Photograph © Nick Dawson  Theodore Hamm is the author of Bernie’s Brooklyn: How Growing Up in the New Deal City Shaped Bernie Sanders’ Politics. He wrote about the 2025 race for The Indypendent and Drop Site, and his articles about New York City politics have also appeared in Jacobin. Hamm is chair of journalism at St. Joseph’s University, NY in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

Introduction: The City Turned Upside Down

On June 25, 2025, just after 12:15 a.m., a victorious Zohran Mamdani stepped on stage at a brewpub in Long Island City, Queens. A 33-year-old Muslim immigrant from Uganda, and an unapologetic democratic socialist, Mamdani had electrified New York City for the past several weeks.

Six months earlier, in mid-January, the Manhattan-based crypto-currency website Polymarket had given the newcomer an 8% shot at winning the mayoral Democratic primary, and although he had not yet become an official candidate, the disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo—with 100% name recognition—led the pack at 44%. But by election day, Polymarket listed Mamdani at 55%, nine points ahead of Cuomo, who had remained the frontrunner since joining the race in March. The Wall Street crowd knows the trendlines.

In a hotel room near the brewpub, Zohran scrambled to update his remarks along with campaign manager Elle Bisgaard-Church, political director Julian Gerson, media strategist Morris Katz, and top aide Spencer Goldberg. Coming into the night, they knew that the results had spiked in their favor—but still expected the outcome to be determined after future rounds of ranked-choice ballot tabulations.

The insurgent candidate planned to give a talk along the lines of what a basketball coach tells the locker room after winning the quarter-finals—i.e. “great job everyone, but we’re not there yet.” But less than 90 minutes after the polls closed at 9 p.m., Cuomo conceded. As they adjusted the speech, Mamdani thought of his youth, when he’d lived in South Africa. He had a quote that he liked.

In his victory speech, which was broadcast live on local TV and across social media, Zohran invoked his native continent’s favorite son (and fellow socialist): “Tonight,” the candidate calmly began, “we made history. In the words of Nelson Mandela, ‘It always seems impossible until it is done.’ My friends, we have done it. I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City.”

Local TV reporters told their mostly older viewers that the upset win was “stunning” and “historic.” At election-night watch parties across the city hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which Mamdani has long been a member, Zohran’s army of millennial volunteers went wild. Across the five boroughs—from Ozone Park, Queens, to Kensington, Brooklyn, to Westchester Square in the Bronx—South Asian and Muslim voters of all ages celebrated. Sundry social media platforms lit up.

From the city elite came wails of bewilderment and exasperation. “Terror. Fear. Panic,” is how Kathryn Wilde, a ubiquitous spokesperson for the city’s dubiously labeled “business community,” summed up the collective reaction. As one of the city’s largest landlords told the New York Times, "You want to have leadership that speaks to what New York is. It’s the capital of capitalism." So concurred the extreme-right New York Post, which had conducted a smear campaign against Mamdani throughout the primary. On election day, its front page had denounced the insurgent candidate as a “radical, antisemitic socialist.” Its follow-up cover page was desperate: “NYC SOS,” shrieked the influential tabloid. “Who will save our city after radical socialist batters Cuomo in Dem mayoral primary?” Throughout the city’s corridors of power, Mamdani Derangement Syndrome reverberated.

Zohran’s quote from Mandela provided his answer to the Post’s question. For democratic socialists, it is “we”—not a “she” or “he”—that wins elected offices. When early voting began on Saturday, June 14, Mamdani’s massive ranks of volunteers, which surpassed 50,000 by primary day, provided an outreach operation far more genuinely committed to its candidate than that of any mayoral contender in New York City history. A massive number of Muslim and South Asian voters, including many in the city’s Bangladeshi enclaves, mobilized for the first time in a city election. Although union-friendly, Mamdani received support from only a few local labor leaders, most of whom preferred not to upset the status quo. Zohran’s coalition—voters under 50, multiracial, polyglot, pro-Palestine, unafraid to be called socialists—was nothing if not groundbreaking in New York City.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a diverse array of other local leaders joined Mamdani for a rally on Saturday night, June 14. The candidate and fellow speakers addressed an overflow crowd of mostly twenty-somethings at Terminal 5, a performance venue on Midtown Manhattan’s west side. Exponentially more viewers caught clips on social media. “This victory,” Zohran declared, “will be historic, not just for who I am—a Muslim immigrant and a proud democratic socialist—but for what we will do: make this city affordable for everyone.”

