The Mamdani Effect

 THE WORLD’S MOST avowedly capitalist city, New York, voted a diehard socialist of Indian origin, Zohran Mamdani, as mayor.

Mamdani is filmmaker Mira Nair’s son. No, she isn’t from Kerala, but Punjab. A misspelling of her name led to the confusion.

There’s no confusion about Mamdani’s ideology. He’s ultra-left. He dislikes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enough to say that he’d like to have him arrested for genocide.

New York is a Jewish city. It has more Jews than any city in the world outside Israel. So, how did Mamdani, who strongly supports a separate Palestinian state, defeat former mayor Andrew Cuomo by a margin of 50.4 per cent to 41.6 per cent?

Mamdani says he’s not anti-Semitic. He just doesn’t like the Zionism that drives Israel to commit genocide in Gaza.

US President Donald Trump despises Mamdani as much as Mamdani despises Trump. Here’s what they said about each other before the election.

Trump: “He’s a 100% Communist lunatic. He looks TERRIBLE, his voice is grating, he’s not very smart. Heis going to have problems with Washington like no Mayor in the history of our once great City. Remember, he needs the money from me, as President, in order to fulfill [sic] all of his FAKE Communist promises. He won’t be getting any of it, so what’s the point of voting for him?”

Mamdani: “New York is not for sale. I will take the Trump administration to court if necessary as New York City mayor.”

And this is what Mamdani said after his victory: “If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.”

For Trump, however, Mamdani as New York City’s mayor could actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise. By electing Mamdani as head of one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities—37 per cent of New Yorkers are foreign born—the Democratic party might be committing political suicide. With Congressional midterm elections due in November 2026, Mamdani is an electoral gift for the Republican Party: he is Muslim, hates Israel’s government, backs an independent Palestine, and wants to be a modern-day Robin Hood— taxing the rich to give handouts to the poor.

Mamdani wants to freeze rents for New York City’s two million “rent-stabilised” tenants. That’s a vote winner in NYC. But it could cost the Democrats in the 2026 midterms.

As Politico reported, Rev Ruben Diaz, a former state and city lawmaker and ally of Trump, said: “Whoever wins has to deal with Trump and none of them would be able to beat Trump. Any one of them will have a losing battle against Trump. He is an 800-pound gorilla.

“The deeper significance of the race is hard to miss. With the midterms less than a year away, a Mamdani win would hand Trump a vivid example of leftwing governance to point to — a test case for his warnings about what happens when progressives run major cities. Every policy move the democratic socialist makes could become campaign fuel for Republicans and a political headache for Democrats nationwide.”

That analysis could be flawed. Mamdani’s victory this week wasn’t the only setback for Trump and the Republicans. Democrats beat Trump-backed Republicans for governor of Virginia and New Jersey.

Where does Mamdani stand on India? He dislikes Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of being complicit in killing Muslims in Gujarat. He has called Modi a “war criminal”.

Mamdani, though, was clever enough to know that Modi-hate would lose him the large Hindu vote in New York City. So he quickly backtracked when addressing the Hindu- American community in New York City days before the November 4 vote: “I also know that I’m running to be the mayor of New York City— eight-and-a-half million people—many of whom may feel differently than me about Mr Modi, and that’s their right, and I will look to represent them all the same, because my responsibility to them as New Yorkers is to ensure that they are safe, to ensure they can afford this city.”

Elon Musk, Trump’s on-off ally, set the cat among the pigeons by calling Mamdani “the future of the Democratic party.”

That could be a left-handed compliment from Musk whose Islamophobia is well-known. But it is Mamdani’s socialist economic agenda that has excited MAGA insiders ahead of next year’s Congressional midterms.