Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, is expected to be publicly sworn in as the next mayor of New York City on Thursday afternoon outside City Hall in Manhattan, ushering in a generational shift in the city’s leadership.
Mamdani was officially sworn in an intimate ceremony in the Old City Hall subway station that took place at midnight. He is the first Muslim mayor and the youngest in generations to run the country’s largest and wealthiest city.
Over the course of his campaign last year, he rose from a little-known New York State Assembly memberto a nationally recognized political force, defeating Andrew M. Cuomo’s famed Democratic political dynasty.
Mamdani’s social-media-fueled campaign tightly focused on the issue of affordability, running on a platform that promised to freeze the rent on the city’s nearly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments, make buses fast and free, and deliver universal child care. He plans to fund these ideas by raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy, including the city’s billionaires who spent big last year to defeat him.
Mamdani is expected to be joined at his public swearing-in by two high-profile political allies, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), highlighting the democratic socialist wing of the Democratic Party at a time when beleaguered party leaders are clawing back from 2024′s decisive loss to President Donald Trump.
The three politicians have energized huge crowds at their respective events. But their positions on key issues fall to the left of many of their Democratic counterparts, some of whom worry about alienating centrist Democratic voters.
Both the private swearing-in ceremony, held in a subway station to highlight the working-class emphasis that Mamdani plans to bring to his mayoralty, and the larger, public block party, which is to be streamed online, are thick with the kind of symbolism that Mamdani has sought to display throughout his campaign.
But Mamdani faces formidable challenges. To achieve many of his promises, he must maintain the support of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and the state’s legislature, whose approval would be required to fund Mamdani’s plans for free buses and child care. .
Born in Uganda, Mamdani moved to New York at age 7 with his father, Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia University, and his mother, Mira Nair, a filmmaker known for films including “The Namesake” and “Mississippi Masala.” He attended New York public schools and graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in Africana studies. He became a U.S. citizen in 2018.
Mamdani has said he was inspired to go into politics after working as a foreclosure prevention housing counselor in Queens, helping low-income homeowners of color fight eviction orders. He was then elected in 2020 to a State Assembly seat, representing neighborhoods in Queens such as Astoria, Ditmars Steinway and Astoria Heights in the city’s most diverse borough.
Republican politicians, led by Trump, have sought to paint Mamdani as a radical communist and the face of a Democratic Party out of touch with mainstream voters. But Mamdani’s friendly visit to the Oval Office after being elected last year undercut some of those attacks and displayed the political skills that have propelled him to prominence over the past year.
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