Mamdani's Shock Win Has Wall Street Fretting Over ‘Hot Commie Summer'
Even Zohran Mamdani's detractors recognize that the vibes are with the 33-year-old democratic socialist.
'It's officially hot commie summer,' hedge fund billionaire Dan Loeb said on X, after Mamdani shocked the Democratic establishment by crushing Andrew Cuomo in the party's primary for the New York City mayoral race.
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New York Times
19 minutes ago
- New York Times
Young Muslims Loved Zohran Mamdani, and Their Parents Listened to Them
It was late in the afternoon on Tuesday, and Bilquees Akhtar was still at work as an assistant to the principal of EPIC High School North in Richmond Hill, Queens. Suddenly her phone exploded with text messages and DMs on Instagram and TikTok from her five adult children. Each of them had already cast a vote for Zohran Mamdani in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary. 'MOM, WHY ARE YOU STILL AT WORK?' Ms. Akhtar's 24-year-old son, Humza Mehfuz, wrote to her. 'YOU HAVE TO VOTE!' While Ms. Akhtar had previously supported Mr. Mamdani's main opponent, Andrew M. Cuomo, when he ran for governor and, years before that, had voted for his father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, she told her children to calm down. After their relentless campaign of showing her TikTok videos of Mr. Mamdani — 'This kid is brilliant,' she had to admit, 'and so friendly!' — she had made her decision. 'All of Cuomo's ads tried to make Mamdani look like a terrorist,' said Ms. Akhtar, 56. 'But he's a New Yorker like me.' By Wednesday, Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens, had won 43 percent of votes counted, all but clinching perhaps the greatest political upset in New York City politics in a generation. (The final tally is not expected to be completed until next week, but Mr. Cuomo conceded the race on Tuesday night.) If Mr. Mamdani were to win the general election this fall, he would be the first Muslim mayor in the history of New York, and also the first mayor of South Asian descent. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Boston Globe
24 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
The Trump administration is suing Minnesota over breaks in higher education for immigrant students
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Walz's office said it is reviewing the lawsuit 'to better understand what this means for the state.' Advertisement The lawsuit argued that Minnesota is 'flagrantly violating' a federal law that prevents states from providing a benefit in higher education to resident students living in the US illegally if US citizens cannot receive the same benefits. States generally set higher tuition rates for out-of-state students. President Trump also issued executive orders in February directing federal agencies to see that public benefits do not go to immigrants living in the US illegally and to challenge state and local policies seen as favoring those immigrants over some citizens. The lawsuit argues that the Republican president's orders enforce federal immigration laws. Advertisement The lawsuit also argues that Minnesota's policies discriminate against US citizens. 'No state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens,' US Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. The Justice Department's lawsuit in Minnesota noted the cases filed earlier this month in Kentucky and Texas, but did not mention any other states as potential targets of litigation. However, in discussing the Texas case, Bondi has suggested more lawsuits might be coming. Last year, Florida ended its tuition break for students living there illegally, but at least 21 states have laws or policies granting them, in addition to the University of Michigan system, according to the National Immigration Law Center, which favors them. Those states include Democratic-leaning ones such as California and New York, but also GOP-leaning ones like Kansas and Nebraska. According to the center, at least 16 states allow the immigrant students to receive scholarships or other aid to go to college. Supporters of the state tuition breaks argue that they don't violate federal law if they provide the same rates to US citizens in the same circumstances — meaning they are residents of the state and graduates of one of its high schools. Generally states have imposed other requirements. For example, Minnesota requires male students to have registered with the US Selective Service System and all students to be seeking legal resident status if that's possible. Backers of the laws also argue that the students generally were brought to the US illegally by their parents, often when they were far younger, and are as much a part of their local communities as US-born students. Also, they contend that such immigrants tend to be motivated high achievers. Advertisement
Boston Globe
25 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
In NYC mayoral race, a political star emerges out of fractured Democratic Party
