Few political contests in 2025 drew as much global attention as New York City’s mayoral race. The winner in the heart of global finance was a brown, immigrant Muslim politician – unafraid to claim his identity and running on an eye-catching redistributionist platform. Zohran Mamdani’s spectacular win in this contest resonated far beyond the city's five boroughs.
To decode his rise and why his campaign resonated with voters nationally in the US and beyond, Abhinandan Sekhri spoke to Maanika Gupta, political director on Harvey Epstein’s city council campaign, and Kabir Cohen, a student volunteer in Mamdani’s campaign.
Responding to Abhinandan’s question of how Mamdani amassed a 3,00,000-strong volunteer force, Maanika said that he ran a campaign that tapped into “communities that felt unheard” centred on affordability – the primary concern for most New Yorkers – and built his entire platform around it. She added that his ability to simplify complex ideas and make them snappy – ‘freeze the rent’ – made his policies digestible and won over undecided voters.
A standout feature of Mamdani’s campaign was his relentless message discipline – rent, transit fares and childcare. India has had its own share of political parties that campaigned heavily on civic issues but polls often get swallowed by identity and spectacle.
The Mamdani campaign also offered a clear template against authoritarianism. He argued that to “terrify a despot”, one must dismantle the conditions that produce him. Throughout the campaign, Mamdani addressed bigotry head-on. Despite his pro-Palestine stance, Kabir noted that nearly half of the city’s Jewish voters, particularly younger ones, backed him, dismissing allegations of antisemitism as Islamophobic baiting.
Maanika and Kabir also highlighted his success in building multi-racial, working-class coalitions, aided by a savvy digital campaign and volunteer-driven mobilisation strategies.
Watch.
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