New York City voters and politicos nationwide are still catching their collective breath after Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s surprisingly decisive win in the Democratic mayoral primary last month. The victory of Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist who rose to prominence through viral social media videos, over former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s significant advantages in name recognition and fund-raising is already reordering traditional Democratic alliances. Some business leaders are openly fretting and strategizing about how to defeat him in November’s general election.
We asked readers to hit us with their questions about the candidates, the electoral process, the ripple effects of the race and our coverage of it. More than a hundred questions poured in, from all over the country and world. Our team of expert political beat reporters and editors — plus a few guest stars — answer a selection of them here.
We’ll keep at it until the November election, sharing selections in our New York Today newsletter. Submit your questions here, and sign up here to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox.
— Dean Chang and Jodi Rudoren
What does Mr. Mamdani stand for?
I was born in Cuba, grew up in Miami and have been living in N.Y.C. for over 10 years. How can I explain to my loved ones that Mamdani is not a communist?
— Anel Rodriguez, New York
Maya King, one of our New York political reporters, explains:
Mr. Mamdani is a democratic socialist. But that political ideology lacks a distinct definition, which supporters and detractors have both exploited. President Trump is one of many to call Mr. Mamdani a communist, a label he rejects.
At its core, democratic socialism stresses shifting power and resources away from large corporations and high-earning businesses to workers. In the United States, most democratic socialists favor working within existing democratic and capitalist systems to achieve this. Mr. Mamdani’s proposals include free buses, a rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments, and five city-owned grocery stores — one for each borough — where prices could be lower because they’d operate on city land and not have to pay property taxes. Much of this would be funded by increasing taxes on businesses and the wealthy.
Some of these ideas have been tried before. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio, for example, supported a citywide rent freeze three times. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority made fares free on five bus lines for a nearly yearlong pilot between 2023 and 2024.
Who’s advising Mamdani about how local government actually works, and who will be his deputy mayors?
— Gretchen Dykstra, Pennsylvania
From Nicholas Fandos, our Metro political correspondent:
The Mamdani campaign is run by a tight circle of young aides, including his former chief of staff in Albany, Elle Bisgaard-Church; Andrew Epstein, chief of staff to another member of the Assembly; Julian Gerson, a former speechwriter for Gov. Kathy Hochul; and Morris Katz, a political consultant.
But Mr. Mamdani has also turned to a wider circle of veteran city officials and civic leaders for counsel, including: Patrick Gaspard, a respected adviser to mayors and presidents; Steven Banks, who ran social services under Mr. de Blasio; Maria Torres-Springer, Mayor Eric Adams’s former first deputy mayor; Kathryn S. Wylde, chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, a business lobby.
Like other candidates, he has not said who exactly he would bring to City Hall if he wins. But he has stressed that he wants an ideologically diverse administration with expertise to balance out his age (33) and limited experience.
Is Mamdani going to keep Commissioner Jessica Tisch? This is my single issue!
— Wade Bredin, Midtown Manhattan
Emma G. Fitzsimmons, our City Hall bureau chief:
It’s possible. Ms. Wylde and others have urged Mr. Mamdani to keep Ms. Tisch on as the police commissioner, and he’s said he’ll consider it. He has praised her efforts to address corruption in the department.
Mamdani has been cited in other media sources as calling for global intifada. Can you provide additional context for these comments?
— Rebecca Andersen, Utah
Here’s Ben Oreskes, who covers New York State government and politics:
So the reality here is a bit more complicated. Mr. Mamdani has been a fierce critic of Israel’s government, but to our knowledge, he has not personally used the slogan “globalize the intifada.” When he was asked on a podcast if that phrase made him uncomfortable, though, he declined to condemn it, saying he did not want to get into the habit of policing language.
“Intifada” means uprising in Arabic. Palestinians and their supporters see the phrase as a rallying cry for liberation. But many Jews consider it threatening because “intifada” is the name for the Palestinian resistance movements of the 1980s and 2000s in which many Israelis were killed.
