At just 34 years old, Zohran Mamdani, a Ugandan immigrant of Indian descent, has captured the political zeitgeist with his successful electoral campaign to become the mayor of New York. He became Mayor-elect on November 5th, 2025.
Mamdani, a progressive who describes himself as a Democratic Socialist, won 50% of the total vote with an astounding win of 78% of the 18-29 year-old bloc. Legacy media has fawned over his charisma, communication and successful campaigning as a blueprint for unconventional politics. However, the compliments end there. The focus appears to be on crafting a narrative that Mamdani’s politics are poetic in practice but simply idealistic and impractical. His youthfulness and charisma are what brought him electoral victory, and simultaneously discredit him.
The reaction to Mamdani’s success is largely centred around New York’s position as a crucial strategic centre of domination for global market capitalism. His political opponents and critics, most notably President Trump, have engaged in great efforts to smear him with claims that he is a “Communist”, and others have suggested that Mamdani (who will become New York’s first Muslim mayor) wishes to implement “Sharia Law”.
Despite the rampant nature of fear-mongering, his policies reflect those of a Social Democrat, who wishes to implement reforms such as 30 30-dollar minimum wage, greater taxes on earnings over $1 million a year, free bus transit, and a chain of city-owned grocery stores which focus on selling affordable food as opposed to making a profit. There is no doubt that in one of the most expensive cities in the world, these policies resonate with residents and allow him to excite and mobilise his voter base.
Mamdani’s style of campaigning has been mistakenly deemed a phenomenon of social media campaigning and virality, but in reality, Mamdani’s campaign was defined by grassroots mobilisation and door-to-door conversation. The strength of his core base allowed Mamdani to take political risks and embrace his critics through a creative and authentic social media presence, which captured the interest of political commentators worldwide and had progressives in their respective countries searching for their own Mamdani. If political strategists were to emulate the characteristics of Mamdani’s politics, it would be a rejection of the right-wing’s weaponisation of cultural populism and an embrace of economic populism, which gives unwavering attention to matters of cost of living.
The next step for Mamdani will be navigating the likely cuts imposed on his city by Trump, the internal suppression of progressive politics reads airily similar to the sanctions the US imposes on countries that are, like Mamdani, seen as a threat to the USA’s global capitalist supremacy.
Another article you may enjoy: https://thebadgeronline.com/2025/11/the-straw-hat-student-gen-zs-global-firestorm/
