Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) officially endorsed Zohran Mamdani for the city’s mayor.
In an opinion piece published in the New York Daily News, de Blasio wrote that Mamdani has “run on an agenda that puts working people first — a rent freeze for more than two million tenants, universal child care for all kids 6 weeks to 5-year-olds, faster and free buses.”
The former mayor acknowledged that New Yorkers “want to know one fundamental truth: can it be done?” He claimed that the “answer is yes,” explaining that he faced similar questions during his time as the city’s leader.
“Throughout my time in City Hall, the argument that my vision was recklessly idealistic — that it was both unrealistic and fraught with dangerous unintended consequences — was thrown at my plans for affordable housing, paid sick days, the $15 minimum wage and most of all, pre-K for All — all initiatives I delivered on,” de Blasio wrote.
The “same overheated condemnations” of 2025 “yield the same result as in 2013,” he added, claiming that “not only does the public want what Mamdani is proposing, it actually all can be done.”
“We don’t just need Zohran Mamdani to be our mayor because he has the right ideas, or because they can be achieved,” de Blasio declared. “We need him because in his heart and in his bones he cannot accept a city that prices out the people who built it and keep it running.”
Last month, Mamdani launched a “Five Boroughs Against Trump” tour in New York City. Upon announcing the tour, Mamdani said there are “far too many parallels between Donald Trump and [former New York Governor] Andrew Cuomo,” arguing that “both administrations have been characterized by corruption, by a sense of impunity, by an inability of an executive to understand that no means no, a prioritization of the interests of billionaires over working people, and an agenda that is driven by little else beyond the retention and accumulation of power.”
