NEW YORK — On January 1, 2026, Zohran Kwame Mamdani was sworn in as New York City's 112th mayor in the abandoned City Hall subway station, taking the oath on the Quran, with Bernie Sanders officiating the public inauguration. At 34, the democratic socialist and former state assemblyman became the city's first Muslim and first Asian American mayor — and immediately set about trying to transform the economic foundations of the most powerful urban economy on earth.
Born in Kampala, Uganda, and raised in New York, Mamdani built his political profile through grassroots activism: hunger striking alongside taxi drivers to secure over $450 million in debt relief, pushing through a fare-free bus pilot, and defeating a proposed power plant in Astoria. His message — that government can and should lower the cost of living for ordinary New Yorkers — resonated in a city where median rents have soared past $3,500 a month and where poverty has risen even as Wall Street notched record profits.
He now governs a city whose economy generates $2 trillion in annual GDP, more than any other metropolitan area in the world. What he does next will ripple far beyond the five boroughs.
