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Zohran Kwame Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist wunderkind who rose from political obscurity and charmed skeptics from the boardroom to the White House, was publicly sworn in as New York City’s mayor on Thursday.
In his first speech as mayor, before a shivering crowd of thousands outside City Hall, Mr. Mamdani sought to immediately assure New Yorkers that he intended to carry out his affordability agenda, and that he would refuse to “reset expectations” for what government can and should deliver for the working class and the unprotected.
“The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations,” Mr. Mamdani said. “Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously.”
He promised to lead unapologetically both as a left-wing Democrat — “I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist,” he said — and as a mayor for all New Yorkers, including those who did not support him.
To those “who view this administration with distrust or disdain,” Mr. Mamdani said, “I promise you this. If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor. Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you and never, not for a second, hide from you.”
The star-studded ceremony at City Hall featured two avatars of the progressive wing of American politics who had helped propel Mr. Mamdani to the mayoralty: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow Democrat representing parts of Queens and the Bronx, delivered opening remarks, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont administered the oath of office, with Mr. Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, resting his hand on two Qurans held by his wife, Rama Duwaji.
The message from the stage was unmistakable: In New York City, the left is ascendant. And to national Democratic leaders struggling to regain the party’s footing, Mr. Mamdani’s victory and the excitement surrounding it may suggest a path forward.
“New York, thank you for inspiring our nation,” Mr. Sanders said. “Thank you for giving us, from coast to coast, the hope and the vision that we can create government that works for all, not just the wealthy and the few.”
The event took place before thousands of well-wishers who flooded the plaza in front of City Hall and poured into a section of Broadway more typically closed off for parades down the Canyon of Heroes, but this time for the inauguration of a self-described champion of the underrepresented.
Amid the sea of knit caps, there were union emblems, Democratic Socialists of America apparel and the occasional kaffiyeh. Attendees stuffed hand warmers into gloves and shifted from foot to foot to warm their toes.
The midday event followed a significantly more modest and subdued swearing-in ceremony just after midnight, during which Mr. Mamdani legally became mayor of New York City.
The subsequent public ceremony and adjoining block party captured how many New Yorkers have hungered for a more earnest-seeming, more hopeful alternative to 21st-century American politics, and have been eager to turn the page on the cronyism and self-regarding swagger of the Eric Adams mayoralty.
After much equivocation, Mr. Adams, who once called himself the future of the Democratic Party, attended Thursday’s ceremony, and Mr. Mamdani spoke kindly of his ascent from an impoverished background to mayor of New York City. But when Mr. Mamdani nodded to mayors he admired from the past, Mr. Adams was not among them.
Shortly after the ceremony ended, Mr. Mamdani traveled to Brooklyn to announce that he had enacted several executive orders, including one that revoked all prior executive orders issued after Sept. 26, 2024, the date of Mr. Adams’s indictment.
“That was a date that marked a moment when many New Yorkers decided politics held nothing for them,” Mr. Mamdani said at a news conference in the borough.
The festive atmosphere of Thursday’s ceremony in Manhattan captured the generational, political, ethnic, and religious magnitude of Mr. Mamdani’s ascent.
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Mamdani New York Maor 2026
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