Zohran Mamdani

Based on Wikipedia: Zohran Mamdani

The Rapper Who Became Mayor

In November 2025, New York City elected a mayor unlike any it had seen before. Zohran Mamdani was thirty-four years old, making him the youngest person to lead America's largest city since 1892. He was the city's first Muslim mayor. Its first Indian American mayor. And perhaps most unusually for someone about to govern eight million people, he had once been nominated for "Rookie of the Year" at the Ugandan Hip Hop Awards.

This is a story about affordability and identity, about democratic socialism finding its footing in American politics, and about how a man who rapped under the name "Young Cardamom" upset Andrew Cuomo—a former three-term governor and political dynasty heir—to win the Democratic primary in what observers called a major political earthquake.

A Childhood Spanning Three Continents

Zohran Kwame Mamdani was born on October 18, 1991, in Kampala, Uganda. His middle name, Kwame, was given to him by his father in honor of Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana and a towering figure in African independence movements. The name choice tells you something about the household he grew up in.

His parents were both accomplished figures in their own right. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a prominent postcolonialist academic—someone who studies how colonial rule shaped and continues to shape societies long after the colonizers left. His mother, Mira Nair, is the acclaimed filmmaker behind movies like Monsoon Wedding and Mississippi Masala.

The family's roots stretch across the Indian subcontinent and East Africa in ways that reflect the complex history of migration in that region. His father is a Gujarati Muslim, born in Mumbai but raised in Uganda. His mother is a Punjabi Hindu from Odisha. His paternal grandparents were born in what is now Tanzania, part of the Indian diaspora that spread across Southeast Africa during the British colonial period—merchants, traders, and professionals who built communities far from their ancestral homeland.

When Zohran was five, the family moved to Cape Town, South Africa. His father had been appointed head of African studies at the University of Cape Town, and for three years young Zohran attended school in a country still in its infancy as a democracy. Apartheid—the brutal system of racial segregation that had governed South Africa for decades—had only officially ended in 1994. Zohran arrived in 1996.

"It taught me what inequality looks like up close," he later said of those years. "That justice has to be more than an idea; it has to be material."

Material justice. The phrase would become central to his political identity.

Growing Up Privileged in New York

At seven, Zohran moved with his family to New York City, settling in Morningside Heights—a neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side, home to Columbia University and some of the city's most expensive real estate. He would later describe his upbringing with unusual candor for a politician.

"I never had to want for something," he acknowledged, "and yet I knew that was not in any way the reality for most New Yorkers."

As a child, he was often present on his mother's film sets, where crew members gave him a rotating cast of nicknames: "Z," "Zoru," "Fadoose," and perhaps most prophetically, "Nonstop Mamdani."

His political instincts showed early. At the Bank Street School for Children, he ran as the independent candidate in a middle school mock election. His platform? "Equal rights, anti-war policies that proposed spending money on education rather than the military." This was during the early 2000s, when the United States was ramping up military spending after September 11th. He won.

In 2003, when Zohran was twelve, the family returned to Kampala for a year while his father took a sabbatical to work on a book titled Good Muslim, Bad Muslim—an academic examination of how Western powers have historically categorized Muslims as either acceptable allies or dangerous enemies. His paternal grandparents and aunt, still living in Uganda, helped look after him.

The Bronx High School of Science and Beyond

Back in New York, Mamdani attended the Bronx High School of Science, one of the city's elite specialized public high schools. Admission requires passing a notoriously competitive exam. Alumni include eight Nobel laureates.

At Bronx Science, Mamdani co-founded the school's first cricket team—a nod to his South Asian and East African heritage, where cricket is a passion inherited from British colonialism. He also ran for student body vice president. He lost that one.

He then enrolled at Bowdoin College, a small liberal arts school in Brunswick, Maine. There, he majored in Africana studies—an interdisciplinary field examining the history, culture, and politics of Africa and the African diaspora. He co-founded the school's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization advocating for Palestinian rights. He wrote a regular column for the campus newspaper called "Kwame's Column," covering politics, culture, and sports.

