Zohran Mamdani is trying to build a new NYC Democratic primary coalition

When you talk with Zohran Mamdani, you can tell he’s tired. He knows the clock is ticking, and he is trying to be everywhere at once.

Since the Queens Assembly member launched his mayoral campaign in late October, he has ridden every subway line, knocked on hundreds of doors across neighborhoods historically overlooked in citywide elections, attended over 500 events, made countless fundraising calls while fasting for Ramadan (something he hopes never to do again), joined his fellow candidates onstage at over 30 forums, and trooped back and forth between New York City and Albany via Amtrak at least 20 times, missing only a day of the legislative session. In each appearance, each meeting, each rally and interview, Mamdani’s message is consistent: The cost of living is crushing working-class New Yorkers, and it’s the job of city leaders to fix it.

“We can’t just hope and pray that people come to us,” Mamdani told City & State as he leaned across a table at Qahwah House in the West Village. It was a sunny Saturday in mid-April, peak spring – the sort of day where freshly fallen cherry blossoms speckle the sidewalks like confetti and everybody flocks outdoors. “We have to go to the mosque, to the church, to the synagogue, to the subway platform, to wherever New Yorkers are with the same message.”

Mamdani’s goal to meet New Yorkers where they are has been central to his efforts to stitch together an unprecedented coalition of Democratic primary voters. He’s betting that his unyielding focus on the cost of living and his targeted outreach to Muslim and South Asian voters will inspire people disillusioned by the political status quo and those long ignored by citywide candidates to flock to the polls. If he’s successful, the many different groups uniting behind him will have challenged the rules about which political coalitions wield power in the city.

Roughly two months out from the New York City Democratic primary, Mamdani has already defied many people’s expectations about how far he could go in the mayoral race. His youth, leftist policies, proud affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America, lack of managerial experience and willingness to break from mainstream Democratic orthodoxy to criticize Israel and defend Palestinians – all factors naysayers initially said clouded his viability – didn’t stop his rise to second place in the polls. His economic populist message coupled with his social media strategy, his charisma and massive volunteer force have made him a serious mayoral challenger – one who hit the $8 million fundraising cap faster than any other candidate and who many observers are starting to see as front-runner Andrew Cuomo’s chief rival.

“He’s pretty concise and succinct around what he wants to do,” said Jasmine Gripper, co-director of the left-leaning Working Families Party. “We all can name (his policies), which really is the power of strong messaging around things that actually resonate.”

Victory is still a long shot. New York City primaries have notoriously low turnout, rarely exceeding a quarter of the city’s eligible electorate. In a city with the second largest Jewish population in the world, Mamdani would be the first mayor to take an openly critical stance on Israel since the country was established. As the former governor, Cuomo has near universal name recognition and a commanding lead in every poll. But narrow as it might be, there is growing consensus that there could be a path for Mamdani. One that will put his ability to build a truly broad, multiracial cross-class coalition to the test.

The message

Mamdani said he went into his campaign knowing the story he wanted to tell and the people he hoped to bring together. He’d entered the already crowded field believing that while there is not an ideological majority in New York City, most New Yorkers feel they’ve been left behind by the economic policies of this mayoral administration and politics today. It’s a reality he said will allow him to build a broad constituency – one that extends across the five boroughs, stretching “far beyond the caricatures of where these kinds of ideas can live and die.”

He was the first candidate to say he’d freeze rents for the city’s roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. He also vowed to make New York City buses free, open city-owned grocery stores in each borough, offer free child care for all New Yorkers between the ages of 6 weeks and 5 years, construct 200,000 new affordable housing units and raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030.

Affordability has emerged as the central theme in the mayoral race, spurring the many Democrats running to replace New York City Mayor Eric Adams to shape their messages around growing concerns over the cost of living. But while many of Mamdani’s fellow progressive candidates have embraced more moderate stances on issues like public safety and the size of the city’s police force, the 33-year-old Assembly member has been unapologetic about his policies.

“He’s always been a very straightforward guy, which I appreciate. This business can have a lot of duplicitous people,” said state Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris, whose district overlaps Mamdani’s and who worked with him on a free bus pilot. “With Zohran, what you see is what you get. For better or worse, he is very clear about his beliefs.”

Critics have derided many of Mamdani’s big, costly policy proposals as overly idealistic and a socialist pipe dream. When asked about Mamdani’s public safety plan, Adams mocked him as “Defund the police Mamdani.” The mayor also cast doubt on his proposals to expand the city’s social safety net, asking, “Where are you going to get the money from?” The city’s current fiscal situation doesn’t leave much room for new spending, particularly with the threat of federal funding cuts. Mamdani has pitched asking the Legislature to raise the city’s 7.25% corporate tax rate to 11.5% – on par with New Jersey – and to increase the income tax rate by 2% for millionaires. He has estimated that together these would generate about $10 billion a year, though legislative cooperation is no guarantee. The idea would likely face stiff opposition from moderate elected officials and the city’s powerful business community. Other policies like his free bus proposal would also require the support of state lawmakers.

