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      Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’

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      After New York City’s race for mayor catapulted Zohran Mamdani from state assembly member into one of the world’s most prominent progressive voices, intense debate swirled over the ideas at the heart of his campaign.His critics and opponents painted pledges such as free bus service, universal childcare and rent freezes as unworkable, unrealistic and exorbitantly expensive.But some have hit back, highlighting the quirk of geography that underpins some of this view. “He promised things that Europeans take for granted, but Americans are told are impossible,” said the Dutch environmentalist and former government adviser Alexander Verbeek in the wake of Tuesday’s election.Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo cafe, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal.“Normal. That’s the word,” Verbeek wrote in his newsletter, The Planet. “Here, taking care of one another through public programs isn’t radical socialism. It’s Tuesday.”That view hit on the wide differences in how Mamdani’s promises are seen by many across the Atlantic. “Europeans recognize his vision about free public transit and universal childcare. We expect our governments to make these kinds of services accessible to all of us,” said Verbeek. “We pay higher taxes and get civilized societies in return. The debate here isn’t whether to have these programs, but how to improve them.”More than a decade ago, Tallinn, the Estonian capital, became the largest city in the world to introduce fare-free public transport. Financed by the city’s resident tax, the scheme faced heavy opposition before its rollout, with some describing it as a political stunt that the city couldn’t afford.Nearly a year later, researchers found that public transport use had increased by 14% and that the mobility of low-income residents had improved. Similar schemes have since sprung up across the continent, in France’s Montpellier and Dunkirk, for example, and expanded across countries in the case of Luxembourg and Malta.When Mamdani promised to launch one city-owned grocery story in each of New York’s five boroughs, with a view to expanding if the pilot was successful, it reminded Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, of the city-run grocery store she had visited in Istanbul in 2014.Back then, she had been surprised to see the heaving shelves, laden with products that ranged from bread to lentils to basic household appliances, much of it provided by small, little-known manufacturers. Access to these stores was limited to low-income households, with families receiving a preloaded monthly loyalty card to use at these shops, she said. “These city-run grocery stores in Istanbul were successful and replicated by other cities.”More than a decade on, the experience convinced her of the viability of Mamdani’s promise. “I was struck by the fact that New York elite and Republicans wanted to paint these proposals as sort of coming from the moon,” she said. “Things like non-profit stores or free buses, these are not outrageous ideas, nor are they socialist. They’ve been tried in different parts of the world.”For New Yorkers, precedents for city-run grocery stores can also be found closer to home. Chicago is mulling similar plans, while Atlanta and St Paul, Kansas have launched their own takes on municipal-run grocery stores.Mamdani’s campaign also promised to make childcare free for all children in the city, ages six weeks to five years. Days before the election, the state of New Mexico provided the city with a precedent-setting example, becoming the first US state to offer free childcare to all of its residents, in an effort to boost its economy and raise education and child welfare levels.Across the Atlantic, Portugal’s government began introducing free childcare in 2022, starting with children ages one and under with promises to gradually expand the program to children up to the age of three. While the program is open to all, places are limited and can be tough to access, with priority given to low-income and single-parent families.In Berlin, childcare has been free for children from their first birthday until they start school since 2018, though centres are allowed to levy additional charges for provisions such as lunches and extracurricular activities. Across the Nordic countries, free childcare is not universal, but is heavily subsidised by the state for most families.Mamdani’s platform also included a promise to provide new parents with a free baby basket that includes items such as diapers, baby wipes, nursing pads, swaddles and books. In Finland, the baby box has been a universal benefit since 1949 and has since been emulated by nearly 100 programs in 60 countries around the world.The sharp contrast in how Mamdani’s policies were seen within the US and abroad probably has much to do with the scant existence of a welfare state in the US, writer Mary Holland noted this week. “To anyone living in a western European state, the self-professed democratic socialist’s ideas probably sound entirely reasonable,” she wrote in Monocle. “But to many Americans, they’re wildly ambitious – radical, even.”Perhaps the most widely panned of Mamdani’s ideas is his vow to freeze rent for nearly 1 million rent-stabilised tenants in the city. The former US treasury secretary Larry Summers was among those who slammed the idea, writing on social media that rent control was the “second-best way to destroy a city, after bombing”.In 2020, Berlin passed a law that resulted in a five-year rent freeze, at June 2019 levels, for 90% of the flats in the city. While the law offered relief to about 1.5 million households who had seen rents rise by an estimated third in the six years prior, it was ruled as unconstitutional in 2021 after Germany’s highest court sided with landlords and property investment lobbyists who had argued it was inappropriate and illegal for the state to meddle with the private market.A 2022 paper, however, marked out an interesting impact of the short-lived measure, in that it found that while rent control was in place, residents were seemingly more receptive to new housing developments in their area. The finding suggests that if Mamdani is able to carry out the rent freezes as promised, it could help to pave the way for his promise to also triple the city’s production of affordable homes.Perhaps the strongest precedent, however, for rent freezes comes from New York’s own recent history. In the past 10 years, during Bill de Blasio’s tenure as mayor, members of the city’s rent guidelines board voted to freeze the rent four times, one former member of the New York City rent guidelines board, Leah Goodridge, noted recently in the Guardian. “This is why criticisms of Mamdani’s rent freeze ring hollow for me – it’s painted as out of touch, yet there’s already a precedent, backed by government reports and data.” More

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      How Mamdani built an ‘unstoppable force’ that won over New York