In January 2014, months before graduating, he co-authored an op-ed in the Bangor Daily News urging Bowdoin to join the American Studies Association's academic boycott of Israel. The boycott movement—part of a broader campaign known by its initials BDS, for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions—remains one of the most contentious issues in progressive politics. Mamdani staked out his position early.

Young Cardamom Takes the Stage

After college, Mamdani did something unexpected for someone with his academic pedigree: he became a rapper.

Under the stage name Young Cardamom, he collaborated with his best friend, a Ugandan rapper named HAB (Abdul Bar Hussein), whose family origins trace to South Sudan. Together, as Young Cardamom & HAB, they created music that was deliberately, aggressively local. Their first song was about chapati—an Indian flatbread that, through migration and cultural exchange, has become a staple of Ugandan cuisine.

The chapati wasn't a random choice. It was a symbol of how cultures blend and transform, how something can be both Indian and Ugandan at once. The duo rapped in a mix of languages: Nubi (a creole language spoken in parts of East Africa), Luganda (the most widely spoken language in Uganda), Swahili, and English. The polyglot approach served a dual purpose: it created a distinctly Ugandan sound rather than a copy of American hip-hop, and it conveyed that Ugandans with roots in other countries—like Mamdani himself—are fully Ugandan.

Their music tackled social issues: corruption, what Mamdani called "black and brown relations," and the ongoing effects of colonialism. They performed at the Nyege Nyege festival, one of East Africa's largest music events. They were nominated for Rookie of the Year at the inaugural Ugandan Hip Hop Awards.

Then Hollywood came calling—or rather, his mother did.

Mira Nair was making Queen of Katwe, a Disney film about a young chess prodigy from the slums of Kampala. She tapped her son to curate and produce the soundtrack. The work earned him a nomination at the 2017 Guild of Music Supervisors Awards. He also co-wrote a song for the film, appeared as an extra, and received a credit as third assistant director.

His mother offered him roles in two subsequent projects: a stage adaptation of Monsoon Wedding and a television adaptation of Vikram Seth's epic novel A Suitable Boy. He turned both down. He had other plans.

The Housing Counselor

Before entering politics, Mamdani worked as a foreclosure prevention and housing counselor in Queens. This is less glamorous than it sounds, which is saying something because it doesn't sound glamorous at all.

Foreclosure prevention counselors work with homeowners who are at risk of losing their homes—people who have fallen behind on mortgage payments, received eviction notices, or are navigating the labyrinthine legal processes that can strip someone of their property. In Queens, Mamdani's clients were often lower-income immigrants.

The experience radicalized him. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say it focused energies that had been building since childhood, since those years in Cape Town watching inequality up close.

"It motivated me to run for office," he later explained, "to address the housing and affordability crisis."

Into the Political Arena

Mamdani's entry into politics came through an unlikely vector: a rapper.

In 2015, he read a Village Voice article about Ali Najmi, a candidate in a special election for the New York City Council. The article mentioned that Najmi was supported by Heems, one half of the alternative hip-hop duo Das Racist. Das Racist had been one of Mamdani's favorite groups. If Heems was backing this candidate, Mamdani figured, maybe this was a campaign worth joining. He volunteered.

That's how political movements sometimes grow—not through grand ideological conversions but through trusted voices saying, "Hey, this person is worth checking out."

In 2017, Mamdani joined the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, commonly known as the DSA. The organization had experienced a surge in membership following Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign and the election of Donald Trump. What had been a relatively small group of leftist activists was suddenly swelling with young people who wanted something more radical than the Democratic Party establishment offered.

Part of what drew Mamdani to the DSA was its pro-Palestine stance, which aligned with his own activism dating back to his Bowdoin days.

He worked on a series of campaigns, learning the craft of electoral politics. He managed Khader El-Yateem's campaign for City Council—El-Yateem was a Palestinian Lutheran minister running in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. He ran the field operation for Ross Barkan's unsuccessful State Senate bid in 2018. He organized for Tiffany Cabán's razor-thin loss in the 2019 Queens district attorney race.

Then, in October 2019, he announced his own campaign.