*

Although he did not talk much about Uganda on the primary campaign trail, Zohran never tried to conceal his roots among the South Asian diaspora in Africa…

Photograph © Nick Dawson  Theodore Hamm is the author of Bernie’s Brooklyn: How Growing Up in the New Deal City Shaped Bernie Sanders’ Politics. He wrote about the 2025 race for The Indypendent and Drop Site, and his articles about New York City politics have also appeared in Jacobin. Hamm is chair of journalism at St. Joseph’s University, NY in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

Introduction: The City Turned Upside Down

On June 25, 2025, just after 12:15 a.m., a victorious Zohran Mamdani stepped on stage at a brewpub in Long Island City, Queens. A 33-year-old Muslim immigrant from Uganda, and an unapologetic democratic socialist, Mamdani had electrified New York City for the past several weeks.

Six months earlier, in mid-January, the Manhattan-based crypto-currency website Polymarket had given the newcomer an 8% shot at winning the mayoral Democratic primary, and although he had not yet become an official candidate, the disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo—with 100% name recognition—led the pack at 44%. But by election day, Polymarket listed Mamdani at 55%, nine points ahead of Cuomo, who had remained the frontrunner since joining the race in March. The Wall Street crowd knows the trendlines.

In a hotel room near the brewpub, Zohran scrambled to update his remarks along with campaign manager Elle Bisgaard-Church, political director Julian Gerson, media strategist Morris Katz, and top aide Spencer Goldberg. Coming into the night, they knew that the results had spiked in their favor—but still expected the outcome to be determined after future rounds of ranked-choice ballot tabulations.

The insurgent candidate planned to give a talk along the lines of what a basketball coach tells the locker room after winning the quarter-finals—i.e. “great job everyone, but we’re not there yet.” But less than 90 minutes after the polls closed at 9 p.m., Cuomo conceded. As they adjusted the speech, Mamdani thought of his youth, when he’d lived in South Africa. He had a quote that he liked.

In his victory speech, which was broadcast live on local TV and across social media, Zohran invoked his native continent’s favorite son (and fellow socialist): “Tonight,” the candidate calmly began, “we made history. In the words of Nelson Mandela, ‘It always seems impossible until it is done.’ My friends, we have done it. I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City.”

Local TV reporters told their mostly older viewers that the upset win was “stunning” and “historic.” At election-night watch parties across the city hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which Mamdani has long been a member, Zohran’s army of millennial volunteers went wild. Across the five boroughs—from Ozone Park, Queens, to Kensington, Brooklyn, to Westchester Square in the Bronx—South Asian and Muslim voters of all ages celebrated. Sundry social media platforms lit up.

From the city elite came wails of bewilderment and exasperation. “Terror. Fear. Panic,” is how Kathryn Wilde, a ubiquitous spokesperson for the city’s dubiously labeled “business community,” summed up the collective reaction. As one of the city’s largest landlords told the New York Times, "You want to have leadership that speaks to what New York is. It’s the capital of capitalism." So concurred the extreme-right New York Post, which had conducted a smear campaign against Mamdani throughout the primary. On election day, its front page had denounced the insurgent candidate as a “radical, antisemitic socialist.” Its follow-up cover page was desperate: “NYC SOS,” shrieked the influential tabloid. “Who will save our city after radical socialist batters Cuomo in Dem mayoral primary?” Throughout the city’s corridors of power, Mamdani Derangement Syndrome reverberated.

Zohran’s quote from Mandela provided his answer to the Post’s question. For democratic socialists, it is “we”—not a “she” or “he”—that wins elected offices. When early voting began on Saturday, June 14, Mamdani’s massive ranks of volunteers, which surpassed 50,000 by primary day, provided an outreach operation far more genuinely committed to its candidate than that of any mayoral contender in New York City history. A massive number of Muslim and South Asian voters, including many in the city’s Bangladeshi enclaves, mobilized for the first time in a city election. Although union-friendly, Mamdani received support from only a few local labor leaders, most of whom preferred not to upset the status quo. Zohran’s coalition—voters under 50, multiracial, polyglot, pro-Palestine, unafraid to be called socialists—was nothing if not groundbreaking in New York City.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a diverse array of other local leaders joined Mamdani for a rally on Saturday night, June 14. The candidate and fellow speakers addressed an overflow crowd of mostly twenty-somethings at Terminal 5, a performance venue on Midtown Manhattan’s west side. Exponentially more viewers caught clips on social media. “This victory,” Zohran declared, “will be historic, not just for who I am—a Muslim immigrant and a proud democratic socialist—but for what we will do: make this city affordable for everyone.”

*

Although he did not talk much about Uganda on the primary campaign trail, Zohran never tried to conceal his roots among the South Asian diaspora in Africa…