Zohran Mamdani wins NYC mayor’s race, capping a stunning ascent

Zohran Mam­dani was elect­ed may­or of New York on Tues­day, cap­ping a stun­ning as­cent for the 34-year-old, far-left state law­mak­er, who promised to trans­form city gov­ern­ment to re­store pow­er to the work­ing class and fight back against a hos­tile Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

In a vic­to­ry for the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty’s pro­gres­sive wing, Mam­dani de­feat­ed for­mer Gov. An­drew Cuo­mo and Re­pub­li­can Cur­tis Sli­wa. Mam­dani must now nav­i­gate the un­end­ing de­mands of Amer­i­ca’s biggest city and de­liv­er on am­bi­tious — scep­tics say un­re­al­is­tic — cam­paign promis­es.

With his com­mand­ing win, the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­cial­ist will etch his place in his­to­ry as the city’s first Mus­lim may­or, the first of South Asian her­itage and the first born in Africa. He will al­so be­come New York’s youngest may­or in more than a cen­tu­ry when he takes of­fice on Jan. 1.

“The con­ven­tion­al wis­dom would tell you that I am far from the per­fect can­di­date. I am young, de­spite my best ef­forts to grow old­er. I am Mus­lim. I am a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­cial­ist. And most damn­ing of all, I refuse to apol­o­gise for any of this,” Mam­dani de­clared to a roar­ing crowd at his vic­to­ry par­ty.

He cast his win as a boon for blue-col­lar work­ers strug­gling to get by. “New York, tonight you have de­liv­ered a man­date for change,” he said, vow­ing to ”wake up each morn­ing with a sin­gu­lar pur­pose: To make this city bet­ter for you than it was the day be­fore.”

More than 2 mil­lion New York­ers cast bal­lots in the con­test, the largest turnout in a may­oral race in more than 50 years, ac­cord­ing to the city’s Board of Elec­tions. With rough­ly 90% of the votes count­ed, Mam­dani held an ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9 per­cent­age point lead over Cuo­mo.

Mam­dani’s un­like­ly rise gives cre­dence to De­moc­rats who have urged the par­ty to em­brace more pro­gres­sive can­di­dates in­stead of ral­ly­ing be­hind cen­trists in hopes of win­ning back swing vot­ers who have aban­doned the par­ty.

He has al­ready faced scruti­ny from na­tion­al Re­pub­li­cans, in­clud­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, who have ea­ger­ly cast him as a threat and the face of a more rad­i­cal De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty that is out of step with main­stream Amer­i­ca. Trump has re­peat­ed­ly threat­ened to cut fed­er­al fund­ing to the city — and even take it over — if Mam­dani won.

A com­mand­ing win

At his vic­to­ry par­ty in Brook­lyn, Mam­dani sup­port­ers cheered and em­braced, some tear­ful­ly, af­ter The As­so­ci­at­ed Press called the race. Cam­paign posters flew through the air, as one per­son hoist­ed the of­fi­cial flag of New York City and Bad Bun­ny played from the speak­ers.

The mood was far more mut­ed at Cuo­mo’s par­ty at a mid­town Man­hat­tan the­atre. In his con­ces­sion speech, a de­fi­ant Cuo­mo called his cam­paign “a cau­tion flag that we are head­ed down a dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous road” and not­ed that “al­most half of New York­ers did not vote to sup­port a gov­ern­ment agen­da that makes promis­es that we know can­not be met.”

Still, he cor­rect­ed his sup­port­ers when they be­gan to boo at the men­tion of Mam­dani’s name.

“No, that is not right,” he said, of­fer­ing to help the in­com­ing may­or in any way. “Tonight was their night.”

Mam­dani’s grass­roots cam­paign cen­tred on af­ford­abil­i­ty, and his charis­ma spoiled Cuo­mo’s at­tempt­ed po­lit­i­cal come­back. The for­mer gov­er­nor, who re­signed four years ago fol­low­ing al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment that he con­tin­ues to de­ny, was dogged by his past through­out the race and was crit­i­cised for run­ning a neg­a­tive cam­paign.

Mam­dani will al­so have to deal with Trump, who not on­ly threat­ened ret­ri­bu­tion against the city but al­so sug­gest­ed he might try to ar­rest and de­port Mam­dani if he won. Mam­dani was born in Ugan­da, where he spent his ear­ly child­hood, but was raised in New York City and be­came a U.S. cit­i­zen in 2018.

In his speech, Mam­dani ad­dressed Trump head on.

“New York will re­main a city of im­mi­grants, a city built by im­mi­grants, pow­ered by im­mi­grants and as of tonight, led by an im­mi­grant,” he said, adding that, “If any­one can show a na­tion be­trayed by Don­ald Trump how to de­feat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.”

Trump ap­peared to ac­knowl­edge Mam­dani’s chal­lenges, post­ing ”…AND SO IT BE­GINS!” on his Truth So­cial site.