Taking Down an Incumbent

Mamdani ran for the New York State Assembly in the 36th district, covering Astoria and Long Island City in Queens. His opponent in the Democratic primary was Aravella Simotas, who had held the seat for ten years—five terms.

In New York City, where registered Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans, winning the Democratic primary is often tantamount to winning the general election. The real political battles happen within the party.

Mamdani ran on housing reform, police and prison reform, and public ownership of utilities—a platform well to the left of the Democratic mainstream. He secured the DSA's endorsement, which brought volunteers, small-dollar donations, and organizational infrastructure.

The June 2020 primary was chaotic. This was the summer of COVID-19 and the George Floyd protests, when New York City was still reeling from being the early epicenter of the pandemic. The vote count took almost a month. When the dust settled, Mamdani had won.

He faced no Republican opponent in November. He was reelected without opposition in both 2022 and 2024.

The Democratic Socialist in Albany

In the State Assembly, Mamdani became part of what the DSA calls its "State Socialists in Office" bloc—a group of nine elected officials in New York who operate as an organized faction within the Democratic Party, pushing it leftward.

At the 2023 DSA convention, where he was keynote speaker, Mamdani articulated a theory of socialist electoral politics: "We are special as DSA electeds not because of ourselves; we are special because of our organization." In other words, the point wasn't individual politicians but building a movement that could hold politicians accountable.

As a legislator, he served on nine committees, touching on everything from aging to energy policy. By May 2025, he had been the primary sponsor of twenty bills—three of which became law—and co-sponsored 238 others. Among his accomplishments: helping launch a successful fare-free bus pilot program and participating in a hunger strike alongside taxi drivers.

That last detail is worth pausing on. How many state legislators participate in hunger strikes? It was a signal of the kind of politician Mamdani was becoming—one who saw his role as activist as much as lawmaker.

Running for Mayor

On October 23, 2024, Mamdani announced his candidacy for mayor of New York City. His platform read like a progressive wish list:

• Fare-free city buses throughout the five boroughs
• A rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments
• Universal public child care
• 200,000 new affordable housing units
• A $30 minimum wage by 2030
• Tax increases on corporations and individuals earning over $1 million annually
• City-owned grocery stores—one in each borough—to drive down food prices

The grocery store proposal was particularly unusual. Most American cities don't operate retail businesses. Mamdani was proposing that New York enter the grocery market as a public competitor to private chains, using city resources to lower prices through competition.

For most of the primary campaign, Mamdani trailed in polls. His main opponent was Andrew Cuomo, who had served as governor of New York from 2011 until his resignation in 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations. Cuomo was attempting a political comeback, and his name recognition and establishment connections made him the frontrunner.

Mamdani and Cuomo raised similar amounts of money, but their donor bases looked completely different. Mamdani had far more individual donors giving smaller amounts—a sign of grassroots enthusiasm that doesn't always translate into votes but often signals momentum.

The Upset

A poll taken shortly before the June 24, 2025, primary showed Mamdani had caught up to Cuomo. On election night, first-choice results showed Mamdani with a significant lead. Cuomo conceded that evening.

New York City uses ranked-choice voting, a system where voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their voters' second choices are redistributed. This continues until someone has a majority.

Mamdani's margin grew under ranked-choice tabulation, partly because he and Brad Lander, another progressive candidate, had cross-endorsed each other—each asking their supporters to rank the other second. Mamdani also cross-endorsed with Michael Blake. This kind of strategic cooperation is one way ranked-choice voting can change political behavior, encouraging coalition-building rather than pure competition.

Interestingly, the New York Times editorial board advised voters not to rank Mamdani at all, while also criticizing Cuomo. They seemed to want neither option.

On July 1, after the Board of Elections completed its ranked-choice tabulation, the Associated Press officially called the race for Mamdani. It was widely described as a major upset—a democratic socialist who had held state office for less than five years defeating a former three-term governor.

The Backlash

After winning the primary, Mamdani faced attacks that relied on what observers called racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic tropes. Some critics referenced the September 11th attacks and terrorism—connecting a Muslim politician to violence committed by people who shared nothing with him except religion.

