You never know what lies around the corner. Case in point: Zohran Mamdani, an obscure New York State Assembly member who had kept a low profile until very recently, pulled off a resounding and stunning upset on June 24 when he defeated Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary.
This was no fluke, his margin of victory having been substantial. Mamdani, who has been dogged by accusations of antisemitism over his sharp criticism of Israel, won 43 percent of the vote, compared to Cuomo’s 36 percent. The third place finisher, Brad Lander, received 11 percent.
If he wins the election in November, Mamdani, 33, will be the city’s first Muslim mayor and its youngest one in more than a century. Since Democrats outnumber Republicans in New York by a margin of right to one, his chances of going all the way seem good.
Cuomo, who made combating antisemitism a core part of his campaign and described himself as a “hyper supporter of Israel and proud of it,” went into the race as the frontrunner who had earned an endorsement from former U.S. president Bill Clinton.
Some voters, however, could not bring themselves to cast their ballots for a politician whose reputation was tarnished by accusations of sexual assault, which forced him to step down as governor four years ago.
Mamdani, a self-styled progressive, radiated far more appeal, his image resting on substance, sharp messaging and charisma.
Appealing to working-class voters in a city where the cost of living is exorbitantly high, he proposed freezing rents for all rent-stabilized apartments, building 200,000 affordable homes, creating publicly-owned grocery stores offering low prices, and making bus rides and child care for children under the age of five free of charge.
He said he would fund these initiatives by increasing the corporate tax rate from 7.25 percent to 11.5 percent and imposing a 2 percent income tax on city residents earning more than $1 million annually.
Mamdani also talked about raising the minimum wage, shifting resources away from traditional policing toward mental health and violence prevention, enhancing the city’s sanctuary status for illegal migrants, expanding legal support for them, and defending LGBTQ rights.
Since Mamdani’s platform appealed to liberals and the downtrodden, it was hardly surprising that he received endorsements from U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Lander, the city’s comptroller, eventually encouraged his supporters to back Mamdani. Representative Jerry Nadler, one of New York’s most prominent Jewish politicians, also backed Mamdani, saying they would work together “to fight against all bigotry and hate.”
While it is clear that some Jewish voters threw their support behind Mamdani, still others were offended by his harsh views concerning Israel.
His electoral success in a city with such a significant Jewish population can only mean one thing. Times have changed. Israel is vulnerable politically, particularly in the Democratic Party. This trend has grown significantly in the past two years. Mamdani, born in Kampala, Uganda, to East Indian parents, personifies it.
Raised and educated in the United States, he did not become a U.S. citizen until 2018. His father, Mahmood, is a Columbia University Marxist historian. His mother, Mira Nair, is a movie director.
At Bowdoin College, where he was educated, he was a student activist, having been one of the leaders of Students for Justice in Palestine, an anti-Israel group.
As an assemblyman, he introduced a bill to end the tax-exempt status of New York charities with ties to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In the wake of Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, he blamed Israel for the attack, but later condemned it as a “war crime.”
After the Israeli army launched a campaign in the Gaza Strip to eradicate Hamas, he accused Israel of genocide, blasted it as an apartheid state, and stated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested.
He supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which was created by Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005. It calls for non-violent pressure on Israel in the form of boycotts, divestments and sanctions until the “liberation” of Palestine.
“My support for BDS is consistent with the core of my politics, which is non-violence, and I think that it is a legitimate movement when you are seeking to find compliance with international law,” said Mamdani at a recent UJA-Federation of New York meeting.
Jews critical of Mamdani say that BDS’ ultimate goal is not a two-state solution that recognizes Israel’s existence and legitimacy, but a one-state solution that leads to its demise.
Mamdani has defended the term “globalize the intifada” as an expression of Palestinian rights. Jewish groups generally view the phrase as a call to violence.
Prior to the primary, Mamdani was pressed to state whether he supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. He said, “Yes, like all nations, I believe it has a right to exist and a responsibility also to uphold international law.”
He added, “I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else, I think that in the way that we have in this country. Equality should be enshrined in every country in the world. That’s my belief.”
During the election campaign, Mamdani suggested that a Department of Community Safety, charged with creating anti-hate programming, should be established.
“Antisemitism is not simply something that we should talk about, it’s something that we have to tackle,” he said on the eve of the primary. “We have to make clear there’s no room for it in this city, in this country.”
Despite his apparent aversion to antisemitism, some conservative critics, such as John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, are far from impressed and indeed alarmed by his candidacy.
In his most recent piece, Podhoretz writes scathingly of Mamdani: “He is a foreign-born Muslim who rose from the ranks of the anti-Israel movement … that laid the groundwork for the explosion of antisemitism in America over the past 20 months. He’s smart and articulate and able and impressive. He is also an implicit celebrator of anti-Jewish violence and antisemitic evil. He said he would have Bibi Netanyahu arrested if Bibi came to New York City. He did not moderate his views or his positions as he ran for office here. That’s because they were good for him financially and electorally. So a Muslim supporter of jihad is likely to be the next mayor of a city that was once 31 percent Jewish (in 1950) and is now 12 percent Jewish.”
Clearly, we’re in a new and uncertain era.