Zohran Mamdani and NYC's Populist Mayoral Race
Looking at it from the perspective of India
I
The reason for starting this Substack newsletter was to disseminate an Indic indigenous1 perspective on current affairs. My first couple of posts were on the relationship between Indian Americans and the two major parties in America. You can see them below:
Since then, I haven’t written much on politics in America primarily because Trump came in with a giant wrecking ball that overshadowed much else2. However, the race for New York City’s (NYC) has started heating up and I have quite a bit to say here. If my instincts are correct, this will have major implications for India’s nationalist politics over the decade.
The election for the Mayor of NYC will be held on November 4, 2025. It is almost a bygone conclusion that whoever is on the Democratic ticket will win the election3. Primarily for that reason, the Democratic primary for NYC mayor ends up being the race to watch.
There are 8 candidates that have thrown their hat in the ring. Of these 7 are competing for the Democratic nomination, while incumbent mayor Eric Adams will be running as an Independent. Of the candidates competing in the Democratic primary, only two are really in the running: Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo.
I find it unfortunate that America’s largest and one of two of its iconic cities4 is facing a choice between Mamdani and Cuomo. Zohran Mamdani, a member of Democratic Socialists for America — the progressive wing of the Democrat Party — is an avowed socialist bordering on communists. His populist policies would put Donald Trump to shame. He promises to freeze the rent, provide free childcare, reduce fares on busses and have the city run grocery stores. The cherry on the cake is his promise to fund all of that with “higher taxes on the rich”.
Andrew Cuomo was the governor of New York State from 2011 till his resignation in 2021 over a sexual harassment scandal. He headed the state’s COVID-19 response, and was charged with “deaths of seniors” because he quarantined COVID carriers into nursing centers. Not just that, it is likely that he actively tried to undercount the number of deaths caused by COVID. If that wasn’t enough, it is highly unusual for politicians to run for a lower office if they’ve previously served in a higher office. It is an intentional demotion and why would anyone willingly go for it? It could likely be that he’s trying to make a political comeback by making a bid for President if he successfully completes a 4-year mayoral term. Control of NYC will allow him to replenish his kitty that’ll be sorely needed for a presidential bid.
Except for one, all the latest polls show Cuomo comfortably in the lead over Zohran. There haven’t been any high quality polls lately other than Emerson, but many of them are trending in the same direction. In theory, this should put it in the bag for Cuomo. There are a few factors here that could act as spoilers for Cuomo though:
Polling for mayoral elections often have high variance. Voter turnout is often low in mayoral elections, hovering around 25%. Presidential elections usually have turnouts in the mid 60s. That makes it difficult for pollsters to identify “likely voters”. And with hyper-local elections, local issues often dominate leading to last-minute upsets. So while being the leader in polls is good, it isn’t as much of an indicator as presidential polls.
New York City practices Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). I’ll get into the weeds of it later, but for now it suffices to say that sometimes it favours weird outcomes and alliances.
Traders on Polymarket are giving Andrew Cuomo about a 3-in-5 chance of winning. That’s significantly down from about a week ago where traders were betting that he almost had the nomination in the bag. That likely represents the brilliant campaign that Mamdani ran coupled with the fact that one poll put Mamdani slightly ahead of Cuomo. 2 weeks ago, in an attempt to consolidate his hold over voters from the Indian subcontinent, he released a beautifully designed and executed ad.
II
Let’s take a quick detour into what RCV means. First Past The Post (FPTP) voting is when you choose one candidate out of a list. The candidate with the most votes (a plurality) wins. No candidate needs to focus on appealing to more than 50% of voters. The FPTP system is the one widely used across democracies. It is easy for even uneducated voters to understand and straightforward to implement for democratic institutions.
Unfortunately, the FPTP system has a few undesirable properties that have prompted the search for other better voting systems. I’ll enumerate a few of these:
Two similar candidates in traditional FPTP systems, will split the vote allowing a third unpopular candidate to win. This is called “vote splitting”. That’s the reason why Indian elections have begun to see formation of two major alliance groups in state and national elections. Ideologically similar candidates will split their supporters’ vote.
FPTP allows winners to have much less than 50% of the vote.
FPTP often leads to two-party system — an outcome referred to as Duverger’s law. Essentially, because ideologically similar candidates cause vote splitting, FPTP provides the incentive to consolidate the field into only two major groups. This is highly visible in the US. Even in India, in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the 2 major alliances ended up bagging more than 95% of the seats.
To alleviate some of these issues, some jurisdictions have begun to shift to RCV. Here’s how RCV works:
Voters typically list 3-5 candidates on their ballot in order of their preference.
If a candidate gets more than 50% of the first-choice votes, that candidate is declared the winner of the election.
If no candidate gets a majority, then the candidate with the least amount of votes is eliminated. Voters who had the eliminated candidate as their first-choice have their votes transferred to the second-choice on their ballot.
This process repeats — eliminating the lowest candidates and redistributing votes — until one candidate has a majority and wins.
