He has a catchy populist platform. His viral videos exude energy and charisma. Young, left-leaning New Yorkers have joined his campaign in droves.
In a moment when Democrats are hungry for change, those assets have propelled Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist from Queens, past more seasoned rivals to emerge as one of two front-runners in the Democratic primary for mayor.
But to actually win on June 24, Mr. Mamdani and his allies confront a fundamental challenge. He must persuade New Yorkers to entrust what many consider to be the hardest job in the country, second only to presidency, to a 33-year-old upstart who until recently managed just five paid staff members.
It is a daunting role for anyone. The mayor of New York City oversees a $112 billion budget, a 300,000-person work force and the bully pulpit of the global capital of finance and culture. The next leader will also have to go toe-to-toe with President Trump as the president threatens to bend the city to his will.
Those who have done the job say there is no perfect training, though most entered Gracie Mansion with more distinguished pedigrees. Rudolph W. Giuliani was a crusading prosecutor. Michael R. Bloomberg was a billionaire businessman. Mayor Eric Adams was a police captain, state senator and borough president.
Mr. Mamdani’s résumé is comparatively slight. The son of a renowned filmmaker and academic, he bounced among gigs — working on one of his mother’s movies, as a rapper, a campaign organizer, a part-time tutor and a foreclosure counselor — before winning a seat in the Assembly in 2020. In Albany, he has a reputation more for advocacy than lawmaking.
Then there is his age. Mr. Mamdani would be the city’s youngest leader since 1917, when John Purroy Mitchel, a reformer known as the “Boy Mayor,” left office after a single term.
Asked in an interview what he tells skeptical voters who question his qualifications, Mr. Mamdani pointed not to previous jobs or life experience but to the success of his current campaign, which he said showed his ability to marshal support for his ideas. He also said that if he was elected, he would hire the “best and brightest” to help him.
“As I run this campaign, I am very clear about that which I know and also understanding that which I don’t know,” he said.
For much of the race, the question of qualifications has been eclipsed by Mr. Mamdani’s policy agenda, including $10 billion in new taxes on the rich to pay for free buses, child care and other programs, as well as staunch criticism of Israel. But that has begun to change as he becomes a more serious contender.
“Donald Trump would go through Mr. Mamdani like a hot knife through butter,” former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the contest’s front-runner, taunted on the debate stage last week. “He’s been in government 27 minutes. He passed three bills.”
Discussion of the assemblyman’s job-readiness, and his ability to steer his agenda through Albany, are far from limited to his opponents, though.
When Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York progressive standard-bearer who entered Congress at 29, endorsed Mr. Mamdani on Thursday, she said she had spoken frankly with him about the issue.
“I have made my expectations for the assembly member quite clear,” she said, specifying that he would need to hire “an administration of extraordinary expertise and experience.”
Progressives have been more reluctant to take shots at Mr. Mamdani, fearful that doing so would only empower Mr. Cuomo. But privately, a subset of strategists and lawmakers who have worked with him and share many of his policy views more candidly cast doubt on his qualifications.
“He’s a baby,” said Liz Krueger, a powerful state senator from Manhattan, who is supporting Brad Lander, the city comptroller. “But I worry more about lack of experience with this enormous assignment.”
Ms. Krueger, 67, who has helped secure many of progressive’s recent policy wins in New York, also questioned whether Mr. Mamdani could really deliver what he was promising from Albany, which alone holds the power to level new taxes.
“I am not ideologically opposed to free mass transit and free higher education,” she said. “I am just pretty sure in the world I’m living in that ain’t going to happen.”
Pressed about Mr. Mamdani’s experience, Mr. Lander said, “There are candidates in the field with exciting ideas and no track record of delivering on them.” He argued he had both.
Mr. Mamdani’s most fervent supporters, though, see his age and newness to government as assets in a party whose leadership is often twice his age.
Unlike older candidates in the field, his worldview was forged in a post-9/11 city marked by soaring costs and growing inequality. He has proposed and defended the kind of uncompromising platform that other Democrats call unrealistic.
His supporters see the mayoralty as about setting values and vision. Mr. Mamdani, they say, can hire technocrats to decide how to pick up the trash.
“Some would say we need experience to deal with the threat that’s coming from the federal government,” said John Liu, a state senator who endorsed Mr. Mamdani. “I think we need ideas and the ability to lead a movement, which seems to be what he’s doing here in New York City.”
Mr. Cuomo, an avowed critic of the left, has focused his campaign almost entirely on his long — albeit complicated — record of managing the state. At 67, he would be, if elected, the oldest person sworn in as mayor in modern times.
Polls show Mr. Cuomo’s message about experience is resonating, particularly with older voters, Black voters and Latino voters, who are among the most reliable primary voters.
Mr. Mamdani has urgently searched for endorsements from older validators, and has secured the top backing of Representative Nydia Velázquez and Mr. Liu. He has also quietly met with former officials for advice, including Steven Banks, who ran social services under Mayor Bill de Blasio; Patrick Gaspard, an adviser to mayors and presidents; Maria Torres-Springer, Mr. Adams’s former first deputy mayor; and Amit S. Bagga, a veteran of City Hall and the governor’s office.
Each said they were also speaking with other candidates, but came away impressed.
In an interview, the candidate cited Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, who took office at 36, as a model. Mr. Cuomo may have more experience, he said, but he also has a track record of accepting help from wealthy special interests, working with Republicans and facing sexual harassment allegations, which the former governor denies.
If elected, he said he wanted expert deputies who shared his focus on affordability, but he added, “I need not agree with each person I hire on every single issue.”
Mr. Mamdani’s personal record starts in Uganda, where he was born to parents of Indian descent. He has described his own childhood as “a privileged upbringing”: He attended a private school in Manhattan before graduating from the Bronx High School of Science. His mother, Mira Nair, is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, holds an endowed professorship at Columbia, where he studies the impact of colonialism.
Old copies of Mr. Mamdani’s résumés shared by his campaign show a patchwork of jobs after he graduated from Bowdoin College in 2014: a four-month stint as an organizer for MoveOn in Seattle; two months organizing with TexPIRG in Houston; paid campaign jobs on New York City races; and an ongoing tutoring gig.
In 2015 and 2016, he worked as a music supervisor on “Queen of Katwe,” one of his mother’s films, and later tried his own creative career as a rapper, going by the name Mr. Cardamom.
In 2018, he became a naturalized citizen. A year later, Mr. Mamdani started at Chhaya, a community development group where he counseled South Asian and Caribbean families facing foreclosure, but left after about a year to run for an Assembly seat representing Astoria.
His tenure has also been relatively brief in Albany, where it can take years to accumulate power. Colleagues say he helped push the ideological center leftward, but only had three relatively minor bills signed into law. His office has typically had five paid staff members, an intern and a budget of a few hundred thousand dollars.
There are indications that some voters who Mr. Mamdani needs to rank him high on their ballots are still conflicted.
“He has probably the most articulated ideas that are similar to my political beliefs,” said James C. Nicola of Manhattan, who recently retired as artistic director of the New York Theater Workshop.
“But I don’t know about his level of experience and running a complex organism like a city,” he added. “It’s way more complex than Mamdani talks about.”
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
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