‘He’s so unafraid’: how New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani aced his TikTok game

Amelia Montooth was scrolling aimlessly through TikTok in January this year when a video of a New York City politician interviewing halal cart owners caught her attention. That was the first time she remembers seeing Zohran Mamdani, who was explaining how the Middle Eastern street food vendors who have become synonymous with the city’s culture could sell a plate of chicken over rice for $8 instead of $10 if four specific bills passed. 

“If I was the mayor, I’d be working with City Council from day one to make halal eight bucks again,” Mamdani said. The video was punctuated by his signature smile. It became Mamdani’s first viral hit, getting more than half a million views on TikTok and nearly 20 million views on X. For Montooth, a 28-year-old New Yorker and the founder of Mutuals Media, a digital media network that produces short-form video content, it was a welcome respite from the depressing feelings she’d had about politics since Donald Trump won re-election two months earlier.

“All of a sudden, here’s this ray of sunshine,” Montooth said. “It’s very authentic and real. He talks like a real person and he’s very direct.”

At the beginning of this year, Mamdani was polling at just 6%, while former New York governor Andrew Cuomo was favoured to win the race before he even officially entered it. But Mamdani pulled off a shockingly decisive win in the June Democratic primary. As the victor in the race to be the party’s official New York City mayoral candidate in an overwhelmingly liberal constituency, this makes him the frontrunner for Tuesday’s mayoral election. He would be the city’s first Muslim mayor and only the second democratic socialist to hold the office since David Dinkins in the early 90s. Internet fame doesn’t always translate to winning elections, but Mamdani’s style and substance sets him apart from his opponents and even other Democrats. 

“The big problem in the Democratic party is that they can’t turn out voters. His content and his vibe is a voter turnout process,” said Jamie Cohen, an associate professor of media studies at Queens College, City University of New York. “He acts more like an influencer. So he does motivate people’s movement and he influences civic action.”

In addition to growing a social media following that rivals some of the biggest national names in American politics, a staggering tens of thousands of New Yorkers have volunteered to knock on doors and cold-call their neighbours on behalf of Mamdani's campaign. This field operation has allowed Mamdani to compete with Cuomo’s billionaire backers, who face higher taxes if Mamdani wins. That is one of the candidate’s plans to make New York City more affordable, along with making bus rides free, freezing rent for many apartments, and providing free childcare.

Soon after learning about Mamdani’s platform, Montooth reached out to his team to see if he’d be interested in appearing on a short-form video series her network produces called Gaydar. It features a drag queen named Anania hosting person-on-the-street interviews about LGBTQ+ identity and culture. Mamdani said yes, and his episode went on to be viewed millions of times.

“His team was so unafraid, they didn’t even ask to look at the questions ahead of time,” Montooth said. “He’s not operating from a place of fear. He’s willing to go to any space, be on any podcast, talk to anyone.”

Mamdani, who is 34, has frequently appeared with left-leaning influencers like the socialist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who reaches millions of young people by talking about politics live for hours every day, and comedian Stavros Halkias, who is best known for a podcast called “Cum Town”. These online collaborations have exposed Mamdani to these creators’ wide audiences. Their controversies have also been used against him – as when Piker said America “deserved 9/11”, a statement which Mamdani called reprehensible during a mayoral debate. 

And as Mamdani’s star has risen, he has also been targeted with Islamophobic rhetoric, which has amped up in the weeks preceding the general election. Republican representatives have called him a “jihadist” and labelled him as “pro-Hamas” for condemning Israel’s attacks on Gaza as a genocide. A conservative congressman recently called him “disgusting” and told him to “go back to the Third World” after Mamdani was seen eating rice with his hands. 

His biggest challenger is still Cuomo, who is running against him as an independent. During the final televised debate between the mayoral candidates, Cuomo aimed multiple jabs at Mamdani’s popularity on TikTok. At the same time, Cuomo’s campaign posted and later deleted an attack ad featuring “criminals for Mamdani” that appeared to be AI-generated and was widely condemned as racist. It included a portrayal of a black man as a “pimp” trafficking a car full of white women.

“They try to say it’s about socialism, but I hear dog-whistles of racism,” said Cohen. “[Mamdani] turns his haters into content. He’s actually airing that out, and that is a civic tool, because it allows people to actually exit their echo chamber to see the other side.”

After the debate, Mamdani posted another signature video, this time talking about the hate and bigotry Muslim people endure in New York City. It was viewed 25 million times on X. Montooth said it was humanising. She’s afraid to get her hopes up for the election after last year, but if Mamdani wins, she’s most excited about a rent freeze. A little over a week ago, she joined 10,000 other people at Mamdani’s largest ever campaign rally in Queens to celebrate how far he’s come.

“He is the same person in real life as he is on screen,” Montooth said. “I just wish more politicians would take the note from Zohran, not necessarily to make amazing social media content, but to be a person.”

Kat Tenbarge is an award-winning independent journalist who writes the newsletter Spitfire News about internet culture and politics