New York City speaks
FOR an entire generation, the most enduring image of New York City (NYC) has been the sight of the Twin Towers being hit by planes on Sept 11, 2001.
The spectre of that disaster has haunted the city in all kinds of palpable and impalpable ways. One of the latter has undoubtedly been the undercurrent of Islamophobia that has cast a pall over the skyscrapers and streets of New York. Muslims have been suspected, profiled on the streets, attacked on subways, vilified and pilloried. So have the causes related to Muslims. A prime example has been how students protesting against the genocide in Gaza have been hunted down and prosecuted.
On Tuesday, however, the city appeared to finally turn the page. Following a ranked-choice election, a 33-year-old Muslim immigrant, the son of a professor and a filmmaker, became the Democratic Party’s nominee for mayor of NYC. The win is historic in many ways, Zohran Mamdani is set to be the youngest mayor, the first Muslim American mayor, the first immigrant mayor, and the first mayor who has won on a Democratic-socialist platform.
Unlike the rest of the Democratic Party, which has stayed quiet on Gaza, Mamdani has openly and repeatedly condemned the genocide. More importantly, Mamdani has an openly socialist agenda that pledges to help the city’s middle class — crushed by the affordability crisis — by promoting city-owned grocery stores, free childcare and freezing rents for those struggling to live in the city
The chances that he will go from mayoral candidate to mayor in the election in November are high. New York is a Democratic city and the candidate who wins the Democratic primary usually goes on to win the city-wide race in the mayoral election. In the run-up to the election, most polls predicted that Mamdani’s opponent, former governor Andrew Cuomo, would win the primary.
This did not happen, and around midnight on the day of the election Cuomo conceded to Mamdani, whose vote counts were ahead by eight points. Mamdani’s other opponent, current NYC mayor, Eric Adams, has faced challenges of his own. Even though he has vowed to run as an independent, his indictment on corruption charges and the fact that he was pardoned by President Donald Trump would have consequences even if he were to run against Mamdani as an independent.
This does not, of course, mean that the road ahead is easy or entirely clear. Mamdani’s support among the younger voters, South Asian and East Asian immigrants, as well as in middle-class neighbourhoods of the city allowed him to raise the maximum $8 million that candidates are permitted in an election. However, his opponents can spend large amounts to attack him.
This was evident in the run-up to the voting, when former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg funded the main attack advertisements against Mamdani. These ads focused on painting Mamdani as an extremist, mostly owing to his open and unapologetic support for Muslim and Palestinian causes. For his part, Mamdani’s ads were positive and colourful and sought to mobilise the diverse population of America’s largest city to finally vote for definitive change.
Another reason why Mamdani’s win has been shocking is that NYC is also home to the largest population of American Jews in the country and one of the largest outside the state of Israel. Mamdani’s openly anti-Zionist stance has irked many in this community. His win has shocked the many rich, pro-Zionist political donors and groups in the city. It is very likely that they will use their money to try and bring down Mamdani’s candidacy to thwart the history-making moment that otherwise would have seen a Muslim immigrant as mayor of America’s largest city in terms of population.
One of the main reasons why Mamdani’s win has been shocking is that NYC is home to the largest population of American Jews in the country.
So far, Mamdani’s campaign has been able to absorb all of these attacks. One reason for this is that his win is rooted in the strong foundation of grassroots organisation among the Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Arab communities that make up a solid vote bank in Queens, where Mamdani is from.
These communities now have decades of experience in organising and dealing with Islamophobic attacks that paint their leaders as terrorists — in fact, anything even remotely linked with Islam — as inherently extremist. Mamdani’s win suggests that even the general population of NYC is fed up of these attacks and of being saturated with the same old Islamophobic propaganda that has been flung around to taint each and every Muslim American candidate for just about anything.
As important as this is the courage that Mamdani has so far shown in espousing a Democratic-socialist agenda. Average rents for a two-bedroom apartment in NYC are often upwards of $5,000, creating a crisis in which the city’s middle class find themselves facing crushing inflationary costs. Crime has risen in the city and the subways have become unsafe and prone to attacks by the mentally ill and homeless, who have no place to go. Women especially feel unsafe in the city’s public transport system, which was once NYC’s pride.
Mainstream Democrats have shied away from proposing solutions to these problems, just as they have turned their back on rising Islamophobia and the increasing harassment of migrants and undocumented people. Mamdani’s win suggests that Democratic voters are eager to move farther left instead of centre, which has been the party’s preference at the national level.
At the same time, while a win for Mamdani is probable, it is not a given. Many months lie between now and November, and Mamdani’s enemies are formidable. However, in having come this far and proving so many people wrong, Zohran Mamdani has shown that change is possible even in a city, that has for quite long now treated Muslims as suspects.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2025