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      The Parents Who Helped Shape Zohran Mamdani’s Politics

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      Zohran Mamdani’s parents, a filmmaker and a professor, gave him the foundation for his run for mayor of New York. But their own political views may open him up to attacks.When Zohran K. Mamdani took a commanding lead in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City on Tuesday, his parents were just as surprised as the party’s establishment. Both are accustomed to the spotlight — his mother as an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and his father as a Columbia University professor. Neither expected to be this close to the halls of power.Mr. Mamdani, 33, has credited his parents with providing him a “privileged upbringing” that included constant discussion of politics and global affairs. But at a moment of intense political fights over conflict in the Middle East, his parents’ critical views of Israel and his father’s academic work on settler colonialism and human rights could make them a target of attacks from the right.The concept of settler colonialism has become especially fraught during the war in Gaza, as some supporters of Palestinians have applied the term to Israel, which some critics say is unfair.“We hadn’t bargained for being parents of a prospective mayor,” Mahmood Mamdani, 79, the candidate’s father and a renowned professor of international affairs and anthropology, said in the couple’s Manhattan apartment the morning after the primary.Mira Nair, 67, Mr. Mamdani’s mother, directed “Salaam Bombay!,” “Mississippi Masala” and “Monsoon Wedding,” among other films. Over the past year, in between filmmaking, she has canvassed for her son and cooked biryani and chicken for him and his campaign staffers. Both parents emphasized that their son, a democratic socialist who could become the city’s first Muslim mayor, has not turned to them for political advice. But they may now find themselves drawn into the campaign nonetheless.Zohran Mamdani with Ms. Nair at his primary night celebration. Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who had been leading in the polls, conceded the race as Mr. Mamdani stretched his lead in returns on Tuesday night.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lawyer Who Pushed Bogus Trump Elector Scheme Is Disbarred in New York

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      Kenneth Chesebro, an architect of the plan to use phony slates of pro-Trump electors to overturn the 2020 election, was indefinitely barred from practicing in the state last year.Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who helped spearhead a brazen legal effort to use phony slates of pro-Trump electors to overturn the 2020 presidential election, was disbarred in New York on Thursday, cementing an indefinite ban issued last year.The decision by a New York State appellate court concluded a strange legal journey for a Harvard-educated lawyer who worked for former Vice President Al Gore during the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida and later evolved into a supporter of President Trump.In a seven-page opinion, the court cited a criminal racketeering case centered on the fake electors in Georgia, where in 2023 Mr. Chesebro pleaded guilty.The New York court said Thursday that Mr. Chesebro’s “criminal conduct — conspiracy to commit filing false documents — is unquestionably serious” and that he had undercut “the very notion of our constitutional democracy that he, as an attorney, swore an oath to uphold.”Mr. Chesebro, 64, could not immediately be reached for comment, and lawyers who have represented him did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The decision came nearly eight months after Mr. Chesebro was indefinitely barred from practicing law in New York because of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The theory that Mr. Chesebro pushed centered on the certification process carried out on Jan. 6, 2021. He posited that Mike Pence, then the vice president, could count bogus slates of electors for Mr. Trump rather than the real ones from states that backed Joseph R. Biden Jr., or otherwise use the existence of the pro-Trump electors to delay the process.In 2022, before Mr. Chesebro was indicted, he told Talking Points Memo that it was “the duty of any attorney to leave no stone unturned in examining the legal options that exist in a particular situation.”Other lawyers who supported Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election have also faced consequences. In 2023, Sidney K. Powell and Jenna Ellis, two members of Mr. Trump’s legal team after the 2020 election, also pleaded guilty in election-interference cases in Georgia. Ms. Ellis’s license to practice law in Colorado was suspended last year.Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became Mr. Trump’s legal browbeater, was barred from practicing in New York and in Washington, D.C.Mr. Chesebro was mentored at Harvard by Laurence H. Tribe, a leading liberal constitutional law scholar. With Mr. Tribe, Mr. Chesebro helped represent Mr. Gore, a Democrat, in the legal battle over the 2000 presidential election recount.Mr. Tribe said Thursday that Mr. Chesebro was particularly skilled at “coming up with arguments — sometimes too clever.”“He’s one of the few students who seriously disappointed me,” Mr. Tribe said, adding: “He’s a very smart person who learned how to manipulate and abuse the tools that the law gave him. And it was proved now that he can’t be trusted to use those tools at all.”Kitty Bennett More

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      Zohran Mamdani’s Winning Style

