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Zohran Mamdani, an American Democratic Party politician, identifies as a democratic socialist. [1] He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America's New York City chapter. [2] [3] Mamdani has also been described by The New York Times as a progressive, [4] and as a left-wing populist by The Guardian . [5]
Mamdani has credited his parents for both fostering his interest in politics and world affairs and shaping his outlook on them. He has noted that, when he was growing up, his household frequently discussed these subjects. [6] He has credited Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign for inspiring him to become a democratic socialist. [1] Mamdani is also influenced by 20th-century American "sewer socialists" such as Milwaukee mayor Daniel Hoan and Congressman Victor L. Berger, as well as the populist New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia. [7] In a December 2020 tweet, Mamdani asked "So what kind of mayor does NYC need right now?" and cited Arya Rajendran, Mayor of Thiruvananthapuram and Communist Party of India (Marxist) member, as a positive model for a future mayor of New York. [8] [9]
During his mayoral campaign, Mamdani has stated his leadership would emulate Boston mayor Michelle Wu and Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott. [10] He has frequently pointed to Wu, whom he has called the most effective current Democratic politician in the U.S., [11] as a role model for both her performance as mayor and prior work as a city councilor. [12] [13] Mamdani has specifically cited Wu's fare free-public bus transit pilot programs as inspiring his similar plans for New York City. [14] Wu is a progressive but, unlike Mamdani, does not identify as a socialist. [13]
Mamdani supported Proposal 1, a 2024 amendment to the Constitution of New York that made it unconstitutional to engage in discrimination based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sex (including sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression), pregnancy and pregnancy-related outcomes, or reproductive healthcare and autonomy. [15] [16] [17] Mamdani's mayoral campaign platform included opposition to wealth inequality [18] and racism. [19] He supports the New York Health Act, which would establish single-payer healthcare in New York State. [20]
Mamdani supports a universal pre-kindergarten childcare system. [21] [22] [23] He has proposed giving all new New York City families "baby baskets" containing products such as diapers and nursing supplies. [24] Mamdani introduced a bill to eliminate New York University's and Columbia University's state property tax exemption and direct those funds to the City University of New York system, which has historically struggled with funding. [25]
In a June 2025 interview with Der Blatt , a newspaper associated with the Hasidic movement of Judaism, Mamdani expressed a desire to defend Hasidic yeshivas (institutions for Torah study) from accusations of failing to meet state educational standards. [26] He said "I will listen to your leaders" on education and "I will work to protect you from anyone who wants to disturb your way of life". [26]
Mamdani supported Proposal 1, a 2024 amendment to the Constitution of New York that made it unconstitutional to engage in discrimination based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sex (including sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression), pregnancy and pregnancy-related outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy. [15] [16] [27]
Mamdani has argued that increasing policing and incarceration does little to prevent harm and that "dignified work, economic stability, and well-resourced neighborhoods" can more effectively keep the public safe. [28] He has advocated a more community-based approach to reducing crime, focusing on homeless outreach and anti-violence programs. He contends that there is too much reliance on police to fix societal problems, saying, "Police have a critical role to play, but right now we are relying on them to deal with the failures of the social safety net of reliance that is preventing them from doing their actual jobs." [29] He has proposed a Department of Community Safety to expand mental health outreach. [3] This proposed civilian-led department would deploy mental health teams to respond to 911 calls and expand street-level programs intended to stop the cycle of violence, as well as focusing on programs "that are proven to create long-term stability and promote recovery." [30]
In a June 2020 tweet, Mamdani voiced support for defunding the NYPD. [31] [32] During the 2025 mayoral race, he said he would work with the police rather than defund them, emphasizing their importance in dealing with violent crime and the role of social workers and mental health professionals in addressing underlying causes and prevention. [33] In October 2025, Mamdani apologized for describing the NYPD as racist. [34] In September 2025, Mamdani condemned the assassination of Charlie Kirk, saying that political violence has no place in the United States. [35]
Mamdani supports the New York Health Act, which would establish single-payer healthcare in New York State. [20] He portrayed a firefighter in a 2021 advertisement for the Campaign for New York Health. [20]
Mamdani supports enforcement of New York's sanctuary laws, which bar Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from entering schools, hospitals, and city property without a judicial warrant, and has advocated for stronger sanctuary laws. [36] Mamdani has decried the actions of ICE under the Trump administration as being fascist. [37] He has also proposed creating a commission to ensure compliance by city agencies and contractors. [38] He has pledged that if he is elected mayor, the city will provide legal representation for all immigrants in detention proceedings. [39]
