Former President Barack Obama reportedly made a private call to socialist mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani on Saturday, offering guidance and encouragement, but stopping short of endorsing him days before the election.
Obama spoke with Mamdani for roughly 30 minutes, according to two people familiar with the call who spoke to The New York Times. The former president praised the 34-year-old candidate and said he was personally invested in Mamdani’s political future.
“Your campaign has been impressive to watch,” Obama told him, according to the report. He also offered to be a “sounding board” once Mamdani takes office, signaling a continuing relationship beyond Election Day.
Obama reportedly gave advice on staffing a new administration and on navigating the challenges of trying to deliver sweeping promises about affordability and housing.
The call included a discussion about how a socialist mayor would handle running a major U.S. city.
The pair also reportedly made plans to meet in person in Washington, D.C., at a later date, reinforcing the idea that the former president sees Mamdani as more than a one-cycle candidate.
Mamdani responded to the call by expressing appreciation for the support and linking his campaign’s message to Obama’s 2008 run, per the New York Post.
“Zohran Mamdani appreciated President Obama’s words of support and their conversation on the importance of bringing a new kind of politics to our city,” a spokesperson told The Times.
Mamdani also said his recent speech on Islamophobia was inspired by Obama’s well-known 2008 speech on race, a signal that he sees himself in the same mold of progressive political storytelling.
But the apparent alliance is not without irony. Mamdani previously attacked Obama on social media, calling him “pretty damn evil” in 2013. “Hasn’t Obama shown that the lesser evil is still pretty damn evil?” he wrote in a post directed at then-Sen. Ed Markey.
In another post, he said, “I can’t trust quotes from @BarackObama, not since his continued lying in the face of Snowden’s #NSA revelations.”
Those comments did not stop Obama from reaching out. The former president also called Mamdani after his shock victory in the Democratic primary in June, suggesting he has taken a personal interest in the young socialist’s rise.
The call comes as Mamdani leads the polling heading into Tuesday’s election, with some Democrats privately panicking about a potential hard-left mayor running a city already dealing with crime, affordability issues, and declining public services.
A recent poll showed former Governor Andrew Cuomo closing the gap, but Mamdani still holds the advantage. His campaign has leaned heavily into anti-police rhetoric, rent strikes, and tax-the-rich proposals, positioning him as the most far-left mayoral frontrunner in decades.
