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On the night of the Oscars, the long line outside of a lower Manhattan nightclub snaked around the block. Young and fashionable, the crowd was hoping to get into an unusual political fundraiser—a combination panel discussion, DJ set, and award show watch party—benefiting the New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old socialist. 

It would be difficult to understand the various downtown personalities who had banded together to throw this fundraiser unless you, like most of those in the audience, were chronically online. There were stalwarts of the “dirtbag left,” including hosts of the podcasts Chapo Trap House and TrueAnon. Others were drawn from the stylish fringes of the city’s arts and literature scene, not typically a contingent known for its earnest support of political candidates. But as one of the hosts, activist and former Disney Channel star Rowan Blanchard, told New York Magazine, “He’s different.” 

Mamdani, who represents Astoria in the state Assembly, is currently defying most expectations for how far a socialist can go in the mayoral race. The slick, highly produced videos touting his core policy proposals—free bus fare, a rent freeze for all rent-stabilized tenants, free childcare up to age 5, and city-owned grocery stores—have monopolized online attention. As Mayor Eric Adams struggles to gain reelection momentum and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo commands a 20-point lead in polls, Mamdani has risen above a slew of more established progressive challengers. He is the first, and so far the only, primary candidate to announce that he has hit the cap for public matching funds, raising almost $1.5 million from 18,000 donors. 

Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran political strategist based in New York City, had a simple explanation for Mamdani’s emergence as the leading progressive contender: “He’s not boring! He’s handsome, articulate, and his ideas are very romantic and interesting.” But, Sheinkopf said, the central question was this: “Does his profile fit the moment?”

As Mamdani gains ground across the city, so has the democratic socialist cause. The city’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter has added 1,500 members—about a quarter increase—since last October, when it endorsed Mamdani. “We’re not only winning elections with downwardly mobile college-educated people,” said Grace Mausser, co-chair of the local chapter. “We’re becoming more diverse.” 

Mamdani is betting that his platform will do more than galvanize disaffected young leftists from gentrified corridors of the city. His theory is that the saliency of universal services will win over working-class voters, particularly those who have become disillusioned by the Democratic party. Whether or not he succeeds, Mamdani’s candidacy is a test of the widespread appeal of a left-wing economic populist platform, at a time when Democrats desperately need to find a better message. 

“The directness of our politics requires no translation,” Mamdani told me. “Our campaign is driven by a belief that, while there may not be an ideological majority in New York City, there is a majority of New Yorkers who feel left behind by the economic policies of this mayor and by politics today.” 

Earlier this month, I met Mamdani at a Ramadan street market in Astoria’s Little Egypt neighborhood, the heart of its Middle Eastern community. Mamdani is a practicing Muslim, and Ramadan is his favorite time of the year. But, he told me, “calling people for money when you can’t drink water is quite the experience.” 

A few hours earlier, he had hopped off the Amtrak from Albany, where the state legislature is in session, and gone straight to a Ramadan iftar. But Mamdani couldn’t stick around to actually eat and broke his fast while walking to the subway, on his way to a fundraiser hosted by Cynthia Nixon, the Sex and the City actress and onetime gubernatorial candidate. By the time we met at 10 p.m., Mamdani was 30 minutes late, but as upbeat as ever. 

The mayoral race has turned Mamdani into a local celebrity in Astoria. As we made our way through the few blocks of Steinway Street that had been closed for food vendors, he was recognized at every turn. Mamdani is boyishly good-looking, with a kind of class-clown appeal. At the market, a significant portion of his supporters were young women hoping to take a selfie. But many also expressed a deep sense of identification with Mamdani, who would be both the first South Asian and first Muslim mayor of New York City. A refrain I heard throughout the night was excitement that “someone like you” and “one of us” was running for office. 

Mamdani’s surging popularity seems to be because of—rather than in spite of—factors that would be considered liabilities in the traditional calculus of New York City politics. He has steadfastly condemned Israel’s war on Gaza, even as pro-Israel PACs have spent millions to sink progressive candidates nationwide. Mamdani likes to joke that, as a Muslim and a socialist, he is “no stranger to bad PR.”

Several days earlier, a recent Columbia graduate and legal permanent resident named Mahmoud Khalil had been detained by ICE over his pro-Palestine activism. Afterward, when Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, visited GOP lawmakers at the state capitol, Mamdani decided to confront him. The ensuing video of Mamdani pushing against state troopers and shouting at Homan, “How many more New Yorkers will you detain?” went viral. 

At the market, some seemed to relish in his display of anger—one person said to Mamdani, “I don’t know how you didn’t punch Homan in the face.” It seemed rare for a politician to express the outrage that so many felt around the Trump administration. Mamdani told me he hadn’t anticipated how emotional he would be. “[Homan] walked that hallway with such a smirk, eating an apple,” Mamdani said. “So I asked him the questions that many people want answered.” 

As the video spread, Mamdani’s legislative offices were inundated with racist messages, while fundraising poured in. The campaign said that it had raised nearly $250,000 in the day or so after the video was posted. 

Mamdani has something of a dream pedigree for a New York City leftist. His mother, Mira Nair, is an internationally renowned writer and director. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a prominent scholar of post-colonialism and African history. They met when Nair interviewed Mahmood on a research trip to Kampala, Uganda, for her 1991 film Mississippi Masala, starring Denzel Washington. Zohran was born in Kampala and moved to New York City at seven, when his father took a posting at Columbia University. 