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      A week before Zohran Mamdani astounded the world by his out-of-nowhere, odds-defying, convention-shattering victory in the New York City mayoral election, members of his vast army of youthful volunteers were amply aware of what was at stake.A group of 16 had assembled in the Bohemian Hispanic neighborhood of Bushwick in Brooklyn for one last push to heave the Democratic candidate over the line.Juuli, the field lead of the group who was coordinating that night’s canvassing on behalf of the Mamdani campaign, was running through the key messages to be delivered to voters on the doorstep. Emphasise the candidate’s policy platform promising to make New York a more affordable city, she said.View image in fullscreenAnd there was one other thing she wanted the volunteers to stress that they wouldn’t find in the official campaign script. “Remember to mention that he’s the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, not just some social media guy.”On Tuesday, that social media guy pulled off one of the great upsets in American politics in the era of Donald Trump. He defeated the Democratic behemoth and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo running as an independent, and the Republican Curtis Sliwa, to become leader of the country’s largest city and its first Muslim mayor.An unashamed democratic socialist had won control of the capital of capitalism.He did so having catalysed the largest voter turnout in the city in more than half a century. And that in turn was in no small part achieved on the back of his foot soldiers, who gathered nightly in Bushwick and in every pocket of New York to spread the word.By election night, that volunteer army had grown to more than 100,000, making it the greatest field operation by any political campaign in New York history. Mamdani paid homage to it in his victory speech, lauding it as an “unstoppable force” that with every door knocked on and every hard-earned conversation had “eroded the cynicism that has come to define our politics”.This is the stuff of political legend. Coming at a time when the Democratic party is in the doldrums, mired nationally in low public ratings and a crisis of confidence following Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris last November, Mamdani’s victory will be pored over by strategists as a possible blueprint for a way out of the quagmire.In nine short months, Mamdani went from a virtually unknown assemblyman in the New York state legislature, ranking alongside “Someone Else” at the bottom of opinion polls, to mayor-elect. At the beating heart of his campaign was the field operation, with its enormous reserves of largely unpaid New Yorkers tirelessly conveying his message of progressive change.View image in fullscreenHow did they do it? What was their secret sauce? And the question that every Democratic candidate will now be asking: can it be repeated across the plains and mountain ranges of America in the battle to resist Trump?“Zohran Mamdani is modeling a different kind of politics,” Bernie Sanders, the US senator from Vermont who was the inspiration for Mamdani’s democratic socialist politics, told the Guardian. “As mayor, Zohran will be a champion for the working people of New York. That idea might frighten the establishment and the billionaire class, but it is precisely why more than 100,000 volunteers turned out to enthusiastically support his campaign.”Very early on, Mamdani’s top team of advisers began to notice that something extraordinary was happening on the ground. That was long before newspaper articles began to appear about the obscure would-be mayor with an army of young supporters.View image in fullscreenÁlvaro López remembers being struck back in December, when the campaign held its first big canvassing event, by the intensity of positive feedback on the doorstep. López is electoral coordinator of the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the political organization to which Mamdani belongs that has acted as a kind of kitchen cabinet for his campaign.Several key positions have been filled by DSA members, including Mamdani’s revered field director, Tascha Van Auken, and communications manager, Andrew Epstein. Elle Bisgaard-Church, his 34-year-old campaign manager who was Mamdani’s chief of staff in the New York state assembly, also has a DSA background.López recalls attending the field launch on 19 December, about six months before the Democratic primary election. They had selected seven locations in which to test out their fledgling on-the-ground operation, with a tight focus on rent-stabilised working-class neighbourhoods where the DSA already had strong roots.The idea was to see whether Mamdani could gain traction by leaning on one of his core policy promises: freezing the rents in the city’s approximately 1m rent-stabilised apartments. If that test-run worked, they would then widen the target group to include other New Yorkers.View image in fullscreenLópez told the Guardian that from the get-go he had high hopes for Mamdani’s populist campaign. It was just six weeks after Trump’s presidential victory, and New York’s left-leaning population was desperate for any sign of hope.What López witnessed that day still took him by surprise. He was knocking on doors in an apartment block in Astoria when he engaged with a woman who was so excited by the promised rent freeze, even though she wasn’t herself living in a rent-stabilised unit, that she took out her purse and handed him several dollars in donation.He was taken aback. At that point the campaign hadn’t even set up a fundraising channel, yet when he talked to other field organizers they reported the same thing: they too had been donated $5, $10, $20 bills, entirely unsolicited.“We had struck gold,” López said. “Voters were identifying with the campaign and its promise to make the city more affordable, and they really wanted an alternative to Trump. We were catching that energy.”That was the start of what quickly grew into a vast fundraising and grassroots mobilization campaign. While Mamdani’s rivals, led by Cuomo, concentrated on attracting big donations from moneyed interests, Mamdani went down the small-donor route pioneered by Sanders in his 2016 presidential bid.In March, just three months after that first December field test, Mamdani suspended fundraising for the primary election after reaching the legal spending cap in record time. He had attracted more than $8m from 180,000 donors.View image in fullscreenIn September he did it again. He called off fundraising for this week’s general election, having hit the $8m ceiling faster than ever before.It wasn’t just fundraising records that were smashed. Campaign organisers set themselves a target of training 250 field leads to run the canvassing network, and within weeks had exceeded 500.The cascade effect replicated itself with volunteers, who descended on the campaign in droves. “There were 50 or 100 showing up, we had to recruit more field leads to cope with the crush,” López said.This was unusual, to say the least. Most Democratic campaigns leave the heavy lifting to be done by 30-second TV ads, with direct door-knocking contact with voters relegated until the final days of the election.Cuomo followed this conventional mould, running such a lackadaisical top-down operation that he had to pay canvassers to do the field work that Mamdani’s eager supporters did for free.Top down is not how Mamdani went about this race. It’s not how he thinks.In an interview with the Guardian shortly before the June primary, Mamdani explained to me how he viewed his bottom-up insurgency. He talked about the need to change “a political impulse of lecturing to listening”.View image in fullscreenListening is exactly what Mamdani set out to do just days after Trump had won the presidential election. He set up shop in working-class streets in the outer boroughs like Fordham Road in the Bronx and Hillside Avenue in Queens where Trump, despite the districts’ large immigrant populations, had enjoyed a double-digit swing from the Democratic party.Mamdani carried out what was in effect his own one-person field operation, asking life-long Democrats why they had voted for Trump or failed to vote at all. “What I learned is that many did so because they remembered having more money in their pocket four years ago” and that they craved from the Democratic party “a relentless focus on an economic agenda”.And that is how he ran his mayoral campaign.The field operation was founded upon that initial voter engagement and the focus on affordability that flowed from it. Just weeks after Harris had lost the presidential race having lectured voters about the threat to democracy posed by Trump, Mamdani decided to go the opposite direction – on the back of what he had heard during his listening tour of the city, he would canvass people not on generalities but around the specific struggles of their daily lives.The rent freeze, free and fast buses, cheap city-run groceries and free childcare were placed at the top of his platform.The field operation was devised consciously as an attempt to win Trump-voting defectors back into the Democratic fold. Exit polls from election night suggest that it worked.Mamdani won the Bronx, a borough that is majority Hispanic and which had swung notably towards Trump, by 11 points.That’s on top of his soaraway success with young voters, with an astonishing 78% of 18- to 29-year-olds backing him.Part of the strategy to woo back Trump defectors was an emphasis on showing respect for everyone on the doorstep. Canvassers were encouraged to engage with people, without judgment.