On a rainy Sunday evening in May, Kuber Sancho Persad found himself in an unusual place for a New York taxi driver: standing in line outside a popular concert venue in Brooklyn.

The venue was familiar territory for twentysomethings heading to indie shows, not for working immigrants like Persad. But this was not a concert. Persad was there to attend 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani’s first major campaign rally in his bid to become the mayor of New York.

Mamdani is competing for the Democratic Party nomination in the party “primary” on June 24 – effectively the main contest in a city where about two-thirds of voters are registered Democrats. The winner of the primary is very likely to prevail in the mayoral election in November.

Since Mamdani announced he would run for mayor in October 2024, he has transformed the election with a series of pathbreaking policy proposals and quirky videos – diving into the Atlantic Ocean on New Year’s Day to promote his rent-freeze plan, interviewing voters in “Little Bangladesh” about why they voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election and using Bollywood clips to explain the system of “ranked choice voting”.

But Kuber, an Indo-Caribbean cab driver living in Astoria in New York, did not discover Mamdani through campaign videos or his progressive policy proposals. He knew him from 2021, when Kuber and a dozen other taxi drivers staged a hunger strike outside City Hall, seeking debt relief from loans taken to buy permits that had driven some drivers to bankruptcy.

For 15 days, Mamdani – then a member of the New York state assembly – fasted alongside the protestors, setting up his office at the site of the demonstration until the city administration agreed to negotiate.

Since he ran for the state assembly in 2020, Zohran Mamdani has built his political career around a simple premise: that the contradictions of his own privileged life – he is the son of filmmaker Mira Nair and academic Mahmood Mamdani – do not impede his ability to fight for taxi drivers and tenants, but rather obligate him to do so.

He describes himself as a democratic socialist.

But building a coalition broad enough to win a New York mayoral election is his biggest challenge yet. His vocal support for Palestinian rights has sparked accusations of antisemitism in a city in which close to 11.6% of residents are Jewish. His progressive policies face scepticism even within communities that might be expected to support him.

Now, with the Democratic primary elections just days away, this is his moment of reckoning.

When Mamdani announced he would run for mayor in October 2024, he was a relative outsider. An early poll showed 80% of New Yorkers were unfamiliar with him.

But since then, his campaign gathered 40,000 volunteers. They have knocked on a million doors in the city to inform New Yorkers about Mamdani. By March 24, Mamdani became the first candidate to reach the $8 million limit in donations legally allowed for primary spending.

That amount came from around 18,000 contributors – more than the rest of the field combined.

He has produced slick videos touting his policy proposals, which include free buses, a rent freeze for all rent-stabilised tenants, free childcare up to age 5 and affordable groceries at stores owned by the city.

In these eight months, Mamdani has been seemingly everywhere all at once – attending union events, rallies, galas and protests. His campaign has reached out to South Asian and Muslim voters heavily in an effort to get them to vote.

“The path to victory lies in getting these communities, which did not vote overwhelmingly in the last mayoral election, to turn out and vote for Mamdani,” said Jagpreet Singh, the political director of an organisation that works with South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities in New York.

South Asian community leaders who have endorsed Mamdani stress that his appeal lies in his genuine commitment to working-class issues rather than symbolic representation – a view that Mamdani himself shares.

“I am proud to be the first South Asian elected official to run for mayor of this city,” Mamdani told Scroll. “And yet I know, as excited as I would be, representation in and of itself cannot feed the families of this city that are starving. It is a means by which they can see themselves in politics but more important than seeing oneself is being able to be fed by the same politics.”

Mamdani's own story as an immigrant mirrors that of many New Yorkers he now seeks to represent. He arrived in New York, aged seven, after growing up in Kampala, Uganda.

By the time Mamdani graduated from Bowdoin College with a bachelor's degree in Africana studies in 2014, he had already found his political voice by co-founding the institute’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

Even though he briefly harboured hopes of a career in hip-hop (going under the name Mr Cardamom), the music scene led him to local politics.

In 2015, he volunteered for lawyer Ali Najmi's city council campaign. He had learned about Najmi through Das Racist rapper Himanshu “Heems” Suri, who was backing Najmi. Though Najmi lost, Mamdani joined the Muslim Democratic Club started by Najmi with long-term goal of building a field operation that could influence local elections in New York.

Mamdani joined the Democratic Socialists of America in 2017 after Bernie Sanders’ presidential run and worked on a number of political campaigns. They reshaped how Mamdani viewed New York’s politics and spurred him to run for the state assembly.

