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Zohran Mamdani: Mira Nair’s son in NYC mayoral race
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed Mamdani's candidature.
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Staff Reporter
- Sun, 08, Jun 2025
- 00:21 EDT
- 20
Mamdani was elected to the New York state Assembly in 2020 / New York State Assembly
New Yorkers are beginning to familiarise themselves with the name of a person with half Indian roots who wants to be their mayor. He is Indian-Ugandan Zohran Mamdani.
Indians here and back home in the sub-continent know his mother quite well. She is Mira Nair, the film maker. Remember Monsoon Wedding that won the Golden Lion at the Venice festival or Salaam Bombay!, that received a nomination for Oscar and BAFTA for best foreign film.
Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda in 1991, when Nair was there, married to political scientist Mahmood Mamdani.
The family moved to New York City when he was seven. He became a naturalised US citizen. A Democrat Socialist, he took to politics after graduation.
In 2020, he was elected to the NY state Assembly, representing Astoria, Queens.
And now, he is running for NYC Mayor. One of the nine hats in the fray, Mamdani wants to take on the most notable candidate, former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary.
Current mayor, Eric Adams, who recently spoke to New India Abroad exclusively about his priorities for the biggest city of the US, is running as an independent candidate.
His campaign website flags a quote of his: “This campaign is for every person who believes in the dignity of their neighbors and that the government's job is to actually make our lives better.”
The website provides a quick recap of his achievements: hunger striking alongside taxi drivers to achieve more than $450 million in transformative debt relief, winning over $100 million in the state budget for increased subway service and a successful fare-free bus pilot, and organizing New Yorkers to defeat a proposed dirty power plant.
His campaign promises to make life easy for working class New Yorkers by getting rid of their problems related to lack of housing, costly rents, high-priced groceries and medicare and transportation woes.
His supporters claim his campaign has really taken off, though sceptics wonder if he has what is required to seek of Cuomo as a rival.
His biggest problem appears to be that many New Yorkers still haven’t heard about him. However, the first mayoral debate took care of some of that, as his arguments were noticed in the media as well.
On top of it, in the first week of June he picked up the endorsement from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In a statement, Ocasio-Cortez said Mamdani’s coalition of working-class New Yorkers “is strongest to lead the pack”.
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