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Despite his own privileged path to power, or perhaps because of it, the son of a Columbia University professor and a movie director is campaigning as a socialist intent on redistributing New York’s wealth.

Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2025/06/24/heres-how-much-new-york-city-mayoral-candidate-zohran-mamdani-is-worth/

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00:00Here's how much New York City mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani is worth.
00:04Mamdani was born in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, in 1991,
00:09the same year his Indian-American filmmaker mother, Mira Nair,
00:12released her second movie, Mississippi Masala, starring Denzel Washington.
00:17That was just three years after her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay,
00:21which depicted the lives of children living in the city's slums
00:24and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
00:29She is also known for Monsoon Wedding,
00:31which won the Golden Lion at the 2001 Venice Film Festival.
00:35The family moved to New York City when Mamdani was seven years old
00:38after his father, Mahmoud Mamdani, got a job teaching at Columbia University.
00:43The younger Mamdani attended Bank Street, a prestigious Manhattan private school,
00:48before graduating from the Bronx High School of Science,
00:51one of the city's best public schools.
00:53He then attended Bowdoin College, a private liberal arts school in Maine.
00:56After graduating in 2014, he worked on his mother's sets
01:00and took jobs working on several political campaigns and community organizing efforts,
01:05per a review of former resumes by the New York Times.
01:08He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018.
01:12In 2020, Mamdani ran for a state assembly seat and won, beating a five-term incumbent.
01:18The job pays $142,000 annually.
01:22Today, he lives in a $2,250 a month rent-stabilized Astoria apartment
01:27and doesn't own a car, taking the subway to his debate appearances.
01:31A quarter of a century after moving to the U.S.,
01:35Mamdani's net worth today is still based in the East African country from which he emigrated.
01:40According to the financial disclosures he filed as a state assemblyman in 2023,
01:44he acquired four acres of land in Jinja,
01:47a region of Uganda bordering Lake Victoria that contains the source of the Nile River, in 2012.
01:52He lists the land's value as between $150,000 and $250,000.
01:59New York City disclosures don't require candidates to list cash accounts,
02:04so there's the possibility Mamdani's worth a bit more than the documents show.
02:09Another caveat, he married his wife, a Syrian-born artist,
02:13earlier this year after the disclosures were due,
02:15so any assets she has may not show up until next year's filings.
02:19And his social-media-savvy outsider campaign to become New York's next mayor
02:23has carried him to victory in the Democratic primary,
02:26where he defeated the frontrunner, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo,
02:30who had pitched himself as an experienced hand on the wheel in a turbulent time.
02:34Forbes estimates Mamdani to be worth around $200,000,
02:3750 times less than Cuomo, who we peg at $10 million.
02:42For full coverage, check out Kyle Kahn Mullins' piece on Forbes.com.
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