Eric Adams the ‘independent’?
I would like to know more detail about what Eric Adams has been doing to further himself as an independent candidate.
— Amalia Alexieff
Emma’s got this one, too:
As the incumbent, Mr. Adams is using his bully pulpit to highlight his agenda and to attack his rivals. He says crime has dropped on his watch; that he made the city cleaner by putting more trash into bins; and that he helped build housing, including through a plan called City of Yes. But he has record-low approval rating of 20 percent, according to a March poll in which more than half of those surveyed said he should resign.
Mr. Adams is also fund-raising — and he needs to because he was denied public matching funds because of campaign-finance-related corruption allegations. (His opponents could get an 8 to 1 match for small-dollar donations.)
Eric Adams is trying to run on two different ballot lines, EndAntisemitism and Safe&Affordable. What is the history of independent candidates running on multiple lines? What about the history of candidates making up their own parties?
— Elijah Hurewitz-Ravitch, Brooklyn
From Nick once more:
New York City has a long, colorful history of candidates running on bespoke ballot lines meant to amuse, confuse or at least communicate something about their candidacies. All someone needs to do is gather several thousand signatures and they can temporarily launch a new party with a name of their choice.
Back in the 1940s, Fiorello La Guardia created the “No Deal” party to undermine the Republicans. In the 1950s, Vincent Impellitteri won the mayoralty running on “Experience.” More recently, Bo Dietl ran in 2017 on the “Dump the Mayor” party line.
Mr. Adams is not the only candidate in this year’s race with his own line. Mr. Cuomo will be on the ballot in November despite his loss in the Democratic primary because he petitioned to create the “Fight and Deliver” party.
As you point out, Mr. Adams gathered petitions for two different independent lines. The city Board of Elections doesn’t allow a candidate to create two new parties in one election. The mayor is challenging this, but his campaign says he’ll run on the Safe&Affordable line if forced to choose.
Criticism of our coverage
Why did you publish an article about Zohran Mamdani’s declared ethnicities from an allegedly eugenicist source? Does The New York Times support the politics of the sources they cite? What concern do the college applications of a now 33-year-old man hold for his role as mayor of New York City?
— Samuel G., Las Vegas
From Patrick Healy, assistant managing editor for standards and trust:
Reporters receive tips from people with biases and bad motives all the time, but we only publish such information after we’ve independently verified it, done our own reporting and judged it to be newsworthy. In this case, Mr. Mamdani himself confirmed the information — it was true and factual. And the information was relevant and valuable to a public still getting to know the new Democratic nominee for mayor of New York
On sourcing, we work hard to give readers context so they can assess sources’ motivation. In this case, that included the online alias of the initial source, who was effectively an intermediary. The politics of the sources are their own; The Times’s role is to assess the information, confirm it independently and judge its newsworthiness. The Columbia University application story is part of a large body of Times coverage about Mr. Mamdani as the general election campaign for mayor is just getting going.
What was the thinking during the endorsement/non-endorsement process?
— Mark Kuhn, Paterson, N.Y.
How do you defend the editorial board’s decision not to endorse in the primary, and then, after convening a panel, effectively endorsing Cuomo by denigrating Mamdani? Staying out of it would have made sense, or making an actual endorsement, but this had the appearance of a Cuomo endorsement without actually saying those words.
— Tom Flaschen
I thought you guys weren’t going to make local endorsements anymore. Why did you publish the editorial board’s “advice to voters” on 6/16 if that’s the case? Surely an anti-endorsement is against the spirit of not making endorsements?
— Meghan, Brooklyn
Kathleen Kingsbury, our Opinion editor, shared what she wrote in the Opinion Today newsletter last month.
As the head of The Times editorial board, I said last year that it would no longer be making pro forma endorsements in elections. That included this one, though we keep the option open to do so in the future should we find the circumstances so compelling or a candidate with qualities that truly match the moment’s challenges. Given what was at stake in the primary, we offered our own guidance about where New York has been and where it should be headed.
