# Zohran Mamdani

Zohran Kwame Mamdani (born October 18, 1991) is a Ugandan-born American politician. A member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, he is the representative for the 36th district of the New York State Assembly, in Queens since 2021. Mamdani is a candidate in the Democratic primary for the 2025 New York City mayoral election.

## Early life and education

Zohran Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda. He is the son of Indian filmmaker Mira Nair and Indian-born Ugandan academic Mahmood Mamdani. His father, Mahmood is a Columbia University professor who studies colonialism, director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) in Uganda, and chancellor of Kampala International University in Uganda. Mahmood gave Zohran the middle name Kwame after Ghanaian politician Kwame Nkrumah.
Zohran Mamdani moved to Cape Town, South Africa, at five years old. He attended St. George’s Grammar School while his father worked at the University of Cape Town. The family moved to New York City when he was seven, where he graduated from Bronx High School of Science. He is Muslim.
Mamdani graduated in 2014 from Bowdoin College in Maine with a bachelor's degree in Africana Studies. In 2018 he became naturalized as an American citizen.

## Career

Mamdani worked as a prevention counselor and cricketer, before running for office. He also tried to work as a rapper in the New York subway stations.
After leading student organizing campaigns, Mamdani became formally involved in politics. He volunteered for the unsuccessful campaign of New York City Council primary candidate democratic socialist Khader El-Yateem, a Palestinian Lutheran minister running in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn in 2017. Then he was the campaign manager for Ross Barkan's unsuccessful race for New York State Senate in 2018. He was then a field organizer for democratic socialist Tiffany Cabán's unsuccessful campaign for Queens District Attorney in 2019. He then ran for New York State Assembly himself and won.

### New York Assembly

In 2019, Mamdani announced his campaign for New York State Assembly in the 36th district, which encompasses Astoria and Long Island City in Queens. He was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and ran on statewide rent control, fare-free transit, ending mass incarceration, and single-payer healthcare in New York. Mamdani's narrow victory over four-term incumbent Aravella Simotas took almost a month to call, and he won the general election in 2021.
Mamdani is a member of Democratic Socialists of America's eight-member "Socialists in Office" bloc, a member of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, and one of three Muslim lawmakers, in the New York State Legislature. His Assembly district includes a section of Astoria, which has a significant population of Muslim and Arab voters and is also the center of the socialist movement in New York City.
Mamdani is a member of the following assembly committees:
* Committee on Aging
* Committee on Cities
* Committee on Election Law
* Committee on Energy
* Committee on Real Property Taxation
* Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus
* Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force
* Asian Pacific American Task Force
* Task Force on New Americans
On November 3, 2021 Mamdani completed a 15-day hunger strike in solidarity with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance to win hundreds of millions of dollars of debt relief for taxi drivers who own taxi medallions, a taxi permit in New York City.
As of January 2025, Mamdani had been the primary sponsor of 13 bills in the Assembly.

### 2025 New York City mayoral race

On October 23, 2024, Mamdani announced that he would be entering the upcoming race for New York City mayor as a Democrat running in the Democratic Party Primary, following Eric Adams' federal prosecution and several investigations into his administration. Mamdani is running on freezing rent and building housing for working families, fast and fare-free buses for riders, and free childcare for all New Yorkers. He is endorsed by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, UAW Region 9A, and Jewish Voice for Peace Action.

## Political and policy views

Mamdani started to consider himself a democratic socialist following the 2016 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the United States.

### Childcare

Mamdani is running on creating free, universal childcare for children aged 6 weeks to 5 years old, as well as increasing the wages for childcare workers. He also has proposed giving all new families in New York City "baby baskets" with baby products, such as diapers and nursing supplies.

### Crime

Mamdani believes that to increase public safety, what is needed is "dignified work, economic stability, and well-resourced neighborhoods," rather than policing and prisons. He supports defunding the police. He is also in favor of completely eliminating cash bail.
He is in favor of dismantling what he refers to as "mass incarceration in New York" by opposing the construction of new state prisons and jails, divesting from the New York prison system, and investing in jobs, services, and restorative justice approaches." Mamdani also supports the abolition of felony disenfranchisement, allowing those with felonies to vote.

### Education

Mamdani introduced a bill to eliminate New York University's and Columbia University's tax exempt status and direct those funds towards underfunded public universities.

### Housing

Mamdani would halt rent increases for all two million rent-stabilized New Yorkers as mayor of NYC by appointing new members to the city's Rent Guidelines Board.
As a New York State assemblymember, he has supported capping rent increases for New Yorkers, stopping unjust evictions, giving tenants the right to legal representation in housing court, and creating a Social Housing Development Agency that would build publicly-owned affordable housing.

### Israel/Palestine

Early in 2023, Mamdani introduced a bill called the "Not on our dime!: Ending New York Funding of Israeli Settler Violence Act" which would prohibit registered charities from donating to organizations that support Israeli settlers. In November 2023, Zohran joined Cynthia Nixon in a five day hunger strike outside of Washington DC in support of an immediate ceasefire and opposition to President Biden's involvement in support of Israel in the war in Gaza. In 2024, he held an iftar for a ceasefire in Gaza during Ramadan.

### Immigration and transgender rights

In 2025, Mamdani was the only mayoral candidate to make an appearance at a rally in Union Square in Manhattan to protest the Trump Administration and Mayor Eric Adams for their immigration policy and federal policy towards transgender Americans.

### Minimum wage

Mamdani has proposed that the New York City minimum wage be raised to $30/hr by 2030.

### Taxes

Mamdani supports an income tax increase on the top one percent of New York income earners to raise $20 billion to fund tuition-free CUNY and SUNY schools, statewide universal childcare, a subway fare freeze, free MTA buses, housing protections, and other social policies.

### Transportation

He is in favor of permanently eliminating bus fares. Mamdani advocated for an MTA bus fare-free pilot program, which was established on one MTA bus in each borough in September 2022, at a cost of $15 million. The program saw a 30 percent increase in ridership on weekdays, which was predominantly from individuals earning less than $28,000 a year. Across the five routes made free, assaults on bus operators dropped by 38.9 percent. However, in April 2024 the MTA budget didn't set aside further money for a continuation of the pilot program, which Zohran denounced and said, "...the MTA was opposed to this program. And they were opposed to this program because they were saying that now is not the time to create any kind of confusion around fare collection.”Mamdani estimates that it would cost New York City approximately $650 million per year to eliminate bus fares.
In December 2022, Mamdani introduced a series of bills for the 2023 session called "Fix the MTA". He proposed free bus travel over the next four years across Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and then Manhattan and Staten Island. The Formula Three Act would fill the $2.5 billion dollar shortfall of the MTA with another plank freezing fares at $2.75. Another plank would have set aside further money for more frequency such as, six minute headways for trains and for the hundred most used bus-routes, then using any additional money towards increasing service by 20%.
In 2023, Mamdani co-introduced a bill that would enact a weight-based vehicle-registration fee to dissuade people from owning heavier vehicles in an effort to make streets safer.
Mamdani has been a vocal supporter of congestion pricing and drafted a bill with New York state senator Michael Gianaris called "Get Congestion Pricing Right." The purpose of the bill was to fund more frequent and reliable buses to "show New Yorkers that congestion pricing will be met with better public transit options, instead of simply saddling them with higher costs or longer commutes." The campaign won $12.3 million for increased peak service on 5 express bus routes and investments in reliability on 13 bus routes. He also condemned Governor Kathy Hochul for pausing her plan for congestion pricing.