Long before he started filling the city’s potholes, Zohran Mamdani built his political platform on unpaved footing. “Half-gravel, half-ground,” he described the lot on 49-09 5th Street in Long Island City, Queens, where, on Oct. 23, 2024, he officially launched the campaign that ultimately made him New York City’s 112th mayor and quickly one of the country’s most influential figures.
Two years later, Mamdani caught up with the Amsterdam News about the fateful day he announced his run. Even months after his campaign launched, he polled at around 1% according to Emerson College. So the trek from an early-career assemblymember, who once pursued a hip hop dream under the moniker Young Cardamom, into citywide politics and ambitions to lead the nation’s most populous city could be called deeper than grassroots.
“For many of the first months of the campaign, people did not know who I was,” said Mamdani. “Which, [at] that time, was a challenge.”
No coverage, no problem
A food justice nonprofit, the Connected Chef, called 49-09 5th Street home at the time and cultivated a cozy community space where people could purchase fresh produce at a “sliding-scale” discount, a short walk from Mamdani’s old assembly district – 36, before moving to Woodside last year. Set under Edison bulb string lights and a wooden pergola, the site felt more suited for poetry night or an open mic rather than the formal galas often held to announce political candidacy and attract mega donors.
Nonetheless, a roughly estimated 150 people — many eager to lend their support by knocking doors rather than just opening a checkbook — packed the lot for Mamdani and watched their step on the uneven gravel as the relatively unknown state lawmaker announced his intent to become mayor of the biggest city in America. A Connected Chef member kicked the night off by informing the crowd that a porta-potty and a handwash station were available “around the corner to the left” for those looking for a bathroom. Not a single TV camera turned up, to Mamdani’s recollection.
But the humble beginnings of his historic run were somewhat by design. Mamdani’s campaign intentionally referred to it as a “block party” rather than a “launch event,” hoping to attract the broader New York City public, who he believed his policy platform resonated most with.
“I think many people saw it almost as a community event,” Mamdani remembered. “The thing to always look for is [if a] campaign is reflecting [what] people are saying and feeling in the streets around them. So much of our campaign was built around what we had heard from New Yorkers: it was cost of living, cost of living, cost of living…”
Several speakers preceded him, including now-Democratic assembly nominee Illapa Sairitupac, who MC’ed the campaign launch, and New York Communities for Change’s (NYCC) James Inniss, who connected Mamdani’s policy platform on affordability with the concerns Black and Brown New Yorkers faced. Congressional primary nominee Claire Valdez, then an assembly candidate for the surrounding neighborhood, was also present.
Many of the campaign’s most famous elements, now thoroughly studied and shamelessly copied by political consultants across the country, date back to Oct. 23, 2024. Its first signature “walk-and-talk” social media video hit YouTube that day to announce the run. At the launch, his campaign’s DIY merchandise were button-makers and coloring sheets for attendees of all ages to create their own Mamdani-themed gear, while his focus on affordability became readily apparent.
He vowed to freeze the rent, bring no-cost universal childcare and “eliminate the fare on every single bus line across the five boroughs.” These now-familiar promises were made with an acknowledgment that they would not come without a fight. But the young lawmaker, just days removed from his 33rd birthday, felt the city was ready for a change.
For years, Mamdani championed a “Fix the M.T.A.” package headlined by a free city bus system while he served in the state assembly. The idea ultimately grew into a pilot, which he frequently credited for bolstering affordability and reducing assaults by eliminating the need for drivers to confront fare evaders. Meanwhile, the Rent Guidelines Board under then-mayor Eric Adams allowed landlords to increase housing costs annually for tenants in rent-stabilized units, even as many meetings were largely inaudible, thanks to furious protesters.
“He said he was a mayor for the working class, and he sold them out to the donors and the lobbyists,” said Mamdani that night. “I stand before you from a different political tradition in this city: like many of you, I wasn’t born in this country. I was born in Uganda and immigrated to this city when I was seven years old. As a Muslim kid in the aftermath of 9/11, I was looked after by my teachers in another moment of xenophobic panic…but it’s not my biography that makes me different.
“It’s the movements that elected me, the working people I put at the center of my politics and the socialist tradition I belong to.”
The lead-up and look back
Two years later, Mamdani’s voice swells with pride while reflecting on that day, which received almost zero media coverage at the time. In the back of a Brooklyn community center this week, he wistfully recounted how he started at the crack of dawn with his then-communications director Andrew Epstein — around 5:30 to 6:00 a.m., by his estimate.
They spent that day reaching out to as many news outlets as possible, while also fitting in a Taxi Workers Alliance rally around the Javits Center in Midtown. He recalled catching his breath at the O.G. Shake Shack in Madison Square Park, where he frequented as a high schooler. Then, the day culminated with the launch in Long Island City. “We all came together and celebrated the beginning of this campaign alongside organizations that endorsed us on that first day,” said Mamdani.
But these efforts technically started before October 2024. Inniss recounted how Mamdani made his case for an NYCC endorsement to about fifty members in the preceding months. There, he pitched his affordability agenda around housing, childcare, and transit. “And they believed him,” said Inniss. “And they still believe him today, as he’s working towards it.”
Several other groups ultimately joined NYCC that night. Of course, the city’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter (NYC-DSA), which Mamdani is a member of, was represented. So were working-class Asian American organizations DRUM Beats and CAAAV Voice. These organizations later aligned themselves with tenant groups and labor unions to establish the “People’s Majority” alliance, which backed Mamdani and championed multi-racial working class politics.
They also serve as accountability partners for his administration, particularly towards policing and mental health response. In particular, several of the day one endorsers successfully pushed back against an NYPD headcount increase earlier this year.
“The relationships with those organizations…are critical to us delivering on our agenda,” said Mamdani. “And ensuring that we do not get lost in the world of City Hall, but ensure that City Halls are a reflection of the world outside of it.”
“We believe in the job he’s trying to do and want to help him do that,” said Inniss. “Part of our role is also, if he’s doing something that we don’t agree with, to bring that up as well.”
Oct. 23, 2024 also earmarked the start of a new chapter in Mamdani’s life. The next June, he won the Democratic primary just hours after the polls closed, notably upsetting former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo stayed in the race as an independent, and by the end of September 2025, Adams, who also ran third-party, dropped out of the increasingly messy field. The contest was left between the veteran politician, the young upstart, and Republican nominee and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, who had already staged an unsuccessful run in 2021.
Then the results came in: 1.1 million New Yorkers voted for Mamdani, more than half of all voters. His victory party took place in the baroque Brooklyn Paramount the night of Nov. 4, 2025, piled up with celebrities, influencers, and every major news network in America and beyond. Today, he cannot step out in the city without a crowd following him for selfies and handshakes. And right-wing outlets will write hit pieces if he so much as breathes wrong. So it seems unfathomable now that Mamdani once felt immense gratitude for any basic media coverage during those early campaign days just two years ago.
“We were introducing ourselves,” said Mamdani. “But at a personal level, it also meant that you could retain your personal life alongside your political life. We would be campaigning, and then at a certain point in the day, the campaign would end, and I would go have dinner; I’d go to Duane Reade. Whatever it might be.
“The more successful the campaign became, the less that distinction existed. It’s a good problem to have.”