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Democratic leaders badly want to win over young voters and minority groups in the coming 2026 and 2028 elections — two groups they have struggled to mobilize since the Obama era — but they also need moderate Democrats and independents who often recoil from far-left positions. Advertisement 'It really represents the excitement that I saw on the streets all throughout the City of New York,' said Letitia James, the New York attorney general. 'I haven't seen this since Barack Obama ran for president of these United States.' That Mamdani had such success while running on a far-left agenda, including positions that once were politically risky in New York — like describing Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip as genocide and calling for new taxes on business — may challenge the boundaries of party orthodoxy and unnerve national Democratic leaders. Advertisement His views on Israel are likely to force some national Democrats into an uncomfortable position, said David Axelrod, a native New Yorker and Obama's chief strategist. But he said that Mamdani's relentless focus on economic affordability resonated widely and could be a playbook for the party's success as well. 'There is no doubt that Trump and Republicans will try and seize on him as a kind of exemplar of what the Democratic Party stands for,' Axelrod said. 'The thing is, he seems both principled and agile and deft enough to confront those sort of conventional plays.' The primary results raised questions about how Democrats on the national level would react. Would they embrace Mamdani as a next-generation leader of the party who can articulate a resonant economic message in a way that former vice president Kamala Harris failed to do in November? Or would they distance themselves from his democratic socialist ideas and move more directly toward the center to court independent voters? The enthusiasm that Mamdani generated among a swath of New Yorkers looking for fresh leadership called to mind the insurgent campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential race and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her upset victory in a 2018 House primary. All three are democratic socialists, a once fringe movement popularized by Sanders that calls for reining in the excesses of capitalism and curbing the power of the wealthy. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom endorsed Mamdani, remain popular progressive figures but have had only limited impact on changing the Democratic Party's agenda and messaging. Advertisement A key question is how the Democratic donor class and business community, which was already unsettled by Mamdani's rise, will react to his apparent victory. Business leaders may flock to his rivals in the general election in November, or try to use super political action committees to stop him. In the meantime, other Democratic elected officials are likely to be questioned on whether they agree with his positions. 'It's a national election, not just a New York City election. People are going to be watching,' said James Carville, a longtime Democratic strategist. 'Everybody will have to weigh in one way or another. Everybody is going to be asked, do they support him.' Even before Mamdani addressed his supporters early Wednesday morning, Republicans were gearing up to caricature him. The National Republican Congressional Committee gleefully declared Mamdani the 'new face of the Democrat Party.' Senator Rick Scott of Florida predicted on social media that more New Yorkers would be fleeing to his state. And Representative Elise Stefanik of New York sent a fund-raising appeal Tuesday saying her 'stomach was in knots,' calling Mamdani a 'Hamas Terrorist sympathizer.' (Mamdani has defended pro-Palestinian slogans like 'globalize the intifada.' He has said that he supports an Israel with equal rights for all its citizens, but has not said if it has a right to exist as a Jewish state. He has emphatically denied accusations that he is antisemitic.) As recently as last month, few people expected Mamdani to beat Cuomo, 67, who benefited from near universal name recognition, a deep war chest, and the endorsement of party heavyweights like former president Bill Clinton. Advertisement But the embrace of the party establishment may have done Cuomo no favors in a race that appeared to be marked by a deep hunger for change. The 33-year-old progressive upstart now faces a tough task: Defeating Mayor Eric Adams and a Republican opponent. 'Voters are not happy with the national party establishment and want to focus on building a movement,' said Basil Smikle, a professor at Columbia's School of Professional Studies. 'I think that's key here. Mamdani created a movement around his candidacy.' Mamdani ran a relentless and cheerful campaign focused on affordability in a city that has grown too expensive for an expanding circle of residents, with zippy videos and catchy tag lines like 'freeze the rent' and 'free buses' that told voters he cared first about their wallets. That kitchen-table focus actually mirrored economic messaging that some in the center of the party have also urged Democratic candidates to embrace. Many Democrats were frustrated that did not occur with former president Joe Biden and Harris during the 2024 election. David Shor, a Democratic researcher and strategist who worked with the leading pro-Harris super PAC, Future Forward, wrote on the social platform X that Mamdani was 'a great example of how far you can go if you genuinely center your campaign in an engaging way around the issue that voters overwhelmingly say in surveys they care the most about.' This article originally appeared in