He was elected in 2021.

That year, when the New York Taxi Workers Alliance fought for debt relief from the city, Mamdani became one of their main advocates and was arrested for blocking traffic on Broadway.

“...There was a way in which he would treat every driver with affection and respect,” said Bhairavi Desai, the president of the taxi workers alliance. After 45 days of protests and a 14-day hunger strike, the city adopted a plan capping loans and monthly payments for drivers.

During the 2021 New York state budget negotiations, Mamdani was among those who fought for the excluded workers fund – “a form of unemployment insurance for undocumented immigrants and cash earners”, said Singh. When moderate Democrats balked at the proposal, Mamdani spearheaded a sleep-out in the Capitol’s war room as a pressure tactic.

“We were able to help a lot of South Asian and Indo-Caribbean workers apply for this benefit,” said Singh.

Despite some success with his legislative work, a viral online presence and a strong canvassing operation, Mamdani is still trailing the favorite Andrew Cuomo, whose name recognition from three terms as governor gave him a headstart in the mayoral race.

Even though he resigned from office in 2021 in the face of an investigation after several women accused him of sexual harassment, a poll on Wednesday showed Cuomo leading Mamdani 56% to 44%.

Cuomo has received major corporate backing, with the largest contribution of $2.5 million coming from the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobby group.

The challenge facing Mamdani is evident even in South Asian neighborhoods in New York like Jackson Heights in Queens where several business owners managing restaurants, food carts, meat shops and grocery stores were unfamiliar with the mayoral election this year.

The few who were familiar with Mamdani were sceptical about his campaign promises.

“I have been hearing about him [Mamdani] recently but how will he realistically keep his election promises?” asked Hamid Kayani, a businessman from Pakistan. “Also, how does he plan to fund his rent freeze proposal?.”

Mamdani’s pitch is to tax the rich – raising the corporate tax rate and implementing a 2% tax on those earning above $1 million annually. His rent freeze proposal would also require him to gain control over the Rent Guidelines Board, whose members are directly appointed by the mayor.

Under the current mayor Eric Adams, the board has voted to increase rents every year.

Since his campaign gained momentum, Mamdani’s events are being increasingly attended by a small but vocal group of Islamophobic protestors.

On June 13, taxi driver Shan Singh was among those who tried to disrupt an event organised by the Muslim Vote Project in Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn. Singh wore a “Make America Great Again” cap and identified himself as a Hindutva supporter.

“I’m aware of his hunger strike [for taxi drivers] but people are pandering to certain communities to get votes,” said Singh. “We must notice Muslims are moving into Europe in large numbers and changing governmental representation. This is now happening in America as well.”

Also protesting was Stephanie Benshimol, a retired school teacher and a Jewish activist who participates in weekly walks for the release of Israeli hostages.

“How does he plan to ensure the safety of Jewish New Yorkers when we have seen a deeply divided New York in the last twenty months?” she asked.

Mamdani, who has described the violence in Gaza as a genocide and spoken of his support for divestment from Israel, has been accused of antisemitism by several pro-Israel groups in New York. In the first televised mayoral debate on June 4, Mamdani was the only candidate asked if he would visit Israel and whether he believed it should exist as a Jewish state.

He said that he believed in “Israel’s right to exist as a state with equal rights”.

The disruptions at his campaign events (one of them ended with the arrest of a protestor for biting a volunteer working with Mamdani’s campaign) represent one hurdle. Others point to his lack of experience in running a city as complex as New York.

An even bigger challenge are his poll numbers in Black working-class neighborhoods. Recent polling shows him trailing Cuomo in these neighborhoods. One poll in late May found Cuomo commanding 74% support among Black voters.

Mamdani acknowledged the challenges he faces but argued that his message on affordability will resonate with voters.

“I think we are seeing our appeal about affordability in New York is resonating especially in these neighborhoods where people understand what it means to be left behind by the economic policies of the administration,” he said. “Families in these neighborhoods have experienced the highest water bill in 13 years and have seen the Con Edison bill [for gas and electricity] go up by $65.”

He added, “...We are putting forward policies to showcase an alternative.”

In a ranked choice voting election where voters list candidates by preference and votes are redistributed until someone reaches a majority, Mamdani’s ability to win over second- and third-choice votes could matter as much as his core support.

There are many who believe in Mamdani’s vision for New York. But it remains to be seen if they have convinced enough New Yorkers to join them.