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Zohran Mamdani

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Zohran Mamdani in May 2025

Zohran Kwame Mamdani (born October 18, 1991) is an American politician and mayor-elect of New York City having won the post in the 2025 election. Since 2021, he has served as a member of the New York State Assembly from the 36th district, based in Queens. Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Quotes

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This campaign is for every person who believes in the dignity of their neighbors and that the government's job is to actually make our lives better.
  • We are special as DSA electeds not because of ourselves, we are special because of our organization.
    • Mamdani during his keynote speech during the 2023 DSA convention[1]
  • This campaign is for every person who believes in the dignity of their neighbors and that the government's job is to actually make our lives better.
    • Statement displayed on Mamdani's campaign website during his run for Mayor of New York City in 2025[2]
  • You know, this is not the first time that President Trump is going to comment on myself, and I encourage him -- just like I encourage every New Yorker -- to learn about my actual policies to make the city affordable But if he continues to focus on persecuting political enemies and on trying to detain and disappear New Yorkers, be it on the basis of their documentation or their sexual orientation or their politics, that is someone that I will fight time and again.

Election night victory speech ( 5 November 2025)

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In this new age we make for ourselves, we will refuse to allow those who traffic in division and hate to pit us against one another.
In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light.
"FULL SPEECH: Zohran Mamdani's victory speech following historic NYC mayoral win", ABC News (5 November 2025) · "The Full Transcript of Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Speech", The New York Times (5 November 2025)
  • Thank you, my friends. The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, "I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity."
    For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands.
    Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns: These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater.
    Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands. My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty.
  • I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life. But let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few. New York, tonight you have delivered. A mandate for change. A mandate for a new kind of politics. A mandate for a city we can afford. And a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that.
  • On January 1st, I will be sworn in as the mayor of New York City. And that is because of you. So before I say anything else, I must say this: Thank you. Thank you to the next generation of New Yorkers who refuse to accept that the promise of a better future was a relic of the past.
    You showed that when politics speaks to you without condescension, we can usher in a new era of leadership. We will fight for you, because we are you.
  • Because of you, we will make this city one that working people can love and live in again. With every door knocked, every petition signature earned, and every hard-earned conversation, you eroded the cynicism that has come to define our politics.
  • Now, I know that I have asked for much from you over this last year. Time and again, you have answered my calls — but I have one final request. New York City, breathe this moment in. We have held our breath for longer than we know.
    We have held it in anticipation of defeat, held it because the air has been knocked out of our lungs too many times to count, held it because we cannot afford to exhale. Thanks to all of those who sacrificed so much. We are breathing in the air of a city that has been reborn.
  • I will wake each morning with a singular purpose: to make this city better for you than it was the day before.
    There are many who thought this day would never come, who feared that we would be condemned only to a future of less, with every election consigning us simply to more of the same.
    And there are others who see politics today as too cruel for the flame of hope to still burn. New York, we have answered those fears.
    Tonight we have spoken in a clear voice. Hope is alive. Hope is a decision that tens of thousands of New Yorkers made day after day, volunteer shift after volunteer shift, despite attack ad after attack ad. More than a million of us stood in our churches, in gymnasiums, in community centers, as we filled in the ledger of democracy.
    And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together. Hope over tyranny. Hope over big money and small ideas. Hope over despair. We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible. And we won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now, it is something that we do.
  • Standing before you, I think of the words of Jawaharlal Nehru: "A moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."
    Tonight we have stepped out from the old into the new. So let us speak now, with clarity and conviction that cannot be misunderstood, about what this new age will deliver, and for whom.
  • This will be an age where New Yorkers expect from their leaders a bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than a list of excuses for what we are too timid to attempt. Central to that vision will be the most ambitious agenda to tackle the cost-of-living crisis that this city has seen since the days of Fiorello La Guardia: an agenda that will freeze the rents for more than two million rent-stabilized tenants, make buses fast and free, and deliver universal child care across our city.
    Years from now, may our only regret be that this day took so long to come. This new age will be one of relentless improvement. We will hire thousands more teachers. We will cut waste from a bloated bureaucracy.
  • Safety and justice will go hand in hand as we work with police officers to reduce crime and create a Department of Community Safety that tackles the mental health crisis and homelessness crises head on. Excellence will become the expectation across government, not the exception. In this new age we make for ourselves, we will refuse to allow those who traffic in division and hate to pit us against one another.
    In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light. Here, we believe in standing up for those we love, whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many Black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall. Your struggle is ours, too.
  • And we will build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism. Where the more than one million Muslims know that they belong — not just in the five boroughs of this city, but in the halls of power.
    No more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election. This new age will be defined by a competence and a compassion that have too long been placed at odds with one another. We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.
    For years, those in City Hall have only helped those who can help them. But on January 1st, we will usher in a city government that helps everyone.
  • Together, we will usher in a generation of change. And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.
    After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.
    This is not only how we stop Trump; it’s how we stop the next one. So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.
  • We will hold bad landlords to account because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks. We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed.
  • New York will remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.
    So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us. When we enter City Hall in 58 days, expectations will be high. We will meet them.
  • A great New Yorker once said that while you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.
    If that must be true, let the prose we write still rhyme, and let us build a shining city for all. And we must chart a new path, as bold as the one we have already traveled. After all, the conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate.
    I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.
  • Let the words we’ve spoken together, the dreams we’ve dreamt together, become the agenda we deliver together. New York, this power, it’s yours. This city belongs to you.
    Thank you.

Press conference with Donald Trump (21 November 2025)

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  • I appreciated the meeting with the President and as he said, it was a productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City — and the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers, the eight and a half million who call our city their home who are struggling to afford life in the most expensive city in the United States of America. We spoke about rent, we spoke about groceries, we spoke about utilities. We spoke about the different ways in which people are being pushed out, and I appreciated the time with the president. I appreciated the conversation. I look forward to working together to deliver that affordability for New Yorkers.
  • I think both President Trump and I, we are very clear about our positions and our views, and what I really appreciate about the President is the meeting that we had focused not on places of disagreement, which there are many, and also focused on the shared purpose that we have in serving New Yorkers, and frankly that is something that could transform the lives of the eight and a half million people who are currently struggling under a cost of living crisis with 1 in 4 living in poverty. And the meeting came back again and again to what it could look like to lift those New Yorkers out of struggle and start to deliver them a city that they could do more than just struggle to afford it but actually start to live in it.

Quotes about Mamdani

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  • It's finally happened, the Democrats have crossed the line. Zohran Mamdani, a 100% Communist Lunatic, has just won the Dem Primary, and is on his way to becoming Mayor. We've had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous.
  • New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, speaking with ABC News the day after achieving an upset in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, said that he believes his strategy that focused on affordability and economics could be a blueprint for Democrats across the country. "I think there's a question of how we return back to what made so many of us proud to be Democrats," Mamdani told ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott in an interview on Wednesday.
  • Since the '70s we've had the Financial Emergency Act, which calls for a balanced budget. And so the budget should also be thought of as a set of choices that the mayor and the City Council make about the allocation of resources. Mamdani has been clear about the priorities he would set in a way that this current administration has not done. And look, we're going to be in a pitched battle next year with a federal administration that's withholding funds. New York State passed its budget as if none of this were happening. New York City passed its budget as if none of this were happening. And what Mamdani has shown us is he's reaching out across the board. And yes, that's a coalition to get elected. It's also a coalition to govern.
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