Indeed, we knew this primary could prove a defining one — a race about what kind of city New York is. Many residents have lost faith in the Democratic Party and its veteran leaders, but they are also savvy about politics and wary of charismatic leaders with little government experience. It felt vital that Times Opinion offer several viewpoints on who is best suited to lead the city.
Fifteen New Yorkers collaborated on The Choice, a new voting guide by Times Opinion, to share their insights on the city’s future leadership. M. Gessen weighed in on the accusations of antisemitism being made against Mr. Mamdani. Mara Gay urged voters to look past Mr. Cuomo’s name recognition and take into consideration his bullying approach to governing as well as the sexual harassment accusations that forced him to resign as governor.
Ezra Klein took a tour of Brooklyn with Brad Lander to demonstrate how his policies could benefit more New Yorkers. David Wallace-Wells predicted the political story New Yorkers would tell should Mr. Mamdani capture the nomination. Nicole Gelinas explored how continued worries about crime would shape this election.
How is it that the N.Y.T. missed the popularity of Zohran Mamdani? It is surprising given that he won such a large victory.
— Elizabeth Myers, Scottsville, N.Y.
From Dean Chang, the editor running New York political coverage:
May I suggest a different takeaway?
We started paying attention to him well before his campaign launch in October, meeting with him months earlier to discuss his candidacy. In December, we detailed his plan to open city-owned grocery stores. In January, we wrote how left-leaning political groups were looking to identify the candidate to coalesce behind, and noted that Mr. Mamdani had the most momentum. In March, we called him the “standard-bearer for progressive Democrats,” and explained his ascension in the polls and in fund-raising.
We also revealed his crime plan, shared his first television ad, examined his legislative record in Albany and chronicled how his faith was playing a role in his campaign, sometimes in complicated ways.
That’s just a small sampling. You can browse it all on our dedicated page for the mayor’s race, where you’ll find comprehensive coverage of other candidates. The outcome of mayoral primaries are often fluid, especially toward the end, so we try to capture that dynamic and cover numerous candidates. Primaries can also produce unexpected results. So if you haven’t seen it, please read our in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at how Mr. Mamdani rose from obscurity to become the Democratic nominee.
The 2025 primary electorate
It is said that Mamdani won the “youth vote.” Were these first-time voters?
— Carol Sadewasser, Strongsville, Ohio
From Wilson Andrews, who runs our election results coverage:
Two things were true of the primary: More young people voted than in 2021, and the Mamdani campaign turned out voters who hadn’t voted recently.
Around 120,000 more ballots have been tallied in this year’s primary compared with 2021’s, and young voters accounted for most of the increase. The number of voters under 30 jumped from 105,000 four years ago to nearly 190,000 this year.
This story goes into more detail about what we do and don’t know about who voted in the primary.
What was the gender makeup of the votes for each candidate?
— David J. Krupp
Jodi Rudoren, the editorial director of newsletters, handled this one:
We have no idea! The precinct data from the city is no help, because gender tends to be distributed evenly across geography. In some elections, we get gender data based on exit polls, but none were conducted in the primary.
Based on general election turnout from previous years, if everyone who ranked Mamdani first voted for him in November, would it be enough to win?
— Ryan Kawahara, Brooklyn
Here’s Wilson again:
Mr. Mamdani received more than 462,000 votes, or 43.6 percent, of the first-round ballots tabulated so far. In the 2021 general, more than 1.1 million people voted, so first-round votes for Mr. Mamdani equals about 40 percent of that total.
(After ranked-choice tabulation, Mr. Mamdani hit 565,000 votes, which is just shy of 50 percent of the 2021 votes cast.)
That said, I expect November to eclipse 2021 turnout, possibly by several hundred thousand votes, especially after the attention generated by Mr. Mamdani’s upset in the primary.
