Five Boroughs and a Socialist: Zohran Mamdani’s Challenge to the Democratic Party
On July 1st of this year, Zohran Mamdani emerged from the primary election as the Democratic nominee to become mayor of New York City — a massive upset win over Andrew Cuomo, former governor of the state. In the months leading up to the November election, he’s continued to solidify his base in younger voters spanning diverse backgrounds.
Mamdani isn’t a seasoned politician like his peers, having only served as a state assemblyman, but he has accumulated the attention of nationwide supporters. Mamdani has come under extreme fire not just for his policy prescriptions, which have been described by leaders of both political parties as lunacy and communistic, but also for his place in the country. Born in Uganda and naturalized in 2018, Mamdani has faced claims of illegitimate citizenship from prominent Republicans. Tennessee Republican Representative Andy Ogles even posted a call to deport Mamdani on June 26 on X: “Zohran ‘little muhammad’ Mamdani is an antisemitic, socialist, communist who will destroy the great City of New York. He needs to be DEPORTED.”
This rise in attention and Zohran’s rise to the nationally known figure he’s become today has been unprecedented; his campaign announcement in October 2024 was met with little attention. Party-established Andrew Cuomo was the early favorite, having served as New York’s governor for 10 years. One key problem within Cuomo’s campaign was his history: he resigned mid-pandemic due to a flood of sexual harassment allegations and accusations of covering up nursing home deaths due to COVID-19. Regardless of policy differences between the two, Cuomo’s governorship left a bad taste in many New Yorkers’ mouths.
But, despite popular opinion, Mamdani and his new ideas of the Democratic Party didn’t come out of nowhere.
The Rise
Before he assumed the citywide stage, Mamdani had political experience in Albany as a New York State Assembly member, representing Queens. He also established a career as a foreclosure prevention counselor — a post that put him in contact with homeowners facing eviction threats. That vantage point has set Mamdani’s main policy focus: city cost of living reductions through a city-wide rent freeze, provisions of free city buses/metro cards, and universal child care coverage.
Those policies embody modern socialism, which he embraces: Mamdani openly calls himself a democratic socialist and has public endorsements from the NYC Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) listed front and center on his website. So even though the image of Mamdani as an underdog is easy to paint, Mamdani expected the uphill climb he’d have to take.
The rise of socialism, and the attraction to leftist politicians (New York Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez being a prime example) didn’t come out of nowhere. A 2025 poll by the Cato Institute revealed 62% of young people between the ages of 18-29 have a favorable view of socialism.
Despite Cuomo’s notoriety, both good and bad, and strong support from top Democrats, Mamdani achieved a clear victory in the first round, defying expectations with the support of a young batch of voters. Cuomo took a traditional approach, focusing on his experience and connections within the party. However, his past liabilities kept resurfacing, and his moderate stance seemed out of touch, especially for New Yorkers experiencing soaring housing prices. In contrast, Mamdani presented real solutions to the problems New Yorkers experience every day. So, for people spending most of their earnings on rent and childcare, the decision was simple.
Again, Mamdani is untraditional. He doesn’t fit the partisan mold, and his priorities are uniquely personal — unlike Cuomo’s housing plan that was allegedly generated by ChatGPT, he hasn’t been forced into them by federal-level leadership and legislative changes. There’s an understanding that New York City’s people can’t stay on the path that Cuomo’s ilk has led them down. In a nation where things continue to get more expensive and more arduous day by day, it’s no wonder that Mamdani’s radical policies are seen by New Yorkers as the only way forward.
Breaking the Mold
As for Mamdani’s lack of past political experience… Well, the demographic of young people who carried him to victory sees that as a plus. Mamdani is viewed as unlike other politicians and as less corrupted by the system than Cuomo. Additionally, he has not been jaded by party politics and donors. In fact, the very characteristics that make Mamdani surprising to the commentators are the things that made him victorious in the primary: demonstrating the power young people and new political voices really have.
One possible reason why Mamdani breaks the mold is that he will never be President: born in Kampala, Uganda, Mamdani does not meet the constitutional requirement of being a US-born citizen for presidential eligibility. Most Democratic politicians with national ambitions often make decisions with an eye on both local and national electability. Governors and senators who harbor presidential aspirations understand the scrutiny they will eventually face in battleground states such as Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. This prospect often steers politicians away from more progressive edges. Former (and potentially future) presidential candidate Kamala Harris, for instance, recalibrated her support for Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation during her 2020 campaign after encountering pushbacks from moderate electorates.
Mamdani’s limit from the presidency paradoxically has allowed him to be exempt from this pressure: the highest office available to him is the mayor of New York City. Even considering future hopes of a federal legislative position as a senator or representative, Mamdani would still only need to run (and win) in NYC. Without the need to appeal for a centrist persona for his future campaign, he has promoted proposals that would be seen as perilous for a national candidate, such as his citywide rent freezes and government-run grocery stores. With his experience serving the immigrants and tenants of Astoria and Long Island City, Mamdani possesses an exceptional down-to-earth candidacy. While this appears to connect with his constituency, others in government aren’t so eager to support.
