Len's Political Note #739 Zohran Mamdani New York City Mayor

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July 18^th Len’s Political Note #739 Zohran Mamdani New York City Mayor

2025 General Election

Zohran Mamdani

I cannot ignore this election. I live here in New York City. I write about other mayoral races. For instance, I urged support for Gina Ortiz Jones, who was recently elected mayor of San Antonio. New York City, much larger than San Antonio, the nation’s 7^th largest city, is important in and of itself.

The New York City will elect a mayor on November, 2025. New Jersey and Virginia will each elect governors on the same day. These are all places with about the same population. New York City had 8.8 million residents according to the 2020 census. New Jersey, the country’s 11^th largest state, had 9.3 million people in 2020; Virginia, the country’s 12^th largest state, had 8.6 million people.

I cannot ignore New York City’s mayoral election because the issues have become so difficult. Previously I wrote about the Democratic primary. (See Len’s Political Note #722 ). Although the general election in November will not use ranked choice, the primary did. Here is how I ranked my five votes for mayor in the Primary.

Adrienne Adams – The Speaker of the City Council
Brad Lander – The City Comptroller
Zellnor Myrie – A State Senator
Scott Stringer – A Former Assemblyman and former City Comptroller
Zohran Mamdani — Assemblyman

Once all the votes were counted in the Democratic primary and the no longer relevant choices were eliminated, Zohran Mamdani defeated the former Governor of the state of New York, who I did not rank at all, Andrew Cuomo 56-44.

Zohran Mamdani is a 33 year old New Yorker, but not a native. He is the son of Mahmood Mamdani, a Muslim and an internationally known political science University Professor at Columbia and Mira Nair, a Hindu and an internationally known film maker. Both were part of the Indian diaspora and were living in Uganda. Zohran Mamdani was born in Uganda. His first schooling was at the St. George’s Grammar School when the family moved to post-Apartheid Cape Town, South Africa. When the family moved to the United States, to New York City, he attended the Bank Street School in Manhattan, Bronx High School of Science, and Bowdoin College. At Bowdoin he co-founded the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

After college, Zohran Mamdani worked as a housing counselor in New York, helping families avoid foreclosure and/or eviction. He spent some time working in music. His work creating the soundtrack for his mother’s film Queen of Katwe won him a nomination in 2017 for an award by the Guild of Music Supervisors.

He also got involved in politics, joining the Democratic Socialists of America and working on campaigns for candidates for City Council, for State Senate, and Queens District Attorney. None of Zohran Mamdani’s candidates won, but his candidate, Tiffany Caban, lost her race for Queens Borough President by 60 votes in the Democratic primary.

More than a year in advance, Zohran Mamdani announced his candidacy for state assembly in the 2020 election. He won that primary by 623 votes, defeating the incumbent Democrat, a progressive white woman whose family brought her as an infant to the United States from Rhodesia. He faced no opposition in the general election and was reelected after that from his Astoria, Queens district.

Although some attention has been given to Zohran Mamdani’s thoughts about governing New York City, the campaign has been dominated by a perception of him as being an antisemite.

I will begin, though, with his ideas for governing New York. Zohran Mamdani’s core issue in his campaign for mayor of New York City is addressing how unaffordable the City has become for those who work in the less glamorous and less lucrative jobs. Fixing this problem is crucial for those who are directly affected and for the city as a. whole. His vision about fixing this problem has attracted his army of volunteers. His vision attracts me as well. I appreciate, as Zohran Mamdani certainly appreciates, that his ideas are not so easy to implement. If nothing else, they have to be paid for.

Free buses.This would be transformative for people to be able to get to and from work and to otherwise get around New York City.
The high cost of housing can be moderated by freezing rent for a year or two. Increasing the housing stock is the major task. He insists that can and will be done and will include involving the private sector.
Strengthening the city’s hand in minimizing the impact of ICE on immigrants in the city is probably more a matter of imagination than money.There is no federal policy more unpopular than the ICE raids. So long as Zohran Mamdani can stay within the law in dealing with this problem, he will have the enthusiastic support of the people of New York.
Creating free child care would also be greeted with enthusiasm.
Developing a way for him to co-govern the schools may be another issue requiring imagination rather than money.I am a retired school superintendent. I have already made a suggestion to him. If he is not interested, I might publish it here.

These ideas have been somewhat controversial. But nothing like the controversy that has greeted Zohran Mamdani’s views of Israel.

Seen from an American perspective, the controversies that have overwhelmed the mayoral campaign began with a book. In 2006, former United States President Jimmy Carter published Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Carter saw two major obstacles to peace in Israel and Palestine – the Palestinians’ use of violence and the apartheid which he later redefined as existing in the West Bank.

