Since June 24, when he won a shocking upset over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has gone from an obscure progressive only those following the race knew about to an internet sensation — as well as a lightning rod for controversy.
Democrats call him both the future of the party as well as a threat to how it’s perceived by independent voters. Republicans have happily used him as the new face of the American left, but also fear what he might do to the country’s biggest city. President Donald Trump has called the guy a “total nut job” and promised to cut off federal funding for the city if Mamdani doesn’t tone down his “communist lunatic” proposals.
However, there’s considerable question over just what Mamdani stands for. People generally know a few of his positions: He’s an unabashed socialist who allegedly comes close enough to actual communism to merit the charge, he seems to be fond of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” and he wants to run city-owned grocery stores. He doesn’t believe there should be billionaires and has an expensive program, but no one seems to know quite what that is.
Given that Mamdani is almost certainly the frontrunner in the November election which will decide who runs the biggest city in the United States, it probably bears looking at what he specifically believes, both in his platform and in comments he’s made on social media and advertisements. Because, beneath the hyperbole and the energetic videos of a soft-focus Mamdani explaining his program in bodegas, there is something genuinely sinister about this 33-year-old and what his ascension to political power would mean.
And, do keep in mind, these are Mamdani’s own words and own campaign literature — no spin, just the truth about what he’d do straight from the candidate’s mouth. That might be the most damning thing of all.
First off, housing is one of the biggest issues in this year’s election, and Mamdani made a huge splash by promising to expand rent freezes and use public money to build new units.
“As Mayor, Zohran will immediately freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants, and use every available resource to build the housing New Yorkers need and bring down the rent. The number one reason working families are leaving our city is the housing crisis. The Mayor has the power to change that,” Mamdani’s platform reads.
“As Mayor, Zohran Mamdani will triple the City’s production of publicly-subsidized, affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes—creating 200,000 new units over the next 10 years. And he will double the amount of capital we are investing into preserving the homes of existing public housing tenants.”
This $100 billion plan will be financed in part by new municipal bonds and use of city-owned land and buildings to get to that magic 200,000 mark. However, it’s worth noting that Mamdani blames “[f]ederal, state, and city disinvestment” in part for the housing shortage — not, say, rent freezes, which disincentivizes landlords from putting units on the market. While he’d assumedly be able to cajole some money from the city for this massive plan, both Albany and Washington, D.C., are both unlikely to play along.
And, as for getting landlords to play along, he promises to “crack down” on them if the conditions of apartments are deemed insufficiently hospitable to Mamdani’s code enforcers:
“If a landlord refuses to make a repair, the City will do it and send them the bill. And in the most extreme cases, when an owner demonstrates consistent neglect for their tenants, the City will decisively step in and take control of their properties,” Mamdani’s platform reads.
Then there are more extreme proposals Mamdani has floated during his time in politics — like this one for buying up homes and turning them into communes, one that has drawn more than a few comparisons to communism:
Zohran Mamdani: “We will slowly buy up the housing on the private market and convert properties into communes” pic.twitter.com/u7RQxaERYt
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 1, 2025
Of course, videos like this don’t help rebut the communism charge, either:
“The end goal is seizing the means of production”
Best of luck, NYC
— AG (@AGHamilton29) June 30, 2025
But I digress. Back on housing issues, Gotham real estate professionals that The New York Times talked to were skeptical this plan would work.
“He has a very thin résumé. He’s never run a business. He’s never even worked at a McDonald’s, let alone run the greatest city in the world,” said Bess Freedman, the chief executive of real estate firm Brown Harris Stevens.
“These proposed ideas are nice in thought, but they have to be financed, and we live in a reality,” said broker Steve Cohen. “You can’t just say, ‘I’m going to do this’ without laying out the second, third, fourth and fifth steps of how you’re going to get it done.”
As you’ve probably heard, too, Mamdani believes in city-owned grocery stores — a plan that seemed slightly ridiculous to reporters when Mamdani was first surging through the polls, but which now looks like a reality.
“Everywhere I go, I hear New Yorkers talking about the outrageous prices of groceries,” Mamdani said on the trail. “These stores will operate without profit motive, or having to pay property taxes or rent, and will pass those savings onto you.”
Mamdani plans to do away with what are known as “food deserts” by putting city-run grocery stores in all five boroughs, not a cheap proposition at $60 million to run just five stores. Never mind that this doesn’t take into account increased shoplifting and damages in a city that defunds the police. (More on that next.) Instead, it’s probably worth focusing on the fact that Mamdani’s entire plan is based on an accounting error.
This is a bit embarrassing.
Mamdani has a plan for paying for his city-owned grocery stores. He’s planning to tap into a $140 million pile of subsidies for “corporate grocery stores.”
But that pile of money doesn’t exist. He just misread a government website. (Link in reply) pic.twitter.com/sI2TTh3aB1— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) July 1, 2025
As Tim Carney pointed out in a piece this Monday in the Washington Examiner, Mamdani’s plan relies on $140 million Food Retail Expansion to Support Health program.
Here are the hard numbers: All in all, the city has given up about $30 million in tax revenue through this program. In the last six years, since FRESH got into full swing, the program has reduced revenue by about $20 million total, according to the city’s estimates.
That is, it costs an average of $3.3 million per year. So, this program would take 42 years to cost the city the $140 million that Mamdani says “the city is set to spend” on it.
So why does Mamdani use that $140 million number?
He misread the city’s webpage.
The city’s Economic Development Corporation estimates that grocery stores have invested $140 million of their own money thanks to the FRESH program. Mamdani is counting the $140 million in private spending as government spending.
