New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani surprised many with his decisive victory over former disgraced New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June 24 Democratic party New York City mayoral primary election. Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, ran a positive, media savvy campaign pledging to make affordability in one of America’s most expensive cities, his number one priority.
Mamdani’s win was historic in that he won more votes than any other candidate in the city’s primary election history. Mamdani defeated Cuomo by 12 points in the final ranked-choice vote count, thanks largely to enthusiastic support from young voters. The 33-year-old candidate, who was born in Uganda into an Indian family that emigrated to South Africa, then the U.S. when he was seven years old, has pledged to make bus service free, freeze rents on stabilized apartments, build city-owned grocery stores and offer free early childcare.
While Mamdani has promised to fight antisemitism, he’s criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and its conduct in the war in Gaza — a view that has stoked opposition among some Jewish political groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with John Tarleton, editor-in-chief of The Indypendent, New York City’s free progressive monthly newspaper. Here, he discusses how Mamdani overcame the odds to win the mayoral primary, the obstacles ahead in the November election where he’ll face Cuomo, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa – and the major challenges in governing should he become NYC’s next mayor.
JOHN TARLETON: Zohran ran for a state assembly seat in Western Queens against a five-term incumbent in 2020 — who had the backing of all the kind of traditional power centers — you know, a very intelligent, sincere, savvy, young politician who really got out there and fought for what he believed in. And one of those kind of early moments was he participated in a 15-day hunger strike organized by taxi drivers here in New York, who had essentially been financially swindled by the city and were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and many of them were committing suicide because they seemed to have no hope for their future.
And he not only participated in the hunger strike, but really worked behind the scenes with Sen. Chuck Schumer and others to force our then-Mayor Bill de Blasio to reach a reasonable deal with the taxi drivers and really transform the lives of thousands of these taxi drivers. So he’s certainly been a hero in the South Asian community for years now, where many of those taxi drivers come from.
SCOTT HARRIS: Thank you for that, John. Tell us a bit from your perspective of someone who’s followed New York City politics very closely, the difference that the Democratic Socialists of America, DSA, made in Mamdani’s victory.
JOHN TARLETON: Yeah. The New York City DSA was absolutely essential to his victory. There’s no doubt he’s a charismatic and social media-savvy candidate in ways that we’ve rarely seen before. But at the same time, it was his strengths as a campaigner combined with the electoral juggernaut the New York City DSA has built up over the past decade. Since 2018, they’ve elected nine people to the state legislature, a couple of city council people and also played an important role in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s election to Congress in 2018.
And all of their incumbents have always been decisively re-elected. So you have various neighborhoods where people have become accustomed to voting for a Democratic Socialist and then returning them to office over and over. They’ve built a base of popular support, at least in certain communities. And then in the process of running those elections, both the ones they’ve won and the ones they’ve lost, I mean, they developed just a vast pool of very talented campaigners, canvassers, organizers who were all ready to go at the disposal of the Mamdani campaign, when the organization decided to endorse his run for mayor.
SCOTT HARRIS: John, certainly there will be obstacles ahead for Mamdani in this November’s general election, where he’ll face incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Cuomo, as well as Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa. And of course, there’s going to be a lot of steep opposition that he’s likely going to face if he should win the mayor’s office and tries to implement his ambitious progressive agenda.
JOHN TARLETON: Yeah, we’re heading into uncharted waters here as our first Socialist mayor moves toward claiming the office. So challenges: Well, one thing that he has to his advantage is that as long as Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Adams both remain in the race on third party ballot lines, and with Curtis Sliwa running as a Republican nominee, that means the anti-Zohran vote will remain divided. So I think Zohran’s chances of winning the general election are very high. But once you get to governance, that’s where it’s really going to start to get tricky.
So his ability to get support from city council, from Albany, from the federal government, these are all going to be very tricky propositions he’s going to have to navigate. But I don’t think he’ll be just a passive figure in all of that. I think he’ll try to utilize his media skills to mobilize his supporters behind this agenda. I don’t think either he or DSA will stop organizing, assuming he wins on Nov. 4.
For more information, visit The Indypendent, New York City’s free progressive monthly newspaper at indypendent.org.
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