On March 12, 2025, Mamdani confronted former ICE acting director Tom Homan in Albany about ICE's recent arrest of student activist Mahmoud Khalil; Mamdani yelled, "Do you believe in the First Amendment?" [40]
Mamdani supports LGBTQ+ rights. [41] [42] He aims to establish NYC as an LGBTQ+ sanctuary city and establish the Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs to "expand and centralize the services, programs, and support that LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers need across housing, employment, and more." [43] [44] Mamdani says LGBTQ+ people who became homeless due to their identity would benefit from his cost-of-living policies. [42]
Mamdani appeared at a February 2025 rally in Union Square to protest an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that threatened to "withhold federal funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming treatments to trans youth". [45] [46] As part of his platform, he supports expanding and protecting gender-affirming care citywide. He proposed an immediate investment of $65 million in public providers to ensure funding for medical treatments that lose Medicaid coverage and promised to ensure hospital accountability. [44]
Mamdani supports permanently eliminating New York City bus fares. [47] [48] [49] He advocated for a fare-free pilot program on MTA buses, [50] [51] which was launched on the Q4, B60, Bx18, M116 and S46/96 routes in September 2023. [52] [53] The program saw a 30% increase in ridership on weekdays, predominantly from people earning less than $28,000 a year. Across the five routes made free, assaults on bus operators dropped by 38.9%. [54] The fare-free program ended in August 2024 after state lawmakers did not reauthorize it. [55] [56] In response, Mamdani said, "the MTA was opposed to this program ... because they were saying that now is not the time to create any kind of confusion around fare collection." [50] [57] He estimates that it would cost New York City $650 million per year to eliminate bus fares. [58]
In December 2022, Mamdani introduced a series of bills for the 2023 session called "Fix the MTA". He proposed free bus travel over the next four years across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and then Manhattan and Staten Island. [59] The Formula Three Act would fill the $2.5 billion shortfall of the MTA with another plank freezing fares at $2.75. Another plank would have set aside further money for more frequency, such as six-minute headways for trains and the 100 most-used bus routes, then using any additional funds to increase service by 20%. [60]
In 2023, Mamdani co-introduced a bill to enact a weight-based vehicle-registration fee to dissuade people from owning heavier vehicles in an effort to make streets safer. [61] Mamdani supports congestion pricing in New York City and drafted a bill with New York state senator Michael Gianaris titled "Get Congestion Pricing Right" to increase bus service frequency and increase the number of fare-free buses. [62]
Mamdani views climate action as essential to achieving social justice in New York City. [63] In 2021, he organized volunteers and lobbied Governor Kathy Hochul to prevent the expansion of a gas-fired peaker power plant in Astoria, citing environmental concerns for low-income non-white communities. [64] [65] Mamdani has also backed statewide measures such as the All-Electric Buildings Act, which prohibits installing fossil-fuel equipment (e.g., gas stoves) in new buildings, and supported introducing congestion pricing in Manhattan to reduce traffic-related emissions. [66] [67]
As a mayoral candidate, Mamdani proposed a comprehensive decarbonization and resilience agenda. His "Green Schools for a Healthier New York City" blueprint would retrofit 500 public school buildings with rooftop solar arrays and upgraded HVAC systems; build 500 green schoolyards; transform heat-absorbing asphalt into green space serving students and community residents; convert 50 schools into year-round resilience hubs to offer shelter and resources during extreme heat, storms, or flooding; and extend tax incentives such as J-51 benefits to support building owners' compliance with Local Law 97. [66] [68]
He has advocated rent control, strengthening tenant protections, and creating a Social Housing Development Agency that would build publicly owned affordable housing. [69] He has stated that he takes inspiration from the Vienna, Austria model of social housing. [70] [71] [72] He wants to build 200,000 new units of affordable, rent-stabilized homes over the next 10 years with union labor, and double the amount of spending to rehabilitate homes for the city's 400,000 public housing tenants. [73]
He also wants to "increase density around mass transit hubs" and "upzone wealthier neighborhoods", citing housing policies in Jersey City and Tokyo as examples. [74]
Mamdani advocates for debt relief among taxi medallion owners. [75] He supports expanding labor protections and relying on unionized labor for public projects. [76]
Mamdani supports raising New York City's minimum wage to $30 per hour by 2030. [77]
As a democratic socialist, Mamdani supports an expansion of social ownership in the form of public enterprises, worker-owned cooperatives, and community land trusts. [78] [79] At the same time, he supports lowering permit costs and extending public support for small businesses in the private sector. [80]