I found it interesting that Cuomo won the majority of the Black vote, since Mamdani ran on a platform of making New York more affordable and many of the people who are leaving the city due to the affordability crisis are Black.
— Christy Wielosinski
From Jeffery C. Mays, who covers City Hall:
It’s true that on the first ballot, Mr. Cuomo beat Mr. Mamdani in precincts where at least 70 percent of the residents are Black. It wasn’t even close: 59 percent to 26 percent. But a closer look revealed a generational divide among Black voters.
Your point about some Black people leaving the city because of its high cost of living may help explain why. Census data shows that while the overall Black population in New York City has stayed steady at about 23 percent over the past 20 years, it has aged: 36 percent of Black residents were over 50 in 2023, up from 23 percent in 2000.
Many of those older Black residents are homeowners, professionals and city workers — and the backbone of New York’s Democratic Party. They are reliable voters who helped Mr. Adams win in 2021. When Mr. Mamdani talked about freezing rent, they heard it as landlords, not tenants. When I spoke to Anthonine Pierre, executive director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, she said that democratic socialists have done a good job of recruiting younger Black voters with their focus on class but have not done as well in viewing Black people who have capital as worthy of being organized.
Ranked-choice voting
Will the election in November be ranked choice?
— Joy Jones, Michigan
Here’s Jodi again:
Nope. Only primaries are ranked-choice in New York. Alaska and Maine use ranked choice for general elections, though, as do St. Paul, Minn.; Boulder, Colo.; and some California cities for local contests.
There was so much pre-election coverage on how ranked-choice voting works yet I haven’t seen any data or infographics on the comprehensive round-by-round results. Will we get to see the full picture?
— Scott Clary, Brooklyn
From Eden Weingart, our ranked-choice expert:
You haven’t seen the breakdown because the city hasn’t released it yet! We hope to get more detailed results in the coming months after the vote is certified.
One thing I’ll be looking for is where Mr. Lander’s second choices went. He got 11.3 percent of the first-round votes, and he and Mr. Mamdani co-endorsed each other shortly before Primary Day.
This is interesting for us obsessives, but not terribly important. Ranked-choice voting ended up not being as much of a factor this year as in 2021 because the large field essentially narrowed into a two-person race. Looking just at the first choices, Mr. Mamdani had a big enough lead — 43.6 percent to Mr. Cuomo’s 36.3 percent — that the former governor conceded the night of the election.
Because of the large gap between the top two candidates and the third, Mr. Lander, it was mathematically impossible for anyone but Mr. Mamdani or Mr. Cuomo to win, no matter how the votes were redistributed. New York uses “batch elimination,” instead of eliminating one candidate round by round, so all of the candidates except for Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Cuomo were eliminated at the same time in the second round.
That’s why the Board of Elections released data for only two rounds: the first in which write-in candidates were eliminated, and the second, where everyone except Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Cuomo were cut. We were able to see that the redistributed votes added 12.5 percent to Mr. Mamdani’s total and 7.5 percent to Mr. Cuomo’s, but not the intermediate steps.
National implications?
How does Mamdani’s race and subsequent win reflect the overall picture of politics — especially the identify of the Democratic Party — going into November and beyond?
— Samantha Kaplan, Annapolis, Md.
Lisa Lerer, a national political correspondent, explains:
There’s a long and storied history of over-interpreting New York elections as barometers of the national mood. Just ask Mr. Adams, who once heralded himself as the “Biden of Brooklyn,” or ask Mr. de Blasio about his very brief presidential campaign. As one prominent Democrat put it to me recently, the party should spend more time thinking about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan than the Upper West Side.
Most of the most competitive midterm races will take place in more moderate areas of the country. So I would not expect many Democratic candidates to embrace democratic socialist positions. More likely is that candidates will try to emulate Mr. Mamdani’s effective use of social media, and perhaps his intense focus on affordability, an issue that resonates everywhere.
