Mamdani’s inauguration – through the eyes of five New Yorkers

The inauguration of Zohran Mamdani was meaningful to all New Yorkers: the ones who wore out their sneakers knocking doors to make it happen, the ones who hope he will bring a new era of affordability to the city, and the ones who are worried his mayoralty will be unable to match the enormous promises he’s made. 

At his historic, freezing inauguration ceremony on Thursday, City & State shadowed five New Yorkers for whom the day has particular significance.

Kuber Sancho-Persad

When New York City taxi drivers went on a hunger strike in 2021, Kuber Sancho-Persad, then in his mid-twenties, met a guy not much older than him – a young, freshman Assembly member who joined the drivers striking for medallion debt relief to help call attention to the issue. “He fit in really well with us,” Sancho-Persad recalls. “I thought at first he was a driver.”

On Thursday, Sancho-Persad sat in City Hall Park and witnessed that man be sworn in as the 112th mayor of New York City. When Mamdani shouted out New Yorkers who were watching his inaugural address remotely, including “from cell phones propped against the dashboards of parked taxi cabs at LaGuardia Airport,” Sancho-Persad identified immediately. “We do that all the time,” he said with a laugh.

Sancho-Persad started driving a yellow cab in 2014, joining the family business. His father had driven his own yellow cab for years and was a taxi medallion owner. Like many medallion owners, he was stuck in a punishing debt cycle perpetuated by predatory and reckless lending practices. He died just a couple months after he got a foreclosure notice in 2017, four years before his son and New York City’s future mayor would go on hunger strike for debt relief.

Sancho-Persad has always driven a yellow cab affiliated with a garage, but for the first time, he’s hopeful that he can make a living as an independent cab owner. He’s in the process of having his late father’s medallion transferred back to him with the help of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, and he hopes to buy his own yellow cab to work for himself. 

In the final stretch of Mamdani’s primary campaign, Sancho-Persad helped organize a campaign stop at the taxi line at LaGuardia Airport. 

It was fitting, then, that Mamdani chose to arrive at his inauguration via a yellow cab. Mamdani rode in the cab of another driver who went on hunger strike, Richard Chow, but had Mamdani been riding with Sancho-Persad, he said he would have delivered a simple message to the new mayor as he starts his first term: “Just keep on trucking. Sometimes you get some setbacks, but you’ve just got to keep on trying.” – Annie McDonough

Andrew Epstein

Andrew Epstein was there on day one of Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, and he wasn’t going to miss the first day of his mayoral term, even if it meant waiting in line for an hour in the cold. The former Assembly staffer was Mamdani’s first campaign spokesperson, and has advised him since before he launched his campaign, to limited fanfare, in October 2024. 

“In the early months, you know, long before the security detail and everything else, I would get on at the Astoria Boulevard station of the N or the W, and Zohran would get on at the Broadway stop. We’d always meet at the front car," Epstein recalled, “then we would be in business and heading into the city for probably a press conference” – ones that were sparsely attended. 

Epstein’s still advising Mamdani’s transition committee, but he had the day off from work and sat in the crowd with his wife and mother. And Epstein found himself tearing up as he watched Senator Bernie Sanders administer Mamdani’s oath of office. 

“It feels like the culmination of a campaign that was a love letter to the city,” Epstein said about Mamdani’s address. “The whole idea of this campaign was that people love New York, and they want to be able to stay here. … I feel immense New York Pride.” - Jeff Coltin

Brad Lander

“You know we’re going to miss you!” a woman said to Brad Lander as he made his way through the inauguration crowd. The now-former city comptroller, who in another universe may have been sworn in as mayor himself on Thursday, arrived without a security detail for the first time in four years. 

“That party I went to last night was like a de-inauguration,” he joked. “My guys are with Mark now.” Lander quickly ran into his successor Mark Levine, greeting him with a hearty “Comptroller!” He took a selfie with Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and chatted with his new political strategist, Morris Katz.

Lander may not be mayor, and he’s not going to be a deputy mayor either, but with Katz’s guidance and Mamdani’s endorsement, Lander is challenging Rep. Dan Goldman for his Brooklyn and lower Manhattan congressional seat.

The “feels like” temperature barely scraped double digits, but Lander was in good spirits. “If I weren’t here I would be doing the polar bear plunge. So this is the warmer of my options,” he said. A political animal with an optimistic nature, Lander has gotten used to choosing the best of his options.

Ahead of the Democratic mayoral primary, that meant a key cross-endorsement with Mamdani in an effort to keep former Gov. Andrew Cuomo out of office. “Proud that we stopped that from happening,” he said while waiting for the ceremony to start. If Cuomo had won? “I was not sitting here on that timeline!”

