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The historic oath takes place during a private ceremony, in an abandoned metro station in the basement of the town hall, in the presence of Mamdani’s family.
In a ceremony presided over by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the new mayor is sworn in at exactly midnight on New Year’s Day.
Later that day, Mamdani will publicly take the oath of office before Senator Bernie Sanders and speak at an inauguration ceremony on the steps of City Hall around 1 p.m. local time (3 p.m. Brasilia time).
The public was invited to attend a street party on Broadway, which leads to City Hall.
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The November mayoral election campaign attracted even more attention than usual.
His election was a watershed moment for progressives, signaling a shift in the center of gravity of municipal politics.
Mamdani presented himself as the people’s candidate and community leader.
Before entering politics, Mamdani worked as a consultant in the housing sector. He helped low-income Queens residents avoid eviction.
The son of Indian parents born in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, he moved with his family to New York at the age of seven.
Mamdani attended Bronx Science High School and later earned a degree in African Studies from Bowdoin College. There he was one of the founders of the university chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Her mother, Mira Nair, is a renowned director and her father, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, teaches at Columbia University. Both are alumni of Harvard University, in the United States.
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Mamdani and his wife met on the dating app Hinge.
Brooklyn-based artist Rama Duwaji is 28 years old.
She was born in Houston, in the US state of Texas. At the age of nine, she moved to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, before briefly attending school in Qatar.
His parents are Syrian Muslims originally from Damascus, according to the Arab press.
Duwaji graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, USA, and received a master’s degree in illustration from the School of Visual Arts, New York.
She preferred to stay out of the spotlight and rarely gives press interviews, even with her husband’s rise to prominence. But what is said is that she has been an important force behind the scenes, according to the American television channel CNN.
As an artist originally from Syria, Duwaji often explores Middle Eastern themes in his work. His work has appeared on BBC News, in the New York Times and the Washington Post, in Vice magazine and at the Tate Modern museum in London.
“Rama is not just my wife. She is an incredible artist who deserves to be known for her work,” Mamdani wrote on social media on May 12, announcing that they had married three months earlier.
In a recent interview with The Cut magazine, she described the experience of becoming First Lady of New York as “surreal.”
“When I first heard it, it sounded so formal. Not that I didn’t feel worthy, but it was… ‘me?’ Now I’m a little more accepting and just say, ‘There are different ways to be first lady.'”
The promise of a “new era”
Mamdani is a millennium progressive. He will be New York’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor – and he has stayed true to his roots in such a diverse city.
He made his Muslim faith a visible element of his electoral campaign. Mamdani regularly visited mosques and released a campaign video in Urdu on the city’s housing cost crisis.
“We know that presenting yourself in public as a Muslim also means sacrificing the security that can sometimes be found in the shadows,” he declared during a campaign rally.
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Mamdani said voters in America’s most expensive city want Democrats to focus on the cost of living.
“This is a city where one in four people live in poverty, a city where 500,000 children go to bed hungry every night,” he told the BBC at a recent event.
“And ultimately, it’s a city that’s at risk of losing what makes it so special.”
Among his proposals, the following stand out:
- Zero fare bus service throughout the city;
- Rent freezes and stricter accountability for negligent landlords;
- Network of municipal grocery stores, with low prices;
- Universal child care for children aged six weeks to five years;
- Triple the production of housing built by unions, with stable rents.
His plan also includes a “reorganization” of City Hall to hold landlords accountable and a massive, permanent expansion of affordable housing.
During his campaign, he associated these policies with very visual and viral gestures.
Mamdani dove into the Atlantic Ocean to dramatize the rent freeze and broke his Ramadan fast on a subway train with a burritoto highlight food insecurity.
Days before the primary election, he walked across Manhattan, stopping to take selfies with voters.
Mamdani claims he can reduce the cost of city living, but critics question his ambitious promises.
Andrew Cuomo, then a mayoral candidate, and other critics said Mamdani lacked experience and was too radical for a city with a budget of $115 billion (about 631 billion reais) and more than 300,000 municipal employees.
Supported by major donors and centrist figures, such as former US President Bill Clinton (1993-2001), Cuomo insists on the importance of experience.
For him, “experience, skill, knowing how to do the job, knowing how to deal with Trump, knowing how to deal with Washington, knowing how to deal with the state legislature, all of that is the foundation. I believe in on-the-job training, but not as mayor of New York.”
The New York Times newspaper did not support any candidate in the city’s mayoral primary election and criticized all candidates.
In an editorial, the newspaper said Mamdani’s program is “exceptionally ill-suited to the city’s challenges” and “often ignores governance commitments.”
The rent freeze would restrict the supply of housing, according to the editorial of the famous New York newspaper.
Israel and Palestine
At a recent Mamdani campaign event in a park in Jackson Heights, one of the most diverse communities in the country, children ran and played on swings, while Latino vendors sold ice cream and snacks.
In many ways, the scene perfectly captured local diversity, which many Democrats consider New York’s greatest asset. But the city is not immune to political and racial tensions.
Mamdani says he receives Islamophobic threats every day, some directed against his family. Police said a hate crime investigation was underway in connection with the threats.
The mayor-elect told the BBC that racism is an indicator of what is wrong with American politics. He also criticized the Democratic Party, “which allowed Donald Trump to be re-elected” and which did not defend workers, “no matter who they are or where they come from.”
The candidates’ stance on the war in the Gaza Strip was also likely to concern voters. And Mamdani’s strong support for the Palestinians and criticism of Israel runs counter to most in the Democratic Party.
The congressman introduced a bill to end tax exemptions for New York charities linked to Israeli settlements that violate international human rights law.
He also said he believed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested.
Mamdani was pressured numerous times in press interviews to state whether he supported Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. And once he answered:
“I don’t feel comfortable supporting a state that has a hierarchy of citizenship based on religion or anything else. I think that, as it is in this country, equality should be enshrined in every country in the world. That’s what I believe.”
Mamdani also said there was no place for anti-Semitism in New York and stressed that if elected he would increase funds to combat hate crimes.
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