NYC socialist Zohran Mamdani wins election despite ongoing controversies

New York Socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani won Tuesday night, defying a long list of critics who have criticized him for several high-profile controversial positions and statements.

Communist label

Throughout the election campaign, Mamdani rejected the “communist” label, insisting that he was a democratic socialist.

His past statements calling for the abolition of private property, confiscation of the means of production, assertions that billionaires should not exist and calls for free government programs have earned him the label of a communist from some, including the president. Donald Trump.

Mike Gonzalez, Senior Fellow, Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital earlier this year, Mamdani is an “absolute communist” who “repeats lines from the Communist Manifesto and other works of Karl Marx.”

“When Marxists today say they are socialists, they usually want to give the impression that they believe in elections, not just getting into power,” Gonzalez added. “Of course, these elections often turn out to be the last free and fair ones. Venezuela is evidence of this.”

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Anti-Israeli positions

A few days before the elections, Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism published a detailed report it summarizes concerns about Mamdani's position on Israel and concludes that he should not become the next mayor of New York.

During the election campaign, Mamdani faced harsh criticism, including from hundreds of rabbis signing a letter opposed him for positions dating back to his time in college, co-founding his school's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter until this year, when he was I hesitate to completely condemn this term “globalization of the intifada”.

Mamdani caused a political storm last month, prompting outrage from law enforcement after the publication of a smiling photo of Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a Brooklyn cleric who served as a witness in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and has long defended convicted terrorists, raising funds for their legal defense.

Mamdani, a 34-year-old member of the New York State Assembly, has openly criticized Israel and even vowed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be arrested if he visits New York.

“I call Zohran Mamdani a jihadist because he is. Zohran Mamdani is an ardent anti-Semite,” said New York Republican Party member Elise Stefanik. said in August.

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“Mamdani is the definition of jihad because he supports Hamas terrorists, which he did as recently as yesterday when he refused to call on Hamas terrorists to lay down their arms—the same Hamas terrorist group that killed civilians, including New Yorkers, on October 7, 2023.”

In July, a Jewish advocacy group blew up Mamdani for sharing a video on social media mocking Jewish Hanukkah traditions.

Mamdani also faced criticism about the anti-Israel stance of his father, Columbia University professor Mahmoud, who previously compared Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler and showed sympathy for suicide bombers in a book he wrote.

“I think criticism of the state of Israel is criticism of the government, not criticism of the people and the faith,” Mamdani told MSNBC This week. “And it’s my job to represent every New Yorker, and I will do that regardless of their thoughts and opinions about Israel and Palestine, which millions of New Yorkers have very strong views about—and I’m one of them.”

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Police protection

Public safety was one of the most discussed issues during the election campaign, resulting in constant debate on Mamdani's 2020 calls to “defund the police.”

Before his campaign for mayor, Mamdani called the New York Police Department “racist” and said in 2023“We must make it clear that when an NYPD boot is on your neck, it means it is laced by the IDF.”

“I think what frightens many New Yorkers about the political positions that Zoran Mamdani has taken over the years is that he has demonstrated more than just a lack of appreciation for the men and women who hold those positions. [police] line, but a visceral contempt for them that led him to push for things like defunding and dismantling the police,” Rafael A. Mangual, senior fellow and director of policing and public safety studies at the Manhattan Institute. told Fox News Digital in August, shortly after a gunman killed four people in midtown Manhattan, including an NYPD officer.

“It’s not just that he said, well, I want to allocate some of this money to other places. He went so far as to say we should dismantle the entire department.”

Mamdani tried to distance himself from his previous positions during the election campaign and apologized to them in Fox News Interview in October.

-Will you do it right now? asked Fox News host Martha McCallum.

“Absolutely,” Mamdani said, turning directly to the camera. “I will apologize to the police officers right here because it is an apology that I have shared with many rank and file officers. And I apologize because I want to work with these officers, and I know that these officers, these men and women who serve in the NYPD, put their lives on the line every single day. And I will be mayor.”

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Columbus Day Incident

You are July, Mamdani caused a storm on social networks after a post surfaced showing him giving the middle finger to a statue of Christopher Columbus.

“Take It Off” Mamdani published June 2020as well as a photo that purportedly shows his gloved hand raising his middle finger toward a statue of the famous Italian explorer in Astoria, New York.

In a message from around the same time, Mamdani asked his followers in a poll who should be honored instead of Columbus, with options that included: “Tony Bennett (Astoria native, music icon) Walter Audisio (communist guerrilla, killed Mussolini) Sacco and Vanzetti (Executed due to anti-Italian sentiment).”

The winners of the poll were Sacco and Vanzetti, two anarcho-communists executed in 1927.

Some in the Italian community were offended by the post, one source said. New York Post reportincluding Columbus Heritage Coalition President Angelo Vivolo.

“We will protect Columbus Day and the Columbus statues,” Vivolo said.

“He is disrespectful to the Italian-American community.” Vivolo added. “If you insult one community, you insult all communities.”

Despite criticism and opposition from senior lawmakers across the country, Mamdani's campaign focused on affordability, opposition to Trump and taxing the rich, propelling him to a landslide victory Tuesday night.

Mamdani's victory is expected to be a rallying cry for Republicans as they look to portray him and his socialist agenda as the face of the Democratic Party heading into next year's midterm elections.

“The Democratic Party has surrendered to radical socialist Zohran Mamdani and the far-left mob that now rules the roost,” Republican National Committee spokesman Mike Marinella told Fox News Digital on Tuesday night.

“They proudly decided to defund the police, abolish ICE, tax hardworking Americans to death, and replace common sense with chaos. Every House Democrat is foolishly complicit in the collapse of their party, and voters will make them pay in 2026.”

Fox News Digital's Deirdre Heavey contributed to this report.