Tuesday night, November 4, 2025, New York City elected the first millennial and Democratic Socialist Mayor of its time: Zohran Mamdani. He won with over 50% of the vote, beating out Republican Curtis Sliwa and disgraced former governor turned Independent Andrew Cuomo. As a Rockland resident, I obviously had no horse in this race, but given our proximity to the city and the all around dumpster fire of American politics, I’ve been very invested in watching it all unfold.

From 2007 until 2015, I called Manhattan my home. I moved in after college graduation and lived there during the Bloomberg mayorship and Obama administration. The NY Post (questionable integrity, but still) once referred to it as “The Golden Age of Gotham.” Crime was at a record low, you could afford rent, the city felt like it was thriving. Of course there were many unpopular policies, such as stop and frisk, but simply put the city was overall doing better than it is today.

Given the tumultuous last decade or so since I was a New York City resident, I’ve watched my beloved city cycle through two more mayors, neither of whom was very popular. Am I surprised that the city took this turn in their election of Mamdani? Honestly, no. The pendulum is heavy and it will swing back when people are pushed to their limits. Affordability and cost of living is astronomical, crime is back up, homelessness is back up, people are fed up. Voters turned out in record numbers to make their voices heard.

Here was a man promising to make New York City more affordable and equitable. New Yorkers want rent freezes, city owned grocery stores, free busing, more affordable childcare, as well as raising the city’s minimum wage and increasing taxes for wealthy corporations. Voters are sick of billionaire backed politicians and nepo-babies, not to mention those accused of sexual misconduct. Mamdani is young, he knows how to use social media and was doing Tai Chi lessons with seniors, hours after hitting the clubs with the twenty-somethings. He knew how to connect and people were energized to head to the polls.

So would I have voted for him? In the spirit of honesty, no I wouldn’t have…but it had nothing to do with his policies. In my gut, I could not vote for a man who has further stoked the flames of antisemitism in the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. I don’t buy the assurances he made that he will fight Jew hatred. Sure, he’s cozied up to a few rabbis and showed up at high holiday services. I used to work in PR, this is exactly what he should have done.

What he hasn’t done, however, is reckon with his past and point blank said to his ardent followers “hey, let’s not fan the flames of blood libel against Jewish New Yorkers.” In the final days of his campaign, after he had already begun to try and assuage the fears of Jews, he chose to run a phone bank with Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn was a UK politician who was expelled from his own party for how badly he handled antisemitism.

A look at his past record: Mamdani once rapped/sang “Love to the Holy Land Five”, a charity group that has funneled millions of dollars to Hamas. There are old videos of him mocking Orthodox jews. When he founded his SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) chapter, he refused to engage with any group that has had any engagement with Israel. Most notably, he didn’t immediately denounce the use of the term “Globalize the Intifada.” Has he changed his stance since? Supposedly, but how much do you or his followers even believe that?

October 7th shattered any sense of safety that Jews have felt both in Israel and in the diaspora. We have been ostracized and demonized in every single place we have ever lived, except for Israel. It is becoming popular and commonplace to conflate Jews who support their heritage and homeland with “war mongering, Genocidal Zionists” and other lovely names that people want to call us.

We just want to be able to go to our synagogues, send our kids to religious school and shop at Kosher markets without worrying that we have a target on our backs. Non-jews do not get to define what feels antisemitic and scary to us. They don’t get to tell us that what we are experiencing and fearing just isn’t true. It’s REAL. I see and read things everyday in this job that prove our fears are justified.

I’ve seen a lot of incendiary posts throughout this election. I’ve also found myself feeling further abandoned from my party and some of my acquaintances, further reinforcing a proclamation I made in a previous article that to be a Jew lately feels like being “politically homeless.” And I do intend to address both sides of this coin in another newsletter. There’s been a sharp incline in neo-nazism and Christian nationalist behavior with certain Right Wing figures in America, proving that the horseshoe theory is alive and well.

Last thing to note, I’m disappointed that the only other viable option for NYC mayor was Andrew Cuomo. (I’m sorry, but Sliwa had under 10% of votes) Cuomo was dismissed from the Governor’s office for sexual harassment and misconduct. Many feel that he fumbled the ball during Covid, badly mishandling nursing homes and losing a lot of lives in the process. His campaign was also an absolute joke, sloppily leaning on AI and Islamaphobic remarks. New Yorkers deserve better. If I was still an NYC resident, I’d have to contend with voting against my interests as a Jew or as a woman, a choice that feels personally impossible.

Alas, since 2023 it seems like most of New York, and the world, don’t give a lick about Jews and blatant antisemitism isn’t a political deterrent, here we are with Mayor Mamdani. New York will always be my city and I want to see it thrive. Only time will tell how it will all unfold. All we can do right now is hold steadfast, invest in our communities, renew our faith, buckle down and do the work. The circle may be getting smaller, but I still believe it’s also getting stronger.