“We’ve emphasised that it’s important not to chastise, not to speak down to people who turned to Trump or who just don’t vote,” López said.You could see that ethos in Bushwick.Cynthia, 37, knocked on the door of a woman who was wearing a Puerto Rico T-shirt and who, when asked, said she never voted.Cynthia shared with the woman that she too had never voted in her life. This time, though, she said, she was casting a ballot for Mamdani because he would make the buses free.View image in fullscreen“And who’s going to pay for that?” the woman said, sounding irked. She revealed that she herself was a bus driver working for the city, and that she feared that if Mamdani made the buses free and it all went wrong she would lose her job.The doorstep conversation lasted more than five minutes, as Cynthia tried to assuage the woman’s fears. It didn’t work – the woman appeared determined not to vote. But at least the interaction had been cordial, the woman’s opinions recognised.Cynthia’s open approach about her own lack of voting history was part of what made the Mamdani field game so powerful. Volunteers were encouraged to air their own personal experiences and views on the doorstep, even if they had never canvassed before and had no experience in formal politics.“We don’t want our volunteers to give elevator pitches,” Juuli, the field lead, said. “If you are passionate about something, and that’s why you are canvassing, then say it out loud.”In most established political campaigns, paid staff make the decisions while volunteers do the donkey work. The Mamdani campaign turned that on its head.Volunteers were encouraged to contribute ideas. Many were rapidly promoted into responsible positions as field leads and then field directors with real influence over campaign strategy.“Mamdani’s campaign gave the keys to his supporters in unique ways that reflected the new political environment,” said Rick Fromberg, who is well versed in the challenges of running a mayoral campaign in New York City. He was the campaign manager of Bill De Blasio’s successful re-election bid in 2017.“Campaigns in general are extraordinarily risk averse,” Fromberg said. “But Mamdani’s campaign was risk forward. They allowed a broad cross-section of his supporters to take ownership of the campaign – and that decision paid off.”View image in fullscreenWhen political historians look back on the 2025 mayoral race it is possible they will fall into the trap that Juuli, the Bushwick field lead, articulated – by casting Mamdani as “just some social media guy”. That, after all, is how he was widely portrayed in the media during the mayoral race.Social media has undoubtedly been an important part of Mamdani’s approach. In his Guardian interview, the candidate told me that he regarded social media as a way of achieving what he calls the “politics of no translation”.“That means you speak directly to people about the crises they are facing, with no intermediaries. They can pull out their phones and see a video right from you. If I tell you I’m going to freeze your rent, you know exactly what I’m calling for.”Mamdani credits Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman and fellow democratic socialist, with opening his eyes to the potential of such direct communication. It was her launch video in 2018, “The Courage to Change”, that showed him the way.Over the course of the mayoral race Mamdani has proven himself to be a master of the form, releasing a stream of videos that are funny, combative, creative, self-deprecating and authentic-feeling – not to mention invariably viral. Yet what much of the media coverage overlooked is how closely Mamdani connected his social media to the affordability message that his army of canvassers disseminated across the city.View image in fullscreenThe video of a fully suited Mamdani taking the Polar Bear plunge in Coney Island will long be remembered as a surreal piece of political theatre, but its purpose was to drive home his promise to freeze stabilised rents. His spoof of his Democratic primary rivals, Cuomo and Eric Adams, as two old dudes bickering in a New York diner was slapstick fun, but its punch was to present them as archetypes of a party establishment that had had its day.The same duality applies to the eye-catching events staged by the campaign that were both entertaining and relentlessly targeted. In August they held a scavenger hunt that drew about 5,000 New Yorkers from all corners of the city.Last month about 1,500 turned up for a soccer tournament in Coney Island where mixed-gender teams played friendly matches borough against borough. Both events broke the mould of serious politics, while at the same time serving a serious political purpose – they underlined Mamdani’s commitment to, and love of, New York City, and drew people to his cause who had never before participated in the political process.There’s another striking contrast here between Mamdani’s campaign and the failed presidential bid of Harris. Both candidates stressed “joy” in their pitch to voters.But while Mamdani was painstakingly careful always to tie his “joy” to his vision for New York, Harris was imprecise, leaving many people to wonder what she was feeling so joyful about.“The Harris campaign tried to make joy the centrepiece of their platform but it fell flat because where was the substance?” said Denia Pérez, who spent much of this year canvassing for Mamdani. “In our campaign there was lots of joy, but it was always tethered to a substantive promise of change that will make people’s lives easier.”Back with the Bushwick canvassers, you could see that duality – fun plus targeted politics – strongly on display. The volunteers were given “Zetro” cards mimicking Metro cards for the subway: each time they canvassed they got a stamp, and when the card was full they were rewarded with a free Mamdani poster or T-shirt.View image in fullscreenWhen the night’s canvassing was done, the volunteers were invited for a debrief to a Bushwick bar, Misfit Moon, serving botanical kava and katrom. The mood was upbeat and ebullient, but Mamdani’s policies dominated the conversation.Mac Nicholas, 26, dressed in a “Hot Girls for Zohran” T-shirt, reflected on her first time canvassing. She says it had felt good to support a candidate trying to make the city affordable for everyone.“I believe he’s genuine and has compassion, and we need that in City Hall,” she said.Cynthia, the one who had never voted before let alone canvassed, said what had driven her to Mamdani’s cause was that she was fed up with Democratic smugness. “How many times did I hear people say, ‘There’s no way Trump is going to win.’ I’m out here to remind people we no longer have the luxury of being complacent.”View image in fullscreenMamdani’s mould-breaking field operation didn’t come out of the ether. He’s been working towards Tuesday night for many years. Like that other Democratic politician with a magician’s knack for mobilising voters, Barack Obama, Mamdani came to electoral politics via community organizing.He got his first taste of the thrill of engaging voters in 2015 when he volunteered for a city council campaign in Queens. “Climbing a six-story walkup, getting to that top floor, and having a senior open their door – you see a glimpse into what it is that they live with every single day,” he recalled to the New Yorker.That same year he canvassed for a pastor, the Rev Khader El-Yateem, in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge, where 9/11 first responders live cheek by jowl with Yemenis and Palestinians.It was that election, in which El-Yateem attracted almost a third of the vote, that taught him the importance of expanding the Democratic base to include Muslims like himself and other New York demographic groups traditionally ignored by the party. It also implanted the idea that one day he might run for office himself.In 2018, Ross Barkan had a chance to experience Mamdani’s nascent field organising skills up close. That year, Barkan had taken a break from his day job as a New York-based writer to run for a Brooklyn seat in the state senate.Mamdani was his first hire. Barkan employed him as canvassing director, then campaign manager.Looking back, Barkan can see the green shoots of Mamdani’s explosive rise already sprouting as they plotted the senate race together.“It’s clear watching him today that he was thinking about this kind of unabashed progressive campaign for many years,” Barkan told the Guardian. “He was always a brilliant leader of volunteers and canvassers. He trained them, he showed them how to connect with voters. For him, field was paramount.”Mamdani took the organizer’s sensibility with him in 2020 when he entered the New York state assembly representing Astoria in Queens. Within a year of taking up the seat he joined a cab driver, Richard Chow, in staging a 15-day hunger strike outside City Hall seeking relief for taxi drivers’ crushing debts.They won, as Mamdani recalled on Tuesday in his victory speech. “My brother, we are in City Hall now,” he said.All these past lessons were brought to bear on the mayoral race, with resounding results. His Bay Ridge experience of expanding the base came into play, with the field operation releasing campaign materials in Urdu, Bangla and Spanish.A huge canvassing push to engage Muslim and south Asian voters across the city, propelled by Mamdani’s condemnation of Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide, also paid dividends.View image in fullscreenMohamed Gula of the Muslim civic engagement group Emgage, which backed Mamdani, estimates that turnout among the 380,000 Muslim New Yorkers who are registered to vote is likely to have doubled on Tuesday. That’s up from the 22% who participated in the mayoral election four years ago.“So many Muslims have been inspired by Zohran’s campaign. It speaks to a new wave of Muslims who are proud of America being their home,” Gula said.With Mamdani’s thumping victory, thoughts are now quickly turning to the hard road that lies ahead – both for New York’s mayor-elect and for his wider party. As statistics of Mamdani’s win filter through, illuminating the neighborhoods and demographic groups that propelled him into Gracie Mansion, deeper lessons will emerge about how to resist Trump and his Maga insurrection.Mamdani’s top team told the Guardian that they were already thinking hard about what to do with the vast volunteer army and the energy that it commands. How should it be harnessed and put to use in the battle ahead?Obama generated similar kinetic forces in his 2008 “Yes we can!” campaign, but then allowed them largely to dissipate once he was inside the White House. Mamdani is determined not to make the same mistake.So watch this space. We will surely be hearing more from Mamdani’s army that bore his message on their shoulders and delivered it to New Yorkers, one door at a time. More

