Read the full transcript of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s speech titled “We Will Not Bend” in Queens’ Forest Hills Stadium, October 27, 2025.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Thank you so much. Good evening, New York City! How we all doing? Habibi, how are you? It is so good to see you all here tonight.
Now as you know, a politician is only as good as the team around him. So I have to ask that team to start up this teleprompter. Because right now, it’s off the top of the dome. And while we wait, why don’t we actually begin?
Opening Acknowledgments
Can we first hear a round of applause for our incredible MC, Sarah Sherman. Can we hear it for the elected officials, the labor leaders, and the New Yorkers who have joined us this evening. And can we hear it for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Yeah, very good. You know, there are many things one can say about our Congresswoman, but I want to tell you a story about 2021. When we went on a 15-day hunger strike and won $450 million in debt relief for working-class taxi drivers, the Congresswoman was there with us on that picket line. She was there with us on the phone after everyone else had gone home. And she was there with us again in the primary of this election. And that’s because she’s there for working people.
And now we are just getting started. And let’s please make some noise for Senator Bernie Sanders.
The Movement That Built This Campaign
I stand before you tonight only because the Senator dared to stand alone for so long. I speak the language of democratic socialism only because he spoke it first. And when I ran for state assembly almost six years ago to the day, it was at Bernie’s rally in Queensbridge Park where I led our first canvas.
When we win on November 4th and then govern from City Hall with dignity as the foundation of our politics, it will be because of the movement that Bernie built.
I stand before you tonight as the nominee of a Democratic Party reinvigorated in its pursuit of making government work for everyone, not just the wealthy and the well-connected.
From Statistical Anomaly to People’s Movement
Looking out at more than 13,000 of you here in Forest Hills Stadium, it is tempting to believe that this moment was always destined. Yet when we launched this campaign on October 23rd, one year and three days ago, there was not a single television camera there to cover it.
When we launched this campaign one year and three days ago, my name was a statistical anomaly in every poll. Four months later, as recently as this February, our support had reached the eye-watering heights of 1%. We were tied with noted candidate “someone else.” I always knew we could beat him.
When we launched this campaign one year and three days ago, the political world did not pay it much attention because we were looking to build a movement that reflected the city as it actually is, not just the one that political consultants think exists on a spreadsheet.
And when we launched this campaign one year and three days ago, we were dismissed as a punchline in the halls of power. The idea of fundamentally changing who government serves in this city was unimaginable. Even if we gained momentum, they asked, how would we ever overcome the tens of millions of dollars in attacks that would follow?
New York Is Not for Sale
Yet we knew then what we know now. New York is not for sale.
As young people showed up in record numbers, as immigrants saw themselves in the politics of their city, as seniors once skeptical dared to dream again, we spoke with one voice: New York is not for sale.
And now, as we stand on the precipice of taking this city back from corrupt politicians and the billionaires that fund them, let our words ring out so loud tonight that Andrew Cuomo can hear them in his $8,000 a month apartment. Let them ring so loud so that he can hear us even if he’s in Westchester this evening. Let them ring so loud that his puppet master in the White House hears us. New York is not for sale.
Thirteen days after we announced our candidacy, Donald Trump won the presidency once again. The Bronx and Queens saw some of the largest shifts to the right of any counties in our country.
No matter what article you read or channel you turned to, the story seemed to be the same. Our city was headed to the right. Obituaries were written about Democrats’ abilities to reach Asian voters, young voters, male voters. Again and again we were told that if we had any hope of beating the Republican Party, it would only be by becoming the Republican Party.
Andrew Cuomo himself said that we had lost not because we had failed to speak to the needs of working class Americans, but because we had spent too much time talking about bathrooms and sports teams. This was a moment where it seemed our political horizon was narrowing.
A Choice to Retreat or to Fight
And in this moment, New York, you had a choice. A choice to retreat or to fight. And the choice that we made was to stop listening to those experts and to start listening to you.
We went to two of the places that saw the biggest swings to the right, Fordham Road and Hillside Avenue. These New Yorkers were far from the caricature of Trump voters. They told us they supported Donald Trump because they felt disconnected from a Democratic Party that had grown comfortable with mediocrity and gave its time only to those who gave millions.
They told us that they felt abandoned by a party beholden to corporations, which asked them for their votes after telling them only what it was against rather than presenting a vision of what it was for. They told us they didn’t believe in a system anymore that did not even pretend to offer solutions to the defining challenge of their lives, the cost of living crisis.
Rent was too expensive, so were groceries, so was child care, so was taking the bus and working two or three jobs still wasn’t enough. Trump, for all his many flaws, had promised them an agenda that would put more money in their pockets and lower the cost of living.
Donald Trump lied. It was up to us to deliver for the working people he left behind.