It’s not just Mamdani’s platform – realistic or not – that’s won him such a devoted following though. It’s how he’s approaching politics at a time when the Democratic Party is facing criticism for failing to meaningfully connect with voters and to effectively respond to President Donald Trump’s agenda. A handful of people interviewed for this story described Mamdani’s solutions-oriented delivery, his economics-first messaging and advocacy for progressive social issues as reminiscent of 2016 Bernie Sanders and 2008 Barack Obama.

Mamdani has been a frequent presence at protests throughout his political career. He has participated in two headline-grabbing hunger strikes – in 2021, outside City Hall in support of striking taxi drivers and again, outside the White House calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza two years later. In March, Mamdani confronted “border czar” Tom Homan as he visited the state Capitol days after federal immigration authorities detained recent Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil. “How many New Yorkers will you detain without charge?” Mamdani yelled in a widely circulated video, attempting to push through a barricade of state police officers.

“Republicans are consistently bringing a gun to a knife fight, and the Democrats are holding knives,” said Brooklyn City Council Member Chi Ossé, the council’s first Gen Z member and TikTok star. “It’s really appealing to young voters, to everyone, to see someone who is actually sticking their neck out, speaking to the issues we actually want to hear and running a campaign that is truly grassroots.”

Coalition building

Ask any of the Democrats running for mayor about which New Yorkers they are actively courting, and they’ll probably say everyone. What is New York City after all if not a grand mosaic of every community, every type of person.

The reality is that roughly 27% of the 3.8 million eligible New York City voters participated in the 2021 Democratic and Republican primaries. With such consistent low turnout, victory is usually bestowed by the New Yorkers who most consistently show up: historically, that has been older, college-educated, white and Black voter groups.

Democratic political consultant Amit Singh Bagga described the city’s matching funds program as the double-edged sword of low-turnout primaries. New York City political campaigns tend to use their limited resources to hone in on “triple prime voters,” people who participated in the last three primaries.

“You can raise a lot of money faster, but there’s a cap on how much the candidates can raise and spend – forcing all of them to go after the same groups of existing primary voters, who are collectively older, whiter, Blacker, and both more English-speaking and home-owning than the broader electorate,” Bagga said.

In the last mayoral primary, Sanitation Department Commissioner Kathryn Garcia appealed to white, New York Times-reading liberals across most of Manhattan and much of brownstone Brooklyn, civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley mostly won younger voters in hip, gentrified neighborhoods in Brooklyn and western Queens, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang made inroads in northeast Queens and southern Brooklyn with a coalition of Asian and Orthodox Jewish voters. Adams won with the working-class outer borough Black and Latino voters in Southeast Queens, central Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Mamdani is already extremely popular with the left and young voters – the Wiley contingent. Turnout has recently grown among young voters – 18% of 18-29 year olds and 22% of 30-39 year olds participated in the 2021 mayoral primary. In 2013, the city’s second most recent open primary, those numbers respectively were 11% and 15%.

Mamdani reached the maximum public matching funds program fundraising cap with more small donations than any other mayoral candidate. The average contribution amount has been $84. Of his 18,000 donors, educators have been the most frequent followed closely by students, according to his campaign.

And multiple political observers and community leaders said they expect an unprecedented number of South Asians, Muslims, and Arab New Yorkers to show up for Mamdani. While over 350,000 of the city’s roughly 1 million Muslims are registered to vote, only about 12% voted in the last mayoral election, meaning there is a lot of potential for growth.

Mamdani’s identity, a practicing Muslim born in Uganda to parents from India, has resonated with many New Yorkers who aren’t used to seeing themselves reflected in the halls of political power. He would be both the first Muslim and first South Asian New York City mayor.

“The message that is out there in the South Asian community, the Muslim community, the immigrant community, if you are the bread winner of the house, is if you vote, don’t come alone,” said Kashif Hussain, a South Asian and Muslim community organizer and activist. “Bring your wife, bring your children if they’re registered. They are being told to realize the power of voting. How much their vote will mean.”

But Mamdani will also need to make major inroads with the old-school, outer borough coalition of Black and Latino voters who carried Adams to victory in 2021.

“It’s going to be tough for him to reach these two groups because of this perception – whether it’s real or not – that DSA has been soft on crime and that their proposals have not led to any progress on the public safety front,” Democratic political consultant Eli Valentin, explaining that Black and Latino voters, particularly older generations, tend to be me more moderate. “He needs to inspire confidence in this electorate. If he’s able to do that, watch out,” he added.

Mamdani said he sees his path to victory as stitching together the constituencies Wiley and Adams assembled in the last mayoral primary while expanding the electorate to encompass Muslim, South Asian and other ethnic communities who haven’t had much sway in prior elections. He said he believes Adams won in 2021 in large part because of his message of empowering the working class – often with progressive language.

