New York City will choose its next mayor on Tuesday in a three-way race expected to send Democrat New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a self-identified socialist, to Gracie Mansion.
The leading candidates on the ticket are Mamdani as the Democrat nominee; former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democrat primary; and the leader of the Guardian Angels, Republican Curtis Sliwa. The winner will succeed incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who recently dropped out of the race after running as an independent.
“I looked at the polls, and [it] looks like we’re going to have a communist as the mayor of New York,” President Donald Trump recently told The Daily Signal. Polls indicate the Queens-born president would be correct: A poll from Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research shows Mamdani leading the race by far with 47% support, with Cuomo at a distant second with 31% support. Sliwa is in third place with 15% support.
“It’ll be very interesting,” Trump said of a socialist running America’s largest city. “But here’s the good news: He’s got to go through the White House. Everything goes through the White House, at least [with] this White House, it does.”
Mamdani’s Message Centers on Government-Created Affordability
How Mamdani has managed to build and maintain a lead has also been interesting, strategists told The Daily Signal.
“The Democratic message has been … ‘I will manage the decline better than anybody else.’ Nobody has been talking about reversing the decline,” Ryan James Gidursky, a veteran of New York City politics who now leads the 1776 Project PAC, told The Daily Signal.
But Mamdani has bucked the messaging of other national Democrats and gone on offense. During a time of low approval ratings and a lack of institutional power in the Democratic Party, Mamdani’s rapid ascendance has been a rare example of Democrat enthusiasm after their crushing defeat in the 2024 presidential elections.
Affordability has been the bedrock message of the Mamdani campaign, and he has repeatedly promised significant government intervention to address the city’s high cost of food, rent, and transportation.
“It was a tangible message. ‘Freeze the rent’ is a tangible message … It’s a very easy to understand tangible thing that he hit over and over and over and over again,” Gidursky continued. “I think it’s more of a condemnation of the way New York has run than the way the country has run, because he may have stomped his feet about ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] or something here or there, but a lot of what he hit on was local.”
Mamdani has found success through a simple promise of, “I’m going to protect you,” Gidursky argued.
Chapin Fay, a political and media strategist and CEO of Lighthouse Public Affairs, told The Daily Signal, “I think the Democratic Party led by places like New York City, and America is headed to where Zohran Mamdani is.”
The core of Mamdani’s pitch is government-created affordability. Mamdani, Fay said, “is talking about something that has long been an issue in New York City—probably everywhere in the country more acutely recently—affordability.”
“There is no more middle class, really, in New York City. It is people who can afford to live here and people who can’t afford to leave,” Fay continued. “You’re not raising your kids in the city anymore, really, unless you’re a billionaire, right, and you have the means to make it safe, pleasant, and educational for them, [otherwise,] you’re not staying here.”
Fay’s analysis may help explain why Mamdani has made inroads with the city’s young voters, whose turnout propelled him to victory in the Democrat primary. “Mamdani is talking about affordability and things that matter with this demographic,” Fay explained. “You can just see the generational impact play out in real time,” Fay said of New York City’s current political landscape.
“You see Zohran everywhere, speaking very well everywhere he goes, talking about his politics. That’s something on the Left that young people talk about. You don’t hear Andrew Cuomo talking about his personal politics,” Fay added. “[Cuomo is] talking much more old school.”
The cohort of younger voters propping up Mamdani, however, are causing the very problems that they want Mamdani to solve, says Ellie Cohanim, a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum and former U.S. deputy special envoy to combat antisemitism.
“Mamdani’s base consists of mostly wealthy, white, highly educateds who have moved into NYC post college and are gentrifying so many neighborhoods in New York, often pushing out the moderate voters from the Greek, Italian, Hispanic, and black communities,” Cohanim told The Daily Signal.
The coalition that delivered victory for Mamdani on primary might not be durable enough to win a general election. “I believe that Mamdani won the Democrat primary due to voter apathy, but the record early voting numbers [for the general election Tuesday] are telling a different story,” Cohanim said, predicting a shocking win for Cuomo on Tuesday night.
Radical Policies, Radical Rhetoric
Mamdani, 34, would be the first ever Muslim mayor of the largest city in America, as well as its youngest in over a century.
The Democrat nominee has passed on opportunities to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada;” has defended Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil; and has called for city-run grocery stores, free buses, and a freeze on rents as ways to address the city’s high cost of living.
He has also released a policy proposal to budget $65 million for “gender-affirming care” for “both transgender youth and adults.”