A Movement Powered by Everyday New Yorkers
Over the eight months of the primary, we told New Yorkers how we intended to address that very same affordability crisis. We did not do it alone. This was a movement powered by tens of thousands of everyday New Yorkers who knocked doors between 12-hour shifts at work and phone-banked until their fingers were numb.
People who had never voted before became die-hard canvassers. Community formed. Our city got to know each other and itself. This, my friends, was your movement. And it always will be.
As the snow melted and the frost thawed, this campaign began to grow faster than anyone ever imagined possible. So many small donors chipped in that we had to ask you to stop donating. Please stop. We climbed the polls faster than Andrew Cuomo could dial Donald Trump’s number. People started to learn how to pronounce my name.
The Billionaires Got Scared
And the billionaires got scared. Or, as the New York Times would describe it, “the Hamptons was basically in group therapy about the mayoral race.”
Andrew Cuomo and his corporate cronies did everything they could to make this campaign one of fear and one of smallness. Hell yeah. Obviously. They pumped millions into this race. Artificially lengthened my beard to make me seem menacing. Painted our city as a dystopian hellhole. And worked night and day to divide the people of New York.
They failed.
When I walked the length of Manhattan just a few days before the election, hundreds of New Yorkers marched alongside me. And when we strode into Times Square under a billboard with betting odds that showed Cuomo’s chances of winning at nearly 80 percent, we knew that the so-called experts were set to get it wrong yet again.
Shattering the Inevitable
Andrew Cuomo was supposed to be inevitable, and then on June 24th, we shattered that inevitability. We won by 13 percent, with the most votes in any citywide primary in New York City history. Some of those New Yorkers had voted for Trump. Many others had never voted before, and when Andrew Cuomo called me to concede at 10:15 that night, he said over the phone that we had created a tremendous force.
When you insist on building a coalition with room for every New Yorker, that is exactly what you create, a tremendous force.
That force has only grown over these past four months. We now have more than 90,000 volunteers, and we have spoken to millions more New Yorkers. We have put forth new plans in these last few months for how we will govern, hiring thousands more teachers for our schools, taking on the consultants and the contracts in city government, and tackling the final boss of New York City infrastructure, scaffolding.
But over the past few weeks, as this race has entered its final days, we have witnessed displays of Islamophobia that shock the conscience. Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams, and Curtis Lewa do not have an agenda for the future. All they possess is the playbook of the past.
They have sought to make this election a referendum, not on the affordability crisis that consumes New Yorkers’ lives, but on the faith I belong to and the hatred they seek to normalize. We spent months working to convince the world that New Yorkers have a right to afford this city that we all love. Now we are being forced to defend the idea that a Muslim is even allowed to lead it.
These same big-money donors and disgraced politicians have sought to rob us of our ambition, because they do not think that you deserve the beauty of a dignified life. And time and again they have encouraged you to imagine less, because they know that a reimagined New York hurts their bottom line.
A City as Ambitious as Its People
I believe that this city is like the universe, constantly expanding. We deserve a city government as ambitious as the working New Yorkers who make it the greatest city in the world. We cannot wait for someone else to deliver it. We are not afforded the luxury of waiting, because too often to wait is to trust those who delivered us to this point.
On November 4th, we will set the course of our city back in the direction it belongs. And in doing so, we will answer a question that our nation has wrestled with from the dawn of our founding: Who is allowed to be free?
The Oligarchs Who Oppose Freedom
There are some who hear that question and they know the answer without hesitation. They are the oligarchs who have accumulated vast wealth off those who labor from before the light breaks the horizon until long after color has drained from the sky. These are the robber barons of America, and they believe their money affords them a larger say than the rest of us.
I am not just talking about the Bill Ackmans and Ken Langones of the world. I speak of people whose names you are not familiar with, who have no qualms about contributing more to super PACs than we would ever tax them, and who celebrate when those PACs flood our airwaves with commercials that plaster the words “global jihad” over my face.
Their freedom doesn’t just come at the expense of dignity and truth. It comes at the expense of the freedoms of others, too. They are the authoritarians who seek to keep us pressed beneath their thumbs, because they know that once we shake ourselves loose, we will never be held down again.
Each and every one of these people think New York is for sale. For too long, my friends, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it. The oligarchs of New York are the wealthiest people in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. They do not want the equation to change. They will do everything they can to prevent their grip from weakening.
Freedom for All
The truth is as simple as it is non-negotiable. We are all allowed freedom. Each one of us, the working people of this city, the taxi drivers, the line cooks, the nurses. All those seeking lives of grace, not greed, we all get to be free.
And on November 4th, thanks to the hard work of more than 90,000 volunteers across every corner of this city, that is exactly what we will tell the world. Because while Donald Trump’s billionaire donors think that they have the money to buy this election, we have a movement of the masses. And we are a movement that is not afraid of what we believe. And we’ve believed it for quite some time.
