Socialist NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Was Raised by Hollywood Royalty

New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani may boast far-left socialist views, but like so many of his ilk, those views do not square with his privileged background as Hollywood royalty.

The son of acclaimed Indian-American director Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding), Mamdani grew up around privilege and has gone to great lengths to hide it. In some instances, Mamdani has employed fake accents depending on the group of people he’s addressing. Some examples:

In 2023, before Mamdani had entered the race as a mayoral candidate for America’s preeminent city, City and State New York even boasted he was “bringing Hollywood glamor to Albany” after winning a seat in the New York State Assembly:

Now a sitting lawmaker, the 32-year-old Mamdani has brought his cinematic flair and performance instincts to the campaign trail and the halls of the state Capitol. He has also become something of a spokesperson for the crossroads of his multiple identities; he’s one of the state’s most prominent socialist lawmakers, one of only a handful of Muslims in state office and among the first South Asians to serve in the Legislature. But where others may shy away from it, Mamdani thrives in the limelight. And he has been able to use that to his advantage in notching major victories less than two full terms into his tenure in the state’s lower chamber. “I think a lot of politics is storytelling, and that is also at the crux of rapping and filmmaking,” he told City & State.

Mamdani’s career path may appear to an onlooker as unusual, until one takes into account his parents. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a prominent Marxist scholar at Columbia University, and his mother, Mira Nair, is an Academy Award-nominated film director. Part of his childhood was spent on movie sets, and Mamdani curated and produced the soundtrack for his mother’s 2016 movie, “Queen of Katwe.” Under his rap alter ego “Young Cardamom,” he contributed a rap to one of the songs featured in the film. “It’s truly a wild thing when your mother happens to be one of your favorite filmmakers,” Mamdani said. But her success didn’t come easily as an Indian woman looking to make movies in Hollywood about issues facing the South Asian diaspora. “She has this mantra of, if we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will,” Mamdani said.

Director Mira Nair and son Zohran Mamdani arrive at the premiere of Disney’s “Queen Of Katwe” at the El Capitan Theatre on September 20, 2016 in Hollywood, California. (Gregg DeGuire/WireImage)

As Breitbart News reported on Monday, a recent poll showed that Mamdani currently leads the New York City primary poll as the possible Democratic nominee.

“In the first-choice vote, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo leads Mamdani 36 percent to 34 percent. That should be that, but in the insane ranked-choice system (an election system which has kept Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski in the U.S. Senate), if no candidate reaches 50 percent, the race moves to round two where the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are distributed based on the second choices made by voters. This continues, round after round, until someone hits above 50 percent,” it reported.

“In other words, Andrew Cuomo might have a plurality of support in round one, but if more voters choose Mamdani as their second choice than choose Cuomo, then Mamdani gets more votes from the person eliminated,” it added.

Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning Christian tech thriller, EXEMPLUM, which has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critic rating and can be viewed for FREE on YouTube, Tubi, or Fawesome TV. “Better than Killers of the Flower Moon,” wrote Mark Judge. “You haven’t seen a story like this before,” wrote Christian Toto. A high-quality, ad-free rental can also be streamed on Google Play, Vimeo on Demand, or YouTube Movies. Follow him on X @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.