Erhan Tuncel, a Turkish immigrant and taxi driver, first met Zohran Mamdani in 2021 when the then-brand-new New York State Assemblymember joined dozens of taxi drivers in a hunger strike outside City Hall.
For 45 days, they demanded debt relief from crushing medallion loans that had driven some drivers to bankruptcy. While other politicians offered words of support, Mamdani moved his office to the protest site and fasted alongside the drivers for 15 days.
Today Tuncel, 65, keeps his phone propped on his dashboard playing a Hot 97 radio station interview with Mamdani, now a candidate for New York mayor.
“He was a huge support in our struggle. He showed up every day and he was even arrested for blocking traffic on Broadway for half an hour,” says Tuncel. “Like many of his campaign videos now, he made videos of us drivers and treated us like brothers.” Tuncel adds: “He was there till the very end when we convinced the city to announce a debt-relief plan.”
Over the course of the mayoral election in New York, many candidates have spoken up against ICE and the Trump administration’s deportation policies, but few candidates have captured the attention of immigrant voters like Mamdani. After announcing his run for mayor in October 2024 as a relative outsider, the 33-year-old democratic socialist is polling second in the Democratic mayoral primary elections.
“I don’t try to start conversations with those riding in my cab but I get the sense that people like Mamdani because I sometimes get tipped a lot,” Tuncel says, as Mamdani’s voice fills the cab, explaining his plans for free buses and rent freezes. “He is the only candidate talking about making New York affordable for us.”
With immigrants making up nearly 40% of New York’s population, Mamdani’s campaign has been actively courting these voters through multilingual campaign ads. He has embraced his immigrant identity and his Muslim faith, rather than downplay it. And in an effort to build a coalition that attracts South Asian and immigrant voters, Mamdani’s campaign has published ads in Hindi and Urdu. He has also shown up at religious events at Durga Mandirs in Ridgewood and Eid prayers in Coney Island Avenue.
For Tuncel, and other taxi drivers who were part of the hunger strike — which include Richard Chow, a taxi driver who lost his brother to suicide during the taxi medallion crisis and Mamdani’s guest at the second and final mayoral debate on June 12 — Mamdani has compelled them to join his campaign rallies and spread the word about the upcoming mayoral election to fellow drivers in taxi lots.
According to Jagpreet Singh, a political director with DRUMBeats NYC, an affiliate of DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving) and one of the oldest organizations in New York focused on the South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities, Mamdani’s success in the election may depend on mobilizing voters, many of whom are immigrants, who have historically stayed home during elections.
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“If we see the same turnout as last time, it doesn’t bode well for Mamdani’s campaign,” Singh notes. (Only 1.1 million or 23.3% of those eligible voted when Eric Adams became mayor in 2021).
Mamdani’s campaign already marks a departure from the South Asian community’s traditionally limited involvement in New York electoral politics. DRUMBeats NYC, which is working with Mamdani’s canvassing operation, has deployed volunteers speaking Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Nepali, Tibetan and Guyanese Creole to conduct door-to-door outreach in immigrant neighborhoods across the city. The campaign estimates they have reached out to over 15,000 potential South Asian voters — 16,000 through phone calls and 8,000 through door-to-door visits by the end of May.
“Often speaking in the language, in culturally competent ways, you know, as your neighbor, as your community member, makes a big difference to canvassing,” Singh says. “Even the minute thing of getting people to open the door, we have 50% more likelihood of the voter opening the door when they are approached by someone speaking their language.”
In the 2024 presidential elections, many voters in Pakistani and Bangladeshi neighborhoods around Ocean Parkway near Kensington, Brooklyn, participated in the “leave it blank” campaign, where voters skipped the presidential race while still voting for down-ballot candidates in protest over Palestine. (A New York Times analysis showed these neighborhoods saw Trump gain 1 percentage point as Harris lost 39 points of support, suggesting the drop was due to the protesting Muslim voters).
“Voters were angry with the Democratic party [in 2024] because of the silence over the violence in Palestine and now we have a mayoral race where it is between Mamdani, a pro-Palestine candidate and Andrew Cuomo, who is supported by pro-Israel groups,” said Raza, a Pakistani student and immigrant who is helping with Mamdani’s campaign in Brooklyn. “This is an issue that is close to people in this community.” For concerns related to their visa status, they shared only their first name.
Shamil Bhatti, a homemaker from Lower Manhattan who earlier worked at a child daycare, felt that previous mayoral elections had ignored Muslim women and the issues important to them. “The campaign [by Mamdani] is different because he is reaching out to us and talking about universal childcare and cheap groceries. And he is doing so in our language, speaking to us in a way that shows he understands our struggles,” Shamil said. Shamil added that she is among a group of volunteers going to mosques in Brooklyn every Friday to convince more people to vote for Mamdani.
Also Read: NYC Mayoral Candidates Confront Trump-Era Anti-Immigration Policies at Mayoral Debate
Zakariya Khan, who helps manage the Quba Masjid in Midwood, Brooklyn said that religious leaders in the area are throwing their weight behind Mamdani’s campaign through the Muslim Votes Project, an organization that works to increase Muslim voter registration and participation.
Khan says the group initially supported Eric Adams in the run-up to the 2021 mayoral elections, using the mosque’s food distribution program that served hundreds of people during the pandemic to campaign for Adams when he was Brooklyn Borough President.
“At the time, it was one of the few places where people gathered and politicians were eager to work with us,” said Khan. But the group withdrew support from Adams after he expressed support for Israel in August 2020.
This time around, Khan is hoping that Mamdani is elected into office. “In Mamdani, we have an opportunity to elect a South Asian and Muslim mayor. He’s young, charismatic, and an organic leader. And crucially, he is not sponsored by the establishment,” says Khan.
With the Democratic primary elections just days away on June 24, it remains to be seen if Mamdani’s popularity in the immigrant areas of the city will help him garner more votes by mobilizing voters, particularly in neighborhoods with high populations of South Asians, who didn’t vote in the last mayoral elections.
