Mayor Zoran Mamdani is a New York phenomenon, but his message of democratic socialism has an audience far beyond the city’s five boroughs.
President Trump praises Mamdani after meeting at the White House
President Donald Trump said he would feel “very comfortable” in New York after meeting with Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani.
- Zoran Mamdani is New York City’s first Muslim mayor and first South Asian mayor.
- He won an upset election with a fierce focus on affordability and a controversial plan to freeze rents on 1 million apartments.
- Polls show Mamdani’s economic message is popular with young voters across the country, including those who voted for Donald Trump.
NEW YORK – He was named the No. 1 trending search for “people” on Google in 2025, and his Wikipedia page was among the 10 most read.
Republicans have called for his deportation, but some Democrats say he reminds them of a young Barack Obama. Fashion magazines say he is a style icon.
Zoran Kwame Mamdani, 34, will be sworn in as the next mayor of New York City at midnight on January 1 under the Spanish-tiled arches of the luxurious former subway station below City Hall in Lower Manhattan.
The private ceremony will be followed by a midday street party on the ground, drawing tens of thousands of supporters. Mamdani will be ceremonially sworn in by fellow Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders in an event expected to draw viewers far beyond the city’s rowdy five boroughs.
Mayor of New York, national audience
The same attributes that make Mamdani an emerging leader for many Americans, including Democrats, socialists, millennials, South Asians, Muslims, and immigrants, make him a lightning rod for others.
“He’s basically the next AOC,” Republican political strategist Robert Hornak said, referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a national progressive star. “He has exactly the same mindset. He’s a villain to her constituency and a hero to her constituency.”
New York mayors typically don’t attract national attention unless they have trouble with the law or come under fire on “Saturday Night Live.” Mamdani is different. He came into office as a man of greater interest to the United States as a whole than his fellow American, Pope Leo XIV, with a vast reservoir of both good and bad intentions.
A Nov. 23 YouGov poll found that 35% of Americans have a favorable impression of the newly elected mayor, while 35% have an unfavorable impression. (The remaining 30% had no opinion.)
Why is this recently unknown state lawmaker gaining national attention? No one can deny that his unique identity and charisma are in part responsible, but experts say it’s primarily because he represents the economic anxieties of an emerging generation.
More than a social media flash
Mamdani has excited young voters in 2025 with ambitious promises to freeze rents, scrap public bus fares, raise the minimum wage and provide free childcare in one of the world’s most expensive cities – something his opponents say is unwise.
“Every politician says New York is the greatest city on earth,” Mamdani told viewers in his first campaign ad. “But what’s the point if no one can afford to live here?”
Many in the business world predict Mr. Mamdani’s policies could bankrupt landlords, restaurant operators and retailers, and force out high earners and employers. His supporters point to research showing that these concerns are often exaggerated.
Mamdani’s anti-corporate, anti-billionaire message is resonating with voters across the country as many young people struggle to find well-paying jobs and the prices of housing, food, health care and utilities soar.
With a multi-million social media campaign, Mamdani has turned his rabid Instagram following into an army of 100,000 campaign volunteers. Twelve months before her election, the then-state lawmaker’s Instagram account had 34,000 followers. By the November 4, 2024 election, it had 10 million views and hit 1 billion views in November.
His videos combined humor with a relentless focus on affordability, such as when he toyed with a promise to freeze rents and ran into the frigid winter waters of Coney Island.
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Gabriela Zutrow, the campaign’s digital consultant, said Mamdani is “a generational communicator.”
pulpit of the nation
Mamdani’s core support in New York is with progressives, but his priorities resonate with many young conservatives, Mark Mitchell, head of polling at Rasmussen Reports, told USA TODAY.
Mamdani is playing to young people who are “outraged and want their needs to be focused on,” Mitchell said. More than half of voters under 40 (including more than a third of young people who voted for President Trump) said they want a democratic socialist to be elected president in 2028, according to the Heartland Institute’s Rasmussen Poll conducted in September.
The survey found that 40% of young people who voted for President Trump said they “strongly agreed” that industries such as health care, energy and big tech should be nationalized, or taken over by the U.S. government, to “give people more control and equity,” while 39% said they “somewhat agree.” Only 6% strongly disagreed.
