In early November, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election in a landslide, a victory that sent shockwaves across United States politics and galvanised the country’s political left.
It was a dramatic turnaround for a campaign that – less than a year earlier – had been polling at 1 percent support.
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Among those who were most surprised was Zohran’s own father, Mahmood Mamdani.
“He surprised me and his mother,” Mahmood told Al Jazeera Mushaber reporter Allaa Azzam in an interview this week. “We wouldn’t expect him to become mayor of New York City. We never thought about it.”
But Mahmood, an anthropology professor and postcolonial scholar at Columbia University, framed his son’s electoral success as evidence of a shifting political landscape.
Zohran, for instance, campaigned heavily on questions of affordability and refused to back away from his criticisms of Israel’s abuses against Palestinians, long considered a taboo subject in US politics.
He is the first Muslim person to become mayor of the country’s largest city by population, as well as its first mayor of South Asian descent.
“There were certain things that were near and dear to him,” Mahmood explained. “Social justice was one of them. The rights of Palestinians was another.”
“These two issues he has stuck by. He’s not been willing to trade them, to compromise them, to minimise them.”
Inside the Mamdani family
The son of Mahmood and Indian American director Mira Nair, Zohran first emerged as the frontrunner in the mayoral race in June, when his dark-horse campaign dominated the Democratic Party primary.
He earned 56 percent of the final tally, besting former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
When Cuomo ran as an independent in the November 4 election, Zohran once again beat him by a wide margin, with more than 50 percent of the vote to Cuomo’s 41 percent.
Mahmood told Al Jazeera that, while his son’s sudden political ascent came as a surprise, his resilience did not.
“It didn’t surprise us, with his grit and determination,” he said of the election. “I don’t think he joined the race thinking that he was going to win it. I think he joined the race wanting to make a point.”
He traced back some of Zohran’s electoral finesse to his upbringing. Zohran, Mahmood explained, was not raised in a typical US nuclear family but instead shared his home with three generations of family members.
Living with a diverse age range allowed Zohran to expand his understanding and build his people skills, according to Mahmood.
“He grew up with love and patience. He learned to be very patient with people who are slower, people who were not necessarily what his generation was,” Mahmood said.
“He was very different from the American kids around here who hardly ever see their grandparents.”
A ‘mood of change’
Mahmood also credited his son’s victory to a shifting political landscape, one where voters are fed up with the status quo.
“There’s a mood of change. The young voted like they never voted before,” Mahmood said.
“Sections of the population which had been completely thrown into the sidelines – Muslims, recent immigrants whether Muslim or not – he gave them enormous confidence. They came out and they voted. They mobilised.”
Local media outlets in New York reported that turnout for November’s mayoral race was the highest in more than 50 years. More than two million voters cast a ballot in the closely watched race.
Mahmood cast his son’s upcoming tenure as mayor as a test of whether that voter faith would be rewarded.
“America is marked by low levels of electoral participation, and they’ve always claimed that this is because most people are satisfied with the system,” Mahmood said.
“But now the levels of political participation are increasing. And most people, it’s not just that they are not satisfied, but they no longer believe – or they begin to believe that maybe the electoral system is a way to change things. Zohran’s mayoral term will tell us whether it is or it is not.”
Mahmood was frank that his son faces an uphill battle as mayor. He described politics as a sphere dominated by the influence of moneyed powers.
“ I am not sure he knows that world well,” Mahmood said of his son. “He’s a fast learner, and he will learn it.”
He noted that significant resources were mobilised during the mayoral election to blunt Zohran’s campaign.
“ He’s taking on powerful forces. He’s being opposed by powerful forces. They failed during the campaign,” Mahmood said. That defeat, he added, “exposed the failure of money” as a defining force in the race.
A focus on Palestine
Mahmood also addressed the role of Zohran’s advocacy on the campaign trail.
Though faced with criticism from his mayoral rivals, Mamdani has refused to retreat from his stance that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide.
That position, though widely affirmed by rights groups and experts, including at the United Nations, is relatively rare in mainstream US politics, where opposition to Israel is a political third rail.
Still, voters appear to be shifting on the question of US support for Israel.
A March poll from the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of US respondents with an unfavourable view of Israel has increased from 42 percent in 2022 to 53 percent in 2025.
While unfavourable views were most pronounced among Democratic voters, they have also increased among conservatives, especially those under the age of 50.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 69,500 Palestinians since its start in October 2023, and there has been continued outrage over widespread Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank as well.
Mahmood said the undeniable human rights abuses are causing a shift in public perception – and not just in the US.
“The real consequence of Gaza is not limited to Gaza. It is global,” said Mahmood. “Gaza has brought us a new phase in world history.”
Source: Aljazeera
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