‘Trump's worst nightmare': New York mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani's political positions, from ICE to Israel

Independent

5 hours ago

Zohran Mamdani is on track to be the Democratic Party's candidate for New York City Mayor after he pulled off an upset in Tuesday's primary, prompting front-runner Andrew Cuomo to concede defeat.
Mamdani, 33, a Democratic socialist and state assemblyman, was powered to victory thanks to a grassroots campaign across the five boroughs and the influential endorsements of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as New Yorkers expressed a clear preference for an alternative to President Donald Trump 's administration.
The Uganda-born son of a Columbia University professor and a celebrated Indian film director received 43.5 percent of first-place votes in the city's ranked-choice voting system to Cuomo's 36.3 percent, according to early results from the New York City Board of Elections.
Should he ultimately lead the Democratic ticket, Mamdani is likely to face Republican Curtis Sliwa, scandal-dogged incumbent Eric Adams, who is running as an independent, and possibly Cuomo again, who has indicated that he, too, could run as an independent as a Plan B.
Here's a look at where the surprise winner stands on key policy areas.
Donald Trump
Mamdani's positioning on the left was always likely to put him at odds with the president, who was born and raised in New York but now pours scorn on his hometown. Sure enough, the younger man has cheerfully pronounced himself 'Donald Trump's worst nightmare.'
Their likely animosity will take center stage if Mamdani ultimately succeeds Adams in City Hall, given the office's outsized influence on the national stage.
'Should he prevail, Mamdani instantly becomes the ringleader of The Resistance,' Philip Elliott of Time has argued. 'As the elected chief of the nation's largest city – with a budget of $115 billion and 300,000 employees – he would command a platform that has few peers.'
Israel
On Election Eve, Mamdani appeared on CBS's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and was grilled about his history of pro-Palestinian activism and said of Israel: 'Yes, like all nations, I believe it has a right to exist – and a responsibility also to uphold international law.'
Pressed on whether New York's Jewish population could depend on him to protect them with antisemitic attacks on the rise in the United States, the candidate answered emphatically: ' Antisemitism is not simply something that we should talk about. It's something we have to tackle.'
He pledged an 800 percent increase in funding for anti-hate crime funding and sought to make clear that he opposed some of 'the Israeli government's policies' in Gaza, not the Jewish people.
He has, however, been attacked by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for his endorsement of the protest slogan 'Globalize the Intifada.'
ICE raids
A recent poll by Marist indicated Mamdani has picked up significant support from New York's Hispanic and Latino community at a time when Trump's Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have ramped up raids on blue cities, suggesting they see him as the right man to stand up to the president's aggressive mass deportation push.
Attacking Cuomo in a recent interview with The Bulwark, the candidate said: 'A disgraced former governor who describes undocumented immigrants as 'illegals' is not what we need as a city under attack by an authoritarian.
'He's not the leader we need to fight against this administration. Ultimately, you want someone who can take on bullies, not who looks just like him.'
He called ICE 'fascist' after it arrested fellow mayoral candidate Brad Lander last week, commenting: 'If this is what ICE is willing to do to a comptroller of the city of New York, imagine what they are willing to do to immigrants whose names you don't even know.'
Tax, housing and rent
Mamdani's campaign has primarily been centered around policies for making New York City more affordable, calling for higher taxes for the Big Apple's wealthier residents, a rent-freeze for more than two million impoverished city dwellers, more permanent affordable housing, free bus rides and child care and even government-run grocery stores to prevent cost of living crises erupting.
Olivia Reingold of The Free Press has argued that it was precisely these 'pie-in-the-sky policies' that Cuomo underestimated, to his cost.
'We see that this affordability crisis is pushing New Yorkers out, which is especially true for immigrant New Yorkers,' Mamdani told The Bulwark. 'Social justice without economic justice is like clapping with one hand.'