New York State Assemblymember Zohran Kwame Mamdani, 33, is a standout candidate in this year’s crowded mayoral race against the incumbent Eric Adams.
Mamdani currently represents the 36th Assembly District in Astoria and Long Island City. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen, originally born and raised in Uganda. First elected to office in 2020, he was part of a wave of progressives that upended several races with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). He became the first South Asian man to serve in the State Assembly, as well as the first Ugandan and only the third Muslim to ever be a member of the legislature.
He’s raised $1,491,837 in private funds to date and $2,859,333 through the city’s public matching funds program, according to the latest filings of the New York City Campaign Finance Board (NYCCFB). About 83% of his donations are in-district and 94% are from small donors, according to the NYCCFB.
Mamdani also went viral last week for trying to confront President Donald Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan during his visit to the state Capitol.
The Amsterdam News caught up with Mamdani over the phone. Here’s what he had to say about his campaign so far. (Questions and answers have been shortened or edited for space and clarity.)
AmNews: Wait, I just learned this this week. Ramadan Kareem!
Mamdani: Yes, yes, that’s correct. You said it right. Thank you.
AmNews: What exactly does being a Democratic socialist mean to you? Socialist seems to carry a negative connotation in some circles.
Mamdani: To me, Democratic socialism means that everyone has what they need to live a dignified life, and New Yorkers tend to agree with that when it comes to sanitation, libraries, and the fire department. What I am arguing is that we have to extend that same belief to the things that are equally necessary, be that public transit or housing. If you need these things to live a dignified life in New York City, then they should not be things that you can be priced out of.
AmNews: That actually leads into my next question about housing. Can you talk a little bit about your plan?
Mamdani: Right now a majority of New Yorkers give over more than 50 % of their paycheck each month to either a landlord or a mortgage lender, and we know that this crisis is at an even higher point when it comes to Black New Yorkers. That level of housing insecurity is shown in statistics to be affecting 50% of Black households across New York City with the same household three times as likely to face eviction as white households. We’ve proposed a number of ways to directly tackle this crisis.
The first is to freeze the rent for close to 2 1/2 million rent stabilized tenants across New York City. This is a form of housing that has historically been a site of economic stability that Mayor Adams has instead turned into yet another site of the cost of living crisis, hiking the rent on rent stabilized attendance by more than 9% in the three years that he’s been setting the rent for the rent guideline board. Additionally, we’ve made a commitment to build 200,000 truly affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes over the next 10 years, tripling what the city is currently set to build through its own financing. This is housing that is targeted towards families of four who make $72,000, to low income seniors, to more than 100,000 New Yorkers that live in a shelter. When you have a crisis at the scale of the housing crisis, the public sector has a responsibility to step up and lead alongside the private sector.
Finally, as part of our housing plan, we’re taking on bad landlords. What we’ve seen for too many New Yorkers who are tenants across the five boroughs is that they don’t even call 311 anymore because of how unhelpful that experience has been. We are pledging to transform that experience both by reporting violations as well as actually having those violations be addressed.
AmNews: Is there a worry that a rent freeze would hurt smaller landlords or homeowners?
Mamdani: A lot of rent-stabilized properties are of a larger scale. This is a commitment that has been born out of the findings of the rent guidelines board itself. In terms of the rent freeze, the vast majority of rent stabilized housing are buildings with six or more units built before 1974. So a lot of times when we speak about small landlords in a brownstone, those are typically an amount of units that fall underneath that threshold.
AmNews: Quite a few candidates in the race have a very similar base of working class Black and Latino voters. How are you going to appeal to this community?
Mamdani: Our campaign is distinct in that our North Star from the very beginning has been to have a relentless focus on an economic agenda. We began the campaign with three clear policy promises: freeze the rent for close to two and a half million New Yorkers, take the slowest buses in the nation and make them fast and free, and expand universal pre-K and 3K into universal childcare.