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      Zohran Mamdani is filling disillusioned Americans with hope and inspiration | Osita Nwanevu

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      The thing that should surprise us most about Zohran Mamdani’s election win is that it wasn’t a surprise. Well before the result was called on Tuesday night, weeks of reliable surveys had already suggested his victory in New York City’s mayoral race, by a nine-point margin over former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, would be a foregone conclusion ⁠– an extraordinary finish for a man unknown to the vast majority of New Yorkers when he launched his run just over a year ago. The campaign that followed was one of the greatest in American history.True as it may be that both Cuomo and incumbent mayor Eric Adams were deeply flawed candidates marred by scandal, it was by no means inevitable that Mamdani would be the leading candidate against them. ⁠As recently as February, Mamdani was polling at 1% in the Democratic primary, well behind a slew of challengers with more name recognition, more experience and deeper roots in city politics. They were defeated by an ever-growing army of volunteers ⁠– 90,000 by the summer ⁠– led substantially by organizers from the Democratic Socialists of America. Early in the campaign, it was a given to many commentators that an openly leftist campaign for the mayorship of the world’s financial capital would face impossible headwinds. In Tuesday night’s victory speech, Mamdani opened with a quote from Eugene Debs. Per exit polling from CNN, nearly one in four New Yorkers who went to the polls described themselves as socialists.As contested as the definition of socialism remains, Mamdani offered up a version of it New York’s voters clearly liked. Free buses, free childcare, higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations ⁠– the critical test now of course, as we are being reminded hourly by those who hope he fails ⁠– will be whether he can actually deliver on these things and more.Fortunately, Mamdani’s campaign has also given us some reason to suspect, beyond his bright and blazing charisma, that he might have the makings of a hard-nosed administrator. Threading the needle on policing, meetings with the business community, taking in new ideas on housing, all while retaining the support and enthusiasm of a progressive base ⁠– all of this was a preview of the balancing act Mamdani will have to do if he wants to succeed where recent progressive mayors and a long line of frustrated New York City reformers haven’t.View image in fullscreenWhatever he manages to accomplish as mayor, much of potentially national significance can be learned from his candidacy alone. Mamdani is the first New York mayoral candidate in over half a century to have earned more than a million votes. It is true that he did so in a diverse and heavily Democratic city that looks nothing like the US at large. But the very same can be said about cities such as Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Detroit ⁠– among the swing-state urban areas where maximizing Democratic turnout and vote share is critical to winning both state races and the electoral college. Last year, Donald Trump made gains in all three on his way to very narrowly winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan ⁠and the presidency ⁠– thanks in large part to increases in support from working-class minorities and young men.Both are constituencies where Mamdani rapidly and remarkably built strength over the course of the year ⁠– beating Cuomo by nearly 40 points with men under 30 and by double digits in some minority neighborhoods Cuomo had initially won during the primary. One of the first pieces of media his campaign released was a video of Mamdani doing man-on-the-street videos asking young people, people of color, and immigrants why they either did or didn’t votefor Trump.The answers given ⁠– affordability, Gaza, distrust in the system – were obviously the ones the campaign wanted viewers to hear. But the video’s approach, treating voters to be won with an openness and friendly curiosity rather than hostility or pontifications from on high, was instructive. It demonstrated ⁠– performed, perhaps ⁠– a willingness to listen and learn lacking among moderate pundits and Democrats already making pronouncements that what Mamdani has been able to accomplish tells us nothing whatsoever about what Democrats elsewhere might.That attitude is reflective of the confidence and self-satisfaction that blinded New York’s politicos to the viability of Mamdani’s campaign to begin with ⁠– a disposition leading Democrats and their operatives refuse to be shaken from even now, a full decade into Trump’s ongoing exposure of the cracks in the Democratic electoral coalition. It’s often suggested that the main force ailing party leadership is gerontocracy ⁠– that Democrats such as Chuck Schumer, who refused to endorse Mamdani as the Democratic nominee, are simply too old and personally embittered to recognize talents like Mamdani, pass the torch on to them and embrace new ideas. But this isn’t even half the story. Mamdani was the only serious candidate in this race.View image in fullscreenHis most significant rivals, Cuomo and Adams, have both faced criminal investigations over their conduct in office, and Cuomo resigned in disgrace in 2021. Despite this, out of sheer timidity and careerism, Democratic leaders around the city and around the country, many of them not especially elderly, embraced the two anyway. So too did a bipartisan front of elites. “The coalition opposing Zohran Mamdani,” Jacobin’s Luke Savage writes, “has spanned the New York Post to the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It now also includes the Trump White House and Elon Musk, to say nothing of Bill Ackman, Michael Bloomberg, real estate tycoon Ronald Lauder, and the wider constellation of plutocrats who’ve pumped more than $40m in outside money into the campaign in addition to the more than $12m spent by the Cuomo campaign directly.”Those expenditures didn’t work. And neither did identity politics ⁠– reliably the last refuge of centrists who, of course, also condemn identitarianism from progressives and the right when it suits them. Adams tried to crown Mamdani “king of the gentrifiers” a few weeks ago; less amusingly, the nonstop effort to label Mamdani a threat to Jewish New Yorkers for his stances on Gaza failed so totally that it might encourage other Democratic candidates to be more critical of Israel.Against all odds and despite increasingly desperate and despicable slights against his faith in the last weeks of the campaign, Mamdani will be mayor ⁠– which unfortunately means the attacks against him and the city he will run will only get worse in the months and years ahead. The president has openly contemplated sending troops into New York City; already, he is using the policy levers available to him to upend the city’s governance however he can. In all probability, a grand showdown is coming. We have ample reason already to look to Mamdani for inspiration. From here on out, millions of Americans, in New York and beyond, will be looking to him for leadership.

      Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      Zohran Mamdani’s biggest threat is not Donald Trump, it’s the Democratic old guard | Emma Brockes

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      The morning after Zohran Mamdani’s startling mayoral victory in New York, the most arresting visual image was not of the mayor-elect celebrating in an applause-filled room, but the breakdown of voting patterns across the city. Street by street, practically building by building, you could index New Yorkers’ support for Mamdani or Andrew Cuomo to the probable amount of rent they were paying. A middle-income precinct on the Upper West Side, for example, showed up as a small island of Mamdani voters in a sea of Cuomo-voting wealthier neighbourhoods. Solid lower-income support for Mamdani in modest midtown gave way to the incredible banking wealth of Tribeca and its majority support of Cuomo.Allowing for large anomalies – Staten Island, a middle- to lower-income part of the city, voted heavily for Cuomo, as did lower-income Hassidic neighbourhoods in Brooklyn and Queens – the message of the huge turnout for Mamdani in the US’s most expensive city seemed to be one of affordability; even of a referendum on capitalism as we know it. And so the most pressing question became: was it a crank result from an unrepresentative city, or the beginning of a new political wave?The night’s countrywide election patterns indicated a swing away from Donald Trump to the Democrats, which, of course, doesn’t mean that Mamdani’s Democratic socialism is anything the US at large will be willing to buy. Still, the move to the left was sharp enough to return Democrats to some traditionally very Republican areas, including two Democrats voted on to a public service commission in Georgia; the first Democratic female governor voted into office in New Jersey; and a new Democratic governor elected in Virginia. In New York City itself, the swing away from Trump, a mere 12 months after his support surged during the 2024 presidential election, was significant. His endorsement of Cuomo, running as an independent, made no apparent difference whatsoever.It should be said that Cuomo was a terrible candidate, trailing sexual misconduct allegations – all of which he denies – and a record as New York’s governor that foundered horribly during the pandemic. It should also be pointed out that Mamdani didn’t simply beat Cuomo; he galvanised New Yorkers into the highest mayoral election turnout since the 1960s, indicating an electorate voting for him rather than against his opponent.How, then, does the 34-year-old look as a potential leader beyond the very particular ecosystem of New York City, where, at times, it is possible to believe that a tub of margarine promising lower rents, higher minimum wage and fairer taxes might win out over a traditional political adversary? On this question, aspects of Mamdani’s identity – exploited by Cuomo and Trump to racist effect – might actually run in his favour. Mamdani’s age and eloquence obviously flatter him in relation to Trump, but it’s his background that stands out as a decisive advantage.In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Mamdani promised working-class New Yorkers: “We will fight for you, because we are you.” This is a great piece of rhetoric, but let’s be honest: Mamdani has the social and cultural capital of someone who grew up in an affluent family in a wealthy part of Manhattan, with one parent who went to Harvard and became a successful film-maker and the other who is a professor at Columbia. And while the mayor-elect went to an academically selective state high school in the city, he attended a private liberal arts college in Maine that now charges $91,000 a year in tuition and living costs.I don’t mention any of this to be snide. Mamdani sells a political message further to the left than any successful American politician has dared to in recent memory, but he doesn’t sound like an outsider. In fact, he sounds as smooth and polished and – can we say it – arrogant as any mainstream political contender.He has neither Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s scrappy, up-from-her-bootstraps energy, nor can he be played for laughs on Saturday Night Live like Bernie Sanders – who, during the 2016 election cycle, Larry David mercilessly if affectionately skewered as a hopeless crank. Even Trump’s characterisation of Mamdani as a communist – the kind of absurd, inflationary claim the president is accustomed to throwing out and having his supporters swallow whole – withers under the slightest scrutiny.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, none of his campaign promises justify use of the word “radical” in the scaremongering sense. Mamdani’s push for a $30 minimum wage sounds like standard political aspiration. He has promised to make buses in New York free – as they were during Covid without the city falling to communism. (On which subject: when the Staten Island ferry went from fare-charging to free in 1997, New York’s commuters didn’t receive it as a communist gesture.) And his promise to increase taxes on those earning more than $1m a year is substantially more generous to affluent earners than anything Rachel Reeves – also not a communist! – is threatening in the forthcoming budget.The election results this week suggest Mamdani as an effective, inspiring force against the corruptions of Trump. But while you can imagine him, years in the future, going toe to toe with JD Vance in a televised presidential debate, his real enemies may be closer to home. To advance beyond New York politics, it’s not just the Republicans he’ll have to beat, but the Chuck Schumer- and Nancy Pelosi-era gatekeepers of the Democratic old guard – who I suspect may find him even more threatening and obnoxious than Trump.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Trump disparages Zohran Mamdani’s victory after Democrats sweep key 2025 elections – live

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      The president continued to undermine the results of New York’s mayoral election. He’s yet to reference the new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, by name. But he’s used the historic victory as a way to color the future direction of the Democratic party.“If you want to see what congressional Democrats wish to do to America, just look at the result of yesterday’s election in New York, where their party installed a communist,” Trump said, inciting a series of boos as a result. “Now the Democrats are so extreme that Miami will soon be the refuge for those fleeing communism in New York.”He went on to summarize the situation at large: “The decision facing all Americans could not be more clear – we have a choice between communism and common sense.”Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, held a call with reporters on Wednesday declaring: “Make no mistake, the Democratic Party is back.”“The Democratic Party is all gas, no brakes,” Martin added.“We made it clear we don’t want gilded ballrooms. We want lower health care costs,” he said. “We don’t want marble bathrooms. We want lower energy bills. We don’t want Great Gatsby parties. We want kids to be able to eat dinner every night.”Martin credited the candidates with a relentless focus on affordability issues – from Zohran Mamdani’s freeze the rent in New York City to Mikie Sherrill’s Day 1 state of emergency on utility costs in New Jersey.He also touted the party’s inroads with young people, and particularly young men, a demographic group Democrats have struggled with. It was his hope that the resounding victory on California’s redistricting measure creates a “chilling effect” on Republican states weighing gerrymanders at Trump’s request.“This is not your grandfather’s Democratic Party. We will meet you in every single state that you decide to try to steal more seats,” he said.Tuesday’s election results point to voter discontent with Donald Trump, according to a new poll by the Associated Press. The news organization surveyed more than 17,000 voters in states that held elections this week and found most disapproved of Trump’s performance as president.In Virginia and New Jersey, slightly less than half of voters said Trump was a factor in their voting. But the majority of those who did cite the president as a factor said their vote was to oppose him – four in 10 voters. Similar patterns were seen in New York City and California.Republicans mostly said Trump wasn’t a factor in their vote, despite saying they approve of his job performance. In California, only one in 10 voters said they were voting to support Trump.Immigration was a hot-button issue for many voters who said Trump’s aggressive approach had “gone too far”. This was most starkly seen in New York City and California, where about six in 10 voters said their state shouldn’t cooperate with the White House on immigration enforcement.Jared Golden, the Maine Democratic representative, announced today that he won’t seek re-election to Congress in 2025.“I have grown tired of the increasing incivility and plain nastiness that are now common from some elements of our American community – behavior that, too often, our political leaders exhibit themselves,” the congressman wrote in a column for the Bangor Daily News. “Additionally, recent incidents of political violence have made me reassess the frequent threats against me and my family.”Golden said that while he’s confident he would win if he were to run again, “what has become apparent to me is that I now dread the prospect of winning”, also citing the ongoing government shutdown – now the longest on record – as part of his decision. “The nonstop, hyperbolic accusations and recriminations by both sides reveal just how broken Congress has become,” he said.Golden’s decision to step aside in a district that supported both him and Donald Trump in 2020 and 2024 poses a challenge for Democrats. To keep the seat competitive, they’ll need to find a candidate who can connect with rural voters in a state with a strong libertarian streak.My colleagues Andrew Witherspoon and Will Craft have been digging into the data following Tuesday’s mayoral election in New York, looking at the sections of boroughs where Zohran Mamdani performed particularly well.

