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ZOHRAN MAMDANI HAS AWAKENED A POWERFUL NEW POLITICAL FORCE  
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Errol Louis
July 16, 2025
New York Magazine
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_ Where all politics is tribal, Mamdani has emerged as a leader of
New York’s South Asian community, 600,000 strong, which is now
following its Irish, Italian, Jewish, Black, and Latino predecessors
in demanding a seat at the table inside City Hall. _

Photo: Shuran Huang/The New York Times/Redux,

 

With only about 100 days until early voting begins, a large slice of
the city’s political Establishment, backed by big-money donors,
is mounting a last-ditch effort to stop Zohran Mamdani
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being elected New York’s next mayor.

Despite his crushing loss in the Democratic primary, Andrew Cuomo
announced
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running in the general election — and “in it to win it” — as
an independent candidate, denouncing Mamdani as pushing “slick
slogans, but no real solutions.”

Adams has been on a fundraising tear, raising $1 million in a single
night
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Lerner, president of a political action committee, expects to raise
another $5 million to $10 million from cryptocurrency donors for an
independent committee supporting Adams’s reelection. “We need big
dollars so that we can compete … buy media ads and do social media
marketing,” he told Politico
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The question is whether either of these candidates can counter the
enormous, six-to-one advantage Democrats enjoy in New York. After
decades of pleading with New Yorkers to vote blue, it will be tricky
for Cuomo and Adams to ask voters to oppose the party’s duly elected
nominee.

The power brokers trying to pull off this unlikely stunt are certainly
aware of that problem. But they face another one they seem unaware of:
They are fighting against deep demographic and political shifts in New
York that won’t be stopped by a few million dollars’ worth of ads.

In a town where all politics is tribal
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Mamdani has emerged as a leader of New York’s South Asian community,
600,000 strong, which is now following its Irish, Italian, Jewish,
Black, and Latino predecessors in demanding a seat at the table inside
City Hall. That bloc is squarely behind Mamdani and fighting hard for
victory in November.

Back in December, when Mamdani announced his campaign for mayor, I
asked him to describe the city’s fast-growing South Asian
communities around the city. Without missing a beat, he began rattling
off a list of neighborhoods he’d clearly been thinking about.
“There are far more Bangladeshis than maybe there are Indians across
the five boroughs, whereas that wasn’t the case a few decades
ago,” he told me
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“Astoria has a significant Bangladeshi population, Parkchester has
one as well, Flushing, Hillside Avenue. Midwood has a significant
Pakistani population, Coney Island Avenue, Bath Beach and then also
across Manhattan. But these are places that you really do feel just
how much the South Asian community is intertwined with the fabric of
the city, but that hasn’t been reflected in our politics. I mean
it’s ridiculous that in 2020, I was the first South Asian man
elected to any position.”

The political power of South Asian neighborhoods has long been divided
and diluted by the Albany lawmakers who draw political boundary lines,
says Mamdani. “You look at Richmond Hill, South Ozone. This is the
largest area of South Asian New Yorkers in any one neighborhood
district, and it was carved into seven or eight assembly districts,”
he told me. “Now it’s about four, and that’s progress — but
is it really?”

While the politicians were gerrymandering, community organizers were
building grassroots activist groups like DRUM
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Moving. (The slang term _Desi_ refers to immigrants from South Asia
and parts of the Indian diaspora in Africa and the Caribbean.) Around
the same time, Bhairavi Desai
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Taxi Workers Alliance, which became an organizing hub for drivers.

For more than a decade, South Asian candidates have been running for
various local offices — lately with more success. Lawyer Jennifer
Rajukmar [[link removed]] lost Assembly
and City Council races before moving to western Queens, where she won
an Ozone Park Assembly seat in 2020 on the same day Mamdani got
elected; the two made history as the first Indian Americans ever
elected to the State Legislature. The following year, community
activist Shahana Hanif became the first Muslim woman and first
Bangladeshi American elected to the City Council.

Over time, a political ecosystem has developed. Attorney Ali Najmi,
the son of Pakistani immigrants, lost a race for City Council but
remained active as co-founder of the Muslim Democratic Club 
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is now a savvy, seasoned election attorney. Amit Singh Bagga placed
second to Julie Won in a crowded Council race
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but as deputy director of the city’s 2020 census effort he played a
critical role in making sure South Asians were located and counted; he
later served as an adviser to Governor Kathy Hochul and is now a
lobbyist.

Mamdani is not just a passive beneficiary of all this activity. A few
years ago, when immigrant cab drivers were being squeezed in a
financial trap that led to personal bankruptcies and a string of
suicides, he was the only politician to join a hunger strike
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drivers, which eventually led to economic relief
[[link removed]*1vskmtb*_ga*MTc3MzkyMDcyMC4xNzUxNTk1MzQ1*_ga_DNE38RK1HX*czE3NTI1MDY2MTQkbzYkZzEkdDE3NTI1MDY3MTEkajMwJGwwJGgxNzM2ODc3OTMy*_fplc*RzZYTTA2bmdoeVBEZHVBbEppWHolMkYxaWQzampwNkVPT2ZqUTFSUFJmTFh4N1VsSWtaVkRtUzFxT3l0NFMwOUZSVSUyQm1vY0Uyb0xJdGtzOHhzMUwzOGxHdW1Wam5tMkxYczROSHJySlFLOFJDZkswd3RiSkxVWktIZXFBOFBvUSUzRCUzRA..] from
the de Blasio administration.

Cuomo, Adams, and other anti-Mamdani politicians who are horrified by
Mamdani’s ties to the Democratic Socialists are missing the meaning
of the current moment. Bagga says primary turnout more than doubled
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South Asian neighborhoods, and that level of excited mobilization is
likely to grow in the general election.

Ever since the days when Irish immigrants began forming clubs, running
candidates, and edging out Dutch- and British-born New Yorkers, new
ethnic groups have banded together to get a better slice of the
municipal pie. The rise of Mamdani represents a breakthrough moment
for a South Asian voting bloc that has long been hiding in plain
sight.

_[ERROL LOUIS is a columnist for New York Magazine and the longtime
host of Inside City Hall on Spectrum News NY1.]_

* Zohran Mamdani
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* New York City
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* 2025 Elections
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* New York Mayor
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* south Asian representation
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* Asian community
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* South Asian voters
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* immigrant voters
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* Andrew Cuomo
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* Eric Adams
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* Muslim voters
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* Muslim community
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* DRUM
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* South Asian workers
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* multi-national working class
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