I Saw Up Close Exactly Why Zohran Mamdani Won—and Why the Attacks Don't Work on Him

Yahoo

3 hours ago

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.
This past May, I was outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office on Frelinghuysen Avenue in Newark, New Jersey, where ICE agents had detained Mayor Ras Baraka on a trespassing charge that would later be dropped. The crowd surged, chanting 'Free Mayor Baraka.' Then a familiar voice on a bullhorn cut through the clamor: Zohran Mamdani had taken the train in from New York to join the crowd.
Protesters tightened around him. 'At a time when too many think the only option is surrender, we have to show the mayor that we have his back,' Mamdani said, the line aimed squarely at Democratic national leaders. Brad Lander and a handful of other Democrats spoke, too, but every camera, including mine, stayed locked on Mamdani. That burst of authority, in a state where he holds no office and can't even vote, convinced me of his potential, weeks before his upset of Andrew Cuomo in the New York City primary race for mayor.
After clinching the Democratic nomination, Mamdani is now on track to become the first Muslim mayor of any U.S. city with a seven-figure population (New York dwarfs the populations of Michigan cities Dearborn or Hamtramck by 30 times). The office he's vying for commands a $100-billion-plus budget and the largest police force in the country. For Muslims like me, that hits hard. We've spent decades under New York Police Department surveillance and 'Demographics Unit' informants. I still remember the anti-terror squad that questioned me for hours about my connections to global jihad after I was arrested on a simple trespassing charge while taking photos. The symbolism of having a Muslim mayor is nice, sure. But it's the control over the NYPD that for me—and likely many more Muslims, especially those who had it much worse—makes Mamdani's victory feel like the impossible has suddenly become possible.
Many believed the Democratic primary for mayor would merely be a formality for Cuomo, given his name recognition and despite his disgrace. In his run for the position, the former governor unleashed an establishment-tested megadonor-sponsored blitz, an attempt to win via moneyed brute force. Fix the City, one of several super PACs that funded his campaign, burned through $25 million carpet-bombing voters with TV ads and mailers that characterized his biggest opponent, Zohran, as dangerous. In response, Zohran countered with 50,000 volunteers as his campaign boasted of a remarkable '1.5 million doors knocked.' It's a strategy that appears to have paid off. It should have strategists on both sides of the aisle taking note.
I saw that difference up close on the last night of Ramadan earlier this year. I'd tagged along as Mamdani ricocheted between Chaand Raat street fairs in the Bronx and Queens. My ears perked up when the same hushed questions about Gaza surfaced—where other Democrats I've covered slip into canned empathy or pivot to poll-tested 'balance,' Mamdani leaned in. He answered at length, never once glancing at a handler for permission, instead just jumping into clearly genuine thoughts on the moral cost of 'dodging hard truths.' Consultants told Kamala Harris to sidestep that very topic in 2024 and she lost to Donald Trump. I think last night's primary shows that voters can hear the difference between these too-carefully-crafted messages and what Mamdani did.
Early analysis says Mamdani's upset was powered by a surge of younger voters. Not only did he go on the record backing the student encampments that Mayor Eric Adams condemned and dispatched an armored NYPD to clear, Mamdani pledged to honor the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Notably, when pressed on fealty to the current state of Israel, he refused to accept anything short of a state 'with equal rights for all.' Polling now shows young Americans likelier to oppose U.S. military aid to Israel than support it, a reality Cuomo and other establishment Democrats miss.
By refusing to triangulate, Mamdani left his opponents only one card to play, the ugliest one: Islamophobia. That became the cri de coeur particularly of Republicans who will try to make this victory representative of some kind of imaginary threat. Minutes after the upset, right-wing figures were screaming 'terrorist.' Charlie Kirk invoked 9/11; Elise Stefanik warned of 'dangerous insanity.' The slurs echoed every insult Muslims here have absorbed since the 2000s, only this time it sounds more like pathetic cope than a denouncement of their neighbors. This primary feels like a rebuke of Islamophobia. Finally.
Which brings me to the national collision course: Mamdani's win comes right on the heels of Donald Trump's attempts to edge closer to his dream to 'liberate' blue cities with fresh ICE raids, as he's being doing this summer in Los Angeles. Already, Trump has posted a rant on Truth Social about Mamdani's victory, calling him a 'Communist Lunatic.'
What does it mean that New York Democrats just nominated the man who vows to 'stand up for our sanctuary city policies which have kept New Yorkers safe, and use every tool at the city's disposal to protect our immigrants'? The man who was literally on ICE's doorstep when his mayoral candidate opponent, Brad Lander, was cuffed and detained for contesting an ICE arrest in a New York City federal building? It means November now looks like a straight referendum on immigrant rights—and whether or not the Democratic Party has any fight left in them. What we saw this week is that Democratic voters certainly do.
For Muslim New Yorkers, a massive electorate that also suffers from chronically low turnout, the idea that American politics is designed to exclude us has just been shattered. My own father once voted for George Bush, before the Iraq War. He now writes off voting as 'picking the lighter boot.' But Mamdani's surge might be the kind of thing to give my dad, and my many equally cynical Muslim friends, hope. Those same people are now basking in the delight of watching online trolls spiral as they belch 'terrorist' while reckoning with his likelihood to win the mayorship in November.
In Democrat circles, Mamdani is catching more grief for being a socialist than for being Muslim, but once again, he is flipping derision into momentum. The Democratic base in New York isn't allergic to unapologetic Muslim identity—it's starving for moral coherence and material promises on affordability, housing, and public safety.
Will Democrats on a national level take cues from his success? It has been a long time since those Democrats have proven themselves to be good listeners. At least Mamdani is speaking so clearly.