Why It Matters That Mamdani Is an Immigrant Mayor

It matters that the newly elected Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, is an immigrant.

Not just for symbolic or sentimental reasons, although those are nice. It's fitting that the city of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty would put an immigrant in charge. As Mamdani put it in his Election Night victory speech, New York is "built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant."

Key word: Powered.

Mamdani's victory matters because of the colossal, catastrophic war on immigrants being waged by the world's most powerful man. From the beginning of President Donald Trump's second term, his administration has led a vicious, increasingly violent campaign against the foreign-born, especially in the states and cities led by Democrats and dominated by people of color.

Mamdan delivered. He defied the corporate establishment and billionaires' attack ads and galvanized a winning coalition–young, hopeful, restive, sick of the politics of stifled ambition, of dreaming small, of being resigned to an ever-higher cost of living.

And for all that time, immigrants have been seen as victims, pawns, prey—as bystanders to their own oppression. In recent years, newly arrived migrants have been rounded up at the border, bused across the country by Republican governors, dumped in shelters in Democrat-led cities. Under Trump, all immigrants, new or not, undocumented or not, have been endlessly vilified and slandered as gang killers, rapists, terrorists, job stealers, culture destroyers, eaters of cats and dogs.

And for months the administration has sent masked goons in battle armor to catch them all. They swarm immigrant neighborhoods in unmarked vans to bag their daily quota of deportees. Raids have brought chaos and terror to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and to cities and suburbs between. The immigration-imprisonment archipelago is vast and growing.

If you believe the administration's threats, the anti-immigrant assault will likely get worse very soon in New York, Trump's hometown. And so it matters that an immigrant, Mayor Mamdani, will be there to oppose him.

Mamdani also said this in his victory address: "So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us."

Those are the words of a leader with the means and will to fight. It's about time. Scorned by MAGAs and pitied by liberals, immigrant communities have battled on their own to protect themselves, tell their own stories, to shape their own destinies, all the while defending bedrock rights for all of us. And while their efforts have been heroic—defending constitutional values for everyone—they have been insufficient to stop or even slow Trump’s torrential abuses of power.

Mamdani's victory goes a long way to turning the tide. It's hard to overstate the shock of a young state assemblyman, an immigrant with no money and no recognition, running a successful grassroots campaign in a crowded race against, among others, an incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, and a former governor, Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo entered the race with a vast lead in the polls and tons of money. He was the candidate to beat, even though he had resigned, disgraced, as governor. He was well known as a bully, a sex pest, and a bumbler—accused of sexually harassment by several women who worked for him and credibly blamed for recklessly sending senior citizens to their Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes. His closing argument was to parrot Trump’s threats against the city as a form of political blackmail: Elect me, or Trump will make things worse.

Worse still, Cuomo had the establishment on his side. It's an understatement to say Mamdani did not.

New York is a city of skyscrapers and tycoons, a global seat of power for the financial, real estate, media, and entertainment industries. None of New York's leading power brokers had any desire to see a democratic socialist like Mamdani take City Hall, with his talk of free buses and lower rent. They spent millions to destroy him.

Mamdani came under editorial fire from the New York Times and the New York tentacles of Rupert Murdoch's media empire: Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post. Billionaires opened their wallets to denounce him with darkly doomful attack ads.

A Mamdani victory would destroy New York, said the power elite. The city as we know it will crumble, they said. We’ll have to move to Florida. Even the city’s supposedly liberal elite seemed to believe the doomsaying. Top New York pols, like United States Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer, dragged their feet on endorsing their fellow Democrat, or demurred entirely.

Mamdani confounded them all.

Or rather, the New Yorkers who voted for him did. A commanding cross section of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Manhattan and the diverse sliver of Staten Island’s north shore came together to demand something–someone–different.

Mamdan delivered. He defied the corporate establishment and billionaires' attack ads and galvanized a winning coalition–young, hopeful, restive, sick of the politics of stifled ambition, of dreaming small, of being resigned to an ever-higher cost of living.

This wasn’t the New York that tourists think of, the New York of Trump Tower, the Plaza, the Times, the Wall Street bros and limo billionaires. It was the city of the working class and working poor, of bus riders and immigrants, ordinary people flexing their power in all its brownness and Blackness.

Mamdani put it this way: "For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns: These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands."

To lots of rich New Yorkers, this future sounds new and scary.

But building power from the bottom up is a familiar story among immigrants. A popular phrase among immigrant rights defenders is "Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo.” Only the people save the people. The message can be seen as grim: No one else is coming to save us. Immigrants who use it prefer to see the words as brimming with hope: We are coming to save us. Or as my colleague Pablo Alvarado from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network says, “What we need is solidarity, not charity. Our community knows how to defend itself.” In a city that is powered by immigrants and now led by one, we are about to see what that looks like.