“As much as he characterized his message around public safety, there were also messages of reform. He spoke to New Yorkers that they need not choose between justice and safety,” Mamdani said. “Now he has shown himself fundamentally uninterested in the former and unable to deliver the latter, but it is important to remember that there is a path here between these constituencies that are often framed as oppositional.”

Cultural fluency has been a priority in Mamdani’s strategy. Campaign literature has so far been translated into Urdu, Arabic and Bangla – the languages most commonly spoken by Muslims in the city in addition to English – and Spanish. Materials in Hindi, Mandarin and Haitian Creole are being created now. Two full-time staffers are dedicated to engaging Muslim and South Asian New Yorkers. The campaign is also currently in the process of hiring a Spanish-language press secretary who will be dedicated to reaching Spanish-speaking voters online and across traditional news media. Of his roughly 15,000 volunteers, nearly 800 are registered Spanish speakers, according to his campaign.

Mamdani said that effort alone is not enough; outreach to communities must be sophisticated and individualized. He added that too often, most campaigns have failed to do this, thus feeding the cycle of city elections being decided by people already engaged in politics.

“What’s so frustrating sometimes when you speak to New Yorkers of color, immigrant New Yorkers, is that the investment that is given to a triple prime voter is often denied to a voter who would carry the same impact if they were given a reason,” Mamdani said. “We need to treat voters the way that shows their worth.”

Former New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said Mamdani’s outreach to Latino voters has been promising (though she hasn’t endorsed anyone). Generally, she explained, the community tends to get approached by candidates at the last minute and feel pandered to – like there isn’t a real interest in making a genuine connection. So when Mamdani, who is not a fluent Spanish speaker, released a video in which he delivered his vision for the city in the language, it resonated. “It was something that hit home. I thought it was a really great, genuine, authentic attempt. That’s something that’s really been missing,” Mark-Viverito said.

Hoping to reach an even broader spectrum of New Yorkers, staff are creating a multilingual video about Mamdani’s campaign in Uzbek, Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Hindi, Nepalese and Urdu. The purpose is twofold: to stitch together into one video, but also to disseminate them individually across WhatsApp and other platforms.

And Mamdani, who has been floated as a possible Working Families Party candidate in the general election if he loses the Democratic primary, isn’t giving up on conservative voters.

He embarked on a breakneck campaign early this year to encourage his supporters to register as Democrats ahead of a Feb. 14 deadline so they could participate in the June 24 election. (Only Democrats can vote in the party’s primary in the city.) After the November presidential election, he went to Hillside Avenue in Queens and Fordham Road in the Bronx, which are in parts of the city that shifted to the right, to speak with Trump voters and others who didn’t vote at all. He went on a New York City Police Department-centered podcast and sat down for an in-depth interview with the right-leaning New York Post.

“We can do all these things in tandem,” Mamdani said. “We can tell people to register and join the party, and we can also speak to those who’ve been in the party for decades while recognizing the ways in which this party has fallen short and try to live up to the ideals that excited so many years ago.”

The final stretch

There are roughly seven weeks to go until the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. Seven weeks for Mamdani to flood the airwaves with television advertisements introducing himself and his policies to a broader audience. Seven weeks to weather attacks from a well-funded Cuomo machine – and to launch his own barbs in kind. Seven weeks to be everywhere and do everything. Seven weeks to make inroads with Black, Latino and older voters. Seven weeks to coalesce the left, to secure further endorsements from influential electeds and unions. Most importantly? Seven weeks to transport potential voters from a place of what is often passive interest to actual boots-on-the-ground supporters come Election Day.

Mamdani has positioned himself well. Altogether, his indisputable rise to second in the polls, his sharp messaging about affordability, his ardent supporters – both online and in the streets – his egalitarian platform and the roughly $7.5 million he’s got in the bank are a powerful springboard entering this key final stretch. But there’s still that chasm, roughly 20 to 30 percentage points, between Mamdani and Cuomo.

Other big questions that could have a big impact on Mamdani’s campaign are still to be answered – like whether he will win Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s coveted endorsement, grow his support with labor unions and whether the Working Families Party will decide to rank him first.

“At the very least he’s going to be in second place. For a 33-year-old junior Assembly member to overperform as much as he has, win or lose, he has done more for his career than anyone else,” Democratic political strategist Trip Yang said. “He could easily leverage himself for a congressional seat, for a borough presidency – anything else probably. If he loses, he’s probably the front-runner in the next race he runs.”

Mamdani says he’s not in the race to elevate his profile, for the viral moments, nor to set himself up for the next big thing. He’s in it to win. He pointed out that while people have described his campaign as having a ceiling since day one, he has already exceeded those initial expectations.

“I understand why they are skeptical because ultimately we are doing something that does not have precedence in New York City. We are building a coalition that is the first of its kind,” Mamdani said. “We will continue to break every single ceiling that is imposed on us.”