My Big-Apple Friends: Are You Ready for Mamdani?
Are You Sure?
If Zohran Mamdani becomes the next mayor of NYC in November, he will have achieved several political firsts.
He will be the first Asian, the first Muslim, the first card-carrying Socialist, and the first crusader for a global intifada to reside in Gracie Mansion.
Oh, and lest I forget, the first up-and-coming ex hip-hop star!
Mamdani’s rise to his current level of political recognition is an amazing, inspiring, only-in-America story.
He was born in Kampala, Uganda, and spent the first six years of his life living there (and later in South Africa) the way educated second- and third-generation Indians live in Uganda and Kenya and virtually any country in which they settle: in safe, upper-middle-class neighborhoods, working assiduously to advance themselves.
Mamdani’s father, Mahmood, was a scholar of Socialist economics. His mother, Mira Nair, worked her way up in the film industry from entry-level assistant, to assistant director, and eventually to becoming the recognized director of several award-winning films.
In his seventh year, the Mamdanis moved to America, where Mahmood took a job teaching at NYU. Ensconced in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the family did what most educated second- and third- generation Indians do when they relocate: They became respected and successful, while preserving a great deal of the best features of their native culture. In the Mamdanis’ case, it included passing on their academic and ideological biases to their son, with a preference for Socialism and the performing arts.
The young Mamdani was educated first at the Bank Street School for Children on the Upper West Side, then at the Bronx High School of Science (one of New York’s most prestigious public schools), and finally at the well-regarded Bowdoin College, graduating with a degree in “Africana Studies.”
As I’ve so far implied, all of that was remarkably unremarkable for a child born into a family like his. But Mamdani’s rise to political prominence after college is extraordinary, considering that he wasn’t granted US citizenship until 2018.
During his high school and college years, Mamdani tried his hand as a performing artist, pursuing a career playing rap music and eventually releasing, with childhood friend Abdul Car Hussein, a song titled “#1 Spice” under the name Young Cardamom, which was featured in Disney’s Queen of Katwe, directed by Mamdani’s mother.
Mamdani was also actively promoting social justice according to Socialist principles, co-founding the first Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Bowdoin.
His Views on Economics
It’s not surprising that the child of an academically respected Socialist writer and professor would lean in that direction. In Mamdani’s case, his political preferences and projects were more a headlong plunge than a tilt.
His stated views on economics are straight out of the Socialist Party textbook, including opposing free markets, state control over the “means of production,” and advocating the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) level of opaqueness on economic issues such as inflation, which, he many times suggested, was caused by price gouging rather than unfettered government spending.
His Campaign Promises
Mamdani’s campaign promises were consistent with his economic theory, which was unambiguously enunciated in the charter of the political party he joined and represented, the Democratic Socialists of America, whose stated purpose is “fighting for the abolition of Capitalism.”
During his political ascension, and particularly in his campaign for mayor of NYC, Mamdani said he would raise $10 billion in new revenue by increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations to fund his social agenda, including:
* Citywide rent freezes and other forms of rent “stabilization”
* Free bus transportation throughout the city
* Free childcare
* Subsidized city-owned grocery stores that will buy and sell at wholesale prices
* Defunding the NYPD and redirecting funds toward “community-based safety and social programs”
* Supporting homeless camps in subways
* Centralized storage and distribution of vital goods
* The downsizing and outright abolishment of prisons
Mamdani is also a big believer in global warming and has argued that somehow going green is “essential to achieving social justice in New York City.” In 2021, he organized volunteers and lobbied Governor Kathy Hochul to prevent the expansion of a gas-fired peaker power plant in Astoria, citing environmental concerns for low-income nonwhite communities.
His Views on Israel, Zionism, and the Holocaust
Mamdani’s views on Israel are not nuanced. He is staunchly pro-Palestine and pro-Iran and has participated in numerous demonstrations opposing Israeli political policies towards Gaza and against US support of Israel.
He has aligned himself with virtually all of the Leftist, neocon, and anti-Zionist stances, calling Israel a colonial occupier and characterizing its governing policies as racist and apartheid and its war against Hamas and the Iranian proxies as genocide against the Islamic people of Gaza and the West Bank. Consistent with that, he has promoted campaigns to boycott Israel.
He has repeatedly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an illegitimate ruler and threatened to have him arrested if he sets foot in NYC. He’s defended phrases like “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea.”
He has even refused to recognize Israel’s “right to exist” and refused to sign a State Assembly resolution recognizing the Holocaust.
Memorable Mamdani Quotes
“We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.”
“Policing is something that does not create safety.”
“The end goal [is] seizing the means of production.”
“We can establish community land trusts to gradually buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership.”
So, Why Is Mamdani So Popular?
And Who’s Voting for Him?
Mamdani’s quick rise to not just city but national prominence as a politician dedicated to dismantling the city’s economy and his unvarnished antisemitism should have made his quest for the mayorship all but absurd.
There is no doubt that one reason for his success is that he is charismatic. He’s intelligent and well-spoken. He presents himself as a moderate and as a nice, thoughtful person. He even looks like a mensch.
A recent survey of NYC voters gives us some idea of who Mamdani’s are.
They are well-born, Ivy League-educated, mostly young people who are relatively wealthy, progressive, and live in Brooklyn. In other words, AOC voters! She endorsed him – and when he won, she wrote this in a post on X:
Your dedication to an affordable, welcoming, and safe New York City where working families can have a shot has inspired people across the city. Billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system. And you won.
What If He Wins in November?
I can’t say.
I think it’s possible that, once installed in office, he may soften his political and social stances when he recognizes how unpopular they are with the wealthy corporations and families that call NYC home. I haven’t found anything in my research to support that, but he’s young and he seems to enjoy his popularity. He’s also intelligent, which means to me that if he wants to be more than just a one-term mayor overseeing a city on its way down, he could modify his views and abort the worst of his political projects.
If he doesn’t – if he takes a note from Trump 2.01 and manages to get his campaign promises put into action – then, as I said, I can see him as a one-time wonder with few prospects for the presidency while he make New York City Not Great Again, crippling the city’s economy by the rapid attrition of its corporate and individual tax base, and bringing back the disorder, dysfunction, and criminality it had sunk into during the 1980s, before Guiliani was elected and instituted the “broken window” policies, ratcheting down the crime rates dramatically and allowing The Big Apple to return to the relative safety and prosperity it currently enjoys.
What would that look like? I like how Nellie Bowles put it in a recent edition of The Free Press:
Those of us who saw San Francisco 2014–2024 know what is going to happen, and all we can do is put on our assless chaps and walk away. The cycle cannot be stopped.
New Yorkers need a couple years of tent encampments in Central Park, 200 more subway stabbings, and a rent freeze that’ll drive prices to astronomical levels.
They need to open a thousand empty government grocery stores. They yearn for Socialism. We can’t help them now. New Yorkers, from a San Franciscan, listen carefully when I say: Human urine ruins car upholstery. If you park on the street, don’t bother investing in the leather interiors for a few years.
