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Tag: new york mayors

  • What Should a Democratic Socialist Wear? Enter Mayor Zohran Mamdani and First Lady Rama Duwaji

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    This afternoon, Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as New York City’s youngest mayor “in generations,” to quote Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s opening remarks at the ceremony. The 34-year-old is also the first South Asian and Muslim to take on the role, which he underscored by taking his oath with two family Qurans during both of his swearing-ins, one held privately at midnight on January 1 and a second, public one held in the afternoon at City Hall Plaza.

    In his inaugural speech, Mamdani vowed to govern “expansively and audaciously,” and said that New York will not be a city “governed only by the one percent,” or “a tale of two cities, the rich versus the poor.” He was sworn in by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who thanked New York City for electing Mamdani as mayor, and reminded the crowd that his ideas are “not radical.”

    And yet, Mamdani and his First Lady, 28-year-old illustrator Rama Duwaji, have broken the political mold. Not solely because of Mamdani’s perhaps not radical but inarguably progressive ideas—to, say, tax the rich or enforce a rent freeze—but also because of their ages and backgrounds, which have been underscored repeatedly by the media as cause of celebration or with Islamophobic dismay.

    Mamdani was born in Uganda to Indian parents, and Duwaji in Texas to Syrian Muslim progenitors. They are young and progressive, and they also look the part. The balancing act moving forward, as it pertains to their style now that they’re embedded in the political establishment, will be to negotiate between the newfound gloss of their public image while keeping it consistent with their politics.

    When Mamdani celebrated his election in November of 2025, Duwaji donned a top by London-based Palestinian-Jordanian designer Zeid Hijazi paired with a skirt by the New York-born and -based Ulla Johnson, who is known for her bohemian flair. She managed the task of looking both like a first lady and a 20-something woman dressing for a special occasion with aplomb. Back then, she had been advised—free of charge—by stylist Bailey Moon, who dresses the likes of Morgan Spector and Cristin Milioti and is most widely known for having worked with Jill Biden and her family throughout president Joe Biden’s administration.

    Rama Duwaji and Zohran Mamdani on election night in November, 2025.

    Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

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    José Criales-Unzueta

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  • Zohran Mamdani Hit the Right Notes in a Rousing Inauguration Speech

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    Probably the most important member of that group was New York state governor Kathy Hochul. Hochul, a centrist who is up for reelection this year, strongly encouraged Mamdani to retain the city’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch; when he agreed, Hochul saw it as a sign of Mamdani’s pragmatism on fighting crime and of his desire to reach out to political moderates.

    The governor is highly interested in finding common ground with Mamdani on his push for universal day care. How to pay the multi-billion-dollar tab for such a plan, though, will be the tricky part, and may be where her differences with Mamdani come to a head. “We will deliver universal childcare for the many by taxing the wealthiest few!” the mayor declared in his speech, drawing one of his biggest ovations. Hochul, though, has repeatedly taken a hard line against raising personal income taxes. “The last thing she wants to do is raise taxes on anybody. And we do tax the rich already,” a Hochul insider told me in advance of Mamdani’s inauguration. “It doesn’t mean that there’s not room for an ongoing conversation.”

    Mamdani intends to raise the volume of that conversation by incorporating the voices of the people who were standing on Broadway today. He has spoken with Barack Obama about how the former president’s “Obama for America” organization did not translate campaign momentum into governing momentum. Mamdani doesn’t plan to make the same mistake, and a key ally is already on the case. The Democratic Socialists of America were crucial to Mamdani’s upset campaign win, organizing a door-knocking army of nearly 100,000 volunteers. “We’re mounting a massive campaign to raise revenue,” says Grace Mausser, a co-chair of DSA’s New York City chapter. “One of the days it snowed pretty heavily in December, we knocked on 15,000 doors. We’re asking them to call their legislators, their assembly members, and their state senators and tell them that they want to tax the rich to fund child-care.”

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    Chris Smith

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  • It’s Never Quite Curtis Sliwa’s Last Hurrah

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    It’s 9:30 p.m. on election night on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Curtis Sliwa is telling his crowd of supporters that his campaign spoke for animal lovers and the emotionally disturbed.

    Polls in New York’s mayoral race had closed a half hour prior, with Zohran Mamdani quickly declared the victor, and while the Republican candidate and longtime city fixture only offered a passing concession—“so we have a mayor-elect”—he took the broader opportunity to reflect on his idiosyncratic presence on the edges of public life for several decades now. In the closing days of the campaign, Donald Trump had come out in support of Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent, in an effort to head off Mamdani’s momentum, and claimed that Sliwa, whose calling cards include his red beret, a much-referenced 1992 shooting in the back of a yellow cab, and the animals he and his wife keep in their studio apartment, “wants cats to be in Gracie Mansion.”

    “Some of the most powerful people in the world,” Sliwa said, “made fun of Nancy and what we do to care for animals, to care for people.”

    “You’re still our mayor!” a supporter in Gucci sneakers and electric blue color contact lenses shouted.

    The audience on hand at Arte Cafe, a neighborhood Italian standby, amounted to a fittingly unpredictable mélange of Sliwa loyalists in streetwear, suits and fedoras, and pops of red in the form of Guardian Angels berets. Former New York governor George Pataki, whom Sliwa described as a key supporter in his speech along with Rudy Giuliani, was mobbed by cameras and microphones as he tried to make his way past the bar. In a quieter back room, was Brad Solomon, a Queens native who identified himself as a poker player and sports bettor by trade. He was vaping in a God Bless America hat as he described how he came to root for Sliwa.

    “We don’t want Killer Cuomo,” Solomon says. “We don’t want communists. It’s an obvious choice.” He and Sliwa were once arrested together, he says, after protesting the arrival of migrants at a mental hospital next to a Catholic school in Staten Island.

    “Curtis was the only one who stood up against that,” Solomon says.

    George Pataki attends the election-night watch party for Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa at Arte Cafe on November 4, 2025 in New York City.David Dee Delgado/Getty Images.

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    Dan Adler

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  • Inside Hot Girls 4 Zohran’s Halloween Party 4 Zohran

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    As I leave, people are still trickling in. Someone in the foyer is telling their friend that their roommate wanted to vote together and she had to make up an excuse. I glance back and see rent freeze dancing with Austin Powers, while Jet2 holiday is still talking to her friend. Tylenol is nowhere to be seen.

    Someone dressed as Curtis Sliwa, I’m told, was announced as the costume party winner later on in the night. She wore a red leather dress and beret, and held a pill box that had “THC” and “Crohn’s” scribbled across it in sharpie.

    In the last few days of the mayoral race, Mamdani has been busier than ever, campaigning well into the night. Yesterday he met with senior citizens in Fort Greene, addressed canvassers in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and held a late-night news conference in Queens. In between stops, he made the time to appear on Track Star, a viral social media show where guests listen to musical clips and have to guess the artist. Then, while his young canvassers were partying in costume, he was visiting nurses and bus operators in the city working on the night shift.

    Emily Gringorten.

    “We ended the night on Diversity Plaza with a promise: my administration will fight just as hard for the New Yorkers who keep our city running while most of us sleep,” Mamdani posted on X at 2:40 a.m.

    I ask Camelia as I get to the stairs what she’d do if he made an appearance.

    “I would tell him good luck,” she says, “Next time I see you, you’re going to be the mayor of NYC.”

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    Olivia Empson

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