By his own admission, Mamdani wasn’t the most dilligent student. “There were moments of seriousness that increased with time,” he told me. But his family history—his father was expelled from Uganda under the dictator Idi Amin—taught him that “whether or not you care about politics, politics sure cares about you.” 

After Mamdani graduated from Bowdoin College with an Africana Studies major, he returned to New York City and worked on a series of long-shot progressive campaigns. In 2018, he managed journalist Ross Barkan’s unsuccessful bid for state Senate. Even then, Barkan told me, there was a sense that Mamdani would not be out-campaigned: “He wanted you out at 6 a.m., and you weren’t going home until late at night.” Though Mamdani was willing and able to debate even the most “rabid right-winger,” Barkan said, he also understood that “if you can’t persuade, you’ve got to show you have a backbone.”

All the while, Mamdani had an intermittent career as a self-described “B-list rapper.” He curated the soundtrack for his mother’s 2016 Disney film Queen of Katwe and, along with a childhood friend and collaborator, produced some of its music. In 2019, under the moniker Mr. Cardamom, he released the song “Nani,” with a music video featuring the Indian actress and chef Madhur Jaffrey. 

Mamdani brought that penchant for showmanship to the state Assembly after being elected in 2020, ousting a popular incumbent. As a legislator, Mamdani was skilled at winning over powerful allies. In 2021, he helped the taxi drivers’ union win debt relief, with the backing of New York Sen. Chuck Schumer. When union members went on a hunger strike to try to force a deal, Mamdani fasted alongside them all 15 days. And, in 2023, Mamdani and the state senate’s deputy majority leader introduced an eight-bill package to “Fix the MTA,” in part by dramatically increasing funding, and won a free bus fare pilot. 

When Mamdani announced his mayoral campaign last October, he was just wrapping up his second term in office, and very few New Yorkers knew his name. Politico reported that some DSA-aligned lawmakers had even tried to dissuade the organization from endorsing him. One thought that his candidacy was so doomed as to be potentially “ruinous” to the democratic socialist cause at large. 

That doesn’t appear to be likely. Though there are still three months left until the June primary—and many voters won’t really start paying attention until May—a recent poll shows Mamdani 10 points ahead of the next progressive candidate, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander.  

At the market in Astoria, a young man named Mikey told us that he had seen Mamdani’s TikTok about making bus fare free. He asked Mamdani, “What do you tell people who say your ideas are a little…” Mikey made an expansive gesture. “Well, I don’t want to say ‘unrealistic,’ but…” 

Mamdani is used to defending the feasibility of his economic proposals. One city calculation put the cost of eliminating bus fare at $652 million annually. He has said that providing universal childcare up to age five would likely cost at least $5 billion annually. When talking to Mikey, Mamdani brought up the sheer size of the city’s budget—$112.4 billion this year—and argued that funding is more a reflection of political willpower than actual fiscal constraints. After all, he often points out, the NYPD spent nearly $1.1 billion on overtime last year. 

But a significant portion of the city budget is dependent on the governor and state legislature. (There’s a reason that mayors lobby state lawmakers for funding on “Tin Cup Day.”) Mamdani has proposed paying for some of the programs through raising the state’s corporate tax rate—which would certainly be met with considerable resistance in Albany—and removing property tax exemptions for institutions like Columbia and New York University.

Though all the Democratic primary candidates have made affordability a core issue, Mamdani is hoping that the straightforward nature of his economic proposals will help him break through. “Voters pay attention to a TV ad or a mailer for 10 seconds—if you’re lucky,” Trip Yang, a New York City Democratic political consultant, said. “You need to get your message out there immediately.”

Mamdani has also argued that his economic policies are resonating with outer-borough voters who drifted away from Democrats, some toward Trump. In a video filmed after November’s election, Mamdani went to those parts of Queens and the Bronx with the biggest shifts and asked people why they voted for Trump or didn’t vote at all. Many pointed to rising costs and described their frustration with the Democratic party. One man said he didn’t vote “because I don’t believe in the system anymore.” 

Mamdani isn’t the only one who thinks that this opens an opportunity for a candidate outside of the establishment, especially one with bold ideas. “The details of policies are not what moves most people,” Ana María Archila, co-chair of the New York Working Families Party, told me. “What moves people is a sense of direction and the perception that someone will actually fight for them.” 

A few weeks ago, I spent an afternoon talking to New Yorkers around downtown Brooklyn. Few could name any mayoral candidates besides Cuomo and Adams. When I described Mamdani’s platform, I was sometimes met with a deep skepticism bred from too many unfulfilled campaign promises. I spoke to Virginia McRae, a retiree in her late seventies, after a Sunday service at her Baptist church in Brooklyn’s Clinton Hill neighborhood. She told me that even though affordability and accessibility were priorities for her, “it doesn’t feel like anyone can address these problems.” 

Mamdani is beginning to reach some voters, though. Taahira, a consultant in her early forties, said that Mamdani had vaguely stood out during a local arts organization’s candidate forum. He seemed to care about everyday people and operate beyond the sway of “corporate dollars,” she told me. Taahira was cautiously optimistic that recent events—including the Trump administration’s crackdown on student protesters—have forced New Yorkers to “acknowledge that there must be a shift” in the political ecosystem. But could Mamdani really become the next mayor? She shrugged. “Time will tell.”

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