‘Democrat saviour’ or ‘commie bastard’: Zohran Mamdani prepares to take on New York

“We love you,” a young woman yelled, punching the air as the frontrunner to be the mayor of America’s biggest city strode by at pace. Sporting a broad grin, Mamdani turned mid-conversation to catch the voice, then pressed on.

Other bystanders leaned in, eager to deliver their verdict on the country’s hottest political star.

“Fuck you, Mamdani,” one man called. “Commie bastard.”

As Mamdani dived down the steps of the 14th Street subway station, half the park was still watching the vanishing entourage.

“Viva Mamdani,” cheered a man with dreadlocks, pulling approvingly on a joint. “He’s the king of New York!”

In less than a year, the 34-year-old Democratic socialist has rocketed from unknown New York assemblyman to the brightest new star in American politics.

Charismatic and articulate, a master of the TikTok soundbite and freewheeling podcast debate, Mamdani trounced his nearest rival, 67-year-old former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, in the June primary with an energetic campaign focused on the cost of living crisis. His victory electrified the New York electorate and reverberated from coast to coast.

Born in Uganda with Indian roots, the son of an Oscar-nominated film director and university professor is now poised to become the first Muslim mayor of New York.

A frenzied, ugly campaign to derail his march into city hall has seen him smeared as “an animal”, a terrorist, a Nazi and a communist as the race nears its climax. With less than a fortnight until polling day on 4 November, however, Mamdani still holds a double-digit lead over Cuomo – now running as an independent – and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.

“What we saw in the Democratic primary, what we’re continuing to see in the general election, is a battle for the soul of the Democratic party right here in New York,” Mamdani told The Observer on the stump last week.

The New York mayoral race rarely makes waves like this, but Mamdani’s ascent to the frontline of US politics has rocked the political establishment on both left and right.

Donald Trump, a New York native, has warned he will pull federal funding from his hometown if Mamdani wins and even threatened to have the new mayor arrested if he blocks the president’s immigration crackdown in the city.

“I’ve always loved New York. I just can’t believe a thing like this is happening … with the communists in charge,” Trump told reporters at the White House last week. “Maybe he'll run for president in four years. You’ll have a communist president. That would be interesting.”

In the Democratic party, still adrift and rudderless since its humiliating defeat to Trump last year, Mamdani’s rise has triggered another round of factional infighting.

To supporters, he is the populist saviour the party has craved since Trump’s emphatic victory cemented the Republicans as the party of the working class and cut deep into traditional Democrat strongholds among Black, Latino and young voters.

Among many centrist Democrats and donors, however, Mamdani’s radical leftwing platform marks a new existential crisis that threatens their very survival and jeopardises hopes of taking back the House of Representatives at next year’s midterm elections. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer and House leader Hakeem Jeffries, both New Yorkers, have conspicuously avoided endorsing their mayoral nominee, prompting a furious backlash from the progressive wing of the party.

In the city that represents the apex of American capitalism, Mamdani has made a raft of revolutionary promises – a four-year rent freeze, city-run grocery stores, free buses and childcare among them. Critics have derided the proposals as unrealistic, even dangerous. Mamdani insists that his bold vision offers a path for Democrats to prove they can stand up to Trump and deliver for the voters who deserted them last year.

“These are not just slogans. These are commitments that I intend to deliver on so that we can show that there is a way to defend our democracy,” he told The Observer. “And that way is by showcasing the ability of that democracy to address the material needs of working-class people.”

He points to the shift towards Trump in nearly every New York neighbourhood last year, led by huge swings among the Latino populations of Queens and the Bronx, fuelled by concerns about inflation and the economy. Yet thousands of the same voters who backed Trump in 2024 are set to elect a socialist mayor a year later.

“We are seeing New Yorkers being priced out of their city, many of whom were even willing to vote for Donald Trump. And what they told me again and again is it was the cost of living that drove them to do so,” Mamdani told reporters last week. “It’s the cost of living that will bring them back here.”

A triumphant campaign stop in Jackson Heights last Monday, where Mamdani distributed sweets to celebrate Diwali, underscored his point. Many who queued up the block for a plate of Indian treats and a selfie with the local celebrity admitted they had voted for Trump last year.

Sukhdev Bawa, the 73-year-old owner of Maharaja Sweets and a friend of the Mamdani family who said he remembers the mayoral candidate visiting the shop as a young boy, said that Trump’s flagship tariff policy had deepened the economic uncertainty.

“Everyone here voted for Trump. I myself did,” said Bawa, a registered Democrat. “But the tariffs are killing us. We expected Trump to fix the economy because he had the experience. Instead, everything is more expensive.”

