In Zohran Mamdani S New York Washington Monthly

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 27, 2025, 2:11 PM

in zohran mamdani s new york washington monthly

The paths and lives of Zohran Mamdani and Ross Barkan are intertwined. Both are outsiders who call New York City home. The Ugandan-born Mamdani—Muslim, faculty brat, and son of a filmmaker—is on the verge of becoming the City’s youngest mayor. Barkan, who is Jewish, grew up in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge in the shadow of the Verrazzano Bridge, the backdrop for Saturday Night Fever. Back in the day, Irish and Italian Catholic-Americans filled Bay Ridge’s streets. Once upon a time, pubs hosted Sunday night fundraisers for the Irish Republican Army.

The neighborhood now boasts a large Palestinian-American population. The city never sleeps. “New York is not America, but it’s got, quite literally, every part of America,” Barkan blogs. Seven years ago, Mamdani managed Barkan’s failed bid for a seat in the New York state legislature. Time presumably heals wounds. Regardless, Barkan was gob smacked by the magnitude of recent Mamdani’s win.

“Mamdani’s victory was stunning in its breadth,” Barkan writes. “Mamdani is now a leader of the American left, along with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders.” A regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine and New York magazine, Barkan has a new book, Fascism or Genocide: How a Decade of Disorder Broke American Politics, his third non-fiction book alongside... Barkan’s own loss on the campaign trail has not derailed his arc as journalist or writer. In Fascism or Genocide, he closely examines the grinding tectonics within the Democratic Party. Generational and ideological fault-lines loudly clang as the calendar barrels toward the midterms.

Fascism or Genocide trashes Joe Biden and his enablers. The 46th president’s age and disabilities were visible, yet voters were told to ignore what they saw: an old man with good days and bad days. Democrats and Republicans, both, suffer from delusions. Was it Trump calling a reporter “Piggy,” the Mamdani-Trump meeting, the Epstein files, or Trump threatening to execute members of Congress? Tough call. Long-standing threats to an independent press are coming to a head.

The Monthly needs your help more than ever to fight back. Everyone cares about Oliver Twist. Now we need to help the Artful Dodgers. Revisit writing from this year that we’re proud to have run. We’re providing new ideas for a stronger America, but we need your help. Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York, met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office today in what might have seemed like an improbable love fest.

Though the 34-year-old democratic socialist and the 79-year-old Republican would seem to have nothing in common, they do share a couple of important ties. Both have called the borough of Queens home, and both were catapulted to office on the issue of affordability. Before the meeting, the two men traded insults, calling each other “communist” and “fascist.” Afterward, Trump said of Mamdani, “I feel very confident that he can do a very good job. I think he’s going to surprise some conservative people, actually.” Mamdani was civil, too: “It was a productive meeting based on a place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City, and... The early pundit consensus for this surprising turnabout is that Trump loves a winner. This is certainly true, but their topic of conversation also reflects the Trump administration’s recognition that rising prices have become a political burden.

Mamdani won what’s been called “the second-hardest job in America” by relentlessly harping on the cost of living for average New Yorkers and ways to drive it down, from free buses to easing regulations... Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger won gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia with a similar message about taming high prices. Republicans, who swept to power in 2024 primarily out of frustration with inflation, recognize that the Democrats’ new strategy rests on a simple truth: Fairly or not, the cost of living gets blamed on... Sign up for our daily newsletter to get two stories in your inbox every weekday, plus a best-of-the-week roundup on Sundays. Opt out any time. Example: Yes, I would like to receive emails from Washington Monthly.

(You can unsubscribe anytime) On Jan. 1, Zohran “Nature Is Healing” Mamdani takes over at City Hall — and many New Yorkers remain anxious about what his mayoralty will mean for public safety. Their well-founded worry stems from Mamdani’s troubling record of rank hostility toward the NYPD, toward the use of jails and prisons, and toward maintaining basic public order. He’s compounded their concerns by staffing his transition team with people like police abolitionist Alex Vitale and convicted armed robber Mysonne Linen, who have also expressed extreme hostility toward the city’s criminal justice system. It’s left many New Yorkers asking, “What can be done?”

Enter Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. Zohran Mamdani is on the cusp of becoming New York’s 111th mayor, and perhaps its most radical. He could also fairly claim to be one of the country’s most influential Democrats, which makes the reasons for his rise relevant far beyond the Big Apple. According to the New York City Department of Records and Information Services, Zohran Mamdani will not actually be the city’s hundred-and-eleventh mayor, as many people have assumed. A historian named Paul Hortenstine recently came across references to a previously unrecorded mayoral term served in 1674, by one Matthias Nicolls. Consequently, on New Year’s Day, after Mamdani places his right hand on the Quran and is sworn in at City Hall, he will become our hundred-and-twelfth mayor—or possibly even our hundred-and-thirty-third, based on the...

