Zohran Mamdani: New York's Working Class Elects a Movement Mayor

Zohran Kwame Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist and the Democratic nominee, will be New York City’s next mayor, after trouncing former Governor Andrew Cuomo in a primary and general election double whammy.

“The working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands,” Mamdani said to a roaring crowd at his victory party in Brooklyn.

“Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor; palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars; knuckles scarred with kitchen burns—these are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it…We have toppled a political dynasty.”

But the fight is just beginning. "This is part of a lifelong struggle,” Mamdani told the campaign’s legions of volunteers in his closing message. “Not an electoral one. You have joined a movement for the rest of your life. Now, however you want to be a part of that movement is your decision, just as long as you continue to be a part of it.”

To read these words as a vague pick-your-own-journey dabbling in politics is to ignore the affordability platform. Leading the crowd in call-and-response chants, he said: “Together, New York, we’re going to freeze the… [rent!] Together, New York, we’re going to make buses fast and… [free!]Together, New York, we’re going to deliver universal… [child care!] Let the words we’ve spoken together, the dreams we’ve dreamt together, become the agenda we deliver together.”

“Zohran has the same expectation [to deliver] of a Tom Brady, a LeBron James, a Aaron Rodgers,” said yellow cabbie Kadir Gaurab on the eve of the election. “He’s a historic figure.”

Mamdani, a state assemblymember from Queens and a stalwart of the Democratic Socialists of America, will be New York’s first Muslim mayor.

The 11,000-member New York City DSA spearheaded Mamdani’s massive canvassing operation, marshalling an army of 104,400 volunteers who knocked on 3 million doors. (Disclosure: I have canvassed for Mamdani’s election bid and I am a DSA member.) Two million New Yorkers cast a ballot in the election, a turnout number not seen in half a century, according to the Board of Elections.

Volunteers were galvanized by Mamdani’s relentless focus on the affordability crisis and principled stand against Israel’s unfolding genocide in Gaza. His platform includes a rent freeze for 2.5 million people living in rent-stabilized apartments, fast and free buses, city-owned grocery stores to lower the cost of food, free universal childcare starting at six weeks old, and building affordable housing.

But up until February, Mamdani was a statistical nonentity, polling at 1 percent in a tie with a hypothetical candidate “someone else.” “I always knew we could beat him,” Mamdani told a crowd of 13,000 last month while rallying with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Queens. “When we launched this campaign on October 23, one year and three days ago, there was not a single television camera there to cover it.”

‘IT’S VERY REFRESHING’

Brian Levy, a city employee, librarian, and member of AFSCME District Council 37, says he backed Mamdani from the very beginning, but it was clear the campaign was struggling to break through. “I remember not being very optimistic about the Zohran campaign at all last November,” said Levy. “He’s talking about affordability, but I don’t know… If Cuomo enters the race, he’s toast. And the Democratic establishment ain’t behind him. There’s a lot of cards stacked against him.”

But by May, Mamdani’s longshot campaign was surging, maxing out the city’s public finance system and clinching key progressive endorsements. NYC DSA had learned from previous campaigns to spin milestones like reaching 25,000 volunteers into fresh momentum to go even further. Levy said the turning point came when Mamdani and Comptroller Brad Lander, who was also running in the mayoral primary, endorsed each other (the primary used a ranked-choice system where voters could rank more than one candidate), spurring left and progressive blocs of activists to consolidate instead of fracturing as they did in the last mayoral race.

Steve Beck, a retired District 37 member, said Mamdani’s victory is an example of coalition-building. Beck, who is 76, came into politics in the 1960s when the Democratic Party had “precinct captains and Democratic committee people in every neighborhood, in every building,” he said. “And now it’s nothing but chasing money. If you donate a little bit to a campaign, you get these endless emails.”

Shortly after Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Donald Trump, Beck went to the local Democratic Party organization in Queens to see what he could do to volunteer. A woman came on the intercom, “and she says, ‘We’re not open to the public,’” he recalls. “Truer words were never spoken.”

At this point, he says, the Democratic Party is a hollow institution that can’t be called a party in any meaningful sense. “I get emails from the New York State Democrats, and you look at the list of meetings, and all it is is fundraisers. There are no meetings. And who holds meetings? The Democratic Socialists of America holds meetings. The Working Families Party holds meetings. Zohran has gone back to the old playbook of politics, which is canvassing and people on the street and people in the neighborhoods, and it’s very refreshing.”

From Beck’s perspective, it’s “very New York” to see a growing South Asian and Muslim voting bloc following in the footsteps of many immigrant groups that came before them. Their political reasoning: “If the Jews and Italians can do it, I can do it,” he says. “And that’s just completely typical, rather than being told to be afraid of each other. That’s what the wealthy always do, is trying to divide us from each other.

“So that’s the way I see it,” Beck said. “I’m a Jewish American. I’m very proud of that, and I don’t see anything to be afraid of from some kid from Uganda jumping into politics,” a reference to Mamdani’s place of birth. “He’s been wildly successful, I think, because he’s a really great candidate, and because he’s built a really great political machine.”