Among his primary campaign positions are a pilot program in which the New York City government would operate one grocery store in each borough to drive down prices, [3] [81] and an extensive social housing system similar to the Vienna model. [70] [71] [72]
Mamdani supports an increase in corporate taxes in New York State from 7.25% to 11.5%, to match those of New Jersey. [82] He also supports a new 2% increase for income tax on city residents who earn more than $1 million a year, [73] to raise $20 billion to fund tuition-free City University of New York (CUNY) and State University of New York (SUNY) schools, statewide universal childcare, a subway fare freeze, free MTA buses, and tenant protections. [83] In June 2025, Mamdani said, "I don't think we should have billionaires." [84]
Mamdani made a mayoral campaign pledge to reduce taxes on "overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs" of New York City, while advocating to increase taxes on "more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods." [85] [86] His intention with this policy was to tackle a 1981 property tax law that essentially taxes owners of expensive homes based on the homes' potential rental price rather than their market value, which could lead to the owners paying much less property tax than owners of cheap homes. [87]
Mamdani condemned both Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel as dictators, but also said the United States' actions against Venezuela and Cuba, including an embargo against the latter, only worsened the conditions of Venezuelans and Cubans. [88]
Mamdani has said he would refuse to appear with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi if Modi visited New York, as he considers Modi a "war criminal", accusing him of "orchestrat[ing] a mass slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat" during 2002 riots in which 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus died. [89] He compared Modi to Israel's Netanyahu. [90] Mamdani said that in the aftermath of these events, few Muslims remain in Gujarat, and that most people believe Gujarati Muslims do not exist today, a claim Indian leaders disputed. [91]
Mamdani is critical of Israel, condemning Israeli apartheid in 2023. [92] He supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, [93] and in 2023 introduced a state assembly bill named the "Not on our dime!: Ending New York Funding of Israeli Settler Violence Act" [94] . The bill prohibited registered charities from donating to organizations involved in Israel's illegal West Bank settlements. A later iteration of the bill added organizations lending support to war crimes in Gaza. [95] [2] The day after the October 7 attacks on Israel, Mamdani issued a statement to "mourn the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine" and saying that the end of "occupation" and "apartheid" was the only path to peace. [96] [92] [97] Mamdani has condemned the Hamas attacks as a "horrific war crime". [92] [98]
In November 2023, Zohran joined Cynthia Nixon in a five day hunger strike outside of Washington DC in support of an immediate ceasefire and opposition to Biden's involvement in support of Israel's offensive in Gaza. [99] [100] [101] He condemned Hamas [102] and the attacks as a "horrific war crime", [92] [103] and criticized celebration of the killings at a rally by the New York City chapter of the DSA as "not befitting of a movement supporting universal human rights". [103] He said that both Hamas and Israel should "put down their weapons". [104] He continued local activism in 2024, holding an iftar for a ceasefire in Gaza during Ramadan. [105] He was also arrested during a ceasefire demonstration. [106] [107] [108] [98]
In 2025, he stated that he believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, [109] [93] and that if Benjamin Netanyahu travels to New York City, he should be arrested in accordance with the International Criminal Court's warrant for his arrest. [110] [111] He has remained an ongoing critic of Israel; in June 2025 he asserted that Israel has a right to exist as a state of "equal rights for all," implying an opposition to apartheid law and segregation, ethnocratic policy and racial or religious supremacy, and occupation or other similar structures. [112] Both supporters and critics have described his position as one in favor of a single, multiethnic democratic state. [113] [114] [115] [116] [117] Mamdani supports the creation of a Palestinian state of the West Bank and Gaza strip, the end of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and an end to economic, military and cultural Israeli apartheid for Palestinians in Israel. [118] [119]
In 2025, Mamdani said that if Russian president Vladimir Putin visited New York, he would order Putin's arrest, in accordance with the International Criminal Court's warrant. [120]
Mamdani condemned U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear sites during the Iran–Israel war, describing them as unconstitutional and destabilizing. [121]
Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist rising in the polls in the New York City mayor's race, has chosen a different approach.
we are going to provide every new family with what we're calling baby baskets. It's a collection of essential goods and resources for new parents, free of charge, including items like diapers, baby wipes, nursing pads, postpartum pads, swaddles, books, and more.
I condemn Hamas, of course, I have called Oct. 7 what it was, which was a horrific war crime and, of course, my belief in a universality in international law is also the same set of beliefs that led me to describe what's happening in Gaza as a genocide.
described the celebration of the killing of civilians by some of the attendees at the NYC-DSA rally as "not befitting of a movement supporting universal human rights."