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      In all the post-mortems that have appeared since Zohran Mamdani upset the political apple cart to potentially, if unofficially, clinch the Democratic nomination for New York mayor, one particular aspect of his appeal has been largely overlooked: not how Mr. Mamdani conducted his campaign but how he looked while conducting it.Put another way: Mr. Mamdani didn’t just record himself for his various social media platforms running into the freezing Atlantic on New Year’s Day to publicize his pledge to freeze rents; he recorded himself running into the freezing ocean not in a wet suit or a bathing suit, but in a suit and tie.Sure, it was funnier that way. But it was also tactical. For a 33-year-old progressive and democratic socialist trying to be the city’s first Muslim mayor, whose opponents are painting him as a “100 percent Communist lunatic” and a “radical leftie” (that from President Trump on Truth Social), not to mention trying to other him because of his racial and religious identity, dressing like an establishment guy offers a counterargument of its own.Leaving a Passover rally in April.Andres Kudacki for The New York TimesOn election night.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesAs Mr. Mamdani walks the tightrope between embodying change, generational and otherwise, and reassuring those who may be leery of such change, his clothes have played a not insignificant role. His mouth may be saying one thing, but very often his outfit is saying another.This is a man, after all, who appeared in Vogue India as long ago as 2020, when he won his seat in the State Assembly, and whose mother is the film director Mira Nair. He has long understood that costume is one way to convey character.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      If Everyone Had Voted, Kamala Harris Still Would Have Lost

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      New data, based on authoritative voter records, suggests that Donald Trump would have done even better in 2024 with higher turnout.A voting line in Phoenix in November. Jon Cherry for The New York TimesIn the wake of last November’s election, many Democrats blamed low turnout for Kamala Harris’s defeat.It wasn’t entirely without reason, as turnout dropped in Democratic areas, but many months later it is clear the blame was misplaced. Newly available data, based on authoritative voter turnout records, suggests that if anything, President Trump would have done even better if everyone had voted.The new data, including a new study from Pew Research released Thursday, instead offers a more dispiriting explanation for Democrats: Young, nonwhite and irregular voters defected by the millions to Mr. Trump, costing Ms. Harris both the Electoral College and the popular vote.The findings suggest that Mr. Trump’s brand of conservative populism once again turned politics-as-usual upside down, as his gains among disengaged voters deprived Democrats of their traditional advantage with this group, who are disproportionately young and nonwhite.For a generation, the assumption that Democrats benefit from high turnout has underpinned the hopes and machinations of both parties, from Republican support for restrictive voting laws to Democratic hopes of mobilizing a new progressive coalition of young and nonwhite voters. It’s not clear whether Democrats will struggle with irregular voters in the future, but the data nonetheless essentially ends the debate about whether Ms. Harris lost because she alienated swing voters or because she failed to energize her base. In the end, Democrats alienated voters whose longtime support they might have taken for granted.The 2024 election may feel like old news, especially in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York City on Tuesday, but the best data on the outcome has only recently become available. Over the last two months, the last few states updated their official records of who did or did not vote in the election. These records unlock the most authoritative studies of the electorate, which link voter turnout records to high-quality surveys. More

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      Trump Won by Turning Out Voters and Building a Diverse Coalition, Report Finds

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      A new Pew Research Center study found that 85 percent of President Trump’s 2020 supporters came out to vote for him again, a better rate than Democrats pulled off.One of the most robust studies of the 2024 election shows that President Trump’s return to the White House was powered more heavily by his ability to turn out past supporters than by winning over Democratic voters, even as he built one of the most diverse coalitions in Republican Party history.The new report, released on Thursday from Pew Research Center, offers some of the most detailed analysis yet of what actually happened last fall, in particular how infrequent voters broke for Mr. Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris.In the end, the math was simple and significant: A larger share of voters who supported Mr. Trump in the 2020 election — 85 percent — showed up to vote for him again in 2024. Ms. Harris earned the support of just 79 percent of former President Joseph R. Biden’s 2020 voters.The analysis showed that 5 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters flipped to Mr. Trump, while only 3 percent of Mr. Trump’s 2020 voters flipped to Ms. Harris.But the bigger factor was turnout: 15 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters did not vote at all in 2024, Pew found.Tony Fabrizio, who was the lead pollster for the Trump campaign, said the new report validated the campaign’s strategic successes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mamdani Triumphed Without a Majority of Black Voters. Where Does That Leave Them?