      The US supreme court appeared skeptical of the legal basis of the Trump administration’s sweeping global tariff regime on Wednesday after justices questioned the president’s authority to impose the levies. The question at the heart of the case is whether the Trump administration’s tariffs violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law which only gives the president authority to “regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency”. Today, even conservative justices sounded doubtful of the strength of the Trump administration’s position. “The vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been a core power of Congress,” said Chief Justice John Roberts. Lawyers for the small businesses challenging the White House said that the president’s actions were unprecedented. “They are tariffing the entire world in peacetime, and they are doing it asserting a power that no president in our history has ever had,” said attorney Neal Katyal.

      As he hosted Republican senators at the White House, Donald Trump offered some initial thoughts on the Democratic victories across the country on election night. “Last night, it was not expected to be a victory, it was very Democrat areas. But I don’t think it was good for Republicans,” the president said. “I’m not sure it was good for anybody.” Later, while speaking at the America Business Forum in Miami, Trump particularly disparaged Zohran Mamdani’s historic win in New York City. “The decision facing all Americans could not be more clear – we have a choice between communism and common sense,” he said, while mispronouncing the new mayor’s name.

      On Capitol Hill, and day 36 of the government shutdown (now the longest on record), Republicans continued to rebuke Democrats for failing to pass a stopgap funding bill. House speaker Mike Johnson also used his daily press conference to both downplay and foreshadow what Tuesday’s election results suggest going forward. “There’s no surprises. What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming,” the speaker said, before stating the importance of maintaining a Republican majority in the midterm elections. “If we lose the majority in the House, and this radical element of the Democrat party were able to take over, we’ve already seen that movie. They will try to end the Trump administration,” Johnson said.

      Meanwhile, Trump had choice words for GOP lawmakers, as he pushed for them to blow up the filibuster. Despite reticence from Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, the president pushed the virtues of abolishing the 60-vote threshold needed to end debate on legislation. His argument largely rests on the grounds that Democrats would do the same, and would use it to advance their own agenda if they were given the opportunity. “We have to get the country going. We will pass legislation at levels you’ve never seen before, and it will be impossible to beat us,” he said. “They’ll [Democrats] most likely never attain power, because we will have passed every single thing that you can imagine.”
      Republicans in California on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a high-stakes redistricting measure that could help flip up to five congressional seats for Democrats.The suit, filed by Republican assembly member David Tangipa, 18 California voters and the state Republican party, in the US district court for the central district of California argues that the new maps are unconstitutional because they were drawn to increase the voting power of a particular racial group. It asks the court to block the new maps from taking effect, at least temporarily.The measure, Proposition 50, was approved by voters on Tuesday evening, in a decisive victory for Democrats. The plan temporarily gives the power to draw congressional districts to the California legislature, allowing it to adopt maps that will help Democrats pick up five seats in the US House of Representatives.Mike Columbo, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that California Democrats drew the maps to increase the power of Latino voters.While the supreme court allows states to use race as a factor in drawing political maps, Columbo argued that the intent was to help minority voters elect the candidates of their choice. In California, he noted, Hispanic voters represent the largest ethnic group.“There is no majority race in California more than Hispanics,” Columbo said. “Hispanics have had fantastic success in electing candidates of their choice. Accordingly, California cannot meet this exception.”Democrats have expressed confidence that the maps would withstand a legal challenge.Trump’s address today in Miami is sounding more like a campaign rally, as he responds to the Democratic victories across the country after Tuesday’s election.“Let’s see how a communist does in New York. We’re going to see how that works out. We’ll help them. We want New York to be successful. We’ll help them a little bit,” the president said, after Zohran Mamdani was elected as the city’s youngest, first Muslim mayor.In MiamiThe White House had said Donald Trump’s remarks would be addressing his economic agenda and the trade deals he has signed in recent weeks. But it swiftly became a familiar litany of personal insults against political foes, including Joe Biden, the California governor Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer and Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat elected Tuesday as mayor of New York.In MiamiDonald Trump’s speech started off with a lengthy self-congratulation for winning his second term of office exactly one year ago today.“We rescued the economy … we saved our country,” he insisted, before recounting his pre-election photoshoot with a garbage truck, and serving hamburgers in a McDonald’s restaurant.“This is the golden age of America,” he said, touting a slew of recent trade deals with other nations, and insisting they would net $21tn for the US economy in one year. He claimed to have removed 600,000 Americans from food stamp aid, and that 2 million more were working than when he took office.“Prices are coming down very fast,” he said. “We’re going to have a bigger, better, stronger economy than my first four years.”The president continued to undermine the results of New York’s mayoral election. He’s yet to reference the new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, by name. But he’s used the historic victory as a way to color the future direction of the Democratic party.“If you want to see what congressional Democrats wish to do to America, just look at the result of yesterday’s election in New York, where their party installed a communist,” Trump said, inciting a series of boos as a result. “Now the Democrats are so extreme that Miami will soon be the refuge for those fleeing communism in New York.”He went on to summarize the situation at large: “The decision facing all Americans could not be more clear – we have a choice between communism and common sense.”The president took the stage in Miami to deliver remarks at the America Business Forum. He’s offered the greatest hits of many of his usual lines: extolling his 2024 win as the most “consequential election victory in American history”, declaring his second administration as the beginning of a “golden age of America” and baselessly claiming the 2020 election was stolen.He also disparaged the results of the New York mayoral election. “Watch what happens in New York, terrible,” Trump said, not referring to Zohran Mamdani by name. “And I hope it doesn’t happen, but you’re going to see it.”Johnson also said today that he has spoken with the president about how they can shore up support in the midterm 2026 elections. “If we lose the majority in the House, and this radical element of the Democrat party were able to take over, we’ve already seen that movie. They will try to end the Trump administration,” Johnson said. “He won’t have four years. He’ll have only two because they will move to impeach him, probably on the first day of the new Congress in January 2027, and they will try to systematically unwind all the important reforms that we’ve done for the American people.”The House speaker also said that Trump is “going to help” as campaign season kicks off. “He’s offered to do rallies and the tele-town halls and all the thing – he’s sent out a huge round of endorsements of incumbents,” he added.Earlier today, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, held his daily press conference on the steps of the US Capitol, declaring that Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York is “the biggest win for socialism in US history and the biggest loss for the American people”.Johnson added: “Working families watching this play out have a right to know that socialism and communism are not just confined in New York City, they are quickly coming to a town near you.”However, he urged those watching to not “read too much” into last night’s results. “There’s no surprises. What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming,” the speaker said.In response the sweep of Democratic victories on Tuesday, the vice-president took to social media to offer his analysis, noting that “it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states”, but laying out his thoughts regardless.“We need to focus on the home front. The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Vance wrote.He added that “infighting” among Republicans “is stupid”.“I care about immigration and our sovereignty, and I care about establishing peace overseas so our resources can be focused at home. If you care about those things too, let’s work together,” he said.On the subject of Mamdani, this time last year no one had really heard of him. Now he is the first Muslim, millennial and mayor of South Asian heritage of America’s largest city. For this week’s episode of Politics America Weekly, Jonathan Freedland speaks to reporter Ed Pilkington about Mamdani’s historic win, his challenge to the president, and what the Democrats should take away from a successful night at the ballot box. You can listen here:I talked with leftwing commentator Hasan Piker on the phone earlier today, fresh off a night of celebrating Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York.Mamdani’s message can be replicated around the country, Piker said, despite the contention from some that the democratic socialist’s platform would be too radical for other parts of the country.“This is probably the 700th time saying this, and not just about Zohran in general, not even just last night. This is the message of my entire political advocacy. This is the message of my entire political career as a commentator, as someone who works with organizers and activists,” Piker said.“Yes, Zohran’s message is universal. It is applicable, and I think as long as you localize it to address the ailments that people feel, the issues that people feel in whatever locality, in whatever state that you are running for, as long as you center working-class struggles and affordability at the heart of your campaign, you will definitely win.”After a brief rebuttal from Sauer and more than two and a half hours of arguments, Roberts announces, “The case is submitted,” and the hearing concludes.The next step is a private conference at which the justices will take a preliminary vote on the outcome. More

