U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz crashing out over Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral primary win

Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and immigrant, beat political heavyweight Andrew Cuomo in Tuesday’s historic Democratic New York City mayoral primary, and Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is not OK.

In a series of tweets since election night, Texas’ junior senator has gone on a rampage, tweeting Islamophobic rhetoric, Communist fear-mongering and alarmist calls for Big Apple residents to flee.

“To all my friends in New York who are not communists; come to Texas! We love freedom & we’re not nuts,” the senator’s Tuesday night invitation read.

In another tweet, Cruz claimed that after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 on Israel, Mamdani “couldn’t bring himself” to condemn the terror group for the massacre. “Instead, he just…blamed Israel.”

The tweet was accompanied by a statement Mamdani issued the day after the attack, the first words of which were, “I mourn the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours.”

But the Islamophobia didn’t end there.

Cruz also retweeted a statement from conservative columnist and Washington Examiner writer David Harsanyi, claiming that Mamdani’s victory shows it “took less than 25 years to go from 9/11 to electing a commie jihadi apologist.”

Much of Cruz’s meltdown appears to center on an increased voter acceptance of socialism that the win seems to represent.

The 33-year-old Mamdani earned 43.5% of the ranked choice votes compared to Cuomo’s 36.4%, despite Cuomo’s dynastic name recognition and vast war chest. Part of Mamdani’s victory is credited to a massive organizing effort by 50,000 volunteers who knocked on more than 1 million doors.

That organizing muscle was provided in part by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)’s New York chapter, which endorsed his candidacy and also lent the massive mobilization effort that helped elect U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Mamdani ran on an economic populist platform, which included free bus fare, city-run grocery stores, rent freezes and taxing the top one-percent. 
“Socialism is like polio, it comes back when people forget about the horrible damage it did last time,” chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov said in online statement Cruz retweeted with the caption “Fact check: true.” The Texas senator also retweeted a complimentary post about Mamdani by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, adding “one socialist endorses another.”

Cruz — a Canadian immigrant of Cuban heritage — also invoked the old standby of anti-immigration rhetoric.

After Trump cabinet immigration hardliner Stephen Miller tweeted, “NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration,” Cruz responded with a “Yup.”

The senator also reshared an alarmist tweet by Ari Fleischer, in which the former White House Press Secretary and Fox News contributor said, “Evacuate New York City now! Thank you for your attention to this important matter.”

However, someone should tell Cruz that those fleeing the “communist caliphate” of New York City for Texas might be in for a rude awakening, especially if they end up in San Antonio, which recently elected a progressive, lesbian mayor and has a city council stacked with DSA candidates.

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This article appears in Jun 12-25, 2025.