The aim of the RCV process is to choose a Condorcet winner. A Condorcet winner is the candidate who would have won a head-to-head matchup against all other candidates. There are a few nuances, but given a few restrictions, RCV often produces a Condorcet winner.
RCV has its own drawbacks. Primarily, it is a complicated system, sometimes difficult even for well informed voters to understand. Because of the way RCV works, it provides an edge to high-information voters, who can band together and vote strategically to ensure that their favourite candidate wins. For a more informed discussion of how RCV can influence the mayoral election take a look at Nate Silver’s article on it:
III
I don’t intend to go into the merits of Cuomo versus Mamdani. There are other better places where you can get better coverage of these two candidates. I want to use this space to dwell on Mamdani’s candidature and his past positions.
Zohran Mamdani is the son of filmmaker Mira Nair — who’s directed The Namesake — and Mahmood Mamdani. Mira Nair famously refused to attend Israel’s Haifa film festival until the “apartheid in Israel” was over. Her positions have carried over to Zohran, where he’s called Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal multiple times. If Mamdani becomes mayor and Netanyahu visits NYC, he would be arrested. NYC doesn’t have any jurisdiction over international law, that’s the federal government’s prerogative, but Mamdani will probably get votes over this issue.
While the issue of Israel is quite emotive in the US, most NRIs and Indian-Americans don’t identify with it strongly. Most are emotionally distant from the issue. It enters the Indian-American zeitgeist only during tumultuous times like October 7th, 2023 or Israel’s invasion of Gaza or Iran.
But at the same time, it must be acknowledged that politicians holding strong pro-Palestine views are often inimical and hostile to India’s indigenous and nationalist movement. Ilhan Omar has leveled allegations that India violates human-rights in its part of Kashmir. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that removal of Article 370 was an affront to democracy. Rashida Tlaib has also excoriated India over the Kashmir issue. Given that someone holds pro-Palestine views, it is highly likely that they’ll hold anti-India views too. Let’s put it in terms of probability.
Zohran Mamdani proves this rule. He has called PM Modi a war criminal on par with Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s headed a Hinduphobic rally chanting slogans inimical to Hindus.
Zohran tweeted the above in the context of the Ram Mandir - Babri Masjid judgement. There’s a lot to unpack in this tweet but that’s for another time. If Zohran gets elected, one of the largest cities in America will be home to some more anti-Hindu and anti-India hate. And this is not only conjecture. Zohran’s most problematic endorsements are those tied to figures with a history of hostility toward India:
Council on American-Islamic relations (CAIR)
Alliance of South Asian American Labor
Bangladeshi Americans for Political Progress
I must acknowledge that Zohran is running a smart campaign. During the Democratic primary debate, he went on a blistering attack on Cuomo. Deftly sidestepping questions on his fiscal plan, he was quick to promise the sky and was pleading with New Yorkers to give him an opportunity. In many ways, he reminded me of Arvind Kejriwal’s campaign back in 2013 for the Chief Minister of Delhi. Without administrative experience, he could claim to solve any problem, especially since the incumbent — Sheila Dixit — was so besmirched. On being questioned about his stances on Israel, he was quick to condemn Hamas’ attacks on October 7th, 2023 and quickly said that he was running on local issues.
IV
Looking at Zohran’s economic policies, you’d think he took inspiration from India’s lost decades of the License Raj. He seems determined to recreate the same cocktail of over-regulation and anti-market sentiment. Only with a NYC zip code. It’s less economic justice and more a nostalgia trip for failed development models.
This is a good opportunity for some myth-busting. Let’s go through some of his promises.
Freeze the Rent
Promising to freeze rent increases, Zohran also promises to build more affordable housing. The problem is that NYC’s rent control is resulting in a lot of dilapidated buildings.
With rent control, only those who manage to land an apartment end up benefiting. With rents under market, landlords are forced to skimp on basic repairs leading to lower quality of life for tenants. It disincentivizes building new housing stock since the threat of that being rent-controlled is always hanging over investors’ heads. Counter-intuitively, that ends up reducing the number of houses in the market.
Freezing the rent also interferes with price signals. Without knowing the signals that markets are trying to send, where does Zohran intend to allow mixed-use development?
City-owned Grocery Stores
This is so socialist, even India took a pass. Zohran skipped past New Delhi and went straight to the Soviet Union playbook.
He claims that network owned stores won’t make a profit and would keep prices low since they wouldn’t need to pay rent or property taxes. If that’s what keeping prices high, why not reduce it for all businesses? The argument that businesses would keep the reduction to themselves doesn’t hold water. Because of competition, grocery stores would naturally cut prices to attract more customers. The ones that don’t will end up losing market share.
And who would staff these city stores? Would it be government employees that are usually unionized and have generous benefits? So in the end taxpayers end up paying a hefty bill for something the city should never have done.
Free childcare for all under 5
Zohran’s childcare plan sounds like it was drafted on a napkin at a brunch. Free care for every kid, teacher-level pay for every worker and no clue on the source of funding. It’s progressive fan fiction with no budget line.
