Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has bold plans for New York City. He wants to establish city-owned grocery stores, build more homes, make buses free and freeze rents for subsidised tenants.
But in the lead-up to the Democratic primary on Tuesday, his opponents and media outlets seemed more concerned by his views on the conflict between Israel and Palestine. He is a defender of Palestinian rights who has decried Israeli abuses and echoed the assessment of rights groups that Israel’s assault on Gaza is a genocide.
Mamdani did not back down from his positions, and he won, edging out former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had more institutional support and was backed by record spending.
Mamdani’s supporters say his victory could be an inflection point in United States politics that shows the electoral viability of left-wing policies and support for Palestinian rights.
“It’s monumental,” said Usamah Andrabi, spokesperson for the progressive group Justice Democrats.
“The sky is the limit for true progressives who are willing to unite the working class against billionaires and corporate super PACs while still refusing to compromise on issues as large as a genocide.”
While the official results are not yet final, Mamdani leads Cuomo by more than seven percentage points with nearly every vote counted, all but securing the nomination.
His lead is expected to grow with subsequent rounds of counting in the city’s ranked-choice voting system.
Cuomo has conceded defeat, and Mamdani has declared victory, putting him on the path to be the next mayor of the largest city in the US.
New York is overwhelmingly Democratic, so as the party’s nominee, he is likely to comfortably prevail in the general election in November — an outcome that seemed impossible when he was polling at 1 percent in February.
‘He refused to back down’
Savvy with digital media, charismatic and approachable, Mamdani — a 33-year-old state legislator — started to grow his base with viral videos and grassroots campaigning on the streets of New York.
After the presidential election in November of last year, Mamdani spoke to Donald Trump’s supporters and non-voters, who voiced frustration with status quo politics. He then presented them with his own platform. In a video segment he filmed, some of them said they would back him for mayor.
Mamdani’s supporters say he also excelled in amassing an army of thousands of volunteers, who knocked on doors to spread the word about his campaign.
Heba Gowayed, a sociology professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), said many young people were drawn to Mamdani and got involved in his campaign because of his opposition to Israeli policies.
“The fact that he refused to back down from his position on Palestine is huge,” Gowayed told Al Jazeera. “In an atmosphere where we’ve been told that holding that position is politically disqualifying, it was a movement that not only insisted on this position but was, in a sense, predicated on it.”
She added that, if Mamdani had flipped to appease critics, he would have lost the support and enthusiasm that put him over the finish line. But Mamdani’s support for Palestinian “likely bolstered his campaign”, she said.
Mamdani faced seemingly insurmountable odds in his campaign for the Democratic nomination. Not only did he lack funding early on, but his name recognition was also low. Few voters seemed to know who he was, compared with the candidate he was running against: Cuomo, a former governor from a political dynasty in New York.
Cuomo’s father had also served as governor, and in the lead-up to Tuesday’s race, he had amassed endorsements from key figures in the national Democratic Party, including former President Bill Clinton and lawmaker Jim Clyburn.
Mamdani, meanwhile, was endorsed by the local branch of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
That is what makes Mamdani’s win stunning for his supporters. It appeared to be a David and Goliath battle, a clash of the old guard and the new.
“The old guard personified was beaten by a democratic socialist, a young, pro-Palestinian brown Muslim kid who had 1 percent name recognition as of February,” Gowayed said. “It is absolutely phenomenal and remarkable.”
Born in Uganda to parents of Indian descent, Mamdani has been serving in the state assembly since 2021.
Many viewed the face-off between Cuomo and Mamdani as a reflection of the years-long arm-wrestling between progressives and centrists in the Democratic Party. The debate over Palestinian rights and the US’s unquestioning support for Israel has been a core issue in that fight.
Cuomo’s focus on Israel
As a state legislator, Mamdani had been vocal in his opposition to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 56,077 Palestinians. He even led a hunger strike outside the White House in November 2023 to demand an end to the war.
But as he launched his campaign for mayor, his focus was on local issues.
Still, Cuomo — who resigned as governor in 2021 over sexual harassment allegations — tried to make Mamdani’s position on Israel and Palestine a central issue in the campaign.
Earlier this month, the former governor suggested that calling out Israeli abuses contributes to attacks against Jewish Americans. The target of his message appeared to be Mamdani.
“Hate foments hate. The anti-Israel rhetoric of ‘genocide,’ ‘war criminals,’ and ‘murderers’ must stop. It is spreading like a cancer through the body politic,” Cuomo said in a social media post after a fire attack injured 15 people at a pro-Israel rally in Colorado.
The former governor is part of the defence team representing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes charges in Gaza, including the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
When Mamdani and some of his fellow candidates, including City Comptroller Brad Lander, campaigned jointly against Cuomo, the former governor invoked Israel.
“How does … a Brad Lander support Zohran Mamdani, support his positions on Israel, support his statements on Israel?” Cuomo said.
Lander, who is Jewish, went on to cross-endorse Mamdani, and the two candidates encouraged their supporters to rank them both highly on their ballots.
A pro-Cuomo election group, known as a super PAC, has also focused on Mamdani’s positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Dubbed Fix the City, the super PAC received $500,000 from pro-Israel billionaire and Trump supporter Bill Ackman. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, another staunch Israel supporter, contributed a whopping $8m to the group.
Media outlets also scrutinised Mamdani’s view on Israel. He was repeatedly asked about foreign policy, including whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state and whether he would visit Israel as mayor.
‘A turning point’
Beth Miller, the political director of the advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action, said Cuomo miscalculated by trying to make the race about Mamdani’s views on the Middle East conflict.
The Democratic base has been increasingly moving away from unconditional support for Israel, especially amid the atrocities in Gaza. A Pew Research Center survey in April showed that 69 percent of Democratic respondents indicated unfavourable views towards Israel.
“Cuomo is part of an old dinosaur way of thinking about politics,” Miller told Al Jazeera.
JVP Action endorsed Mamdani at the outset of his campaign. Miller said that, while his campaign was rooted in making New York affordable, his progressive politics are based on upholding the humanity of all people, including Palestinians.
“Cuomo was counting on the idea that Zohran’s support for Palestinian rights would be a liability for him, but what last night showed was that that’s not true,” Miller said.
“And in fact, what I witnessed and what I saw was that his support for Palestinian rights was an asset to his campaign. It mobilised young voters. It mobilised a lot of progressive Jewish voters and Muslim voters and many, many others.”
In recent years, pro-Israel groups, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have poured record amounts of money into Democratic primaries to defeat progressives.
In the last election cycle, they managed to help oust two Democratic Congress members who were critical of Israel: Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush.
Progressive advocates say they hope that Mamdani’s win will help turn the tide in their favour.
“We are finally seeing a turning point,” said Andrabi of Justice Democrats. “AIPAC likes to say supporting Israel is good policy and good politics. I think what has become extremely clear at this point is that supporting apartheid Israel is bad policy and bad politics.”