‘FOCUSED ON IMMIGRANTS AND WORKERS’

Mamdani’s victory should put to rest the lie that workers are drawn only to simpleminded economic populism that casts social justice questions as distractions. In reality, workers are people with genders, identities, and religious beliefs that shape their relationships with each other and the world—and that’s part of what can spur them to action. "I am young. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this," said Mamdani at his victory speech.

The campaign cut across ethnic and racial divides not by ignoring these differences but by building a unified political platform wrapped around good public services and a strong labor movement. “We can demand a government that makes our lives better,” Mamdani said. But these are the concrete lives of a working class in its full splendor of variety: “Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city, who made this movement their own. I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.

In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light. Here, we believe in standing up for those we love, whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many Black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall. Your struggle is ours, too.

And it’s about people like Richard, the taxi driver I went on a 15-day hunger strike with outside of City Hall, who still has to drive his cab seven days a week. My brother, we are in City Hall now."

On the eve of the election, he walked the taxi line at LaGuardia Airport, canvassing drivers to vote, posing for photos, chatting with Bangladeshi, Senegalese, Algerian, and Indian workers. He greeted them in English, Arabic, Hindi, and Urdu. In the final stretch of the campaign, he released a GOTV video in Arabic, after recording others in Spanish, Urdu, and Hindi.

Bhairavi Desai, president of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, says Mamdani won the trust of taxi drivers during their fight for debt relief and 15 days of hunger strike in 2021. “Members witnessed this humble state assembly member insist on being the last in line behind them to be checked by physicians during the hunger strike,” she said, “huddle in circles with them during campaign updates and strategy sessions, and introduce them by name to other elected officials.

“So of course drivers feel that Mamdani is one of their own. They see themselves reflected in a campaign focused on immigrants and workers, and they see Mamdani carrying the working class with him in every step he takes toward power.”

HOW UNION SUPPORT GREW

Now Mamdani is a national name. He has found success by translating a broad agenda of affordability into a platform that can unite across various divides.

One of these divides was among the big unions. In the primary, only AFSCME District Council 37 (representing city workers), the Professional Staff Congress at the City University of New York (PSC-CUNY), and United Auto Workers Region 9A supported him. Most unions backed Cuomo.

“Much of the problems of the Democratic establishment are reflected in the union establishment,” says Desai. “The ‘endorsement industrial complex’ has pitted unions against each other, because each wants to be the first to place a winning bet on a candidate. Too many leaders in the labor movement think their power comes from being political kingmakers rather than from raising consciousness. With authoritarianism on the rise, unions cannot afford to fall back on zero-sum politics. It’s time for unions to reclaim their muscle by joining together across industries and affiliation to move candidates and platforms that serve the working class.”

The UAW was the first union to endorse Mamdani, after starting discussions among members last fall. Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla says both members and leaders were excited about the candidate, bringing their arguments in favor of an endorsement through the union’s political council: “He's been front and center at every single one of our fights, whether it’s in higher education at Columbia or at the Mercedes-Benz first contract rally.”

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Then the union lobbied for Mamdani among other leaders at the NYC Central Labor Council. “We were proud to be the first union to endorse him, but we also got to work to make sure that it didn’t make us special,” said Mancilla.

MORE THAN A TURNOUT MACHINE

After Mamdani won the primary with 56 percent of the vote, the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the New York State Nurses Association, and 32BJ SEIU, representing doormen and other building workers, united behind Mamdani.

Soon followed endorsements from many other unions. Among the biggest: 1199SEIU, the largest health care union in the country with 450,000 members in the Northeast; the United Federation of Teachers, the largest local in the Teachers union (AFT); Communications Workers (CWA) District 1; and the NYC Central Labor Council, representing 1 million workers from 300 unions.

The Laborers didn’t endorse Mamdani, but didn’t endorse Cuomo either. A source inside the union, who would only speak to me anonymously, reports signs of a gradual shift in thinking. Some members and leaders have begun to question the pay-to-play model of politics, where access and influence are based on financial contributions rather than shared values.

People are sick and tired of being a turnout machine for elections but sidelined when it comes to deciding the platform, this person said: “We should be electing people that are about us, not whenever they need us. What we used to think was extreme under Bernie is not that extreme, because people have gravitated to him.” For instance: “We’ve got to build affordable housing; we can’t just be building luxury homes.”

TAX THE RICH

In office, Mancilla says, Mamdani should “continue building a working-class movement that not only supports his campaign agenda but actually empowers working people and puts them front and center of the politics of the city.”

The union is well-positioned to organize support for affordability measures statewide. “We’re going to have a common agenda going into the next legislative session in Albany to fight not just for Zohran’s priorities for the city that our members in the city really care about,” Mancilla said, “but some of those things, like childcare and the cost-of-living crisis, that all workers in places like Buffalo and Rochester and Ithaca all care about.”

A November Siena poll commissioned by Invest in Our New York found that 78 percent of statewide voters support taxing corporations and the wealthiest 5 percent to pay for universal childcare, affordable housing, and public transportation.