Childcare is expensive. More so in NYC than anywhere else. Childcare costs almost $3,000/month in NYC. Because of the zero price effect — where demand for a free object shoots up — demand for daycare would increase even more. So the budget needs to account for that.
Where does the money come from? Well Zohran’s next idea is the solution to that.
Tax the rich and the corporations
He plans on raising the tax on those earning more than $1,000,000 at a flat 2%. And corporations would be taxed at 11.5% up from the current 6-7%, matching the rate in New Jersey.
Socialists seem to skip history class, but the rest of us have seen this rerun too many times. Here’s how the plot unfolds:
Wealthy individuals would move to New Jersey or Connecticut. Likely, their jobs are much more flexible and allow working remotely.
Corporations would move out from the state and only have satellite offices there. New corporations would be dissuaded from setting up their offices in the city.
Wealthy individuals and corporates are the primary spenders generating tons of secondary and tertiary industries like services, restaurants and others. If they move out and reduce the amount they spend in the city, working class folks are the first ones to be affected.
The NYC mayoral election promises to be interesting. In the Democratic primary debate, Andrew Cuomo was often mispronouncing Zohran’s last name, probably to rile him up. While Zohran is issuing cheques he can’t cash, Cuomo is running on his track record of experience in the administration.
The primary will be held on June 24, 2025 and early voting has already started. If Cuomo fails to get the nomination for the Democratic ticket, he’s already filed to run as an independent so he’ll definitely be there on the ticket come November.
Even if Zohran loses the election, he has made his mark on the city. He’s gotten Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement as well. It wouldn’t take him long to make a mark on national politics and I could see him making the move in a few election cycles, if he loses this race.
For NRIs and Indian-Americans, the important question remains: Is Zohran an adversary to the Indic way of life? I’m not holding my breath.
Often prominent Indian voices in the West end up echoing the established liberal-conservative viewpoints. But an indigenous perspective looks at it from outside this binary.
I could’ve written about the US’s foreign policy, but international relations (IR) isn’t appealing to me. IR is often opaque and the constraints on actors are usually invisible. Most analysis by non-experts ends up being quite shallow.
The Democratic candidate for Mayor usually gets around 70% of the vote. So it is generally a no-contest for the Republican candidate. However, if Zohran Mamdani manages to get the Democratic nomination, Andrew Cuomo has also filed to run as an Independent and he might manage to stage an upset and get a win over Mamdani in the general election.
The other being Los Angeles, where Hollywood is located.
# The Ideological Blindness of West Bengali Immigrants
The lack of self-reflection among certain immigrant communities reveals itself most starkly in their political behavior after relocating to different economic systems. This phenomenon reaches its most absurd expression among West Bengali immigrants, who continue supporting left-wing parties even after experiencing the benefits of capitalist regimes firsthand.
West Bengalis represent a particularly egregious case study in ideological persistence. They have lived at the epicenter of socialist failure, witnessed its consequences daily, yet maintain unwavering commitment to the very policies that created their original circumstances. This represents ideology triumphing over lived experience in the most dramatic fashion possible.
The recent revolution in Bangladesh provided a perfect illustration of this mindset. A West Bengali commentator predictably attributed all of Bangladesh's problems to big business, demonstrating the reflexive scapegoating that characterizes this worldview. More tellingly, there was complete absence of self-reflection regarding a fundamental economic reality: Bangladesh has become richer than West Bengal despite starting from a significantly disadvantaged position.
Consider the comparative trajectories. Bangladesh began with weaker institutions, endured war, famine, decades of political instability, and religious violence—yet still managed to surpass West Bengal economically. This outcome should prompt serious reconsideration of the policy frameworks that produced such divergent results.
Even the commentator's crisis analysis revealed profound analytical confusion. Bangladesh's economic difficulties were concentrated in state-owned banks and the electricity sector, which operates as a government monopoly. Natural gas production had declined due to chronic underinvestment by the state-owned gas development company. The pattern is unmistakable: government monopolies failing to deliver basic services and economic growth.
Yet socialist believers maintain that the failure of government-owned enterprises somehow results from capitalist conspiracy. This represents a level of cognitive dissonance that defies rational explanation. When state monopolies fail, the fault lies not with the monopolistic structure or government management, but with private actors who have been systematically excluded from these sectors.
This ideological blindness prevents any meaningful learning from comparative economic performance. It ensures that the same failed policies will be advocated regardless of mounting evidence of their inadequacy, creating a feedback loop where ideology becomes increasingly detached from observable reality.
What exactly is an indigenous Indian? Who were the original peoples before modern day Indians came? And how does this perspective differ from other diaspora Indians in America?
I have been unsure why more people arent covering this race. The DSA has had a lot of success with getting people elected, and they have the progressive values that the right claims to mostly hate. It would be nice to see more coverage!
I also hadnt realized how liberal NYC was since actually living in the city you wouldnt know it. But I think Dems are obsessed with shoring up power and then refusing to govern.