This essay is part of a series in which writers reflect on Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration as the mayor of New York City.  Illustration by Stuart Davis There is a steeliness to Zohran Mamdani that wasn’t obvious when he first appeared as a candidate for mayor, ablaze with ideas while extending a panoramic embrace to New York’s most invisible communities that inspired a surge of new voters in November. I remember watching a video of him entering a community room bursting with first-generation West African New Yorkers at Co-op City earlyish in the campaign. They greeted him with a roar of appreciation—a kind of ecstasy, really—that seemed to take the candidate himself by surprise. By that juncture Mamdani had become that rare political figure, a conduit of people’s deep-seated wishes—a perilous status that is often a setup for disappointment. New Yorkers were finding him irresistible, but many worried that he would prove to be too naïve to outsmart the city’s most fiercely defended private interests. Now, on the eve of taking power, he has revealed himself …