Wo i’s Zohran Mamdani?

Zohran Mamdani, a 33 -year -old assembly, should be the Democratic candidate for the mayor of New York, making history as the first Muslim candidate.

With 95% of the counted voting bulletins, Mamdani heads former governor Andrew Cuomo – who resigned from this position after allegations of sexual harassment in 2021 – 43% at 36% in the Democratic primary, powered by a wave of base support and a daring left platform.

“Tonight we have made the story,” Mamdani told supporters. “I will be your Democratic candidate for the mayor of New York.”

New York’s classified voting system means that the final result could still evolve, but the example and momentum of Mamdani seem decisive.

His victory over Cuomo – once a dominant figure in state policy – marks a moment of watersheds for progressives and signals a change in the city’s political gravity.

Born in Kampala, Uganda, Mamdani moved to New York with his seven -year -old family. He frequented the Bronx High School of Science and then obtained a diploma in Africana Studies at the Bowdoin College, where he co -founded the section of the student campus for justice in Palestine.

The millennial progressive, who is said to be the first Muslim and South-Asian mayor in the city, looked into its roots in a diversified city. He has published a campaign video entirely in Ourdou and mixed in clips of Bollywood films. In another, he speaks Spanish.

Mamdani and his wife, the Syrian artist based in Brooklyn, 27, Rama Duwaji, met on the Hinge meetings application.

His mother, Mira Nair, is a famous director and her father Professor Mahmood Mamdani, teaches Columbia. Both parents are Harvard alumni.

Mamdani presents himself as a candidate of people and an organizer.

“While life has taken its inevitable turns, with detours in cinema, rap and writing”, reads its profile of the State Assembly, “it was always organized which guaranteed that the events of our world would not lead it to despair, but to action.”

Before entering politics, he worked as a housing advisor, helping the low -income owners of Queens to fight against expulsion.

He also made his Muslim faith a visible part of his campaign. He visited the mosques regularly and published a campaign video in Ourdou on the cost of the city’s cost of living.

“We know that being in public as a Muslim is also sacrificing security that we can sometimes find in the shadows,” he said during a rally this spring.

“There is no one who represents all of the problems I really care about who works for the mayor now other than Zohran,” said Jagpreet Singh, political director of the organization of social justice Drum, at the BBC.

Mamdani said that the most expensive American city voters want Democrats to focus on affordability.

“It is a city where one in four people lives in poverty, a city where 500,000 children fall asleep every evening,” he told the BBC at a recent event. “And finally, it is a city that risks losing what it makes it so special.”

He proposed:

• Free bus service throughout the city
• The rent freezes and the more strict responsibility for the negligent owners
• A chain of grocery stores belonging to the city has focused on affordability
• Universal Childcare for children aged six weeks to five
• Tripled the production of housing stabilized rent

Its plan also includes the “overhaul” of the mayor’s office to hold the owners of responsible goods and massively develop affordable housing permanently.

In his campaign, he linked these policies to highly visual and viral gestures. He plunged into the Atlantic to dramatize rent gels and broke a quick Ramadan on a metro train with a burrito to highlight food insecurity. A few days before the primary, he covered the entire length of Manhattan, stopping for the selfies with the voters.

Although he insists that he can make the city more affordable, criticisms question such ambitious promises.

The New York Times did not approve anyone in the primary of the city mayor and criticized the candidates in general. Its editorial committee said that Mamdani’s agenda was “only unsuitable for city challenges” and “often ignores the inevitable compromise of governance”.

His rent boles would restrict the offer of housing, said the board of directors.

Cuomo and others supervise Mamdani as not tested and too radical for a city with a budget of $ 115 billion and more than 300,000 municipal workers.

Cuomo, supported by the big donors and centrists, including Bill Clinton, insisted on experience, saying: “Experience, competence, knowing how to do work, knowing how to manage Trump, knowing how to deal with Washington, how to deal with the state legislature, these are bases. I believe in the training in the course of alcohol, but not as mayor of New York.”

But Trip Yang, a political strategist, said that “experience” does not necessarily change the situation at this political time. And whether Mamdani wins or not, Mr. Yang thinks that his campaign has made “the unthinkable”.

“Zohran is propelled by tens of thousands of volunteers, hundreds of thousands of unique donors. It is very rare to see a local campaign in New York Democratic Democrat with so much excitement of volunteers and basic,” he said.

“He understands us. It belongs to us. He is from our community, you know, the community of immigrants,” added the supporter of Lokmani Rai.

During a recent Mamdani campaign event in a park in Jackson Heights, one of the most diverse communities in the country, children ran and played on swings, while Latin cuisine sellers sold ice cream and snacks.

In many ways, the scene has perfectly captured the diversity of the city – which many Democrats consider the biggest asset in New York. But the city is not without its racial and political tensions. Mamdani said he had received Islamophobic threats daily, some targeting his family. Police say an investigation into hatred crimes on threats is underway.

He told the BBC that racism is indicative of what was broken in American politics and criticized a democratic party “which allowed Donald Trump to be re -elected” and did not defend workers “whatever they were or where they came from”.

The positions of candidates on the War of Israel-Gaza were also probably in the minds of voters.

Mamdani’s strong support for Palestinians and solid criticism of Israel goes further than most of the democratic establishment. The Assemblyman presented a bill to put an end to the tax exemption status of charitable organizations in New York with links with the Israeli colonies which violate international human rights law.

He also said he thought that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza, is an apartheid state and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested. Israel vehemently rejects the accusations of genocide and apartheid.

Mamdani has been pressed several times by the press in interviews to indicate if he supports the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. In an answer this month, he said: “I am not comfortable to support a state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or something else, I think that in the way we have in this country, equality should be consecrated in all countries of the world. It is my conviction.” Israel says that all religions have equal rights under the law.

Mamdani also declared that he accepted Israel’s right to exist as a state, saying to the late program on Monday that “like all nations, I think that it has the right to exist and a responsibility of respecting international law”.

Mamdani also said that there was no room for anti -Semitism in New York, adding that if it were elected, it would increase funding to combat hatred crimes.

Cuomo, on the other hand, described himself as a “hyper supporter of Israel and proud of that”.

In many ways, the problems faced by New York Democrats are the same ones the party faced in the next elections, and then the primary can be dissected at the national level for what it says about the party – and how it should take on Trump.