Mamdani’s Opposition
Within the Democratic Party, many centrists have avoided officially endorsing Mamdani, like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who faces pressures from beyond the boundaries of New York, and his policy choices reflect their complacency and fear of moderates. At the same time, the degree to which NYC voters, and particularly youth, are concerned with housing and affordability allows Mamdani’s radical policies to be embraced by his constituents.
Party politicians within the Democratic Party have cautioned that Mamdani’s radicalism is dangerous, serving as a liability to the party in battleground states. Their concern is that his policies challenge the consultant-focused campaigning of the DNC that is seen as required to win support from independents and moderate voters.
A Rising Tide
Despite this pushback, Mamdani’s momentum has continued to build as his network of endorsements has begun to expand to an increasing number of progressive leaders. Recently, even more moderate Democrats are starting to bend the knee: a recent op-ed in the New York Times by New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced her endorsement of him. Hochul joins the ranks of high-level supporters like Mamdani’s former opponent New York State Representative Michael Blake, and national figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, bringing him ideological and partisan validation. All of these endorsements establish Mamdani as the central political figure in New York politics and beyond, but they also help those figures to ride Mamdani’s coattails as particularly influential and popular. New York City Comptroller Brad Lander harnessed this strategy during his own mayoral campaign, with a cross-endorsement between the two progressives in mid-June.
NYC follows a system of ranked choice voting, where voters rank candidates in order of preference. Then, the candidates undergo a system of elimination based on each tier until a majority is arrived upon. Through their cross-endorsement, Lander and Mamdani encouraged their voters to place each other as their second preference, so that, if either were eliminated, their votes would flow to the other candidate. As another progressive, the popularity Lander gained from his support of Mamdani could be harnessed in the future in order to get him into higher office.
In the past 4 months, Lander has been arrested twice for incidents related to anti-ICE protests and activity outside an immigration court. The arrest, rather than distracting from the public’s opinion of him, has garnered attention and manufactured a persona that could potentially take a higher office. Perhaps he’s looking at Chuck Schumer’s seat? Alternatively, his interests could be legitimately rooted in being Zohran’s deputy mayor. Regardless, his partnership with Zohran has elevated his political position.
The point is: Mamdani is the rising tide lifting all progressive boats, and Lander is the first of many to benefit. Other prominent examples include Minneapolis mayor hopeful Omar Fateh and Jersey City mayor hopeful Mussab Ali, who are both taking tools from Mamdani’s campaign.
A New Strategy
One of these tools Mamdani has used to great effect is his skillful use of social media. By leveraging short-form content, he engages younger audiences – the very demographic his policies resonate most with – on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Overwhelmingly, young people today worry that they’ll never be able to afford anything and that they’ll live worse lives than their parents. Zohran, with his snappy Instagram Reels, is their answer. He’s secured an enthusiastic voting base and weaponized their hope to widen his constituency, and there’s a lot more than the charming personality behind the camera.
Mamdani further seeks to realize a successful campaign through heavily emphasizing new voter registration. His campaign focuses heavily on canvassing and grassroots organizing, often with New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America branch.. This strategy seems to have been a major factor in broadening primary turnouts. Notably, in the two weeks preceding the registration deadline of the primary, nearly 37,000 New York voters completed voter registration, compared to about 2,000 during the same period in 2021. Much of this surge came from younger voters, a group that has historically had exceptionally low rates in city elections, with about 11% of voters aged 18 to 29 casting ballots in the 2021 general New York City election, the lowest of all age demographics.
By aligning his policies with the youth’s priorities, Mamdani drew a higher turnout in his favor from a demographic that had previously shown less interest in voting. Thus, the radical politician entered the general election as the candidate best positioned to win.
Mamdani’s ascension signals the strength of his model of leadership. His body of work demonstrates that collaboration among a nationwide Democratic coalition does not need to entail a compromise to the wants of the DNC. Through him, the recurring challenges in housing and costs of living of the rising generation have been met without compromise, and the traditional constitution of party politics has been challenged to respond to escalating demands. Overwhelmingly, young people disapprove of the current status of the Democratic Party and seek change: polling from Yale in spring of 2025 showed that 59% of young people support a progressive path forward for the Democratic Party. Zohran is exactly what the tens of millions of young people in America are looking for: his strong narrative constitutes exactly what they’ve been looking for.
Even as Mamdani’s career is bound by constitutional limits, his influence is not. He is in a unique position that frees him to define his own agenda without diluting his politics for national optics. In this sense, Mamdani sets a precedent of city-level politics that re-envisions the larger political landscape itself, underscoring the influence of younger and more diverse voters.
