New York City elected a communist to be its next mayor on Tuesday. Uganda-born Zohran Mamdani is projected to win more than 50 percent of the Big Apple. Over the next few days, professional Republicans will shake their heads and lament the outcome of the race. But few, if any, will acknowledge the truth: Mamdani’s victory is the direct result of mass immigration.
New York City wasn’t lost to a communist because the radical left out-organized the Democrat establishment. New York City was lost to a communist because we lost control of our borders — not just our southern border, but every single border separating the United States from the rest of the world. Mass migration, whether legal or illegal, is national suicide.
And New York City is the proof.
A survey released in October from Patriot Polling found Mamdani had 62 percent support from foreign-born New Yorkers, and just 31 percent amongst American-born. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa had 40 percent and 25 percent support, respectively, among native-born Americans.
Even Mamdani — a dual citizen — seems aware that his base was foreign and decisive.
In a video posted to X this weekend, Mamdani spoke with a voter who said, “I just got my citizenship. And I’m voting for you.”
Mamdami himself celebrated the transformation of the electorate in his victory speech:
“We will fight for you, because we are you. Or, as we say on Steinway, ana minkum wa alaikum. Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city, who made this movement their own. I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties,” Mamdani said. “New York will remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.”
Putting aside Mamdani’s foreign support, he himself is proof of the problem. We didn’t just import new voters, we imported a new ruling class. Mamdani is from Uganda, a nation that has never truly sustained a functioning republic or culture of ordered liberty. His politics were clearly not founded on basic American habits or institutions of self-governance. His victory is what happens when a republic opens its doors to people who do not know how to maintain one.
When you replace the people who made a civilization with people from nations that have made clear they are incapable of self-governance and republicanism, you eventually set your own country up for the same failure that plagues many of these third-world nations. What’s more, Mamdani, and anyone who voted for him — including immigrants — have already proved they are uninterested in self-governance and incapable of assimilation to basic American values. Why? Because socialism is diametrically opposed to the principles on which our Constitutional republic was founded.
Every city and state that imports enough of the world’s population eventually imports its corresponding worldviews, too.
In fact, Alexander Hamilton cautioned in 1802 that foreigners will “entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived.” Even if they “should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism?” he warned.
And yet it would be surprising if, over the next few days, Republicans acknowledge that you cannot preserve the republic when you import people who are incapable of self-governance and republicanism.
We didn’t lose New York because of turnout. We lost it because we lost control of our borders.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
