Editor’s note: Zohran’s Mamdoppelgänger

The first time I remember being mistaken for Zohran Mamdani was at the National Action Network Convention last year.

I was reporting on his interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton from the front of the hotel ballroom. And minutes after the surging mayoral candidate stepped off the stage, a couple of older ladies – I can’t speak for their eyesight – clasped my hand and told me I did a great job up there.

I don’t look that much like Mamdani. But when you’re working in New York politics as a 30-something light-skinned man with a brown beard who often wears a suit and tie, you kind of invite the comparison.

This can feel … uncomfortable at times. My job is to look at the mayor not look like the mayor. But it did get me a big role in the Inner Circle Show, where my fellow journalists and I had fun critically spoofing City Hall on stage. And it was there that Mamdani, of Indian, Muslim descent joked that I, of white, Jewish descent, “look like a version of me that could have actually won the Upper East Side.”

And the vague resemblance has kicked off some great conversations, like when I grabbed a cab in White Plains last week. “Are you Mamdani’s brother?” the driver said. “Love that guy.” A Haitian immigrant, he said he stayed up all night watching the news when Mamdani won. “Get outta here Cuomo!”

To mark the mayor’s first 100 days, City & State focused not on his (dashing good) looks, but on how he’s been handling the job. He was careful with his words in a sit-down interview with City Hall reporters Sahalie Donaldson and Annie McDonough. But we dug through it all: the good, the bad and the ugly.