. It was very obviously where he stood from day one.”
While Tiktok and Instagram verticals certainly helped Mamdani connect with young people, he also got Millennial and Gen Z voters to show up in real life. The campaign touted 3 million doors knocked and 90,000 volunteers. They quickly fundraised to qualify for the city’s matching funds program, whereby candidates reach a certain fundraising threshold that then gets matched by public dollars. His campaign told supporters to stop donating money and start donating time.
Mamdani previously told USA TODAY, “Younger voters are, in many ways, at the heart of this campaign, and where we are in this moment.”
Winning over the establishment
The night Mamdani won the June 24 primary, Bichotte Hermelyn endorsed him.
Mamdani, she said, campaigned on “regular issues that made people come out, knock on doors, make phone calls, volunteer and invest. And because of that, unlike the other candidates, he didn’t need to be tied to billionaires or millionaires. Everything was grassroots.”
Later, Gov. Kathy Hochul, a moderate facing re-election in 2026, endorsed Mamdani in September, appearing with him at a 10,000-person rally in Queens in October.
Others were more reluctant, but Mamdani gradually won over many of them. He held meetings with business leaders to ease the concerns of wary moderates.
In 2020, he called to “#defundtheNYPD” and said the agency was “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.” He apologized in October to the rank-and-file, preventing that attack line from taking hold, Yang said. When a Nevada man killed Officer Didarul Islam in a Midtown Manhattan mass shooting in July, Mamdani flew back from his wedding in Uganda to console Islam’s grieving family in the Bronx.
He also vowed to keep current Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch in charge of the NYPD. Tisch is a billionaire heiress whose father donated heavily to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican. He has said he wouldn’t cut the police budget and would keep staffing levels the same.
After these signals, he gradually picked up the backing of Democratic stalwarts such as Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the first Dominican American in Congress, who in the primary backed Cuomo, and a late endorsement from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the powerful Brooklyn Democrat.
Mamdani worked with Bichotte Hermelyn, the Brooklyn Democrat, and other Black city leaders to meet with voters, including frequently church stops in the city’s working-class outer boroughs.
Staying on-message, reaching out to everyone
Mamdani is a long time activist for Palestinian rights, who has called for boycotting Israel and refers to its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank as “apartheid.”
But running for a municipal job, Mamdani mostly focused on local issues. At one debate, candidates were asked where they’d visit as mayor. A plurality responded Israel. Mamdani said he’d stay in the city. When specifically pressed about why not Israel, he said he’d visit Jewish New Yorkers where they were.
Mamdani reached out to the city’s diverse Jewish communities. He had difficult conversations with reform congregations in Brooklyn, met with Hasidic leaders, and had four rabbis speak in support of his candidacy.
It was a stark contrast to Cuomo, who also relied on his connections in Jewish communities but did little outreach to Muslims.
Polls found Mamdani lost nearly two-thirds of Jewish voters to Cuomo, who had high support in Orthodox voting blocs.
But Mamdani’s outreach to the Jewish community may still have paid some dividends, as he easily carried progressive neighborhoods like Brooklyn’s Park Slope with large Jewish populations.
Comptroller Brad Lander, the city’s highest-ranking Jewish official who formerly represented Park Slope on the City Council, disagrees with Mamdani on some issues around Israel, but he pivotally cross-endorsed Mamdani in the June primary and campaigned for him in the general election.
“New Yorkers love this city,” he said, “but they can’t afford to stay here.”
Now it’s up to Mamdani to fix it, or the pendulum may swing back again.
Eduardo Cuevas is based in New York City. Reach him by email at emcuevas1@usatoday.com or on Signal at emcuevas.01.