Instead, Mamdani is using numbers involving investment in FRESH by private grocery stores — money he’s probably not going to be able to expropriate. The plan is based on an accounting error. If you were worried about Mamdani’s thin résumé before, that’s not likely to help matters.
In addition to this, he plans to do away with fares on city buses — an expensive proposal, indeed.
“Zohran won New York’s first fare-free bus pilot on five lines across the city,” Mamdani’s website reads. “As Mayor, he’ll permanently eliminate the fare on every city bus – and make them faster by rapidly building priority lanes, expanding bus queue jump signals, and dedicated loading zones to keep double parkers out of the way. Fast and free buses will not only make buses reliable and accessible but will improve safety for riders and operators – creating the world-class service New Yorkers deserve.”
How much will this cost? Mamdani says $700 million annually, although this is likely a low-ball figure. It’s worth noting that this is one of the programs he won’t be able to deliver on; as New York Magazine notes, these fares are set by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is an agency controlled by the governor.
Next, we have his plan to defund the police — only he doesn’t call it that. Instead, he calls it the Department of Community Safety, another proposal to divert law enforcement money to mental health professionals.
“The Department of Community Safety will fill the gaps of our programs and services. Its mission will be to prevent violence before it happens by taking a public health approach to safety,” his plan reads. “That requires us to reconcile the fact that violence is highly concentrated in working class neighborhoods in our city. The Department of Community Safety (DCS) will prioritize prevention-first, community-based solutions which have been consistently shown to better improve safety.”
“The DCS will coordinate across city agencies, including with the NYPD, creating a whole-of-government approach to improve safety outcomes. The DCS will oversee moving the below existing city Offices into Department jurisdiction, allowing us to cohere these programs and fill cracks in our systems. The budget for the Department of Community Safety will be $1.1B, approximately $605M of which represents transfers of existing programs into the DCS, and $455M of which represents new funding needs.”
Of course, this kind of lax policing leads to externalities like rampant shoplifting and outlets moving out of crime-ridden areas, something that will cost the city more in the long run.
How to pay for all this and more? You guessed it. From Mamdani’s proposal:
The Mamdani administration has a plan to pay for this agenda by raising taxes on the most profitable corporations and the wealthiest New Yorkers, reversing decades of tax cuts and disinvestment.
We know that our plan will work because New York City has a $1.3 trillion economy and it can afford to support a stronger public sector. Our tax base is stable and growing, with new millionaires minted every year. But New York City taxes everyone at the same rate, regardless of whether you make $50,000 a year or $5 million.
And our state corporate tax rate is lower than all our neighboring states—New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Rhode Island, and even New Hampshire.
We don’t leverage our economic strength or stability to deliver for working class people. We fail to collect taxes we’re owed and, under Eric Adams, we have gotten even worse at enforcing our tax laws. In short, money that could be invested into the future of this city is instead being wasted.
And he apparently doesn’t think this will cause people to leave:
Mamdani is asked why won’t rich people just leave when he raises taxes on them to pay for his socialism.
He says they won’t leave because he’ll make their lives better.
They’re already millionaires!
Mamdani is clueless. Socialism has never worked and it never will work. pic.twitter.com/j9YLpikwRx
— Paul A. Szypula ???????? (@Bubblebathgirl) June 30, 2025
Let’s forget for a second that this plan would raise $10 billion under Mamdani’s numbers — hardly enough to pay for all he wants to pay for. Wealthy and productive New Yorkers are listening to what this guy says and, now that he’s the Democratic nominee, taking him seriously.
And he’s not backing off the fact that he wants to tax them into oblivion, as seen on one of the most viral clips out of Mamdani’s Sunday appearance on “Meet the Press” in which he stated, flatly, “I don’t think we should have billionaires.”
WELKER: Do you think billionaires have a right to exist?
MAMDANI: I don’t think we should have billionaires because it is so much money in a moment of such inequality and ultimately what we need more of is equality across the city and across the state and country and I look… pic.twitter.com/MU6h9sJ2uw
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 29, 2025
Mamdani’s “Meet the Press” appearance also generated another bad-viral clip — one in which he was yet again given a chance to walk away from the phrase “globalize the intifada,” something he refused to do.
Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani told Kristen Welker three times on Meet the Press that he refuses to condemn “globalize the intifada” because doing so would make him like Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/LfLUEp7jyD
— Christopher Hale (@chrisjollyhale) June 29, 2025
New York City is obviously one of the most populous areas of the Jewish diaspora, and a lot of his campaign — which has focused, to an inordinate degree, on Israel-baiting — has aroused considerable consternation among Jewish voters. He’s promised to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on an International Criminal Court warrant if he ever comes to New York City, despite the fact that the ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction in the United States. He’s also only admitted that Israel has a right to exist reluctantly.
“Yes, like all nations, I believe it has a right to exist – and a responsibility also to uphold international law,” he told Stephen Colbert on election eve.
Finally, it’s worth noting what he plans to do in terms of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents trying to effectuate arrests in New York City. Mamdani has promised to be the face of #TheResistance2.0, essentially, and on this count he delivers for the left: Not only will he block masked ICE agents (opening them up to doxing and their families to danger), he’ll also bulk up New York’s sanctuary city laws and provide funds for legal defense to immigrants.
This is a longer look at just what the guy believes — although not long enough to realize how much damage he’d do to New York City. Call him a socialist, call him a communist, call him a progressive, call him whatever you like: The fact remains that whatever label you put on him, he would still be the worst mayor in city history. The nation’s cultural capital cannot suffer through four years of this man’s untethered political madness.
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