A year after President Trump won over New York voters with his promise to end inflation, prices continue to rise. According to an NBC News poll, one in 10 supporters of President Trump who participated in the mayoral race supported Mamdani.
Food prices have soared by nearly a third since the COVID-19 pandemic. Only 36% of 35-year-olds who were born between 1965 and 1980 own a home, compared to 80% of 35-year-olds born between 1965 and 1980. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in New York City will be $2,327 in 2025, an 81% increase from 2020, with cities across the country seeing small but significant increases.
Young people are “inheriting an economically devastated land,” Mitchell said.
Inspiring Muslims and Islamophobia
Mamdani portrays love and hate as much for what he expresses as what he says. His election embodies the rise of Muslim Americans in a society that has traditionally shunned them.
Mamdani will be New York City’s first Muslim city official and the first Muslim mayor of a major U.S. city. She was one of 42 Muslims elected on Nov. 4, including Democratic Virginia Lieutenant Governor-elect Ghazala Hashmi, who became the first Muslim-American woman elected to a statewide office.
“This is already happening,” New York City Councilmember Shahana Hanif, a Bangladeshi-American, told USA TODAY. “Our political power is growing.”
But the backlash was just as intense as the excitement.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican from upstate New York, repeatedly inaccurately called Mamdani a “jihadist.” Trump ally Laura Loomer, a self-described “proud Islamophobe” with a wide following, said New York would soon have sharia law.
Mamdani is a particularly popular target because he opposes the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. His defense of the Palestinian cause and his sharp criticism of Israel, initially reluctant to reject the phrase “the globalization of the intifada,” have worried supporters of Israel and even some Jewish Americans who might sympathize with Israel’s actions in Gaza.
After the election, New York City Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker announced his resignation, citing Mamdani’s views on the Middle East.
Mr. Mamdani has staffed his campaign and transition team with many Jewish New Yorkers and pledged to combat anti-Semitic hate crimes, but he has already drawn criticism for stumbles in his response to recent protests outside a synagogue and for appointing at least one person with a history of anti-Semitic comments. (When her old social media posts came to light, the official resigned and apologized.)
Even Mamdani’s parents, who were born in India, seem perfectly tuned to tempt the intrigues of the left and embarrass the right. Her mother, Mira Nair, is an Oscar-nominated film director, and her father, Mahmoud Mamdani, is a political scientist who grew up in Uganda.
In response to a video showing Mamdani eating with her hands, a custom among South Asians, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) said Mamdani “should go back to the Third World.”
Star power and its limits
Surveys show that supporters of the new mayor are “more supportive of the policies Mamdani is putting forward than the character,” said Ruby Bell Booth, a researcher at Tufts University’s Youth Information Research Center.
Still, with his stylish artist spouse, sunny demeanor and occasionally venomous barbs, Mr. Mamdani “disrupted the state’s red-haired voters’ idea of what it meant to be an Islamic socialist,” said Elizabeth Spiers, a digital media strategist who also worked with progressives on their unsuccessful 2018 state Senate campaign.
Even President Trump, who had slammed Mamdani as a “communist” during the campaign, showered him with the warmth of a generous uncle when he visited the White House in November.
“He’s very charismatic,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who served with Mamdani in the state Legislature, told CNN. “He and I often played poker together.”
high expectations
Mamdani’s plans for the first major street party, which will fill seven blocks of Broadway with 40,000 revelers, will only heighten expectations.
However, other New York mayors also took office with enthusiastic support, but left office with low approval ratings.
The weight of expectations for Mamdani is especially heavy. For supporters, opponents and fascinated onlookers alike, his performance is widely seen as a key test for progressive governance.
Provoking such a strong reaction means they can mobilize supporters, but they will also have to deal with relentless negative coverage from conservative news outlets such as Fox News and the New York Post. He is expected to be met with skepticism from NYPD officials, since he has called for defunding the police in the past, but has since abandoned that idea.
Still, Mamdani’s allies see his penchant for bold, progressive rhetoric as an advantage rather than a drawback.
“He’s saying what he means and he means what he’s saying,” Zutrow, the campaign consultant, told USA TODAY. “That’s not the case with most politicians.”
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