EDITORIAL: In Mamdani, Trump finds his ultimate foil

For the better part of two centuries, New York City has been the globe’s capitalist beating heart; a place with no sense of self-consciousness and where fortune-seekers are encouraged and rewarded.

It just elected a self-described socialist as its mayor.

Zohran Mamdani isn’t just any old socialist either. At 34, he’s a millennial too. And a Muslim immigrant, the Ugandan-born son of two Harvard-educated Indian parents.

Mr Mamdani himself has a degree in Africana studies and while at university he founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. He even had a rap career in his pre-politics life, under the moniker Mr Cardamom.

Donald Trump couldn’t have dreamed up a better foil for his MAGA faithful to concentrate their ire upon if he tried.

Mr Mamdani has grandiose ambitions for his mayorship. His policies include free bus travel for all, a freeze on rents in stabilised apartments, universal free child care and subsidised city-run grocery stores.

To pay for this socialist utopia, he intends to pile an additional 2 per cent tax on those earning more than US$1 million and hike company taxes.

It’s a radical agenda which has struck a chord with the city’s young and working class who are desperate for any solution to the city’s cost-of-living crisis — even if the chance of success is remote.

Wall Street firms threw millions at stopping Mr Mamdani’s election. They failed.

Now they are going to have to find a way to work with a mayor who made it clear in his victory speech that he sees them as an enemy to be vanquished.

Throughout his campaign, Mr Mamdani positioned himself as a unifying candidate through his brand of smiley socialism. He was a radical, sure, but a mostly non-threatening one.

That evaporated when he took the stage. He taunted his opponent, former New York Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo.

“I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life. But let tonight be the final time I utter his name as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few,” he said.

There were words for President Trump too.

“We will hold bad landlords to account, because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants,” he said.

“We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks.”

Ironically, it was a speech that was Trumpian in both volume and message.

Mr Trump has cleaved America into nationalist conservatives versus liberal elites.

Mr Mamdani has done the same to the President’s hometown, dividing its citizens into oppressors and the oppressed.

The two men and their opposing ideologies are now on a collision course, headed for a fight from which neither will back down.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore.