The Making of a Mayor: How Mamdani Read New York City Like a Chessboard and Checkmated Its Political Establishment

A girl studies the board in silence. The pieces are mismatched, the pawns chipped. Around her, Kampala hums with the chaos of survival — vendors shouting, radios crackling, the smell of dust and sugarcane in the heat. Her opponent, older and surer, leans back, expecting an easy win. But the girl doesn’t see chaos; she sees patterns. The bishop is a blade, the knight a dancer, the queen a revolution waiting. When she finally says “checkmate,” it isn’t just victory — it’s discovery.

It isn’t a scene from “Queen of Katwe,” but it could be — the kind of vivid moment Mira Nair might have framed through her lens. The story of Phiona Mutesi, a Ugandan girl who learns to see strategy where others see struggle. Based on a true story, it mirrors the unlikely ascent of another Ugandan-born New Yorker who learned to read the city like a chessboard and is now poised to call checkmate on New York’s political establishment.

From Kampala to Queens

Born in Kampala to filmmaker Mira Nair and scholar Mahmood Mamdani, Zohran inherited two powerful lenses: one of storytelling, one of structural critique. His parents were among the South Asian Ugandans expelled by Idi Amin — a trauma that made justice and displacement part of their family vocabulary. Mahmood’s books dissect power and empire; Mira’s films give the displaced a stage. Their son combined both instincts: critique and compassion.

When the family settled in Queens, Zohran grew up amid the borough’s clamor of accents and ambitions. Public school, Bowdoin College, and years as a housing counselor fighting evictions grounded his politics in the city’s material struggles.

The Rise of a Reluctant Celebrity

Politics was never inevitable. In 2020, Mamdani challenged Aravella Simotas — a well-entrenched Assembly member backed by the Queens Democratic machine. His campaign had no corporate donors, no party blessing — just a coalition of tenants, cab drivers, students, and organizers. He won.

That victory established his identity as the rare kind of progressive who could win without compromise. Four years later, he took that model citywide.

When he announced his mayoral bid, pundits scoffed. He was barely known beyond Astoria. But the June 24, 2025 Democratic Primary changed everything.

Turnout topped one million — the city’s highest in over a decade.

• Zohran Mamdani: 469,642 votes (43.82%) → 573,169 (56.39%)
• Andrew Cuomo: 387,137 (36.12%) → 443,229 (43.61%)
• Brad Lander: 120,627 (11.26%) — eliminated after the first round

Mamdani beat Cuomo by nearly 130,000 votes in the second round — a landslide few predicted. It wasn’t just a win; it was a rupture. The establishment’s sure thing had fallen to a first-term Assemblyman powered by volunteers, tenants, cabbies, and students.

The press called it “The Queensquake.”

In that moment, the national spotlight turned on a man who didn’t fit the old scripts. Pundits scrambled to explain how a grassroots socialist had out-organized and out-communicated a former governor.

The answer was simple: He showed up. Everywhere.

The Campaign That Redefined New York Politics

In the final stretch, Mamdani’s campaign became something between a festival and a movement. What began as grassroots organizing evolved into a citywide symphony of inclusion.

Over one frenetic weekend before Election Day, he shared biryani with taxi drivers, danced with seniors, practiced Tai Chi in the park, trick-or-treated with families, switched effortlessly between Arabic and Spanish in campaign videos, and closed the night rallying voters in Queens clubs.

His volunteers canvassed in twelve languages, turning playgrounds, mosques, bodegas, community centers, and subway stations into campaign hubs. And everywhere you looked, the campaign branding itself told a story: no patriotic red-white-and-blue, no sleek consultant-approved gradients — but the warm yellow-and-green glow of New York bodegas, blocky type that looked hand-painted, and visual cues pulled from the actual streets of the city.

These posters didn’t look like campaign materials — they looked like belonging. They were taped to deli refrigerators, pinned to bulletin boards above dollar-slice counters, slipped into pockets outside halal carts and taco trucks. From Jackson Heights to Flatbush, lampposts carried the same message: this campaign is already part of the neighborhood.

He didn’t run for the people; he ran with them. And the machine never saw it coming.

Cuomo: The Ghost of Power

Andrew Cuomo’s comeback began in denial and ended in defeat. Once the state’s most powerful Democrat, he left office in 2021 under the weight of multiple sexual-harassment accusations, a nursing-home cover-up, and reports of a toxic workplace. His resignation should have been an epilogue. But Cuomo, addicted to power, mistook exile for intermission.

Strip away the hysteria, and Mamdani’s agenda looks less like a revolution and more like a return to the city’s best traditions — a continuation of the pragmatic progressivism that once defined New York’s soul.

