Zohran Mamdani: NYC’s New Socialist Mayor Sparks Controversy in First Week

The Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC)
January 9, 2026
by Shane Harris

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Mayor Mamdani’s Nightmare Starts

When New York City’s 8.5 million residents elected a self-professed socialist to be their next leader, conservatives across the country warned that his tenure would be a disaster. But the first week of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s term has been even worse than most predicted.

Like a true Marxist, one of Mamdani’s first acts was erecting a monument to himself. The 34-year-old Ugandan-born immigrant was officially sworn in as the Big Apple’s 111th (or 112th, depending on how you’re counting) mayor just after midnight on January 1. Mamdani, the first Muslim mayor of the city, took his oath of office on a Quran, which will now be kept on display at the main branch of the New York Public Library alongside a photo of his swearing-in and the slogans “The People’s Qur’an” and “Making history at City Hall.”

Clearly, the new mayor wants everyone to understand just how important he is.

Mamdani’s inaugural address, which sounded like a ChatGPT rewrite of the Communist Manifesto, was even more ghastly. “I was elected as a Democratic Socialist and I will govern as a Democratic Socialist,” he declared, promising to start an “era of big government” and to govern “expansively and audaciously.”

By far the most controversial line was his pledge to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” Perhaps nothing else he has said so completely captures just how dangerous, ignorant, and deeply un-American Mamdani and his political ideology are. Rugged individualism is the beating heart of the American spirit. It fueled the first settlers to forge a new nation from wilderness, spurred on the Founding Fathers to craft a cradle of liberty from tyranny, and has sustained every generation of American patriots since.

The record of collectivism, meanwhile, is one of scarcity, pain, and despair. According to the best estimates, “collectivism” (also known as communism) killed 100 million people in the 20th century alone. That Mayor Mamdani doesn’t know this – or perhaps just doesn’t care – should be terrifying.

Lest any listener still have doubts about what Mamdani’s socialist dystopia will look like, the new mayor also pointed to South Africa as a model of his governing philosophy – specifically encouraging New Yorkers to view every problem through the lens of racial injustice. Never mind the fact that South Africa is rapidly descending into chaos and violence as white farmers are killed en masse. Mamdani wants us all to know that he wants America’s largest city to look just like Johannesburg, and that anti-white discrimination is his guiding light.

For anyone unconvinced of that fact, just look at the record of Catherine Almonte Da Costa, Mamdani’s first Director of Appointments – the individual charged with placing candidates in senior leadership positions throughout the city government. In 2016, Da Costa wrote, “It’s important that white people feel defeated.”

Da Costa lasted just one day in the job before she was forced to resign over antisemitic posts, including one that complained about “money-hungry Jews.” But Mamdani has continued to support Cea Weaver, his executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, in spite of her own troubling social media history.

Along with calling for treating private property as a “collective good,” Weaver stated her desire to “impoverish the *white* middle class” and described homeownership as “a weapon of white supremacy.” In another social media missive from 2018, she wrote: “There is no such thing as ‘good gentrifier,’ only people who are actively working on projects to dismantle white supremacy and capitalism and people who aren’t.”

Weaver has also called on people to seize private property and elect communist lawmakers. Yet in true champagne socialist fashion, Weaver’s mother, who is white, owns a $1.4 million home in Nashville, and Weaver burst into tears when a reporter asked her about it.

Of Mamdani’s other appointees who aren’t somewhere to the political left of Joseph Stalin, most are hopelessly unqualified. Perhaps the most glaring example of this is Mamdani’s choice of Lillian Bonsignore as the next fire department commissioner.

In announcing Bonsignore, Mamdani gushed about the fact that she would be the second woman and the first openly gay individual to lead the department, but was strangely silent on the details of her experience as a firefighter – probably because she has none. Bonsignore most recently served as EMS chief for three years before retiring in 2022. She has never been a firefighter.

The appointment outraged many longtime firefighters, as Mamdani passed over more senior and qualified choices. “It’s so stupid,” one told The New York Post. “EMTs have no idea what firemen do. They have no idea how to fight a fire.”

Stupid as it may be, it’s likely only a sign of things to come for New York City. No decent American wants to see his fellow citizens suffer. But elections have consequences, and Mayor Mamdani is showing just how dire they can be.