The chaos sown by Trump’s trade war and the backlash to his migrant crackdown which brought some seven million protesters onto the streets last weekend will be the linchpin of the Democratic campaign at next year’s midterms.

The unresolved generational clash between the progressive and centrist wings of the party will dog the Democrats into 2026. With control of Congress back up for grabs, party leaders and strategists fear that if Mamdani struggles to deliver on his promises in New York, that failure will be hung around the party’s neck. Republicans have already signalled that Mamdani will be front and centre of their midterm campaign.

“He could cost the Democrats the House, because the rhetoric that he’s using will be used against Democrats nationwide,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic strategist and former adviser to President Clinton. “Every time Zohran opens his mouth, he creates another suburban Republican.”

Sheinkopf credited Mamdani with running “one of the most brilliant campaigns I’ve ever seen”, but warned that his inexperience would be exposed by the brutal realities of stewarding the Big Apple, where powerful unions, business giants and stakeholders of every kind vie for control.

“It’s an impossible place to run,” Sheinkopf said. “They seem to think this is a friendship circle. It’s not.”

He added: “The unions are critical, and the presumption is that the unions will love him because he’s a socialist. But when everyone sits down at the table and figures out there’s no money to negotiate contracts, whatever love there is will disappear.”

As the election nears, Mamdani has met privately with business executives, former city leaders and anxious Democrats in an effort to allay concerns and seek their counsel. He has apologised directly to police officers for a tweet he posted at the height of the George Floyd protests in 2020, condemning the NYPD as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety”. He has courted Jewish groups to discuss his lifelong support for the Palestinians and strident criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.

But he has hit back at the latest campaign to smear him as a radical Islamist since he appeared with Siraj Wahhaj, a controversial Brooklyn imam. Wahhaj, who endorsed Mamdani, has opposed homosexuality and was linked to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, but never charged.

For the first time last week, Mamdani’s grin slipped as he addressed the vitriol directed at him. A cartoon depicting a plane with his name printed on it flying into World Trade Centre has circulated on social media, widely shared by rightwing activists.

Mamdani noted that other former mayors had met Wahhaj, and “the only time it became an issue of national attention was when I met with him”.

“That’s because of … my faith and because I’m on the precipice of winning this election,” he said. “Andrew Cuomo joins a list of those who would cheer threats to blow up my car, those who would call me a jihadist.”

New York business leaders have launched a frantic last-ditch spending blitz to defeat Mamdani, pleading with Sliwa to bow out and unite the anti-Mamdani vote behind Cuomo.

Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund investor and Trump supporter, donated $1m to Defend NYC, a fundraising committee dedicated to defeating Mamdani and warning that the Democrat’s plans to raise corporation tax would “destroy the city”.

Sliwa, 71, who sports the signature red beret of the Guardian Angels, a crimefighting vigilante group he founded in 1979, has grown increasingly irritated by the relentless questions about whether he would step aside.

“Well, number one, Ackman is a jerk,” he told YouTuber Nate Friedman last weekend, before eviscerating Cuomo’s record as governor, which saw him resign in disgrace after a string of sexual harassment allegations in 2021. He dismissed the suggestion that his supporters would automatically swing behind the former governor.

“This is the result of the Democrat self-destruction,” Sliwa said of Mamdani’s rise. “So I’m supposed to help them? … Get your own votes.”

The three candidates faced off in a fiery TV debate last Wednesday night, their last before polling day. Cuomo and Sliwa frequently ganged up on Mamdani, mocking his lack of experience.

“You’ve never accomplished anything,” Cuomo told his Democratic rival. “You don’t know how to run a government. You don’t know how to handle an emergency.”

Mamdani attacked Cuomo as “Donald Trump’s puppet”, warning that the former governor would roll over for the president.

“He wants Andrew Cuomo to be the mayor,” Mamdani said of Trump. “Not because it will be good for New Yorkers, but because it will be good for him.”

After weeks of pressure from the Democratic base, Jeffries issued a last-minute endorsement of Mamdani on Friday, the eve of early voting. 

Jeffries, who represents a Brooklyn district that Mamdani won by 20 points in June, acknowledged the “areas of principled disagreement” between them. But he called on Democrats to unite against the threat from Trump and back the party’s chosen candidate. 

Jeffries said in a statement: “Zohran Mamdani has relentlessly focused on addressing the affordability crisis and explicitly committed to being a mayor for all New Yorkers, including those who do not support his candidacy.”

Photograph by Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images