Running again in 2025, he styled himself as the “responsible adult” standing against “radical socialism.” Voters remembered the real record: $959 million in corporate welfare to Elon Musk’s failed Buffalo project and a rent deal that charged Musk’s company one dollar a year. Now he mocked Mamdani’s $700 million transit and housing plan as reckless. The hypocrisy was breathtaking. His repeated attempts to drag Israel into a municipal contest revealed the same old playbook — weaponize fear when substance runs out.

His primary loss to Mamdani was humiliating. Yet instead of conceding, Cuomo filed as an independent, determined to avenge his reputation. To many New Yorkers, it felt like watching the final act of a play long past its run. As one voter quipped, “If power is theater, Cuomo’s encore is one nobody bought tickets for.”

In the campaign’s final 24 hours, his messaging grew almost surreal. He joked that his “1990s white Bronco is marginally different from O. J. Simpson’s,” half-apologized for pandemic nursing home deaths, and warned that “if Mamdani wins, my friend Trump will be very mad and will hurt you.” It was desperation disguised as humor — the rhetoric of a man who had run out of audiences.

His backers — Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, Woody Allen, Eric Trump, and George Santos — only deepened the irony. A disgraced governor propped up by billionaires railing against a socialist who’d beaten him fair and square.

Sliwa: The Rooted New Yorker

Curtis Sliwa has lived New York City in every register — from subway brawls to talk-radio tirades. Founder of the Guardian Angels in 1979, he’s the city’s perpetual watchman: part folk hero, part street philosopher. In this election, his red beret stood for something Cuomo couldn’t fake — authenticity.

He ran an old-school campaign, shaking hands, debating in diners, riding the E train at midnight, and hosted call-ins on WABC. When asked if he’d leave if the “communist” Mamdani won, Sliwa replied,

“Why should I have regrets? I trust people. I was born in this city. I was almost killed in this city. I’ll die in this city.”

That grounded conviction made him an unlikely ally by contrast. His presence reminded voters what civic rootedness looks like — and in doing so, made Mamdani’s brand of grassroots belonging feel even more authentic. The two men, ideologically worlds apart, shared a faith in the city’s pulse that exposed Cuomo’s transactional hollowness.

The Myths, the Meltdowns, and the Bigotry

No modern campaign has been so drenched in bad faith. The Islamophobic attacks came fast and loud. A misquoted interview about “globalizing the intifada” was distorted into propaganda. Anonymous accounts and right-wing media painted him as an extremist.

As Rolling Stone documented, much of the backlash was coordinated: headlines questioning his faith, op-eds equating his heritage with danger, and even party insiders parroting talking points from billionaire donors.

The absurdity peaked when tabloids mocked him for eating biryani with his hands — in a city where everyone eats pizza that way. “Attack policies, not culture,” one Queens voter snapped.

And then there was the name.
Not the politics — the name.

Opponents who had no trouble saying Massachusetts, Schwarzenegger, or Giuliani suddenly twisted themselves into knots performing deliberate mispronunciations of Mamdani — stretching vowels, adding consonants, making it sound foreign, comedic, suspect.

It was the oldest trick in American politics: if you can’t defeat the idea, caricature the identity. A small humiliation meant to signal he was not really from here.

But the joke backfired.
Because every time someone mangled his name on purpose, New Yorkers corrected them.
If not out loud, then silently — on the ballot.

Neighbors corrected them.
Strangers on subways corrected them.

The city already knew how to say Mamdani.

And when the mispronunciations and whisper-campaigns failed, the money arrived.

Michael Bloomberg alone spent $13.3 million to stop Mamdani — the largest political spend in the city this cycle. Joseph Gebbia poured in $3 million, the Lauder family another $2.5 million, Bill Ackman $1.8 million, and the Tisch family $1 million — all to prevent a mayor whose central promise was reinvesting public money into public life.

Not a single hedge fund, police union, supermarket chain, or luxury developer could explain what they were defending — except their influence.

It was the most honest political confession of the race:

The billionaires finally had something to lose.

Through it all, Mamdani stayed unflappable — joking that being an Arsenal fan had probably shaped him more than any religion.

The smear campaigns revealed less about him and more about the city’s unease with seeing a Muslim-heritage candidate not as an exception — but as the norm.

The Policy Reality

Strip away the hysteria, and Mamdani’s agenda looks less like a revolution and more like a return to the city’s best traditions — a continuation of the pragmatic progressivism that once defined New York’s soul.

• Rent Freeze — Following de Blasio’s 2015–2020 precedents; aims for stability, not ideology.
• Free Buses — Modeled on NYC’s own pandemic pilot and Kansas City’s success; cheaper than the NYPD’s overtime budget.
• City-Run Groceries — Public markets to end food deserts, not compete with bodegas.
• Universal Childcare — Funded by trimming corporate-tax incentives.
• Public Housing Green Retrofit — Bonds to modernize infrastructure, offset by ending luxury-development subsidies.
• Police Budget Reallocation — Evidence-based transfer of certain duties (mental health, traffic) to civilian teams.

None of these policies are radical in the city’s historical context. In one of his final campaign videos, Mamdani invoked Fiorello La Guardia and Vito Marcantonio, reminding New Yorkers that both men proudly identified as democratic socialists — and that their legacies still shape the fabric of the city today. La Guardia built libraries, parks, and housing projects in the midst of the Depression. Marcantonio championed tenants’ rights and racial justice from East Harlem decades before it was fashionable. They proved that compassion and competence were not opposites.

Mamdani’s vision builds on that lineage — redirecting public money from corporate welfare toward public purpose. His platform treats governance as investment, not ideology; as accountability rather than charity.

Contrast that with the billions past mayors handed to corporations: Hudson Yards alone cost the city more than Mamdani’s entire four-year plan. His policies aren’t radical — they’re responsible. They make New York look less like a brand, and more like a community again.

The Democrats’ Dilemma

Mainstream Democrats hesitated. AIPAC pressure, donor anxiety, reflexive caution — all kept endorsements from Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer on ice. By the time they came around, the movement no longer needed them. Mamdani had built a coalition of labor unions, tenant councils, immigrant networks, and first-time voters who saw themselves in him.

Election Results: A Mandate in Real Time

As this column is being published, with 90% of votes counted, Zohran Mamdani has won the New York City mayoral election.

Mamdani (Dem.) — 1,024,794 votes (50.3%)
Cuomo (Ind.) — 847,200 votes (41.6%)
Sliwa (Rep.) — 145,227 votes (7.1%)
Source: Associated Press

The map tells the story as clearly as the numbers.
Mamdani carried Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx — the neighborhoods where people live close together and rely on one another. Cuomo’s strength was concentrated in Manhattan and a few waterfront enclaves, areas more defined by wealth than by density of community.

But the deeper story is who turned out:

• First-time voters, especially those under 35
• Union households and public-sector workers
• Immigrant communities, across faiths and languages
• Middle-class families who do not identify as leftist but recognized authenticity when they saw it
• Longtime New Yorkers who simply wanted the city to feel like home again

This wasn’t a coalition built on demographic targeting or marketing analytics — it was built on contact. Conversations on sidewalks. Rallies in parks. Bodega counters functioning as political organizing desks.

In the end, Mamdani’s coalition stretched far beyond the predictable progressive base. Tenants, taxi drivers, union workers, and immigrants were joined by thousands of young voters and middle-class New Yorkers who might never have called themselves socialists — but believed in the possibility of a city that invests in its people.

And the youth surge was not a footnote — it was decisive.

Voters under 35 broke for Mamdani by more than +40%.
A generation that has known only rent hikes, debt, gig work, and climate anxiety looked at the ballot and chose a future that wasn’t just survivable — but livable.

They turned the electoral map into a living mosaic — a visual affirmation that New York still rewards conviction over calculation, and empathy over fear.

From Kampala to Gracie Mansion

A family once expelled from Uganda now writes a new chapter in New York’s story. Mahmood Mamdani’s intellectual legacy — interrogate power, center humanity — finds civic expression in his son’s politics. Zohran’s campaign proved that identity can be additive, not divisive: that you can honor where you’re from while rebuilding where you live.

A City Redrawn

Assuming projections hold, Zohran Mamdani will become New York’s first South Asian and Muslim-heritage mayor. That single sentence rewrites the city’s mythology. He will also be the first immigrant to serve as the mayor in nearly 50 years (after Abraham Beame who served as the mayor between 1974 and 1977).

His victory is not just political; it’s poetic — curiosity over cynicism, belonging over branding.

Seventeen years ago tonight, on November 4, 2008, a young Barack Obama stood before a jubilant nation and declared that change had come to America.

Zohran Mamdani was seventeen years old that night — a boy watching history unfold. Seventeen years later, at thirty-four, he steps into his own chapter of it. The baton has crossed continents and generations, from Chicago’s Grant Park to Queens Boulevard, from the son of Kenya to the son of Uganda — both proof that imagination still has a vote.

In “Queen of Katwe,: Phiona Mutesi learns that strategy is imagination — the power to see moves others dismiss. Mamdani’s rise proves New York can still imagine itself anew — one square, one borough, one hard-earned checkmate at a time.

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Ganpy Nataraj is an entrepreneur, author of “TEXIT – A Star Alone” (thriller) and short stories. He is a moody writer writing “stuff” — Politics, Movies, Music, Sports, Satire, Food, etc.