Those who worry about what this movement may look like on January 1st are the ones who worried on October 23rd what it may look like tonight. But our purpose has not changed and neither have our promises.
Our Concrete Promises
As I said on the evening I announced, the job of government is to actually make our lives better. And in the exact words I said on October 23rd, here is what we stand for, my friends.
We are going to freeze the rent for more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants and use every resource at our disposal to build housing for everyone who needs it. We are going to eliminate the fare on every single bus line and make what are currently the slowest buses in the nation move around this city with ease.
And we are going to create universal childcare at no cost to parents so New Yorkers can raise their family in the city they love. Together New York, we’re going to freeze up. Together New York, we’re going to make buses fast in. Together New York, we’re going to deliver universal. We will make our city one where every person who calls it home can live a dignified life.
No New Yorker should ever be priced out of anything they need to survive. And we believe then, we believe today, we will believe tomorrow that it is government’s job to deliver that dignity. Dignity, my friends, is another way of saying freedom.
The Legacy of Government Action
Standing before you this evening, I take great strength from those who have labored mightily for the cause of freedom in America, who refused to accept that government could not meet what moments of crisis demanded from it. When the power of the people overwhelms the influence of the powerful, there is no crisis the government cannot meet.
It was government that enacted a New Deal to lift a generation out of poverty, to create beautiful public goods, and establish the right to unionize and collectively bargain. My friends, the era of government that deems an issue too small or a crisis too big must come to an end. Because we need a government that is every bit as ambitious as our adversaries.
A government strong enough to refuse the realities we will not accept and forge the future we know we deserve. A government that refuses to accept one in four New Yorkers living in poverty, that refuses to accept more than 150,000 public school students being homeless, that refuses to accept that two union salaries are not enough to put down a mortgage in this city. And a government that refuses to accept you being priced out of the very city you helped to build every single day.
Seizing the Moment for Change
Time and again, our nation has teetered on the precipice of hopelessness. Now is one of those times. But in each of these moments, working people have reached into the darkness and reshaped our democracy. No longer will we allow the Republican Party to be the one of ambition. No longer will we have to open a history book to read about Democrats leading with big ideas.
My friends, the world is changing. It’s not a question of whether that change will come. It’s a question of who will change it. We have an opportunity before us that few have ever received and even fewer have seized. It’s the opportunity to show the world what it means to win freedom. It is the opportunity to live up to the legacy left by those who came before.
We do not get to determine the scale of a crisis. Our choice is how we respond. Let us win a City Hall that works for those straining to buy groceries, not those straining to buy our democracy. And let us look forward to January 1st, when the hard work of governing will begin.
Policy Commitments That Demand Fulfillment
Those in power would like to describe our policy commitments as if they are illusions that will evaporate as soon as we approach City Hall. Let us show them instead that they are invocations of the future that we will win. And let us prove to each and every New Yorker that a politics of expansion does not just mean imagination. It insists upon fulfillment. We can make City Hall a place where New Yorkers come to expect the future, not just failure.
Rejecting Complacency in the Final Days
But we are not there yet. Just as Andrew Cuomo’s victory in the primary was thought to be inevitable, the same narrative has started to form around us today. When you read the articles that tell a post-election story of triumph while we are amidst early voting, when you see the calshy odds that have our chances of victory in the 90s, know this: you are reading the same things that Andrew Cuomo read when he went to sleep each night in June, believing that his victory was promised.
We cannot allow complacency to infiltrate this movement. So over these nine final days, I ask for only one thing from each of you: more. I know you are tired, and for that I recommend some Adani chai. And still, I ask for more. I know the attacks have intensified, that a warm bed is more inviting than a sixth-floor walk-up, that another evening spent knocking doors after a long workday feels daunting. And still, I ask for more.
I ask for more because that is the only way that we win a future of more. So if you are able, I urge you, my friends, stand up.
If you have knocked a door, turn your flashlight on. If you will knock a door, turn your flashlight on. If you have more to give, turn your flashlight on. Together, let us make a light bright enough to banish any darkness.
Over these final nine days, and the months and years that follow, the powers that be will throw everything in their arsenal against us. They will spend millions more dollars. They will attack us from every conceivable angle. But we will not bend. We will not flinch. We will triumph over the oligarchs, and we will return dignity to our lives.
Meeting Our Match and Our Master
Nearly eighty-nine years ago to the day, FDR spoke before a crowd of thousands at Madison Square Garden. He said, “I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it these forces met their master.”
My friends, I should like to have it said of our campaign that in it the forces of selfishness and lust for power met their match. And I should like to have it said of our city hall that in it these forces met their master.
New York, our work has only just begun. On November 4th, we set ourselves free. Thank you.
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