Zohran Mamdani is taking the Big Apple by storm. Promising free bus rides and childcare, rent controls, government-run grocery stores, and making Gotham City off-limits to ICE agents, the statist assemblyman is the talk of the town. He not only trounced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democrat primary, but he also currently leads all other candidates in the general election.

The Leftmedia are just as excited as primary voters, who can’t wait for the city’s first socialist mayor. However, The New York Times stepped out of its comfort zone in publishing a story about Mamdani’s 2009 application to Columbia University in which he checked multiple race boxes. The Times even admits that “Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time,” adding: “Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.” Mamdani, according to the Times, “said his answers on the college application were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him, not to gain an upper hand in the admissions process.”

In reality, there aren’t many college applicants who pause when filling out the form to contemplate the complexity of their existence. In any event, many on the Left were triggered by the Times reporting on something they think is irrelevant and completely excusable, especially when it concerns their sweetheart socialist. They’re just fine reading about Mamdani’s plan to turn New York City into Moscow on the Hudson, but they’re apoplectic over the mention of his college application.

One reason why the Times published this story was to jump on it before another journalist could take the credit, as well as to sugarcoat it before the news spread. As Max Tani writes at Semafor, “The story, published late last week, came as the result of the release of hacked Columbia University records that were then shared with the Times. The paper believed it had reason to push the story out quickly: It did not want to be scooped by the independent journalist Christopher Rufo.”

Tani adds, “The more interesting question revolves around Mamdani’s relationship with the Times, and how the Democratic nominee will treat the hometown paper of record if he is elected mayor in the fall. In recent years, many prominent Democratic figures have been frustrated by the Times, taking issue with the editorial sensibilities of a paper that many of their supporters consume religiously.”

That may be why the Times piece was treated with kid gloves, mentioning his odd decision to check multiple race categories but threading the needle by brushing it off as nothing more than a young man boxed in by limited choices on an application. Christopher Rufo writes: “If only it were so innocent. As any ambitious youth in America understands, there is a huge payout in marking ‘black’ for college applications. Mamdani’s father is a professor at Columbia, and his mother is a famous filmmaker, so the idea that he did not understand the Ivy League’s racial calculus is not credible.”

Rufo adds that checking “black” on the application gave Mamdani a vital advantage regarding his SAT score. According to Rufo, “Mamdani scored a 2140 out of 2400 on the SAT. At the time, this was below the median SAT score for admitted students at Columbia and, given the prevailing distribution by race, well below the median SAT score for Asian students, but likely above the median SAT score for black students — hence, the advantage of marking ‘black.’” Nevertheless, Mamdani was rejected by Columbia despite his father serving on the faculty and despite his decision to make Columbia think he was black and Asian.

More importantly, Mamdani’s choice represents a broader pattern of behavior recurring throughout his foray into politics. Twenty-five years after Mamdani’s application to Columbia, the black-Asian-Ugandan-American-Indian is still searching for his identity (and maybe his soul). According to the Times, Mamdani “took pains to court voters of South Asian background. He released campaign videos in Urdu and Bangla, and occasionally appeared in a kurta, the long collarless shirt worn by South Asian men and women. On his official State Assembly web page, he touts his status as the first South Asian man and first Ugandan to serve in the New York State Assembly.” The Times adds, “In campaign events with predominantly Black audiences, Mr. Mamdani has stressed his African roots and his father’s activism in the American civil rights movement when he was a student.”

In other words, Mamdani is a chameleon who changes his attire, his background, and even his accent depending on the group he’s courting for political support. In the Democrat worldview, if you create an identity on the spot, it’s authentic and cannot be questioned. Just ask Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris, both of whom changed their accents and mannerisms to appeal to identity groups.

Mamdani admitted in an interview, “In such an eagerness to make friends and be popular and whatever it might be, I would play to whatever X person needed from me as opposed to being who I actually wanted to be.” He added, “It’s like being a great mirror, right, you know? You just … give people exactly what they want.”

It should come as no surprise that a Democrat as extreme as Mamdani can’t be true to himself or to the public. The only way leftists can appeal to voters is by pretending to be one of them. Hopefully, New Yorkers will see through Mamdani’s smokescreen of socialist fantasies and identities before it’s too late to save the Big Apple.