“The numbering of New York City ‘Mayors’ has been somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent,” a department official disclosed in a blog post this month. “There may even be other missing Mayors.” New York City has already had youthful mayors (John Purroy Mitchel, a.k.a. the Boy Mayor), ideological mayors (Bill de Blasio), celebrity mayors (Jimmy Walker, a.k.a. Beau James), idealistic mayors (John Lindsay), hard-charging mayors (Fiorello LaGuardia), mayors with little to no prior experience in elected office (Michael Bloomberg), immigrant mayors (Abe Beame), and even one who supported the Democratic Socialists... (That would be David Dinkins.) Whether Mamdani turns out to be a good or a bad mayor, he will also not be alone in either respect.

He will, however, be the city’s first Muslim mayor, and the first with family roots in Asia. He is as avowedly of the left as any mayor in city history. And the velocity of his rise to power is the fastest that anyone in town can recall. Since his general-election trouncing of the former governor Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani has been preparing for the sober realities of governing—appointments, negotiations, coalition management, policy development. Trying to preserve the movement energy he tapped during the campaign, he has also made an effort to continue the inventive outreach practices that brought him to broad public attention. Just last Sunday, for instance, he sat in a room in the Museum of the Moving Image, in Astoria (a few blocks from the rent-stabilized apartment he’s giving up to move into Gracie Mansion),...

It was a gesture to show that he could look his constituents in the eye, and that he could listen to them. Mamdani ran a disciplined campaign, and he has run a disciplined transition. He didn’t take the bait when Mayor Eric Adams criticized him, told Jews to be afraid of him, and pulled other last-minute maneuvers seemingly designed to undermine him. Mamdani met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office—and they startled everyone by having an outwardly productive meeting. (Trump happily told Mamdani that it was O.K. to call him a “fascist.”) Mamdani discouraged a young D.S.A.

city-council member, Chi Ossé, from staging a primary challenge next year to the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries—a magnanimous move, considering Jeffries’s ongoing chilliness toward Mamdani. In rooms full of wealthy business leaders and in others filled with donors, he has tried to win over skeptics among New York’s élite. (“They are finding themselves, unexpectedly, charmed,” the Times reported recently.) It was a relief to the city’s political establishment when he asked Jessica Tisch, the current police commissioner, whom Adams appointed, to stay in... Last week, when a top appointee’s old antisemitic tweets surfaced, Mamdani accepted her resignation within hours. Having rocketed, in a matter of months, from one per cent in the polls to mayor, Mamdani seems comfortable facing his doubters. But what he’s up against cannot be overstated.

It’s been an open question for centuries as to whether New York is “governable” in a top-to-bottom, municipal, positive sense. For a long time, city government here was considered little more than a trough for Tammany Hall. In the past century, the city proved that it could (more or less) pick up its own garbage, get a handle on crime, and operate large school and hospital systems, even if sometimes just... It can do more than that, of course, but can it durably make life in New York better, and not just more tolerable, for the bulk of its residents? In his effort to answer affirmatively, Mamdani will have to navigate problems of management, budget, and bureaucracy inside City Hall, and also Trump (does anyone think their chumminess will last?), ICE raids, intransigent billionaires,... The billionaire exodus that was forecast during his campaign has shown no signs of materializing, but one bad blizzard in January could hamper Mamdani’s ambitious agenda for months.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani listens as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) New York Mayor Jimmy Walker, right, rides with Romania’s Queen Marie upon her arrival in New York, Oct. 18, 1926, as she started her extended journey across America. (AP File Photo)

Mayor Joseph V. McKee, center, stands with Sioux chieftains, in full tribal regalia, who met with him at New York City Hall, Nov. 18, 1932, in New York. (AP File Photo) New York Mayor John P. O’Brien pins an honor medal on Capt.

Giles Stedman, on the steps of New York City Hall, Jan. 27, 1933, in New York. (AP File Photo) NEW YORK (AP) — Zohran Mamdani can claim multiple firsts when he becomes New York’s mayor Jan. 1.

In Zohran Mamdani S New York Washington Monthly

People Also Search

The Paths And Lives Of Zohran Mamdani And Ross Barkan

The Neighborhood Now Boasts A Large Palestinian-American Population. The City

“Mamdani’s Victory Was Stunning In Its Breadth,” Barkan Writes. “Mamdani

Fascism Or Genocide Trashes Joe Biden And His Enablers. The

The Monthly Needs Your Help More Than Ever To Fight