The controversy about using the term Apartheid to describe Israel continues. An Israeli businessman whom I know confirms Carter’s revised analysis. Within the borders of Israel, his nation is nothing like an Apartheid state. The West Bank, on the other hand, very much resembles one.

Tony Karan, a former anti-Apartheid activist and more recently a journalist for Al Jazeera suggested that Jimmy Carter’s book was valuable for its explanation that “Palestinian life and history is not accorded equal value in American discourse…[that American] liberals .. rationalize away the daily, grinding horror being inflicted on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.”

American Jews had imagined Israel as a place with Jewish bus drivers and janitors as well as Jewish scholars and political leaders. American Jews could not conceive of an Israel that would be judged to have violated standards of international behavior. That Israel acted in its invasion of Gaza with the mitigating circumstances of suicide bombers on buses and in restaurants and the vicious attack of October 7 is not mitigation enough for much of the world and many in the United States. Many cannot accept the deaths of what is now counted as 55,000 Gazan civilians or the lawlessness of the settlers in the West Bank.

Like Jimmy Carter, Zohran Mamdani is not an antisemite. He sees, as his parents see, the apartheid-like conditions in which Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live. Zohran Mamdani envisions the weapons used against Israeli apartheid as the same weapons used against South African apartheid.

Zohran Mamdani’s youth, his socialism, and his support for Palestinians brought him the army of volunteers that led to his primary victory. His views have also led to some reactions of hate. He has cried in public about the death threats he and his loved ones have received. His opponents ask if he decries attacks on Jews?

Zohran Mamdani refused to condemn the call of some for a “global intifada” in favor of the Palestinians, but he would not use the phrase and discourages its use. In response to the controversy about his refusal to condemn the phrase, he explained that, for many, the words mean rebellion or resistance without a connotation of violence. Because many Jews are particularly conscious of the violence of the Second Intifada in Israel, he said it is “a bridge too far” to make that term a part of our shared language. Therefore, he discourages the use of the phrase.

Zohran Mamdani has been a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Drawn primarily from the boycott experience against the Apartheid era South Africa, BDS leadership seeks to target a small number of corporations most closely connected with what they see as Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. BDS as an economic attack on Israel and, in a way, on Jews. To me, it is an implicit acceptance of the stereotype of Jews as primarily economic beings. I wish Zohran Mamdani were more aware of, more sensitive to that meaning of such a boycott.

Zohran Mamdani has joined those who have described Israel’s responsibility for the death of Palestinians in Gaza as genocide. I understand claims that Israelis have been callous with regard to civilians in Gaza as they attack Hamas. I can accept that some of those actions should be investigated as war crimes. But genocide?

We are familiar with 20^th century genocides – of the Armenians, the Tutsis, the intentional Ukrainian famine — the Holodomor, and, of course, the Holocaust destruction of the Jews of Europe. Israeli killings of Palestinians in Gaza are terrible; some of the killings may be war crimes. To my mind, it goes too far and incites angry opposition by those with a connection to Holocaust survivors.

When we choose which politicians to vote for, to provide voluntary help to, to offer financial contributions to, we are limited by the options we have that the system offers us.

Despite my discomfort with some of his views, Zohran Mamdani and his proposed policies offer hope and enthusiasm and even love for New York City. His opponents offer something else.

The current mayor, Eric Adams, running as an independent offers a history of corruption and a special connection to President Donald Trump who would, perhaps, further relieve Adams of the consequences of his corruption.
The former governor of New York State, Andrew Cuomo, running under New York State’s peculiar election laws on the Fight and Deliver Party he created, offers a promise that he can get things done.What things? Done how? Legally or illegally? Ethically or not? By trampling or by guile?
The Republican former leader of the red bereted Guardian Angels, Curtis Sliwa.The only thing he has going for him is that, like many New Yorkers who knew the president, he dislikes him. Otherwise, Curtis Sliwa has a history of leading a faux military group, of inventing non-existent achievements by members of the group, and a promise of achieving law and order that has led to confrontations with the police.
An attorney, Jim Walden, running as an independent. He is not a nobody, but nobody is paying attention to him.

Help Zohran Momdani win this election. With the exception of Jim Walden, he is the only candidate who does not make you feel grimy when you read or think about him. Zohran Mamdani is the best choice among this crew. He offers hope for the future. He may not get everything he wants, but he learns. He is already talking about the possibility of keeping the recently appointed and popular police chief. DONATE now. November, 2025 is not far away.

Other important November 4 elections

Former Congresswoman MIkie Sherill for Governor of New Jersey. DONATE See Len’s political Note #732. (In New Jersey, the elected Governor appoints both the Lt. Governor and the Attorney General.)