SAN JUAN — Zohran Mamdani wants to be a new kind of leader for New York. But in his second day as mayor-elect, he embraced an old political tradition: partying in Puerto Rico.
New York’s Democrats — from state lawmakers to City Hall aides to union power brokers — decamp to San Juan every November for a long weekend of panels and receptions, schmoozing and dealmaking. With more than 4,000 attendees, the Somos conference doubles as the New York political world’s unofficial family reunion, and this year the family member with the newest and unlikeliest win was its biggest draw.
The 34-year-old democratic socialist, whose stunning victory upended the political order those insiders helped build, arrived at the Caribe Hilton hotel early Thursday evening to address a teeming crowd of hundreds that had been waiting for him on the oceanfront.
While Mamdani’s audience was different than the crowds he faced during his campaign rallies — a sea of Democratic power players, many of whom view politics as an industry above all else — his message wavered little.
“It is time for working people to be able to afford to live in the city that they call home,” Mamdani told the crowd. “When I look at these leaders, I see partners who are willing to do two things all at once, fight an authoritarian administration and deliver on an affordability crisis. No longer can we just do one. Now we must do both. “
There are many receptions to choose from at Somos, and Mamdani made a statement with his pick: an outdoor gathering co-hosted by District Council 37 — the city’s public employees union, which supported him in the election over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — and state Attorney General Letitia James, who also embraced the upstart’s candidacy.
“Courage, my friends, is contagious,” James said on stage. “And what we have in the next mayor of the city of New York, Zohran Mamdani, we’ve got a leader with this bold leadership, this bold vision, who will bring us all together, and we must recognize and support him and protect him each and every day.”
For Mamdani, the trip wasn’t just a celebration — it was a debut before the establishment he once ran against. Somos is where New York’s Democratic hierarchy gathers each year to gossip, broker deals and take the temperature of power. And now the mayor-elect was suddenly at the center of it all.
His presence posed a new question for both sides: Would Mamdani try to build bridges with the Democratic old guard — or keep his distance from the machine he’s long criticized? And would the party’s power brokers, wary but impressed, open the door to a mayor who preaches redistribution and quotes Eugene Debs?
For now, Mamdani is signaling coexistence rather than confrontation. He plans private meetings through the weekend but is steering clear of the bar circuit that defines much of Somos’ after-hours politicking — a cautious entrance for a figure still deciding how close to get to the city’s old power structure.
Still, Mamdani has been the talk of the conference since it kicked off Wednesday, and his arrival was eagerly awaited. “When’s my boyfriend getting in?” Rep. Nydia Velázquez joked Thursday morning in the hotel lobby.
When Mamdani attended the Somos conference for the first time in 2024, he didn’t get much attention — he was a newly announced mayoral candidate polling near zero percent. One year later, he was the belle of the ball, having to sneak in the side door because the lobby would have been too busy, and later escape droves of admirers who rushed under the barricades after his speech for a selfie.
Velázquez and James were among those who joined him for a brief press availability in a hotel conference room before he stepped out to the reception.
Mamdani said he was “looking forward to having a conversation with President Trump” — after the president said on Fox News “it would be more appropriate” for the mayor-elect to reach out to him, rather than the other way around.
He didn’t have a specific time planned, Mamdani said, but when they do talk, “it will be a conversation that will be geared towards serving New Yorkers across the five boroughs, New Yorkers who are currently being priced out of the most expensive city in the United States of America.”
Trump has threatened to pull federal funds from the city and send in troops if Mamdani won.
Mamdani also responded to House Speaker Mike Johnson calling him a “Marxist.”
“If I were Speaker Johnson, I would also not focus on the disastrous results of what the Republican administration has delivered for Americans across this country,” he said. “It is time for us to show that politics can be more than the cruelty and the punishment we so often see coming out of Washington, D.C.”
And when asked about Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s plans to launch her campaign for governor Friday, Mamdani said she “typifies the exact kind of politics that has created so much despair across the city, across the state and across the country.”
But his focus wasn’t only on GOP leaders. Asked how bullish he is on his plan to get state government to raise taxes on New Yorkers making over $1 million to fund his proposals like free, universal child care, Mamdani reiterated that “the most important thing is to fund the agenda.” And if state Gov. Kathy Hochul remains opposed to raising taxes but has other means to raise revenue, “I’m open to them, because what I care most about is that we actually deliver on these things.”
Hochul herself spoke at the receptions before Mamdani and celebrated his victory as an exclamation mark to a set of wins Democrats delivered throughout the state on Tuesday.
But the governor — who initially kept Mamdani at arms length before putting out a carefully-worded endorsement — seemed keenly aware of their political differences.
“Our fight is not with each other,” the governor said. “It is with Republicans in Washington who are destroying our way of life, our democracy.”
Eleven days prior, she had appeared at a campaign rally with Mamdani for the first time, where his fans shouted down the more moderate governor’s speech with chants of “Tax the Rich!”
Even at the posh Somos gathering, the governor was subjected to those same calls, shouted from the crowd when she took the stage.
“I hear you, but I’m the type of person, the more you push me, the more I’m not going to do what you want,” she said. “So little lesson to all of our friends out there.”
Mamdani will stay in San Juan through Saturday morning. But he already got a taste of an island delicacy before coming to the hotel.
“I’m proud to report,” he said, “that in the few hours I’ve been here, I’ve already had some mofongo, and it was great.”
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