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      Trump voters for Mamdani and a new left coalition: the biggest surprises from New York’s election

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      Two days before the New York mayoral election, Michael Lange made a big electoral prediction – not just of who would win overall, or in each borough or neighborhood, but block by block. Lange, a political analyst born and raised in New York City, has spent over a decade in progressive politics and has become something of a local celebrity this year for his deep dives into city data and polling.He published his highly detailed prediction map – which correctly forecast that Zohran Mamdani would win although failed to predict Andrew Cuomo’s strong performance – on his Substack, the Narrative War. Lange has a flair for witty coinages. He highlighted, for instance, the divide between the “commie corridor”, stretching from Park Slope to Bushwick to Astoria, where he predicted (accurately) that Mamdani would win by huge margins, and the “capitalist corridor” on Manhattan’s Upper East and Upper West Sides. There, “the Free Press and Wall Street Journal outrank the New York Times” in readership and most voters leaned toward Cuomo, who ran as a conservative-courting independent.I spoke with Lange on Wednesday morning to discuss the trends and surprises that emerged on election night.You’ve had a very busy election season. I could see you on Hell Gate’s election live stream last night, with your laptop strapped to you like a busking DJ in Washington Square Park. How was your night?I had to do that because they were dropping around 200,000 ballots into the system every few minutes! I was actually a little nervous at the beginning: Mamdani led the early vote by 12 points, but there were two big batches of ballots that came in after that and his lead went from 12 to 8%. I was worried.You know, there was a world in which yesterday went kind of poorly for Mamdani, where Cuomo was going to end up basically doubling his votes from the Democratic primary. But Mamdani added 500,000 votes to his primary coalition, and that’s a huge reason why he won. He went out and massively expanded his base from the primary.Where did Mamdani get those extra votes from?He built the coalition that the left always wanted to build: it’s multiracial, it’s young, it’s renters and it’s people squeezed by affordability. He improved considerably with Black and Hispanic voters, working- and middle-class voters, compared to the primary. Plus he further maximized his base of liberal progressives, young leftists, and Muslims and south Asians. He couldn’t have won without making those significant inroads.There were also some Trump/Mamdani voters – is that a big trend?It’s definitely a real thing, confined to working-class Latinos, south Asians and Muslims. Voters in immigrant strongholds that went for Trump last year went for Zohran this year. But I wouldn’t say he was winning over white working-class voters and Maga voters.One of the big stories of the night was the sky-high turnout. Who did that help?Both sides. Turnout was significantly higher than I had expected. I thought we might go over 2 million, but it’s closer to 2.3 million – that is a lot of darn voters. There was a decent anti-Mamdani block, who were motivated, but the Mamdani base was also motivated, and that was enough to win.You predicted he’d get over 50% of the vote. Is he on course for that?Right now you would say he’s favored to get over 50%. He’s at 50.4% but there’s still, like, probably 200,000 votes left to report [as of Wednesday morning]. So I don’t think it’s definitive, but I think it’s likely, and I hope he does because then no one can say Sliwa was a spoiler.Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, is the other big story of the night. His vote completely collapsed.He didn’t win a single precinct in any borough. Not even Tottenville in Staten Island, which is like an 88% Trump neighborhood. That really surprised me. Cuomo kept very white areas, very wealthy areas and very religiously Jewish areas, and then added all of these Republicans on Staten Island who had a strong turnout. I think there was a lot of tactical voting by the Republicans. They were doing it before Trump tweeted his support for Cuomo, but that definitely helped. It could have even turned the tide if Mamdani’s coalition hadn’t grown.View image in fullscreenWhat about your much mentioned “commie corridor” – was support for Mamdani overwhelming in those parts of Brooklyn and Queens?I think there was a little dilution of the commie corridor in some areas like Astoria or Greenpoint that have more older white ethnic folks. In Astoria, for example, the Greek landlords and homeowners all went for Cuomo. So there was a little resistance. But no, mostly the commie corridor is another huge reason why Zohran won – he was polling between 77% and 83% in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Bushwick.In the lead-up to the election we reported on whether Mamdani was making inroads with Jewish New Yorkers. Is there any suggestion that he did?There are neighborhoods with a lot of secular and more progressive-leaning Jews – like Park Slope and Morningside Heights – where he did well. But in the wealthy Jewish communities like the Upper East Side, his position on Israel definitely mattered there. Similarly in the more middle-class Jewish areas like Forest Hills, Rego Park, or Spuyten Duyvil and Riverdale in the Bronx – they all leaned Cuomo. And also, you have Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in southern Brooklyn, they were pretty staunchly Cuomo. So I don’t know if there were crazy narrative-busters on this one, but Mamdani did hold more progressive Jewish neighborhoods and even parts of the Upper West Side [which has more reform and conservative Jews] by big margins.Has Mamdani rewritten what New York means politically? Will the commie corridor become a launch pad for leftwing candidates?Yes, it’s no coincidence that some of the biggest political leaders from the left come from a handful of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. I’m sure that we’ll see more of that – people will come from these neighborhoods to be elevated nationally.But I think that every city in America can have their own commie corridor. Urban places are the epicenters of leftwing power in America – because they’re young, people rent and they are places where people are crushed by the inequalities we face. More

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      London mayor sees parallels in Zohran Mamdani’s victory: ‘Hope won’

