After bringing in $8 million from donors throughout New York Metropolis at a tempo by no means earlier than seen within the metropolis’s elections, mayoral candidate and state Rep. Zohran Kwame Mamdani referred to as on his supporters to shift their focus away from donating cash and towards creating “the one largest volunteer operation in New York Metropolis historical past.”
“I’m about to say one thing to you you’ve by no means heard a politician say: Please cease sending us cash,” said Mamdani (D-36) in a video posted on social media Monday.
The fundraising haul from 18,000 donors makes Mamdani the primary candidate within the mayoral race to succeed in the cap for donations, together with projected matching funds from town’s Marketing campaign Finance Board, and comes three months earlier than the Democratic major.
Halting fundraising efforts — despite the fact that his present donations are solely a projection and gained’t be confirmed till the Marketing campaign Finance Board makes its public funding choices on April 15 — “implies that I don’t must spend the hours that I’ve sitting at a desk calling by means of our supporters and asking them for his or her cash,” Mamdani instructed Gothamist. “It implies that as an alternative, I’m now asking New Yorkers for his or her time as we search to construct the one largest volunteer operation we’ve ever seen within the New York Metropolis’s mayor’s race.”
Within the video posted on Monday, the democratic socialist explains that he goals to develop his 7,000-strong volunteer drive to knock on greater than 1 million doorways throughout New York Metropolis earlier than the June major election.
At the moment is three months till the election. And because of all of you, we’re formally DONE fundraising.
Please don’t ship us cash. However we might love your time. pic.twitter.com/j8lfO5OhJm
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) March 24, 2025
“I train New York Metropolis historical past for a residing,” said historian Asad Dandia of Mamdani’s momentum. “This right here is historical past in actual time.”
A ballot launched Tuesday by Honan Technique Group found that — as he was within the group’s February survey — Mamdani is at present in second place within the major contest, with 18% of voters saying they favored him. Twelve % of voters stated they supported him final month.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is in first place with 41% of voters backing him, whereas metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander and Mayor Eric Adams — who’s going through federal corruption expenses — are trailing Mamdani with 8% and 6%, respectively.
“That is us whereas fasting,” Mamdani’s marketing campaign stated in response to the ballot numbers, in reference to Ramadan.
Mamdani has made deft use of social media to advertise his marketing campaign, posting pictures and movies of himself riding the subway alongside tens of millions of working New Yorkers; interviewing folks within the outer boroughs who both didn’t vote within the 2024 election or supported President Donald Trump; and announcing his proposal for city-owned grocery shops, which might “function with out a revenue motive or having to pay property taxes or hire, and would move on these financial savings” to New Yorkers.
The state meeting member, who has represented District 36 in Queens since 2021, additionally wants to make hire stabilized housing models “the bedrock of financial safety for town’s working class” by freezing hire, broaden a fare-free program for all metropolis bus traces, and introduce no-cost childcare.
Along with demanding solutions from Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, on the kidnapping of former Columbia College pupil protester Mahmoud Khalil, Mamdani has taken goal in latest days at Cuomo over his refusal to take questions from the press and his demand that nursing properties settle for residents who had lately had Covid initially of the pandemic, adopted by his understatement of the coronavirus demise toll at nursing properties.
“New York Metropolis deserves a frontrunner,” stated Mamdani at a press convention exterior Cuomo’s house constructing final week, “who won’t choose and select the moments wherein they’re accountable to this public.”
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