The Legend of Zohran

This positioning is growing increasingly difficult for prominent politicians on either side of our divide, and it can be particularly difficult in radical-tinged spheres like the New York left, where so many see ideological purity as a point of pride. I asked Mamdani how he had survived the blood sport this type of politics had become during the years when he’d emerged as a political figure.“Come on,” I said.

“America deserves to know!” he laughed.

He said that he hadn’t really lived through this kind of thing. “You’ll call this careful,” he said, “but I think it’s honest and direct. When you have run a paid canvass operation, like I did for the Najmi campaign, it becomes very tempting to work backwards from the IDs you need per shift.” He’d become a political operative so young that all he knew was practical politics.

I brought up the Kennedy comparison, if only because without a base in DSA and the left to elevate him, I was curious how he’d managed to rise in politics in the first place.

“Is that where you’re gonna go?” he said, laughing, and possibly flattered. I clarified that I didn’t mean it as praise exactly. I meant the combination of the privileged background, the dash and charm, along with the realpolitik stuff of winning over unions one steward at a time, and texting influential Black preachers over and over until they agree to let you come and talk. No one is born with this network or skill set.

He insisted he really had come up through shoe-leather politics, but had also captured a cultural moment. “My path to the Muslim Democratic Club of New York was because I listened to Heems,” he said, adumbrating a rap lyric. “I was like, Oh, this is great, I should get on the F train and go to the second to the last stop and door-knock for Ali Najmi,” he said. “I remember going with Ali on Election Day,” he said, “and going to Dunkin’ Donuts, getting doughnuts, giving them to the poll workers, and the sadness of him losing that election.” It was such a distinctly New York image—the doughnuts on a sad day, the getting into something because you heard an indie rapper talk about it, the ethnic politics. The entire Mamdani project, in fact, is idiosyncratic, and specific to the international center New York has always been. I found myself asking whether or not he is worried by the prospect of governing, now that he’s been cast as a face of the left.

“For as much as this is an immense responsibility,” Mamdani told me, “it is also an opportunity, and one that deeply excites me, the prospect of delivering on this agenda. People speak to me as if the campaign was one thing and then governing must be another. My job is to deliver on the promises that I have made. These are not anchors that I view tying my feet down. These are north stars that I will wake up every morning and head towards.”

This is just how he talks. The issue that draws him to speak unguardedly is Palestine. “This is a city that is an international city, 40 percent, as I was telling you, of its residents were born elsewhere,” he said to me. He had just announced that his NYPD would arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he set foot in New York.