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      While the soon-to-be first Muslim mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, was in the final throes of his mayoral campaign on a brisk day in New York, Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim of mayor of London, was wrapping up a two-day climate summit in a steamy if overcast Rio de Janeiro.“Hope is not gone,” Khan told the 300 city mayors gathered in the Brazilian city’s museum of modern art.The London mayor was referring to the challenges faced by regional politicians in dealing with the climate emergency in the face of the scepticism or outright denial of the science by national governments – including that led by Donald Trump.But on hearing of Mamdani’s win, Khan suggested that this too had given him hope. London and its mayor have been repeatedly raised by figures such as Trump’s former chief of staff Steve Bannon as the disastrous outcome that New Yorkers had to avoid.“In recent years, there’s been a growing chorus of commentators and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic attacking London and New York for their liberal values,” Khan told the Guardian. “They paint a picture of a lawless dystopia in an attempt to sow fear and division. But ask most Londoners or New Yorkers, and you’ll find that this narrative falls on deaf ears.“Many of the challenges our cities face are similar, but they are not identical. But we are united by something far more fundamental: our belief in the power of politics to change people’s lives for the better.”He later tweeted: “New Yorkers faced a clear choice – between hope and fear – and just like we’ve seen in London – hope won.”Khan, 55, the London-born son of Amanullah and Sehrun Khan, a bus driver and seamstress respectively, who arrived in Britain from Pakistan in 1968, achieved a historic third term as mayor on the Labour ticket in May last year.Mamdani, the son of a Ugandan academic, Mahmood Mamdani, a specialist in colonial and post-colonial history, and Mira Nair, the acclaimed film-maker, made his own history on Tuesday as a Democrat picking up nearly 200,000 more votes in New York than his nearest rival, the former state governor Andrew Cuomo.“It’s never been more crucial for our cities to challenge those who weaponise our diversity and instead stand firm in the belief that no matter who you are, or where your family is originally from, you can achieve anything,” said Khan. “In our cities, hope and unity will always triumph over fear and division.”There are obvious, albeit superficial, similarities between the two men.For all that Mamdami, 34, has been characterised as a diehard socialist, his policy platform bears a distinct resemblance to that of Khan, who would describe himself as of the “soft left” on the British political spectrum – a flavour of progressive politics that is less enamoured of the munificence of market forces than politicians such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, but more sceptical about handing over the running of the economy to the state than the likes of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.They have both proposed types of rent controls. Mamdani wants a $30 (£23) an hour minimum wage in the city, while Khan has long supported a voluntary London living wage, which at £14.80 ($19.30) per hour is more than £2 beyond the UK’s statutory minimum.Mamdani has proposed to impose a 2% levy on earnings above $1m year (affecting about 34,000 households), but that will involve negotiating with the New York state legislature and with Governor Kathy Hochul, who has said she opposes new income taxes. Khan does not have the powers to raise taxes, but he has sought such cash-raising powers to fund major transport projects.Making their cities affordable has also been central to both men’s policy prospectus: Mamdani proposed free bus transit while Khan has frozen fares for years. Both men have been outspoken on Gaza, condemning Hamas’s October 7 attacks but describing Israel’s war as genocidal. Khan was ahead of his party leader, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, in calling for the UK to recognise a Palestinian state.The context, though, is quite different. Mamdani terrifies and excites his party in equal measure, observers say. Unlike Khan, whose 2024 campaign mantra was a “London for everyone”, the New Yorker’s rhetoric draws up dividing lines, and is seen by some as making a bogey figure of the “billionaire”.Khan has been involved in Labour politics for over 30 years and is well-attuned to building electoral coalitions. Asked about warnings that the wealthy would leave New York if Mamdani won, he responded by inviting them to the UK.“If that is the case, come to London,” he said. “I am going to roll out a red carpet and welcome you.”Brett Bruen, a former US diplomat in the Obama administration, said that the major issue is that at 34 years of age, there is very little to go on when judging how Mamdani will actually govern.He said: “He’s certainly managed to stand out as a leader made for this moment, but that comes, obviously, with quite a lot of scrutiny. Some of it, I think, is warranted in questions about his résumé and whether or not he’s got like the requisite experience to lead this huge city.“It’s fair to say that he is on the outer extremities of the political spectrum, even in New York. And you know, we have seen, in the case of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and some others, that while they’ve done well in certain segments, they also become popular targets for Trump and the Republicans.“Those of us who are more in the centre of the party, face a problematic predicament. How do we talk about a party that can appeal to independents, that can even appeal to moderate Republicans, when some of our most vocal and visible voices are those that are out so far on the left?”If the two men differ in terms of experience, rhetoric and level of internal support within their respective parties, there are certainly parallels in the dog-whistle – and worse – politics that their candidatures provoked among their opponents.When Khan first stood for mayor in 2016, his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith was accused of pursuing arguably the dirtiest campaign in British politics.Tamils, Hindus and Sikhs were sent letters warning that their jewellery was unsafe, because Khan planned to introduce a wealth tax.The Conservative then cabinet minister Michael Gove suggested that Khan would implement sharia law if elected.The campaign culminated in an article by Goldsmith in the Mail on Sunday accompanied by a photograph of a London bus blown up during the 7/7 terror attacks and a headline suggesting that a vote for Khan would put the city into the hands of a party that “thinks terrorists are its friends”.Trump, meanwhile, has described Khan as a “terrible, terrible mayor”, and falsely claimed that London was facing “sharia law”.Mamdani faced similar slurs. “God forbid, another 9/11, can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?” asked Cuomo at one stage to the conservative radio talkshow host Sid Rosenberg.“He’d be cheering,” Rosenberg replied. Cuomo, who had previously referred to Mamdani as “a terrorist sympathiser”, laughed, adding: “That’s another problem.”“Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday.Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Democratic governor of New Mexico, said that what united Khan and Mamdani was that they offered a positive vision of the future.“I think that is incredibly attractive to voters,” she said. “They want new ideas. They want innovation. They want optimism. They don’t want somebody who’s dark and negative and angry.“Mamdani is the opposite of dark, angry, moody and he’s very optimistic. So I think that’s the future of the Democratic party, identifying this enthusiasm and optimism for the future.”Leah Kreitzman, who was Khan’s director of external and international affairs until 2021, said that there was a clear parallel between the two men that explained much of the vicious backlash they endured.“The reason why [Sadiq] gets attacked, both by the far right and by Islamist extremists is that the very fact of him and his success means that they’re wrong,” she said.“He completely defies their ideology and worldview: that he can be a Londoner, a Brit, a Muslim, from immigrant parents, liberal in his politics, but religious in his beliefs. If that’s all true and it’s successful and popular, they’re wrong.“[Khan and Mamdani] are quite important people in that sense, because they’re living embodiments of the fact that you can be all of those things.”The two men, who have only spoken once after Mamdani won the Democrat ticket for the mayoral election, have clearly also recognised that there is electoral mileage in having a clear positive vision but also in being the anti-Trump candidate.Khan told the Guardian: “What do nativist populist leaders hate? They hate liberal democracies. They hate progressives. They hate multicultural society. And in London, we have all that, and it’s really successful. So you know, having a really successful liberal, progressive, multicultural city led by a mayor elected not once, not twice, three times who’s of Islamic faith and Pakistani origin must be a real sore to him, a running sore, but that’s his problem not mine.”On winning in New York, Mamdani, with typical swagger addressed the US president: “Donald Trump, since I know you‘re watching, I have four words for you – turn the volume up.” More