Who is Zohran Kwame Mamdani?

DREAMS WISDOM / NEW YORK, US — BIOGRAPHY

Zohran Kwame Mamdani (born Oct. 18, 1991, Kampala) is an American politician and activist affiliated with the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Representing New York’s 36th Assembly District — Astoria, Queens — since 2021, he rose to national attention after winning New York City’s 2025 mayoral race, defeating former governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary and later prevailing over both Cuomo (as an independent) and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa. He is set to become the city’s first Muslim, first Indian American and first Millennial mayor on Jan. 1, 2026.

Early life and family

Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, to renowned scholar Mahmood Mamdani and acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair. At the age of five he moved with his family to Cape Town, South Africa, and at seven he immigrated to the United States, settling in New York. Growing up in an academic and artistic household, he was exposed early to global politics, culture and diaspora issues.

Education

He graduated from Bronx High School of Science and in 2014 earned his B.A. in Africana Studies from Bowdoin College in Maine. After college, he worked in New York as a housing advocate and also as a musician/rap producer, while getting involved in local progressive politics. He held organizing and managerial roles in campaigns for Khader El-Yateem and Ross Barkan, which gave him his first hands-on experience in New York City politics.

Entry into politics

In 2020, Mamdani ran in the Democratic primary for New York State Assembly and defeated five-term incumbent Aravella Simotas. This upset confirmed the growing strength of tenant, immigrant and progressive organizing in Astoria. He was re-elected without opposition in 2022 and 2024.

In October 2024 he announced his bid for the 2025 New York City mayoral election. He went on to beat Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary on June 24, 2025, and later won the general election, outpolling Cuomo — who re-entered the race as an independent — and Republican Curtis Sliwa. His campaign centered on expanding public services and shifting the city’s fiscal priorities toward working-class New Yorkers.

Policy positions and platform

Mamdani identifies as a democratic socialist, a label he adopted after Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, and he is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. His policies consistently emphasize public investment, tenant protections and free or low-cost access to essential services.

Key planks from his 2025 campaign and earlier legislative work include:

• Free city buses and holding down subway fares for New Yorkers.

• Publicly provided child care and city-run grocery stores to lower the cost of living.

• Rent freezes for rent-stabilized units and creation of a Social Housing Development Agency to build publicly owned, permanently affordable housing.

• A 10-year plan to build 200,000 new affordable, rent-stabilized homes and to double spending to renovate the city’s 400,000 existing social housing units.

• $30/hour city minimum wage by 2030.

• Tax increases on corporations and on individuals earning over $1 million annually to fund these programs.

• A public safety vision that argues arrests alone do not reduce crime and that stable jobs, well-resourced neighborhoods and expanded mental health coverage do.

He also backed state-level proposals to end property tax exemptions for large private universities like NYU and Columbia and redirect those funds to historically underfunded public higher education systems such as CUNY.

On public safety, Mamdani has argued that New York relies too heavily on the police to deal with failures in the social safety net, and has proposed a community safety department to expand mental health services instead of defaulting to policing.

Foreign policy views tied to local politics

Mamdani is known for his outspoken pro-Palestinian stance. He introduced legislation to end tax exemptions for New York charities connected to Israeli settlements he said violate international human rights law, and he described Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocidal and apartheid-like. These positions place him to the left of much of the Democratic Party but align him with New York’s progressive and DSA-aligned activists.

In February 2025, he joined a rally in Union Square protesting a Trump-era executive move that threatened to cut federal funding from hospitals providing gender-affirming care to trans youth.

Personal life

Mamdani became a U.S. citizen in 2018 and is a Shia Muslim. In early 2025 he married Rama Duwaji, a Syrian American artist he met on the dating app Hinge; the couple lives in an apartment in Astoria. He speaks English plus four other languages at varying levels — Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Spanish and Arabic — and is a supporter of the English football club Arsenal.

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