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      Black city leaders are worried their influence is waning at a moment when the rising costs that Zohran Mamdani put at the center of his campaign are pushing Black New Yorkers out of the city.For years, the conventional wisdom in New York among strategists and candidates alike has been that in any Democratic primary, the road to victory runs through Black communities.Then came Zohran Mamdani.In the race that culminated on Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani forged a new multiracial political coalition to become the likely Democratic nominee for mayor and topple Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor, who had far more name recognition, financial firepower — and political baggage.And Mr. Mamdani did so even as he lost many of New York City’s most solidly Black neighborhoods. A New York Times analysis of the results shows that Mr. Cuomo dominated in precincts where at least 70 percent of residents are Black, more than doubling Mr. Mamdani’s support, 59 percent to 26 percent.The result is a break not just from the parochial politics of New York — Black voters helped deliver the mayoralty to both Eric Adams and his predecessor, Bill de Blasio — but from the nation as a whole. Black voters have served as the Democratic Party’s most important voting bloc this century, elevating Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the party’s last three presidential nominees, oftentimes sanding down the most exuberant instincts of the left.Most famously, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina rescued Mr. Biden’s flagging 2020 effort by rallying Black voters before his state’s primary in a bid to thwart Senator Bernie Sanders, though Mr. Clyburn’s backing did not appear to help Mr. Cuomo in this race’s closing stretch.In a city whose politics have been defined by race-based math, Mr. Mamdani’s success as a democratic socialist upended these traditional calculations and birthed a new and unconventional coalition. It also highlighted tensions between older and more moderate Black voters and the party’s most strident progressive wing, typically anchored by wealthier white voters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Donors Work Against Mamdani, Top Democrats Stop Short of Backing Him

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      After Zohran Mamdani’s performance in the New York City mayoral primary, Republicans and suburban Democrats attacked him, and party leaders seemed to be hedging their bets.The day after Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani rocked the nation’s largest city by becoming the presumptive Democratic mayoral nominee, New York’s political leaders declined to formally endorse him, and some donors to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo considered coalescing behind Mayor Eric Adams.In an interview, Scott Rechler, one of the city’s biggest landlords, said that in a general election race between Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, and Mr. Adams, he would put his support and potentially his financial resources behind the scandal-tarred incumbent.Mr. Rechler, who donated $250,000 to a super PAC supporting Mr. Cuomo, expressed hope that the former governor and Mr. Adams, who is running in the general election as an independent, would not split the centrist vote.“You want to have leadership that speaks to what New York is,” Mr. Rechler said. “It’s the capital of capitalism.”Mr. Cuomo, who for months led in Democratic primary polls, continued on Wednesday to leave open the possibility that he would run in November on a third-party line. Polls and conventional political wisdom suggest that such a move would only enhance Mr. Mamdani’s chances, at the expense of Mr. Adams.Bill Ackman, a hedge fund billionaire and supporter of President Trump who donated $500,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s super PAC, said on social media that he also “may ultimately support and endorse” Mr. Adams.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Polls Underestimated Mamdani. Here’s Why It’s So Hard to Poll Primaries.

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      Accurately gauging support in primaries can be notoriously difficult. Pollsters face multiple challenges.Polls largely underestimated Zohran Mamdani’s support in the Democratic primary for the New York City mayor, illustrating once again just how difficult it can be to accurately poll primary elections.When polling general elections, pollsters are helped by the fact that increasing polarization has led Americans to sort neatly into their political camps, with more than 90 percent of partisans supporting their party’s candidate. But in primary elections, partisanship no longer factors into voters’ decisions in the same way. Voters’ preferences are more fluid in partisan primaries and more difficult to track over time.Primaries also tend to be much more volatile than general elections, making the timeliness of a poll more relevant. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, nearly every Republican contender in the field took a turn as the front-runner in the polls before Donald J. Trump ultimately pulled ahead. And in the 2020 Democratic primary, Elizabeth Warren, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Bernie Sanders ping-ponged in the polls.The New York City mayoral primary presents an additional challenge because of its use of ranked-choice voting. Pollsters took different approaches to try to mirror the process, but it is challenging to accurately simulate what voters actually experience at the ballot box.While most polls did not show Mr. Mamdani leading in the first round of balloting, they did appear to show him gaining support in the final weeks of the campaign.Polls in March and April of this year showed former Governor Andrew Cuomo ahead by 20 to 30 percentage points. Surveys conducted in May and June showed Mr. Mamdani cutting that lead down, often to single digits. And an Emerson College poll taken within a week of the election found Mr. Mamdani neck and neck in the first round and winning in the final round of voting. More