Zohran Mamdani is a man with a brand, a New Yorker with a remarkably similar look, sound and feel to Canada’s former prime minister

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It may not have garnered a lot of attention in Canada, but America’s largest city and global financial centre appears set on choosing its very own version of Justin Trudeau as its next mayor.

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Zohran Mamdani is a man with a brand, a New Yorker with a remarkably similar look, sound and feel to Canada’s ex-prime minister. Handsome as all get-out, in a particularly boyish, non-threatening sort of way, he’s young, hip, well-coiffed and strategically-attired, his wardrobe carefully selected to suit the setting and deliver the message he’s chosen to project that day. Born in Uganda to a pair of glam parents — his father a professor of post-colonial studies, his mother an Oscar-nominated filmmaker — he fizzes with energy, has an excellent smile, is absolute murder at selfies.

At 33, Mamdani is made for magazine covers. He excites the young, is thoroughly left wing, thinks billionaires shouldn’t exist and promises a cornucopia of popular goodies for the city’s struggling middle- and working-classes should he be elected New York mayor as expected in November. Free buses. Frozen rents. City-owned grocery stores stocked with lower-priced offerings, paid for by higher corporate taxes and levies on the wealthy.

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