As I wrote last month, there are some early signs that Mr. Mamdani’s win could inspire some younger Democrats to challenge older incumbents in primaries. It comes as many voters are desperate for generational change, after watching their leaders dismiss their concerns about former President Joe Biden’s age.
Why is The Times covering the New York mayoral race like it is a national election? How does this affect those of us who do not live in New York?
— Ansley Roberts, Columbia, S.C.
From David Halbfinger, our Politics editor:
The leadership and future of the largest city in the United States is an international story. If you visit New York, own stocks, were born in another country, buy clothes, listen to music, watch television or work in an office in your own city’s central business district, what happens in New York matters to you.
The race is also one of three major contests — along with governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia — the year after a presidential, so it’s always closely watched for any signs of a mood shift in the electorate.
This election happened amid an intramural fight among Democrats over whether their path back to power will lead through a return to the political center or through the more energetic and activist left. So the potential election of a democratic socialist — over the fevered objections of moderates — would be quite a statement by the heart of liberal America.
Mr. Mamdani’s emphasis on affordability also cuts to the quick of a big debate underway among Democrats nationally. And his candidacy opens the door for something we haven’t seen before: a staunch critic of Israel presiding over the city with the largest population of Jews. That could sharpen the intensifying debate over the Mideast that is dividing Democrats nationwide and putting at risk the party’s historically overwhelming support from Jewish Americans.
Last but not least, New York’s City Hall has, historically, been a powerful political platform. Think of Rudy Giuliani after Sept. 11, or John Lindsay’s 1971 campaign for president. The possibility that a left-wing newcomer could be given such a bullhorn raises the prospect of an intriguing new opponent — a particularly effective communicator — pushing back against President Trump.
Trump vs. Mamdani
Do you believe that Trump’s threats about “arresting” Mamdani, or otherwise interfering with his campaign, is a concern for his candidacy? Is a threat to “revoking” Mamdani’s citizenship just Trump bluster, or a ploy to gain leverage over him?
— John Bergot, Bellingham, Wash.
We asked Hamed Aleaziz, who covers immigration policy:
The Trump administration would have to go through a process known as “denaturalization” to strip Mr. Mamdani of his U.S. citizenship.
Such a process is lengthy and difficult: “The government holds a high burden of proof when attempting to revoke a person’s naturalization,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The government would have to show that he got his citizenship after hiding a “material fact.”
What about rent control?
How does “rent control” work? Does the government subsidize those owners to ensure that the property is maintained? This seems to be a way to make sure that people can afford to live where they work, so just wondering if it could work elsewhere.
— Judy Hiller, Mentor, Ohio
From Mihir Zaveri, who covers housing in New York:
When people talk about “rent control” in New York, they are usually referring to “rent stabilization.” There are about one million rent-stabilized units in the city. A nine-member panel, appointed by the mayor, decides how much their rents can go up each year.
That panel, the Rent Guidelines Board, is supposed to protect tenants from “unwarranted and abnormal” increases in rent. It is also supposed to make sure landlords can collect enough to pay for building maintenance and property taxes.
But the process has become extremely political, especially as New York remains a ridiculously expensive place to live. So, instead of relying on a dispassionate or apolitical formula, the board gets lobbied by tenant and landlord advocates, and often makes decisions consistent with the political leanings of the mayor.
This year, the board approved increases of 3 percent for one-year leases and 4.5 percent for two-year leases. Tenant groups — and Mr. Mamdani — had wanted a rent freeze. Landlord groups wanted much higher increases.
Landlords say the board’s caps on rents make it hard for them to pay for increasing costs including insurance, fuel, labor and taxes. The city and state have programs that are supposed to help with these things, but landlords say they are too confusing and inefficient.
Several housing experts worry that if rent increases aren’t keeping up with inflation, landlords in poor neighborhoods might abandon their buildings rather than keep struggling to maintain them. That would be bad for tenants, too.
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