A Most Violent Four Years?—The Coming Prospect of a Mamdani Mayorship

Photo via NYC Democratic Socialists of America

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Zohran Mamdani is going to be New York City’s next mayor. He won fair and square, and just like how Americans send their newly elected President to the White House every four years, New Yorkers are sending their newly elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani, to Gracie Mansion on January 1st, 2026, ringing in the new year. Eric Adams will be out, Zohran Mamdani will be in, and a radical new era in New York City politics will commence.

Although Mr. Mamdani ran his campaign on descriptive representation, running as a proud Muslim American unabashed about his identity, he ran for mayor arguably more so on substantive representation, campaigning primarily on affordability as a socialist. 

The first thing you see on his website, “Zohran for NYC,” is that he is running for Mayor “to lower the cost of living for working class New Yorkers.” Meanwhile, the first thing you see on his platform page is that “New York is too expensive. Zohran will lower costs and make life easier.” “Zohran for NYC” essentially ran Zohran himself wholesale as the solution to New York City’s problems in this mayoral cycle, running Zohran on an agenda of utopian remedies for the economic and even social plights of New Yorkers. 

For example, “Zohran for NYC” has a Savings Calculator that estimates how much you would save if Zohran is elected mayor, based on his “Big Three Commitments”—freezing the rent for rent-stabilized apartments, making buses fast and free, and implementing no-cost childcare for all New Yorkers. Additionally, Zohran also campaigned on creating “a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low, not making a profit,” a concept that, like many of Mamdani’s prospective policies, may sound nice on paper, but ultimately guarantees disaster if implemented.

Zohran’s policies are radical, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing; radical change is often necessary. In New York City, congestion pricing, an at-one-time radical proposal, has significantly reduced congestion and won New Yorkers over. Furthermore, the civil rights movement was radical, and, for as destructive as Donald Trump’s immigration policies have been, because of President Trump’s radical immigration policy, our border is secure. However, a middle ground is where we need to be heading, something like building more affordable housing (for which Cuomo, Sliwa and Mamdani all agree), but not something like a “homes guarantee” that has luxury properties seized.

Tragically, I view Zohran Mamdani as radical both positively and negatively. On one hand, I support Zohran Mamdani’s radical fight for affordability as an overwhelming net positive. On the other hand, I reject his socialist policy prescriptions and a plethora of his past statements and actions that constitute a danger to our city and civil society writ large. I take Zohran at his repeated word, and I reject the fringes of the Democratic Party that Zohran embodies, an inseparable fusion of fanatical identity politics and shock or disaster socialism. 

Zohran Mamdani is a member of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), an organization that in its Constitution broadly rejects “an economic order based on private profit.” In 2021, the DSA proclaimed in its second draft of its yearly platform that “Our legal, economic, and social institutions continue to perpetuate racialized oppression.” The draft then went on to advocate for the decriminalization of “all misdemeanor offenses,” the decriminalization of sex work, as well as “freedom for all incarcerated people.”

Four years later, the DSA, in its 2025 program, has called for the extension of voting rights to “people with criminal convictions and noncitizens,” and the replacement of the Electoral College. Its “working-class foreign policy” demands the end of “all immigrant detention and deportations,” “immediate amnesty,” and access to all social services to “all immigrants.” Finally, in the DSA’s statement following Zohran’s mayoral win, the organization champions getting “ICE out of our cities” and fighting “for alternatives to policing that truly keep communities safe.” 

Each one of Zohran Mamdani’s policies is uncompromising democratic socialism, incompatible with our capitalist society, that will bankrupt New York City and hurt the very people Zohran seeks to protect. The most pressing and chronic Mamdani problem that encapsulates this theme (and much of my apprehension towards him) is his platform on public safety. 

In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, safety and security are the second base level of man’s needs. In New York City, however, New Yorkers are largely unhappy with their quality of life, with crime statistics reflecting the sad state of affairs where citywide 56% of rapes and 79% of assaults do not lead to even an arrest. We should not accept these conditions and we should not accept a mayor who is against cash bail and who will be complacent with our “revolving door” criminal justice system. 

Zohran Mamdani will likely let loose on the streets the recidivists who have taken advantage of our great city. New York City will become “the strongest sanctuary city” in America, which will destroy New York City’s social services and public safety. As someone who has been to the border in Brownsville, Texas, during the Biden migrant surge, social services and, consequently, public safety, will be functionally nonexistent to New Yorkers if New York City is championed once again as a sanctuary city. What Mamdani seeks, we simply do not have the resources for.

We should not accept a mayor who inflames tensions by posing with figures such as Imam Siraj Wahhaj, Rebecca Kadega, or Hasan Piker. We should not accept a mayor whose father has said suicide bombers are “a category of soldier” that should not be “stigmatized as a mark of barbarism.” Nor should we accept a mayor who has sung “love” to a group convicted of “providing material support to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization.” Fundamentally, who someone associates with reflects their character. If that maxim means anything, Zohran Mamdani’s character is tainted with serious indiscretion and impropriety.

Mamdani’s overhaul of public safety is not without its flourishes. A Department of Public Safety that provides a social safety net is important. I support sending social workers and mental health professionals to certain calls, but the idea of sending these people to certain other, more dangerous calls is folly that I do not trust Mamdani with, considering his past stances on the NYPD, membership in the DSA and support for DSA policies, and support for policies such as those that District Attorney Al Bragg abides by, dropping charges and prosecuting felony charges as misdemeanors, which in sum spell disaster for New York City. The NYPD and social services certainly need reform, but I do not believe in Zohran Mamdani as a good-faith actor. 

Zohran Mamdani is very charismatic. He is a great orator. But I do not believe in Zohran Mamdani’s ability to protect New Yorkers. Ronald Reagan said that the government’s first duty is to “protect the people.” Milton Friedman set out that the government should, first and foremost, “protect our freedom both from the enemies outside our gates and from our fellow-citizens: to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, to foster competitive markets.” On these three prongs Zohran Mamdani fails the test.

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This article was edited by Anna-Rose Barnes.