Image Credits: Heute.at

On the 4^th of November 2025 New York City elected a new mayor into office:  Zohran Mamdani. A democrat, and a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, Mamdani won the mayoral election race with over 50% of the vote against the former state governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican party candidate Curtis Sliwa. 

Mamdani’s victory has undeniably disrupted the right-wing Republican power structure. During Mamdani’s campaign, President Trump vowed to end federal funding to New York if Zohran won. Following this, Trump (rather bizarrely) would go on to claim that he was both more attractive than the newly elected mayor and that Mamdani is a “communist”. 

Over the course of his campaign, Mamdani was ruthlessly criticised in the American press for his allegedly radical policies and economic proposals. CNN’s Political commentator Scott Jennings for example claimed Zohran’s campaign had been funded with “Islamo-Marxist” money and that Mamdani would destroy the economic capital of the world if he became mayor.  

However, these claims are unfortunately just two of many that aimed to destabilise Mamdani’s campaign and persuade politically disillusioned American voters that the ‘extremist left’ is taking over. It is important to remember that falsehoods being spread by Republicans and the media do not come from nowhere – Mamdani has explicitly claimed he wants to tax “billionaires who think their money can buy democracy” and unsurprisingly, those billionaires (such as Micheal Bloomberg, the Lauder Family and Joe Gebbia) have spent millions of dollars to hinder his campaign.

This article will look at both what Zohran Mamdani’s campaign has promised New York city residence and what right-wing media coverage of Mamdani have revealed about the nature of racialised political discourse in the US.  

Starting first with his policies, Zohran Mamdani has stated that one of the first things he will implement upon coming into office is rent freezes. In 2023, it was reported that on average people were spending 30% or more of their monthly income on rent while the USA real estate sector reported an 8% increase in net worth that year. Mamdani has promised to end rent increases to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis and help low-income New Yorkers. 

Additionally, Mamdani has promised to make the busses of New York City free to all residents. Whilst Trump and other Republicans have compared the implementation of free public transport to that of Cuban communism; the success of this implementation was proven in 2023 following a one-year pilot of the scheme funded by Mamdani and his team. Research from that campaign showed an 30% increase in bus ridership and an estimated decrease in motor traffic by 12%.  

However, despite Mamdani’s popularity during his campaign, highly approved of left-wing policy promises and mayoral victory – the republican and allegedly ‘centrist’ media surrounding him has been overwhelmed with lies and hateful, racist rhetoric. 

Zohran Mamdani is both the first south-east Asian to be elected as mayor of New York and the first Muslim. Additionally, he is the youngest Mayor of New York to be elected since 1892. Whilst you would think all these things would be a cause for celebration, seeing under-represented communities play a major role in political discourse, the media attack on Zohran’s character has been undeniably racially charged.

Racist, hateful and right-wing conspiracist responses to the Mamdani victory are not hard to come by. Mamdani has been accused of being a Marxist, a jihadi and a terrorist both online and by prominent members of the political opposition. Mike Johnson for example, a republican speaker of the house, commented on X that Mamdani’s victory “cements” that the Democratic Party has transformed into a “radical, big-government socialist party”.  

Similarly, Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s main opposition in the mayoral race has made numerous blatantly racist comments about his opponent. Cuomo has previously equated Mamdani’s religion with terrorism, claiming that the now mayor is a “terrorist sympathiser” who would not be adequately prepared to handle “another 9/11” due to his religious affiliations. Furthermore, the prior New York City mayor Eric Adams justified his endorsement for Cuomo by doubling down on his Islamophobic rhetoric, stating he was “seeking to fight Islamic extremism” and people who were “burning churches”.  

On a separate occasion, during a live streamed mayoral debate, Cuomo’s media team posted an AI imagine on X that read “criminals for Zohran Mamdani” and illustrated Mamdani eating rice with his hands whilst depicting “a Black man in a keffiyeh shoplifting, a man abusing a woman, a sex trafficker, a drug dealer, and others, all showing their support for Mamdani.”

Obviously, there is no evidence that suggests Zohran Mamdani is either a terrorist, a terrorist sympathiser, or someone with any vested interest in burning down churches, supporting theft or the abuse of women. However, these disgusting and racist claims by political elites highlight how complicit the American media and right-wing opposition are in creating and spreading a racist and Islamophobic ideology that aims to subsequently shapes the beliefs and attitudes of the general US population.

Despite the racist and right-wing rhetoric being spread by the media, republicans and democrats alike, this election season saw sweeping victories nationwide for progressive democrats with Mamdani being just one of many. In New Jersey and Virginia, progressive Democrats won governor elections and in Mississippi democrats “broke a republican super majority”. Even a Democrat attorney general candidate who had previously joked about killing Republicans won easily.

Zohran Mamdani, within this wider context of progressive victories, has shown that in times of such political unrest, the electorate can still unite and mobilise to voting in policy that promises what the people ultimately want: to make New York City more affordable and liveable for its inhabitants.