These attacks came from across the political spectrum, sparking debate about the persistence of Islamophobia in American politics nearly a quarter-century after 9/11.

A July 2025 poll captured something of the shifting political landscape. Among Jewish New Yorkers, 43% planned to support Mamdani. Among Jewish voters under 44, that number was 67%. Analysts saw this as evidence of generational change in Jewish American political attitudes, particularly regarding Israel and Palestine—issues on which Mamdani had staked out strong positions since his college days.

However, many Jewish leaders remained critical of him. A December report from the Anti-Defamation League found that about 20% of Mamdani's transition team was affiliated with anti-Zionist organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and Within Our Lifetime. The same organization unearthed antisemitic social media posts from Mamdani's director of appointments, who resigned after the posts became public.

Trump Weighs In

In early November 2025, President Donald Trump—serving his second non-consecutive term—threatened to withdraw federal funding from New York City if Mamdani were elected mayor. The threat was vague on specifics but clear in intent: Trump wanted to signal opposition to what Mamdani represented.

It didn't work. On November 4, 2025, Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City.

What happened next surprised some observers. On November 21, Mamdani met with Trump at the White House. According to a spokesperson, they discussed public safety, economic security, and affordability.

After the meeting, Trump praised Mamdani. "We agree on a lot more than I would have thought," the president said—a remarkable statement given months of mutual criticism. The comment illustrated something about both men: their politics might be opposed, but they shared a willingness to deal with whoever held power.

Building an Administration

The day after his election, Mamdani announced the first members of his transition team. The executive director would be Elana Leopold. The co-chairs included Maria Torres-Springer, a former first deputy mayor; Lina Khan, who had served as chair of the Federal Trade Commission under President Biden and become something of a progressive folk hero for her aggressive antitrust enforcement; and two nonprofit executives, Melanie Hartzog and Grace Bonilla.

For his top staff, Mamdani chose Dean Fuleihan, another former first deputy mayor, as his first deputy. His chief of staff would be Elle Bisgaard-Church, who had been his Assembly chief of staff and then his campaign manager—a sign of the tight inner circle that had brought him from longshot candidate to mayor-elect.

What It Means

Zohran Mamdani's mayoralty officially begins at midnight on January 1, 2026. New York Attorney General Letitia James will administer the oath of office. Later that day, at a public inauguration, he will be ceremonially sworn in by Senator Bernie Sanders—the man whose 2016 presidential campaign had helped revitalize the democratic socialist movement that Mamdani now represents at the highest level of municipal government in America.

It's worth stepping back to consider what his election means.

New York City has had progressive mayors before. It has had mayors who were children of immigrants. It has had young mayors. But it has never had a mayor quite like this: a democratic socialist, a Muslim, an Indian American, a former rapper who made music about chapati and colonialism, someone who participated in hunger strikes and organized for Palestinian rights and built his political career through the DSA.

Whether his policies will work—whether fare-free buses and city-owned grocery stores and a $30 minimum wage will address the affordability crisis that has made New York increasingly unlivable for working-class people—remains to be seen. Governing is harder than campaigning. The mayor of New York City has significant power but also significant constraints: state government, federal government, courts, unions, real estate interests, Wall Street, and the sheer complexity of managing a city of eight million people with a budget larger than most countries.

But Mamdani's victory itself tells us something about where American politics might be heading. A candidate can run explicitly as a democratic socialist, call for policies that would have been considered radical a decade ago, face a barrage of attacks invoking terrorism and antisemitism, and still win—in the nation's largest city, against a former governor with vastly more political experience.

The affordability message, it turns out, resonates. The young voters and immigrant communities that Mamdani courted with Bollywood songs and social media savvy showed up. The ranked-choice voting system that encourages coalition-building rewarded candidates who could work together rather than tear each other down.

At thirty-four, Zohran Kwame Mamdani—the kid they called "Nonstop Mamdani" on his mother's film sets, the rapper who named himself after a spice, the housing counselor who helped immigrants fight eviction—will become the mayor of New York City.

What happens next is anyone's guess. But it will not be boring.