These are, in many ways, the same costs that are giving New Yorkers so much anxiety at this moment — whether or not they can afford to live in the city. That economic agenda, that North Star, has continued to drive us through this race and inform every additional policy proposal that we have put forward. Whether it be raising the minimum wage to $30 an hour by 2030, or creating a network of municipally owned grocery stores, one in each borough, that would guarantee cheaper prices for bread and milk and eggs. Or the commitment to double the amount of money that the city spends on preserving public housing across the five boroughs. It all comes back to how we can actually use the tools of city government to make it easier for working class people to afford to live in the city they call home.
AmNews: Are you a fan of congestion pricing?
Mamdani: I’m supportive of congestion pricing. I have supported it out of a belief that it would reduce congestion, that it would transform our streetscape, and that it would also be something that would speed up our bus transit system. We have seen all of those things take place in the time that it’s been implemented, especially also while being able to raise a significant amount of money for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) capital budget. Last year, I launched a campaign to get congestion pricing right. For it to be at its most effective it needs to be paired with immediate enhancements of bus service across the five boroughs.
AmNews: As mayor, how would you respond to the situation with Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil? I think it’s important for New Yorkers to know that as legal citizens, or undocumented folk, that they’re not subject to being disappeared and detained without due process.
Mamdani: It is absolutely unacceptable, what has happened to Mahmoud Khalil, and he must be released immediately, and this is what I’ve been saying since the news of his detainment has become public because it is an assault on the First Amendment. It’s a sign of advancing authoritarianism under Trump. It’s something that must be opposed by all of us.
In this moment, we’re seeing the systematic dismantling of many different initiatives towards equity when you’re talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as well as the dismantling of the First Amendment when it comes to political expression. It is all the more necessary to have a mayor whose politics are consistent and clear about the fact that if we want to claim to believe in universal rights and if we want to claim to believe in the constitution of this country, we must apply it to each and every New Yorker. The time for standing up is now. Instead, we have a Mayor who’s opting for cowardice and collaboration when New Yorkers are demanding courage and connection.
AmNews: Do you think there’s anything more that a mayor can do on a city level to make sure that this kind of thing doesn’t happen?
Mamdani: I don’t even think we’ve been able to explore that under the current mayor, who has publicly spoken about his interest in civil collaboration with the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). I serve on the cities committee in Albany, and that means I get three minutes to question the sitting mayor on any topic every year when the mayor comes up to Albany for Tin Cup Day. And my first question this year was on this very topic. I asked the mayor to address the fact that his own Schools Chancellor had reported that attendance in schools across New York City dropped by up to 5 % because of families that were afraid of sending their children to school lest they be abducted by ICE in the process.
I asked him, “Will you take this opportunity to publicly and clearly state that New York City will not allow entry to ICE agents into our schools, hospitals, other city property, unless they present a warrant that’s been signed by a judge?” And he refused to answer that question, instead punting it to the law department. You don’t need to be a lawyer or even a legal scholar to understand that our sanctuary laws that have been passed in New York City forbid local government from this kind of collaboration that our mayor has been so interested in, all in pursuit of securing his own personal freedom at the expense of other New Yorkers.
AmNews: How are you feeling about your chances in the race so far?
Mamdani: Campaign is on a high note. It has an immense amount of momentum, and it all reflects the fact that New Yorkers are hungry for a different kind of politics, one that puts working people first. I think for too long our politics has required translation and this is a politics that is consistent, that is direct, and it is clear that this campaign at its core is about one thing: making the city more affordable.
AmNews: Is there anyone that you could see yourself cross endorsing or maybe partnering up with later in the race?
Mamdani: I’m open to cross endorsing other candidates so long as they’re not disgraced New York executives, whether past or present. Luckily for New Yorkers, that leaves a number of options. I’m very excited about developing that coalition, being a part of a slate, and finally cross endorsing another candidate to ensure that on June 24 we finally turn the page on this disgraced former governor and current mayor.
I like him, hope he never takes money from the dnc
I wouldn’t want a 33 yr old for mayor. He’s much too young and does not have enough life experience
you forgot to ask him how much he hates jews, why he hates jews and what other problems he will blame the jews for.