To fund his plans for free childcare and fast, free buses, Mamdani will need Governor Kathy Hochul and state legislators to tax the rich. When Governor Hochul rallied alongside Mamdani in Queens last month, the crowd of 13,000 chanted: “Tax the rich!” If the message wasn’t clear then, it’ll become louder amplified from the bully pulpit at City Hall. Unions and other grassroots organizations are already organizing to be the troops that win the agenda they voted for.

Mamdani can also use his profile to promote more workplace organizing, Mancilla says: “This is a great moment to get serious about organizing thousands of workers who want a union and don’t have one. This is a time to go on the offensive against bad employers, corporate greed, the concentration of wealth and power, and the disempowerment of working people in the city, in any industry.

“A lot of unions that are in deep fights right now, whether it’s us or the nurses or the taxi workers, or with fights to come, are going to see a shift in the political system,” Mancilla said “Number one, having a mayor that will actually speak out and be on their side. But also someone who’s willing to think creatively alongside them about what their priorities are, beyond their everyday struggles. It’s a really important moment for labor to come together across a common set of goals.”

‘WE ALL GET TO BE FREE’

Midori Hills, a PSC-CUNY member who works at a nonprofit assisting immigrants to become citizens, was out canvassing November 2 in Queens. The last time she did voter turnout for a candidate was 2013. “The energy and enthusiasm around Zohran Mamdani has been really contagious,” she said, “and so it made me actually excited to vote, instead of voting because it’s what you’re supposed to do.”

Mamdani beat Cuomo even after the disgraced governor was bankrolled to the tune of $50 million by the wealthiest few. He’s heir apparent to the democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders and a throwback to a vision of municipal governance that serves the needs of working-class people in the style of 1934-1946 New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. La Guardia built the public subway system, the city’s first airport, hundreds of playgrounds, zoos, beaches, swimming pools, schools, and health centers, and thousands of units of public housing.

“We can be free and we can be fed,” Mamdani told supporters after his primary victory in June. Throughout his campaign he staked out a future of possibilities, blending the themes of civil and labor rights. To those under the spell of cynicism, he offered a jovial confidence in a better tomorrow, rooted in a fierce determination to take on the wealthy.

“When organized labor won the weekend, so that working people would have time to rest—that was power won, not given,” he said in a speech in October. “When those who came before us marched for voting rights and civil rights, they triumphed because they dared to dream, not because they were given permission by a political establishment content with the status quo. When millions of seniors were lifted from lives of poverty with Social Security, that’s because Americans were sick of a bad deal and wanted a new one instead. When we shake loose the shackles of small expectations, our city builds parks and hospitals, and we show the world that ambition and compassion are in fact intertwined.”

Mamdani has tapped into unifying ideals of equality, dignity, and freedom, connecting them to class. “For too long, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it,” he said in the final stretch of the election. “The oligarchs of New York are the wealthiest people in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. They do not want the equation to change. They will do everything they can to prevent their grip from weakening.

“The truth is as simple as it is nonnegotiable: we are all allowed freedom,” he said. “Each one of us, the working people of this city, the taxi drivers, the line cooks, the nurses, all those seeking lives of grace, not greed—we all get to be free.”

HANDS OFF NYC

Still, “a politician can’t save us, so as great as Mamdani is, we will need to keep organizing to win his bold agenda,” said labor scholar Stephanie Luce, a PSC-CUNY member. “He will be facing a lot of pressure from billionaires and other politicians. That’s why a group of unions and community organizations came together to form a citywide alliance called the People’s Majority Alliance—to be ready to go into the streets, to lobby the city council and state legislature, and to keep up the organizing we need to bring a bold agenda into being.”

Among unions, this multiracial alliance includes Teamsters Local 804, the Committee of Interns and Residents (SEIU), PSC-CUNY, Stagehands (IATSE) Local 161, the Doctors Council SEIU, and the UAW.

According to the New York Post, a House Republican from Tennessee has been urging the Trump administration to investigate Mamdani’s citizenship and deport him. On November 3, Trump said “you really have no choice” but to back Cuomo for mayor.

There’s also the threat that Trump may send in federal agents and National Guard troops, as he has done to Chicago. This seems even more likely now that Mamdani has won office. To prepare against a possible occupation, unions and community groups have created the Hands Off NYC coalition. A recent webinar drew thousands of participants.

“NYC is doing just fine without masked goons kidnapping hardworking immigrants off our streets,” said Hae-Lin Choi, a political director for the CWA. “We don’t need them here, we don’t want them here, and every time they show up they’re going to get the same welcome they got on Canal Street,” a reference to coordinated immigrant worker defense after ICE agents deployed last month to terrorize street vendors in Chinatown.

“Trump’s troops have no business here,” Choi said. “Hands Off NYC is training thousands of New Yorkers to make sure we’re ready for whatever comes next.”

“So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up,” said Mamdani. "AND SO IT BEGINS!" Trump wrote on Truth Social, confirming the assumption.

"New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant," said Mamdani. "To get to any of us, you will have have to get through all of us."

“And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power."

"The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, 'I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.'"

People are shouting rent freeze. They call Zohran Mamdani the people’s mayor. pic.twitter.com/FmLpf4u3DD

— Luis Feliz Leon (@Lfelizleon) November 5, 2025