With early voting underway and just a few days until the Democratic mayoral primaries, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist running for mayor of New York City, spoke to the AmNews about his platform and how he believes his proposals for affordability will directly benefit the city’s youth.
“I’ve been so excited over the course of these last seven months to see just how much excitement there is amongst young New Yorkers,” said Mamdani, an assemblymember from Queens. “[They] are bearing the brunt of the affordability crisis.”
At its bedrock, Mamdani’s campaign promises to tackle New York City’s affordability crisis; his platform includes plans to freeze the rent for more than 2 million New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments, ensuring free and fast buses, and providing universal childcare.
Mamdani is convinced his platform is exactly what the city’s youth needs and what will allow them to grow old in the city. “There are too many young New Yorkers who feel as if that is not even an option for them because of how prohibitively expensive it is to keep calling oneself a New Yorker.”
Mamdani said this narrative is “unacceptable,” explaining that a platform on affordability connects all the issues young New Yorkers care about.
“CUNY [the City University of New York] used to be the crown jewel of public education in our city, in our state, and even in our country. And yet what we’ve seen is a systematic attempt to defund it, both from when Andrew Cuomo was the governor of the state and also from when Eric Adams began his administration as the mayor of New York City.”
If elected mayor, Mamdani is committed to ending the $321 million yearly property tax exemptions for Columbia University and NYU, and funneling the revenue into CUNY funding. “I’ve already introduced legislation at the state level,” Mamdani said. “Why do they not pay an annual property tax while they have become two of the largest landlords in New York City?”
As potentially the first immigrant mayor of New York since 1945, Mamdani’s stance on immigration is strong: “I would stand up for sanctuary city policies … establish an oversight commission that would ensure 100% compliance at every city agency, school, and hospital property, as well as the properties of city contractors, to ensure that they follow the law when it comes to denying ICE agents entry unless those agents can provide a signed judicial warrant from a judge.”
He stressed that his campaign “seeks to speak to every New Yorker,” not just “the Democrats who voted in the last mayoral primary.”
Mamdani also discussed the divisiveness the city currently faces and New Yorkers’ concerns about public safety. “We know that antisemitism is a real crisis in our city, and we know that Islamophobia is similarly a crisis across our five boroughs. It is incumbent on a mayor and an administration to recognize the humanity of each and every New Yorker,” he said.
According to the Siena College Research Institute, 61% of New Yorkers fear becoming crime victims. Mamdani is convinced his public safety proposal will address this issue directly. “I’m proud that we have put forward to proposal to create a department of community safety that would increase the funding for anti-hate violence programming by 800%, tackling the issues of antisemitism and Islamophobia in a manner that is more committed in its funding than any other campaign we’ve seen in mayoral cycles and that reflects our deep commitment to keeping New Yorkers safe.”
Mamdani’s message appears to resonate deeply with New Yorkers. As reported by Queens Post, Mamdani’s campaign raised $642,339 from 6,502 single donors in its first 80 days; “the most money raised by any candidate in a single filing period for the 2025 New York City mayoral election.”
According to Emerson College latest polling, Mamdani’s support “increased from 1% to 23% from February to May,” and as of May 28, Mamdani has surged into second place in the Democratic primary, cutting former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s rank-choice lead from 12 points to 9 points.
Nothing quite captures the campaign’s exponential growth and popularity among New Yorkers, though, like Mamdani’s volunteers and their efforts.
As of June 8, Zohran’s 17,132 volunteers have made 896,480 door attempts across the city, said Jasmina Aliakbar, field coordinator for the campaign; in the first week of June, volunteers “knocked on the doors of over 150,000 voters. To give a sense of scale, it took us from December to April 8 to knock on 150,000 doors.”
Mamdani, whose strongest support comes from voters under 50 and leads Cuomo over white and college-educated voters, according to Emerson College Polling, said defeating the former governor’s bet for the mayoral office is possible.
“We have come to second place before we even spent a single dollar on advertising on cable or broadcast,” Mamdani said. “Thanks to the support of more than 19,000 people, we have a fully funded campaign.”
He acknowledged that defeating a former governor requires a coalition made up by “New Yorkers of all ages and all ages and backgrounds,” but insisted that youth will play a critical role in the outcome of the election.
“Too often, we focus on the lower turnout of younger voters, without asking whether we are offering enough of a vision,” Mamdani said. “For too long, the political impulse has been to lecture when it should be to listen to New Yorkers, who have rightfully felt betrayed by promises of politicians at every single level of government.
“I’ve heard from them … I am running a race that recognizes that history and seeks to respond to it with a platform that I’m not only running on, but want to be held accountable to.”
Ensuring accountability and transparency is a key issue for Mamdani. “I do not need to hire replicas of myself. I’m instead looking to hire people who have demonstrated their ability to deliver the mandate of our campaign, specifically with regard to the agency or the department they’re being hired for.”
Emphasizing that diversity and expertise are often framed as if they are somehow in competition, “to have a team that looks like New York City is to have a team that is the best and brightest,” Mamdani said.
As a reminder, in ranked choice voting, voters can rank up to five candidates. In the first round, if a candidate receives more than 50% of the votes, they win. If no candidate achieves a majority, the candidate with the lowest rank is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed based on voters’ next preferences. This process continues until only two candidates remain, with the one receiving the most votes declared the winner.