Zohran Mamdani is New York City’s insurgent candidate for mayor in Tuesday’s election to pick the Democratic Party’s nominee for the general election in November. Up against disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo and a host of other candidates ranging from centrist to progressive in a ranked choice voting election, it’s anyone’s guess who will win. But recent polls show Mamdani could achieve one of the biggest upsets in New York political history.

Mamdani is a democratic socialist who is championing a platform to raise the standard of living for city dwellers by rebuilding the public sector, which has suffered decades of disinvestment and austerity. And thanks to his persuasive abilities as a candidate, laser focus on cost-of-living issues like expensive groceries and rising rents, and, most importantly, the tens of thousands of committed campaign volunteers — some with the zeal of the newly converted and others lifelong socialist organisers — he has Wall Street and the city’s landlord class on edge.

Mamdani, a 33-year old immigrant from Uganda, represents parts of Queens as a legislator in the New York State Assembly. He got his start in politics as a college student, where he founded a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. After graduating, he returned to the city to work as a housing organiser and was one of the many young activists who joined the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in the wake of the inspiring campaign of Bernie Sanders and the traumatic election of Donald Trump in 2016. Mamdani was an activist and leader in DSA prior to running for the state legislature in 2020. In his surprise victory, Mamdani joined a slate of NYC-DSA candidates who each won their respective elections in a high-stakes battle at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter mass mobilisations.

In office, Mamdani has been one of the loudest and most effective champions of left-wing politics and for Palestine solidarity, going on hunger strike for taxi-drivers laden with debt and authoring a bill to end New York’s support for illegal Israeli settlements. Crucially, he has also given proof of concept for one of his campaign’s cornerstone proposals: in 2023, he passed into law a pilot program to make a limited number of bus lines in New York fare-free.

Absent a true membership party of the labor movement and the Left, DSA and its New York City chapter in particular has worked to fill that void. Since endorsing Mamdani, NYC-DSA has been an integral part of his campaign. DSA members are a key part of his staff, the core of his volunteer army, and many of his early small donors. Mamdani has also won the support of major unions including the United Auto Workers and DC37 (the city’s public sector workers), community organisations, and Muslim and Jewish groups, including the Muslim Democratic Club of New York and Jewish Voice for Peace Action. In recent weeks Mamdani’s campaign was endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders.

Mamdani has run one of the city’s most inspiring mayoral campaigns in New York history. Campaigners numbering in the tens of thousands (the campaign’s latest estimate is 40,000 volunteers) have spread out over the city, knocking on more than one million doors, flyering street corners and early voting sites, and even taking to the East River by boat, with signs in tow. His rallies are electric and his campaign videos and digital advertising have been equally impressive.

The challenge for the anti-Mamdani crowd is that Cuomo, the putative frontrunner in the race and the only candidate with any hope of beating him for the Democratic nomination, is most remembered for being forced out of office, after multiple accounts of him sexually harassing and assaulting women. Now, Cuomo’s campaign is fueled by a desire for revenge against those who lead the charge against him. Nevertheless, given his name recognition and support from many of the party’s local community leaders — including some who called for his resignation — Cuomo has consistently led in the race since he joined it. Those hoping to defeat Mamdani have had no choice but to line up behind him.

In recent weeks, many of the leading lights of the party’s aging establishment leadership have come out in support of Cuomo and against Mamdani: from former president Bill Clinton to the powerful South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn (who helped defeat Sanders in 2020) and one of the architects of the Democratic Party’s neoliberal turn in the 1990s, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

The attacks keep coming as the city’s ruling class and their comrades nationally have flooded the field with money against him. Backed by the likes of billionaires Bill Ackman and former mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as major corporations like Doordash, Mamdani’s corporate antagonists are spending millions. They are barraging New Yorkers with slanderous accusations and literature (one leaked advert that didn’t make it off the press pictured Mamdani, who is Muslim, with a much fuller and darker beard, photoshopped to gin up more Islamophobia). One former Goldman Sachs executive even started running ads not so subtly comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

Remarkably, Mamdani has never flinched from his support for Palestine in a campaign marked by Islamophobic attacks against him and his campaign. In a city where Zionist groups hold outsized influence and most politicians feel obligated to sing Israel’s praises, Mamdani and his base have been relentlessly on message: the genocide in Gaza must end, Palestine must be free, and war criminals like Benjamin Netanyahu must be brought to justice.

With the backing of the city’s ultrawealthy, the major landlords, and the finance and real estate industries, Cuomo has relied on deep pockets to try to fend off the Left. The question now is if Mamdani’s people-powered campaign can overcome that kind of organised money. For democratic socialists, the campaign has already been a huge success. In a year beset by crisis, war, and the persecution of working people and the Left, Mamdani’s campaign is the brightest light so far. Its effect is palpable: NYC-DSA membership has already grown by more than 40 percent; the American Left has rallied to the cause with a level of energy and discipline not seen since the height of Bernie’s 2020 campaign; and millions of people are starting to believe again that a better world is possible.