It’s been a colossal year for Zohran Mamdani. In Oct. 2024, nobody paid any attention when he announced his candidacy to be the next mayor of New York City. And why would they? He was a Democratic Socialist Muslim in his early thirties with only a few years of legislative experience in the New York State Assembly.
But Mamdani was laser-focused on a message of affordability for regular New Yorkers. More and more people began to pay attention and agree with what he was saying, all helped by his natural charisma and affable nature.
In June 2025, he pulled off a historic upset to defeat Andrew Cuomo to win the Democratic primary. Cuomo didn’t get the hint and ran as an independent, conducting a dirty campaign scaremongering over Mamdani’s religion. Mamdani stayed on message, continued to beat the drum of affordability, and on election day crushed his opponents.
Establishment Democrats and Republicans alike are unnerved by Mamdani’s popularity. But none more so than Ted Cruz, who appears to think Mamdani is a “frontrunner” for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination despite being ineligible under the current rules!
Ted Cruz: "I think right now the 2 frontrunners for the Democratic nomination in 2028 are AOC and Mamdani. Now, he's not even eligible, but what do they care? Law doesn't mean anything to them. That's where their party is." pic.twitter.com/zSlwbyhmUx
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 6, 2025
“I think right now the 2 frontrunners for the Democratic nomination in 2028 are AOC and Mamdani. Now, he’s not even eligible, but what do they care? Law doesn’t mean anything to them. That’s where their party is.”
The biggest compliment any Republican has given him
Now look, I know Cruz is attempting to use this as a way to attack the Democrats, claiming they’re willing to run roughshod over the law to put an American born in Uganda in the White House. But, frankly, it’s inspiring that Cruz believes that Mamdani could be a potential candidate and this is the most complimentary thing any Republican has said about the new mayor to date.
It also goes without saying that Cruz isn’t so much throwing stones in glass houses here, but rather pulling the trigger on some kind of stone-blasting mounted minigun. It’s rich to accuse Democrats of trying to bend the rules on presidential eligibility when the current Republican president and his cronies are repeatedly teasing breaking the rules to get Trump a third term.
Beyond that, Ted Cruz himself ran for president despite also not being born in the United States. Cruz was, in fact, born in Canada, and his family only moved to Houston when he was three or four years old. Hypocrisy much?
All we can say to Ted Cruz is ‘Be careful what you wish for’. Zohran Mamdani will almost certainly never run for the presidency, never win a presidential Democratic primary, or win a presidential election. But hey, Donald Trump is currently president, so strange and unlikely things can happen!
