History was made in New York on Tuesday evening, as Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani officially defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in the city’s mayoral race.
With his win, Mamdani, 34—who has served as a New York State Assembly member representing the Astoria neighborhood of Queens since 2021—became the first Muslim and South Asian mayor of New York City.
Mamdani’s campaign, which aligned itself with progressive issues including universal childcare, free city buses, and rent freezes for rent-stabilized tenants, attracted supporters from all corners of the city. Highly visible New York cultural figures including Alison Roman, Lizzy Caplan, and Aminatou Sow came out in force for Mamdani, but so did working-class New Yorkers with whom he has worked and organized for years. (In 2021, for instance, he joined a 15-day hunger strike alongside the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.) Mamdani’s victory came in spite of an eleventh-hour endorsement of Cuomo from President Donald Trump, who said in a social media post on Monday that “whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice.”
While Mamdani’s election represents a historic win for leftist politics, it’s not without precedent in New York City; David Dinkins, who served as mayor of New York City from 1990 to 1993, was at one point a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Mamdani is also, notably, New York City’s youngest mayor-elect in about a century.
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