“My greatest concern is that the safety and security of New Yorkers will suffer under a Mayor Mamdani,” Cohanim told The Daily Signal. “Whether it’s his belief that the NYPD is ‘racist;’ or his vow to disband NYPD’s special-ops group—the very group that has responded to the violent pro-Hamas mobs that have targeted Jews since 10/7, as an example—I am concerned for the safety of Jewish New Yorkers in particular and all New Yorkers as we try to go about our daily lives in the city.”
Mamdani, born in Uganda to ethnically Indian parents, has found ways to appeal to immigrant communities with advertisements in Spanish and Arabic.
There were “lots of Asians that voted for him [in the primary] and a smattering of other ethnics like, you know, he didn’t win the Puerto Rican vote, but he did very well with the Central American Hispanic voter in places like Queens. He won the Asian vote overwhelmingly [and] Muslim voters,” Gidursky told The Daily Signal. “So it’s a smattering of recent immigrants, woke whites. He didn’t do super well with blacks, but he did fine.”
National Democrats Rally Around Mamdani’s Momentum
Early on, Mamdani picked up support from fellow democratic socialists Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. He has also received endorsements from other prominent Democrats, among them New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Recently, he was endorsed by U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. The lack of an endorsement from Jeffries for months suggests national Democrat leaders have been hesitant to support him. New York Democrat Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have yet to endorse Mamdani.
Van Hollen has accused New York Democrats of “spineless politics” for not backing Mamdani.
Republicans Look to Make Mamdani the New Face of the Democratic Party
Republicans in Washington have seized on the ascendance of Mamdani as a way to tie his urban policy proposals to the national Democratic Party.
Recently, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., alleged a radical wing of the Democratic Party—exemplified by Mamdani—has put pressure on Democrat congressional leaders to keep the government shut down.
“The new power center of the Democrat Party is one that should frighten every commonsense American,” said Johnson. “Exhibit A is Zohran Mamdani. New York City, America’s largest city, the cradle of capitalism … they’ve got a 34-year-old, unproven, untested socialist who looks to be the next mayor.”
“Mamdani is a big issue here in the halls of Congress. Why? Because the second-highest ranked Democrat in the country, leader Jeffries, endorsed him,” said Johnson. “They’re making Mamdani a mainstream Democrat now. This party has left the people.”
Johnson’s efforts to make Democrats suffer politically for their association with Mamdani are much like the broader Republican strategy going into the 2026 House midterm elections.
Last week, the National Republican Congressional Committee released a memo detailing a “Battle Plan to Weaponize Mayor Mamdani in Battleground Districts.”
“The NRCC will ensure every voter knows Zohran Mamdani is synonymous with the Democratic Party nationwide,” the memo reads.
Can Mamdani Deliver for New York?
As the Big Apple anticipates a likely four-year experiment with socialist policy, a question has emerged—will Mamdani have the power to implement all of his policies?
Mamdani’s opponents have consistently accused him of making promises that cannot be translated into effective policies.
“Zohran Mamdani deals with fantasy, not reality,” Sliwa said in the final debate regarding Mamdani’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $30.
Cuomo said of Mamdani’s rent-freezing promises: “It’s all B.S. because the mayor doesn’t have the power to do it anyway. The rent guidelines board does, and he doesn’t control the rent guidelines board.”
“Nothing is going to happen … It’s just more political blather,” Cuomo said.
Mamdani handled this accusation by saying, “If you want a candidate for mayor who tells you everything that he cannot do, then Andrew Cuomo should be your choice. If you want a candidate for mayor who will use every tool at their disposal, including the nine appointees at the rent guidelines board—all of whom are appointed by the mayor—then I am the candidate for you.”
Mamdani has made alleged failures of his opponents a focus of his campaign, accusing the sitting mayor, Adams, of corruption and cozying up to the Trump administration; and highlighting Cuomo’s mismanagement of COVID-19 as well as sexual harassment allegations.
Mamdani vs. Trump?
It remains to be seen how Trump and Mamdani would work together, but the prospects do not look great. Mamdani has pledged to fight the administration’s deportation policies, saying, “What I would be doing is reminding New Yorkers of their rights, making it clear that this is not something that we stand for, being proud of our sanctuary city policies and utilizing the courts.”
Nevertheless, Mamdani has also said he “will continue to be open to speaking with Donald Trump, to meeting with Donald Trump, all of it on the premise of actually supporting New Yorkers.”
Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell contributed to this report.
