Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman, is poised to be the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, making history as the first nominee Muslim.

With 95% of the ballots counted, Mamdani leads the Democratic primaries with 43% to 36% for former Governor Andrew Cuomo - who resigned from that post following sexual harassment allegations in 2021 -, propelled by a wave of popular support and a bold left-wing platform.

"Tonight we made history," Mamdani told his supporters. “I will be your Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City.”

New York’s ranked-choice voting system means the final outcome could still change, but Mamdani’s lead and momentum appear decisive.

His victory over Cuomo—a figure who once dominated state politics—marks a watershed moment for progressives and signals a shift in the city’s political center of gravity.

From Uganda to Queens

Born in Kampala, Uganda, Mamdani moved to New York City with his family when he was 7.

He attended the Bronx High School of Science and later earned a degree in Africana Studies from Bowdoin College, where he co-founded the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

The progressive millennial, who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor of Ugandan and Indian descent, has embraced his roots in a diverse.

She released a campaign video entirely in Urdu, mixed with clips from Bollywood films. In another, she speaks Spanish.

Mamdani and his wife, Rama Duwaji, a 27-year-old Syrian artist living in Brooklyn, met on the dating app Hinge.

His mother, Mira Nair, is a celebrated film director, and his father, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, teaches at Columbia University. Both are Harvard alumni.

Mamdani presents himself as a people’s candidate and an organizer.

“As life took its inevitable twists and turns, with detours into film, rap, and writing,” his state assembly profile reads, “it was always organizing that ensured that the events of our world would drive him not to despair, but to action.”

Before entering politics, he worked as a housing counselor, helping low-income homeowners in the New York City borough of Queens fight eviction.

He has also made his Muslim faith a visible part of his campaign. He regularly visited mosques and released a campaign video in Urdu about the city’s cost-of-living crisis.

“We know that presenting yourself publicly as a Muslim is also sacrificing the safety that we can sometimes find in the shadows,” he said at a rally this spring.

“There’s no one who represents the totality of the issues I really care about running for mayor, other than Zohran,” Jagpreet Singh, political director of the social justice organization DRUM, told the BBC.

Mamdani’s cost-of-living fight

Mamdani said voters in the most expensive US city want Democrats to focus on lower prices.

“This is a city where one in four people live in poverty, a city where 500,000 children go to bed hungry every night,” he told the BBC at a recent event. “And ultimately, it’s a city that’s in danger of losing what makes it so special.”

He has proposed:

His plan also includes a “comprehensive overhaul” of the Mayor’s Office to hold landlords accountable and a massive expansion of permanently affordable housing.

During his campaign, he tied these policies to highly visual and viral gestures. He dove into the Atlantic for a rent freeze and broke his Ramadan fast on a subway with a burrito to highlight food insecurity.

Days before the primary, he walked the length of Manhattan, stopping to take selfies with voters.

While he insists he can make the city cheaper, critics question the feasibility of such ambitious promises.

The New York Times did not endorse any candidates in the mayoral primary and was generally critical of the candidates. Its editorial board stated that Mamdani's agenda is "particularly ill-suited to the city's challenges" and "often ignores the inevitable sacrifices of governing." According to the board, his proposed rent freeze would limit the housing supply.

Critics question his experience

Cuomo and others consider Mamdani inexperienced and too radical for a city with a $115 billion budget and more than 300,000 municipal workers.

Cuomo, backed by big donors and centrist endorsements like Bill Clinton, insisted that experience matters: “Experience, competence, knowing how to do the job, knowing how to deal with Trump, knowing how to deal with Washington, knowing how to deal with the state legislature—these are basics. I believe in on-the-job training, but not if you’re the mayor of New York.”

But Trip Yang, a political strategist, said “experience” isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker in this political era. And whether Mamdani wins or not, Yang believes his campaign has done “the unthinkable.”

“Zohran is powered by tens of thousands of volunteers, hundreds of thousands of unique donors. It’s very rare to see a local Democratic primary campaign in New York with this number of volunteers and grassroots enthusiasm,” she said.

“He understands us. He belongs to us. He’s from our community, from the immigrant community,” added Lokmani Rai.

Israel and Palestinian Territories

At a recent Mamdani campaign event in a park in Jackson Heights, one of the most diverse communities in the country, children ran around and played on swings, while Latino food vendors sold ice cream and snacks.

In many ways, the scene perfectly reflected the city’s diversity, which many Democrats consider New York’s greatest asset. But the city is not without its share of racial and political tensions. Mamdani said he has received Islamophobic threats daily, some directed at his family. According to police, a hate crimes investigation is underway.

He told the BBC that racism is indicative of what is broken in American politics and criticized a Democratic Party “that allowed Donald Trump to be reelected” and has failed to stand up for working people “no matter who they were or where they came from.”

The candidates’ stances on the Israel-Gaza war were also likely on voters’ minds.

Mamdani’s staunch support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel put him at odds with much of the Democratic establishment. The assemblyman introduced a bill to end the tax-exempt status of New York charities linked to Israeli settlements that violate international human rights law.

He has also said he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested.

He has been pressed numerous times in interviews by the press to say whether he supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and on one occasion he said, “I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship based on religion or anything else. I think the way we have it in this country, equality should be enshrined in every country in the world. That’s my belief.”

Mamdani has also said there is no place for antisemitism in New York City, adding that if elected, he would increase funding to combat hate crimes.

Cuomo, for his part, has described himself as “hyper supportive of Israel and proud of it.”

In many ways, the issues facing New York Democrats are the same ones the party will face in future elections, and afterward, the primaries can be dissected nationally by what they say about the party—and how should confront Trump.

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