Zohran Mamdani is running for Mayor to lower the cost of living for working class New Yorkers.
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.
Zohran Kwame Mamdani is a New York State Assemblymember and democratic socialist running for Mayor. Born in Uganda and raised in New York City, he has fought for the working class in and outside the legislature: 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. The cost of living is crushing working people but Zohran believes that government can lower costs and make life easier in our city — he'll use every tool available to bring down the rent, create world class public transit, and make it easier to raise a family.
Get involved
This campaign is about talking to thousands of New Yorkers across the city about how we make this city work better for the many and not the few. And to do this, we need you.
Join an upcoming canvass (or two!) and learn how to have positive conversations with New Yorkers about freezing the rent, free and fast buses, universal childcare and more!
No experience is required. All canvasses start with a training and you will be paired up with a partner if you are new to this. We can't wait to see you!
A majority of New Yorkers are tenants, and more than two million of them live in rent stabilized apartments. These homes should be the bedrock of economic security for the city’s working class. Instead, Eric Adams has taken every opportunity to squeeze tenants, with his hand-picked appointees to the Rent Guidelines Board jacking up rents on stabilized apartments by 9% (and counting)–the most since a Republican ran City Hall.
As Mayor, Zohran will immediately freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants, and use every available resource to build the housing New Yorkers need and bring down the rent. The number one reason working families are leaving our city is the housing crisis. The Mayor has the power to change that.
Public transit should be reliable, safe and universally accessible. But one in five New Yorkers struggle to afford the ever rising fare. Adding insult to injury: our city's buses are the slowest in the nation, robbing working people of precious time for family, leisure and rest.
Zohran won New York's first fare-free bus pilot on five lines across the city. As Mayor, he'll permanently eliminate the fare on every city bus – and make them faster by rapidly building priority lanes, expanding bus queue jump signals, and dedicated loading zones to keep double parkers out of the way. Fast and free buses will not only make buses reliable and accessible but will improve safety for riders and operators – creating the world-class service New Yorkers deserve.
All New Yorkers deserve to be safe. But the Adams administration has failed to deliver the sense of safety and security that everyone should feel walking down our streets, riding our subways, or taking our buses. Zohran will create the Department of Community Safety to prevent violence before it happens by prioritizing solutions which have been consistently shown to improve safety. Police have a critical role to play. But right now, we’re relying on them to deal with the failures of our social safety net—which prevents them from doing their actual jobs. Through this new city agency and whole-of-government approach, community safety will be prioritized like never before in NYC. The Department will invest in citywide mental health programs and crisis response—including deploying dedicated outreach workers in 100 subway stations, providing medical services in vacant commercial units, and increasing Transit Ambassadors to assist New Yorkers on their journeys—expand evidence-based gun violence prevention programs, and increase funding to hate violence prevention programs by 800%. Read more in the NYT, and the full proposal here.
After rent, the biggest cost for New York’s working families is childcare. It’s literally driving them out of the city: New Yorkers with children under six are leaving at double the rate of all others. The burden falls heaviest on mothers, who are giving up paying jobs to do unpaid childcare.
Zohran will implement free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years, ensuring high quality programming for all families. And he will bring up wages for childcare workers – a quarter of whom currently live in poverty – to be at parity with public school teachers. It will foster early childhood development, save parents money and keep our families in the city they call home.
Food prices are out of control. Nearly 9 in 10 New Yorkers say the cost of groceries is rising faster than their income. Only the very wealthiest aren’t feeling squeezed at the register.
As Mayor, Zohran will create a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low, not making a profit. Without having to pay rent or property taxes, they will reduce overhead and pass on savings to shoppers. They will buy and sell at wholesale prices, centralize warehousing and distribution, and partner with local neighborhoods on products and sourcing. With New York City already spending millions of dollars to subsidize private grocery store operators (which are not even required to take SNAP/WIC!), we should redirect public money to a real “public option.”
We need a lot more affordable housing. But for decades, New York City has relied almost entirely on changing the zoning code to entice private development – with results that can fall short of the big promises. And the housing that does get built is often out of reach for the working class who need it the most.
As Mayor, Zohran will put our public dollars to work and triple the City’s production of permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes – constructing 200,000 new units over the next 10 years. Any 100% affordable development gets fast-tracked: no more pointless delays. And Zohran will fully staff our City’s housing agencies so we can actually get the work done.
For the additional housing we need, Zohran will initiate a Comprehensive Plan for New York City to create a holistic vision for affordability, equity, and growth. This planning will allow NYC to address the legacy of racially discriminatory zoning, increase density near transit hubs, end the requirement to build parking lots and proactively chart our future.
One in ten renter households reported a lack of adequate heat last winter. One in four reported mice or rats in their homes. Half a million live in poor quality housing.
Every New Yorker deserves a safe and healthy place to call home. That’s why Zohran will overhaul the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and coordinate code enforcement under one roof, making sure agencies work together to hold owners responsible for the conditions of their buildings. Tenants will be able to schedule and track inspections with a revamped 311. If a landlord refuses to make a repair, the City will do it and send them the bill. And in the most extreme cases, when an owner demonstrates consistent neglect for their tenants, the City will decisively step in and take control of their properties. The worst landlords will be put out of business.
Zohran has a plan to bring down the cost-of-living through city-owned grocery stores, universal childcare, and other bold proposals, and he knows exactly how to pay for it, too. Zohran’s revenue plan will raise the corporate tax rate to match New Jersey’s 11.5%, bringing in $5 billion. And he will tax the wealthiest 1% of New Yorkers—those earning above $1 million annually—a flat 2% tax (right now city income tax rates are essentially the same whether you make $50,000 or $50 million). Zohran will also implement common-sense procurement reform, end senseless no-bid contracts, hire more tax auditors, and crack down on fine collection from corrupt landlords to raise an additional $1 billion.
In the crowded race for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani has become a magnet for attention, ascending in the polls and raising money through a mix of social media savvy and a plain-spoken, everyman approach.
There's a reason he resonates with so many New Yorkers, and it's not just because he's relatable—he grew up here, almost failed Mandarin class, and got sent to detention one too many times in high school—it's because he's straightforward, funny, and sincere. He is the antithesis of politics for show. He has proven to be what many voters now think is impossible: an elected official for the people.
As Democrats around the country debate moderation, doing nothing or pursuing a politics of abundance — calling for government to stop getting in the way of things like building housing with over-regulation — Mamdani is an example of another path, one that follows in the footsteps of Sanders by lifting up concrete leftist policies toward a social safety net and affordable cost of living.
Mr. Mamdani, who has called on Mr. Adams to resign, said in an interview that the mayor had failed New Yorkers. He said that he would focus his campaign on addressing the city's affordability crisis.
In 2021, Mamdani went on a 15-day hunger strike to protest predatory loans that targeted the taxi drivers who purchased "medallions", the physical certificate required to operate a yellow cab. The city eventually caved and struck a deal with medallion loan guarantors, securing $450m in transformative debt relief for these drivers.
A New York City mayoral candidate wants the city to open its own, more affordable grocery stores. The idea has gained momentum in Chicago and other cities.
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