So it’s no surprise Lander saw teamwork in the ceremony. “When Jumaane called this ‘a shining beacon of possibility,’ you really could feel it. He laid it up, Zohran then knocked that ball just out of the park,” Lander recounted. “You can feel what's special about New York City elevated in this moment. Yes, it’s Zohran's agenda for affordability. Yes, Jumaane standing up for immigrant neighbors.” - Jeff Coltin

Dena Cox

One year ago, 35-year-old Dena Cox had never heard of Mamdani. But when videos of the young democratic socialist began popping up on her social media, the things he was saying about affordability resonated.

“He was somebody who was speaking about politics in the way that I and my friends speak about politics,” she recalled, standing near the steps where Mamdani would soon be sworn in. “You know, we need to take care of New Yorkers. We want to make sure that people who live here and those that want to live here and who are from here want to stay here and that they are able to do so.”

A native New Yorker and health program manager employed by the city, Cox was well acquainted with what it means to love this place while simultaneously struggling to remain. The cost of living has been a longstanding fight for herself, her friends and many of the people she’d grown up with in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Believing that Mamdani’s vision could change things, she’d spent hours upon hours speaking to fellow native New Yorkers about his message with a group called “We Grew Here” and later, as a field lead for the campaign.

Bundled in a long black puffer jacket and joined by her sister, Ashley, a public school teacher, Cox said everything felt surreal. A thick pack of hand warmers was tucked in one of the women’s bags – they’d brought extra to the inauguration, figuring many of their fellow attendees would want them.

As the programming stretched on, the sun dipping with the waning afternoon, many moments resonated with Cox; the emotional tenor of Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ speech as he spoke of Grenadian revolutionary Maurice Bishop and socialism in the Caribbean, and Mamdani’s obvious love for New York. What she’d perhaps felt most of all though was renewed hope in the city’s ability to work for New Yorkers. After all, come Monday, she’ll be back on the job. Administrations change, but municipal workers’ duties stretch on. “I want to be able to work for a city that feels like we’re doing excellence for our people,” she said. With Mamdani, she’s hopeful she will. - Sahalie Donaldson

Curtis Sliwa

In his trademark red beret, former Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa stood out in the crowd of Mamdani supporters.

“You know that guy? That’s Curtis Sliwa,” a couple New Yorkers whispered to each other as they spotted him. “I think that’s literally him!”

The “Zohranistas,” as Sliwa called them, kept coming up to pay their respects and ask for selfies. Sliwa was in his element, glad-handing and making small talk with the well-wishers. “Oh, they didn’t vote for me,” he told City & State. “Some may have lied, like ‘Oh, I voted for you.’ Please. Don’t insult me. If you had voted for me, I’d be the one giving the inaugural address!”

Although the pro-Mamdani crowd certainly disapproved of Sliwa’s conservative politics – “My dad says he at least used to be pretty racist,” one Mamdani supporter remarked to a friend after spotting Sliwa – they still seemed to respect him.

“I’m a socialist and whatnot, but it’s a real honor because you care so much about animals,” one person told Sliwa.

“They don’t see me as a Trumper, you know, MAGA,” Sliwa said. Sliwa said he was rooting for the new mayor to succeed. 

“He got a mandate, and more importantly, if he does well, the city does well, everybody does well … Anybody who wants him to fail, that’s pretty selfish,” he said.

Sliwa had arrived in Lower Manhattan for the inauguration shortly before noon, after spending the morning at the Polar Bear Plunge in Coney Island, alongside members of the Guardian Angels doing security.

He did not have a ticket for the inauguration ceremony at City Hall. Instead, like thousands of other New Yorkers, he planned to watch it live on Jumbotrons on Broadway.

But those hoping to gain access to the Canyon of Heroes had to go through a security screening and the line to get in was backed up for more than 10 blocks – which led to hundreds of Mamdani supporters missing the inauguration entirely because they were stuck standing on Church St, where there were no Jumbotrons, instead of being able to stand on Broadway, where there were.

Around 2:30 pm, Sliwa and the rest finally made it into the Canyon of Heroes. Sliwa headed up Broadway, toward City Hall. On the way, he was constantly stopped by people on the street – not just Mamdani supporters, but the cops and street cleaners working the event, too. 

Just before 4 pm, Sliwa finally made it to the City Hall plaza. The inauguration was long over and Mayor Mamdani was gone, having headed to Brooklyn for a press conference. And the gates to City Hall were closed. – Peter Sterne