Editor’s note: City & State’s groundbreaking coverage of Zohran Mamdani’s rise

Zohran Mamdani shocked the New York political world this week when he defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by 7 points in first-place voting in the Democratic mayoral primary. No one predicted the full extent of Mamdani’s success, but if you’ve been reading City & State, you might have had a sense this was a possible outcome.

City & State reporter Rebecca C. Lewis profiled Mamdani in 2023, and I first broke the news that he was planning to run for mayor a year ago – a full three months before he formally announced his candidacy.

Days after he got into the race, City & State asked the question: “Could this pro-Palestinian socialist really be NYC’s next mayor?” (Seems like it!) In January, when Mamdani was consistently polling in single digits and as low as 1%, City & State publisher Tom Allon wrote a prescient column suggesting it was a mistake to assume Mamdani’s appeal would be limited to self-described progressives.

City & State’s reporting on Mamdani has not been without controversy. Our decision to put Mamdani on the cover of the Asian Trailblazers issue in May led an official photographer for Mayor Eric Adams’ office to publicly accuse this magazine of “mainstreaming antisemitism.”

Our strong coverage of Mamdani has continued in the days since his primary victory. Reporter Sahalie Donaldson and City Editor Holly Pretsky wrote about how the state’s Democratic leaders have begun offering support to Mamdani now that he will be the party’s nominee, while Lewis wrote about the GOP’s attempt to use Mamdani’s victory as a talking point against Gov. Kathy Hochul. We’ll keep covering the most important political news as it happens – and sometimes, even before.