The Nation

11/04/2025

Zohran Mamdani has no higher responsibility than to be a great mayor of New York City. It is, after all, his job, now that more than one million New Yorkers have overwhelmingly elected him to the highest office of America’s largest and most dynamic municipality. Yet, as he succeeds, Mamdani has the potential to transform not just a city but the politics of a nation that desperately needs a robust antidote to Donald Trump’s oppressions. As Mamdani told The Nation after his Democratic primary win in June, “You cannot defeat this attack on democracy unless you also prove its worth.”

Prominent pundits refused to accept the prospect that New Yorkers would elect a democratic socialist as mayor (hello, cable news commentators), as did newspaper editorial writers (hello, New York Times) and top Democrats (hello, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who refused to endorse his party’s nominee for mayor of his hometown). The elites were slow to catch on to the fact that this 34-year-old Muslim immigrant from Uganda, after serving three terms in the relative obscurity of the New York State Assembly, had captured the imagination of the city’s multiracial, multiethnic electorate. Of course, Mamdani’s mastery of social media helped. He presented himself with a confidence that belied his age, a calm that countered the hysterics of his critics, and a clarity that both inspired and reassured voters. Tens of thousands of young volunteers rallied around a candidate who was comfortable speaking truth to power. When he called out the genocide in Gaza, Mamdani was attacked by the New York Post and a billionaire-funded smear campaign. Yet he won a mandate from New Yorkers who demanded moral clarity amid Republican cruelty.

Mamdani’s determination to renew faith in democracy by delivering economic justice is not new: FDR made the connection with his “Economic Bill of Rights.” Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are doing the same with their “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies. But Mamdani’s relentless focus on putting government in the service of the working class captures the zeitgeist of 2025. So powerful is his vision that Trump pulled out every stop to derail Mamdani’s campaign: threatening to impound funding for the city, to send in federal troops, and to arrest the Democrat if he kept his promise to protect immigrants. While Mamdani relied on public funding and volunteers to carry his message, billionaire-funded political action committees directed $19 million into a bitterly divisive campaign against him.

With Mamdani’s election, the attacks from his avowed enemies in Washington and on Wall Street will only intensify. To counter them, he must surround himself with tough, experienced managers. In the face of hostile media and corporate lobbying, Mamdani’s determination to maintain his viral social media campaign will be essential to mobilizing his base, unifying New Yorkers, and keeping the pressure on cautious Democrats in Albany.