Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state legislator, won the Democratic Party primaries for the New York mayoral race on Tuesday. Born in Uganda to Indian parents (he arrived in the Big Apple as a child and has been a U.S. citizen since 2018), Mamdani was an absolute unknown, a tiny link in the Party apparatus, a minor figure in the State capital (Albany). However, in a matter of hours, he has become the protagonist of political life on the East Coast, the man everyone is talking about, whom his own party colleagues want to get rid of, and whom conservatives attack with an unfiltered campaign of hatred and xenophobia.
Mamdani took a leap of faith a few months ago to try to replace Eric Adams, yet another New York mayor who fell due to corruption, after allegedly accepting in-kind payments from Turkey in exchange for favors for embassy works in front of the United Nations. Adams, who then made a spectacular and successful turn to seek help from the Trump administration, symbolizes the past. Mamdani, who made history by defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the primaries, presents himself as the future, but his emergence has caused an unprecedented earthquake, stirring discontent among progressive ranks.
Mamdani, who owes much of his success to a series of dynamic, modern, fresh videos (his mother is a film director), has a discourse considered almost anti-system in the U.S. Advocating for public education and healthcare, calling for free public transportation, rent freezes in a city where the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is already over $5,000. He even proposes public grocery stores so that lower-income households can shop. Not to mention higher taxes for those earning over a million dollars. A left-wing discourse in Europe, a communist threat in the U.S.
His victory has triggered a brutal chain reaction, in a harsh tone, a defamation campaign that seeks to shatter his aspirations in a city that seems receptive to the message he conveys about the cost of living and opportunities. Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, the ultra-rich of Wall Street... All are alarmed, mobilized, hysterical at the possibility of a Muslim socialist coming to power in the largest city in the country. At the prospect of him becoming a new Obama or a new Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), the unofficial leader of the new wave of the party and the country's left, even though he could never become president.
"It's finally happened, the Democrats have crossed the line. Zohran Mamdani, a 100% Communist Lunatic, has just won the Dem Primary, and is on his way to becoming Mayor.We've had radical leftists before, but this is getting a bit ridiculous. He looks TERRIBLE, his voice is harsh, he's not very smart, he has AOC+3, ALL the fools, supporting him, and even our great Palestinian senator, the crybaby Chuck Schumer, is humiliated by him. This is a crucial moment in our country's history!" wrote U.S. President Donald Trump on his social media.
"New York is the clearest warning so far of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration. Comments on the nomination of an anarcho-socialist for mayor by the New York Democrats omit one point: how uncontrolled migration fundamentally transformed the New York electorate. Democrats transform politics by changing voters. That's how a city that defined American dominance becomes what it is today," echoed Stephen Miller, Trump's most powerful and radical advisor in the White House.
Open racism and Islamophobia are not a concern for the president's family or friends. "This hits hard," tweeted MAGA congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green from Georgia, sharing a photo of the Statue of Liberty covered in a burqa. "New York has fallen," wrote Trump's eldest son, Don Jr., spreading a wild message: "I am old enough to remember when New Yorkers suffered on 9/11 instead of voting for him," comparing Mamdani to the terrorists who attacked the city because he is Muslim.
Andy Ogles, perhaps the most sycophantic Republican congressman with the president, has even asked the attorney general to strip Mamdani of his citizenship with a deeply racist tweet. "Zohran 'little Muhammad' Mamdani is an anti-Semite, socialist, and communist who will destroy the great city of New York. He must be deported. That's why I request that he undergo denaturalization," he wrote. "After 9/11, we said we would never forget, but we have forgotten," added congresswoman Nancy Mace in several messages.
It's not just the political world, which seems to sense that a left-wing populist movement capable of competing with the MAGA universe in narrative and staging is emerging in the U.S. Even the world of money is very nervous, almost in panic, talking about leaving the city and moving to Miami. Investor Bill Aikman, one of the best examples of billionaires who have embraced the Trumpist light in recent months, has summarized the 'money' position in this race. After praising Mamdani by saying that "he is an exceptional politician who led a remarkable and inspiring campaign. He is smart and eloquent. He is young and charming, and managed to minimize incriminating publications and statements from his past, presenting a joyful campaign of unity," he asserts that his ideas "would be disastrous for the city of New York. Socialism has no place in the economic capital of our country. New York City's ability to provide services to the poor and needy, let alone the average New Yorker, depends entirely on it being a business-friendly environment and a place where wealthy residents are willing to spend 183 days and bear the associated tax burden. Unfortunately, both have already begun planning their exits."
In his lengthy message, Aickman assures that since there are still 130 days left until the elections, there is plenty of time for a charismatic, intelligent, eloquent, attractive, charming, young but more experienced, and, above all, more centrist candidate to emerge, and that there is "hundreds of millions of dollars in capital available to support an alternative candidate to Mamdani that can be gathered overnight (believe me, I'm in the text messages and WhatsApp groups), so that a great alternative candidate does not waste time fundraising. So, if the right candidate raises their hand tomorrow, the funds will pour in." Offering himself for the task of raising them.
The economic press, with the WSJ and CNBC at the forefront, has compiled dozens of testimonies from heavyweights on Wall Street who are alarmed but above all mobilized to prevent him from winning the elections, even if that means financing the allegedly corrupt former mayor Adams, who wants to run as an independent, or Cuomo himself, who may do the same after losing the primaries.
Even the considered centrist establishment, with figures like Larry Summers, Harvard economist and Treasury Secretary under Clinton, are joining the lynching. "I am deeply alarmed for the future of the Democratic National Committee and the country, by the designation yesterday in New York of a candidate who did not reject the slogan of 'globalizing the intifada' and advocates for Trotskyist economic policies."