New may­or will pur­sue an am­bi­tious agen­da

Mam­dani, who was crit­i­cized through­out the cam­paign for his thin re­sume, will now have to be­gin staffing his in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion and plan­ning how to ac­com­plish the am­bi­tious but po­lar­is­ing agen­da that drove him to vic­to­ry.

Among the cam­paign’s promis­es are free child care, free city bus ser­vice, city-run gro­cery stores and a new De­part­ment of Com­mu­ni­ty Safe­ty that would send men­tal health care work­ers to han­dle cer­tain emer­gency calls rather than po­lice of­fi­cers. It is un­clear how Mam­dani will pay for such ini­tia­tives, giv­en De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s stead­fast op­po­si­tion to his calls to raise tax­es on wealthy peo­ple.

His de­ci­sions around the lead­er­ship of the New York Po­lice De­part­ment will al­so be close­ly watched. Mam­dani was a fierce crit­ic of the de­part­ment in 2020, call­ing for “this rogue agency” to be de­fund­ed and slam­ming it as “racist, an­ti-queer & a ma­jor threat to pub­lic safe­ty.” He has since apol­o­gised for those com­ments and has said he will ask the cur­rent NYPD com­mis­sion­er to stay on the job.

Mam­dani’s cam­paign was dri­ven by his op­ti­mistic view of the city and his promis­es to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for its mid­dle and low­er class­es.

Cuo­mo, Sli­wa and oth­er crit­ics as­sailed him over his ve­he­ment crit­i­cism of Is­rael ’s mil­i­tary ac­tions in Gaza. Mam­dani, a long­time ad­vo­cate of Pales­tin­ian rights, has ac­cused Is­rael of com­mit­ting geno­cide and said he would ho­n­our an ar­rest war­rant the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court is­sued for Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu.

Mam­dani won over the city while Cuo­mo fal­tered

Mam­dani be­gan his cam­paign as a rel­a­tive­ly ob­scure state law­mak­er, lit­tle known even with­in New York City.

Go­ing in­to the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry, Cuo­mo was the pre­sumed favourite, with near-uni­ver­sal name recog­ni­tion and deep po­lit­i­cal con­nec­tions. Cuo­mo’s chances were buoyed fur­ther when in­cum­bent May­or Er­ic Adams bowed out of the pri­ma­ry while deal­ing with the fall­out of his now-dis­missed fed­er­al cor­rup­tion case.

But as the race pro­gressed, Mam­dani’s nat­ur­al charm, catchy so­cial me­dia videos and pop­ulist eco­nom­ic plat­form en­er­gised vot­ers in the no­to­ri­ous­ly ex­pen­sive city. He al­so be­gan draw­ing out­side at­ten­tion as his name recog­ni­tion grew.

Mam­dani trounced Cuo­mo in the pri­ma­ry by about 13 points.

The for­mer gov­er­nor re­launched his cam­paign as an in­de­pen­dent can­di­date for the gen­er­al elec­tion, vow­ing to hit the streets with a more en­er­getic ap­proach. How­ev­er, much of his cam­paign con­tin­ued to fo­cus on at­tack­ing op­po­nents. In the race’s fi­nal stretch, he claimed Mam­dani’s elec­tion would make Jews feel un­safe.

Mean­while, sup­port­ers packed Mam­dani’s ral­lies, and he held whim­si­cal events, in­clud­ing a scav­enger hunt and a com­mu­ni­ty soc­cer tour­na­ment.

Cuo­mo al­so jux­ta­posed his deep ex­pe­ri­ence in gov­ern­ment with Mam­dani’s less than five years in the state Leg­is­la­ture. But the for­mer gov­er­nor al­so faced his own po­lit­i­cal bag­gage, as his op­po­nents dredged up the sex­u­al ha­rass­ment al­le­ga­tions that led to his res­ig­na­tion, as well as his de­ci­sions dur­ing the ear­ly days of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Sli­wa, the cre­ator of the Guardian An­gels crime pa­trol group, al­so had his mo­ments — most­ly in the form of fun­ny quips on the de­bate stage — but had dif­fi­cul­ty gain­ing trac­tion as a Re­pub­li­can in an over­whelm­ing­ly De­mo­c­ra­t­ic city.

He con­ced­ed the race about a half hour af­ter the polls closed, wish­ing Mam­dani “good luck be­cause if he does well, we do well.”

But he al­so is­sued a warn­ing: “If you try to im­ple­ment so­cial­ism, if you try to ren­der our po­lice weak and im­po­tent, if you for­sake the peo­ple’s pub­lic safe­ty, we will be­come the may­or-elect and his sup­port­ers’ worst en­e­mies.”

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Jen­nifer Peltz, Philip Marce­lo and Jake Of­fen­hartz con­tributed to this re­port.

NEW YORK (AP) —