Mamdani promises voters his movement will ‘create a society we would like to see’

NEW YORK — New York mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani spent the final weekend of his campaign telling his supporters that they have helped him build a movement that will transform the city, where injustice will be abolished and the poor will be uplifted.

At each campaign stop, Mr. Mamdani, a socialist running as the Democratic nominee, described his supporters as oppressed, and he promised to turn that around.

He told the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network members in Harlem on Saturday, “It’s not enough to simply complain about injustice. The only way to prevent future injustice is to create the society we would like to see.”

He added, “Over the past 12 months, we have built a movement around creating a society we would all like to see: a society where the poor receive aid, where those who work long nights are set free in the day, where injustice is banished from our city.”

He said President Trump and congressional Republicans would have likely trashed the post-Civil War, congressionally created Freedmen’s Bureau, which provided care and resources to freed slaves, as “socialist overreach.”

“If such an agency existed today, Donald Trump would pilfer its coffers to facilitate a tax cut, just as he has done these past months to SNAP, to Medicare, to Medicaid — to any program that dares to uplift the poor rather than comfort the wealthy,” he said.

Mr. Sharpton admonished those who criticized Mr. Mamdani for recently campaigning and taking a photo with a gay-bashing Brooklyn imam who is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and who has been tied to other terrorist activity in the U.S., including urging “jihad” on the Big Apple.

“I am outraged at the ugly Islamophobia used in this campaign to act as though every Muslim is a terrorist,” Mr. Sharpton said.

“They act like because somebody campaigns and shakes somebody’s hand who they don’t know, whatever you accuse them of, or whether you accuse them right or wrong, therefore makes them have something to connect it to — something as ugly that happened to us as 9/11 is insulting the intelligence of all New Yorkers.”

Mr. Mamdani, who is Muslim, also appealed to Muslim supporters at a subsequent rally in Queens, saying they are too often told to have patience while being subjected to bigotry.

“We’ve been told that we should wait. We’ve been told that our time will come. … We can wait no longer because to wait would be to trust those who gave us this moment, who delivered us to this crisis,” the assemblyman said.

“Those who are serving the entirety of our borough and our city on this stage alongside me, and what I find in them are partners. Partners in delivering a city where we freeze the rent for more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants,” he said. He promised to “make buses fast and free” and “deliver universal child care.”

He continued, “Because I know, looking out into this crowd, there are many here today who are Muslim New Yorkers, just like me, who have been made to feel as if they should be ashamed of their faith.”

Still, the 34-year-old Democratic Party star faces questions about how he intends to deal with crime in the city after calling for defunding and dismantling the New York Police Department and replacing officers with social workers in many law enforcement cases.

Additionally, he wants to phase out the city’s gifted programs for kindergartners. He has signaled, as reported by the New York Post, that he will stock his prospective administration’s education hires with anti-merit leftists who want to eliminate standardized testing.

Despite his critics’ reservations, Mr. Mamdani appears to be on a glide path to Gracie Mansion.

He leads his nearest competitor, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, by an average of 14.5 percentage points and leads Republican Curtis Sliwa by 28 points in the latest RealClearPolitics polling average. He described Mr. Cuomo and New York City Mayor Eric Adams as “desperate” because their “power is slipping away.”

Mr. Adams endorsed Mr. Cuomo after his withdrawal from the race in September and joined Mr. Cuomo to criticize Mr. Mamdani on the campaign trail.

“They will engage in attacks that are more hateful, more racist and more bigoted than we have seen in our city’s politics in quite some time,” Mr. Mamdani said of both men.

“And our answer to that is a vision of a city where all of us belong, all of us. No longer will we apologize for who we are,” he said.

“No longer will we apologize for who we believe in. No longer will we apologize for our conviction that the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world should be one that every single New Yorker can afford.”

Mr. Mamdani asked those in the crowd to raise their hands if they had ever been referred to as a terrorist while living in New York City or if their name had been “mangled” when they went to work.

“If you have ever been made to feel less than because of who you are, because of where you came from, because of what you believe in,” he said.

“This is why these words offend me, because they are about all of us, and no longer will we allow a politics in this city that seeks to discard those that they deem to be disposable.”

Mr. Mamdani has captured a broad coalition of Democrats, who make up 56% of registered city voters, who say they like his amiable personality and his pitch to make New York City more affordable.

“I think it comes back to affordability, just like what Zohran’s been mentioning, it is making the working people of this city have the affordable lifestyle that they deserve,” said Erfan Karim, 40, a health care worker.

“I like him for the way he explains the advantages and the visibility and opportunities he will provide to the New York people,” said one Queens voter who did not identify himself.

Establishment Democrats, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, were slow to endorse Mr. Mamdani.

On Saturday, Ms. James stood with the assemblyman from Queens at a Brooklyn Church.

“Affordability is a major issue for the members of this great church. They are concerned about the price of groceries, they are concerned about transportation, and they recognize that in Zohran, they will see someone who can relate to them and someone who understands their troubles,” Ms. James told reporters.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also belatedly endorsed Mr. Mamdani. Still, in a “State of the Union” interview broadcast Sunday on CNN, the New York Democrat answered no when asked whether New York’s socialist mayoral candidate is the future of the Democratic Party.

“No, I think the future of the Democratic Party is … communicating to the American people, like, we understand, you deserve better than the country that you have received,” Mr. Jeffries said.

Mr. Mamdani has not received the endorsements of New York’s two Democrats in the Senate: Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer.

Former President Barack Obama called Mr. Mamdani for a second time and offered to be a “sounding board,” but he stopped short of a public endorsement.