The election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City represents a defining political moment

The election of a left-wing Muslim immigrant, who plans to increase taxes on big business and the rich, to run the largest and most important city in the United States represents a defining political moment.

Zohran Mamdani’s easy win in the New York City mayoral race has captured global attention. He has earned praise for giving a voice to the marginalised, but he has been criticised for his expansive proposals for social and economic change in the global centre of capitalism.

Zohran Mamdani’s ascent was helped by his indefatigable campaigning.Credit: Bloomberg

Mamdani, the Democratic candidate, defeated former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who ran as an independent after losing the party primary to Mamdani in June. The Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, failed to secure a primary vote percentage in the double digits.

Mamdani, 34, is New York’s second-youngest mayor. He is also the first Muslim and only the second democratic socialist to hold the post.

As North America correspondent Michael Koziol told readers, the extraordinarily gifted communicator campaigned chiefly on addressing New York’s affordability problems. He plans to build social housing, freeze rents on rent-stabilised apartments, make buses free and introduce universal free childcare for all children under five.

How to pay for it? By levying a 2 per cent city income tax on anyone earning more than $US1 million a year ($1.5 million), and raising the top corporate tax rate from 7.5 per cent to 11.5 per cent, the same as neighbouring New Jersey.

His critics had drawn attention to his past support for the “defund the police” movement, and they had queried his commitment to keeping the city safe. They had also pointed to his remarks about Israel and his refusal to condemn the phrase “globalise the intifada”. While Mamdani’s campaign certainly deserved scrutiny, some criticism regrettably veered into full-blown Islamophobia.

As The New York Times noted, Mamdani’s ascent was also powered by indefatigable campaigning.

“He made bringing his economic message to the city’s hundreds of thousands of Muslims an important part of his operation, visiting more than 50 mosques, some multiple times, and hosting phone banks in Urdu, Arabic and Bangla, among other languages,” the Times wrote.

“He campaigned on the night shift, stopping by LaGuardia Airport to convene with the city’s taxi drivers — many of them Muslims of South Asian descent, like him — for whom he went on a hunger strike to win debt relief in 2021. He explained inflation in viral videos featuring the city’s halal food carts and he did interviews from beloved Jackson Heights restaurants like Kabab King. And he maintained an unwavering commitment to the Palestinian cause as New Yorkers broadly came to sympathise with Palestinians over Israelis.”

This may have been a US mayoral race, but there are clear messages for Australia’s political class – should it choose to listen.

The first is that the capital city affordability crisis is still a potent force in global politics. The second is that political campaigns don’t have to be an ultra-cautious bore-fest, particularly on digital platforms. The third and perhaps most important is that Mamdani did not appear like a cardboard cutout politician – and in the eyes of voters, authenticity clearly counts for a lot.

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