Zohran Mamdani Beats Andrew Cuomo in Victory for the Left in NYC Mayoral Race

Zohran Mamdani Won the New York City mayoral election on Tuesday night, becoming the first Muslim elected mayor in the city’s history in a race that garnered national attention as a test for the future of the Democratic Party.

Mamdani defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo by eight points, drawing 50 to his 42 percent of the vote with 98 percent of ballots reported. Guardian Angels founder and perennial gadfly Curtis Sliwa came in a distant third at seven percent.

“We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible,” Mamdani told a crowded room at the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn on Tuesday. “And we won because politics is no longer something that is done to us — now it is something that we do.”

“Years from now,” he said, “let our only regret be that this day took so long to come.”

Campaigning on a core platform of affordability, Mamdani went from little-known assembly member to household name as he criss-crossed the city, popping in at churches and nightclubs, supported by an army of volunteer canvassers.

The race has been unlike any other in recent memory in New York. Minutes before polls closed, the New York City Board of Elections announced that 2 million people had cast ballots — the highest number since 1969.

When the AP called the race for the democratic socialist, the Paramount exploded in cheers.

Mamdani press chief Andrew Epstein gave another man a bear hug, while New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who easily won his reelection race Tuesday night, jumped up and down.

“We shook up the world baby!” Williams yelled before wrapping New York Attorney General Letitia James in a hug.

“Unreal,” James said.

Cuomo, who lost the primary to Mamdani in a stunning upset in June, billed himself as the best man to stand up to Donald Trump — an argument that was complicated Monday when the president endorsed him, pledging to slash federal funding to the city if Mamdani were to win.

Trump’s endorsement was by then effectively a formality: The right had already coalesced around New York’s former Democratic governor, with the president and other members of his party pushing Sliwa, the Republican candidate, to drop out and let Cuomo face Mamdani head-on. On social media, Trump warned: “A vote for Curtis Sliwa (who looks much better without the beret!) is a vote for Mamdani.”

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New York City comptroller and former mayoral candidate Brad Lander, a key Mamdani ally since the primary, rebuked Trump at the Paramount for a recent social media post in which the president said that any Jew voting for Mamdani was “stupid.”

“When Andrew Cuomo earlier in the race tried to tell Jews how to vote I cursed at him in Yiddish, so I guess I’ll do the same,” Lander said. “Gay kaken ofn yam — Go shit in the ocean, Donald Trump!”

In addition to making history as an avowed socialist, Mamdani — who is of Indian descent and was born in Uganda — will be the city’s first Muslim American mayor. For many Muslims in New York who lived through the Islamophobia, racism, and pervasive NYPD surveillance of the post-9/11 years, Mamdani’s success on the campaign trail has been deeply personal, urban historian Asad Dandia told The Intercept.

“It means a great deal to me as a Muslim New Yorker, but also as a native New Yorker who doesn’t know how to live anywhere else,” said Dandia, who was involved in a lawsuit over the NYPD’s targeting of Muslim communities. “To see someone who looks like he could be my brother or my cousin, that’s a powerful testament to the possibility of New York and to people’s power.”

In the June primary, South Asian voter turnout surged by 40 percent from the 2021 primary, thanks in part to a surge in new voters, according to the New York Times.

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But Mamdani’s identity as a Muslim and his committed support for Palestine came into play in an ugly fashion too. Cuomo’s allies repeatedly attacked Mamdani with claims that he did not sufficiently denounce the Palestinian liberation protest cry “globalize the intifada,” which Cuomo translated, inaccurately, as “kill all Jews.” As the general election drew closer, Mamdani’s opponents engaged in naked Islamophobia by calling him a “jihadist” and a “terrorist sympathizer,” while congressional Republicans mused about having his citizenship revoked.

Despite efforts to tar him as an extremist outsider, Mamdani proved immensely popular, both in polls and on the street, where videos show him routinely being stopped by enthusiastic passersby.

Mamdani’s success was not limited to Muslim or South Asian communities, or to the so-called “Commie Corridor” of progressive, college-educated voters in north Brooklyn and Queens who have made up the primary basis of support for candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

In the primary and in the months that followed, his campaign worked aggressively to build a coalition of support that cut across ethnic and class lines. According to a recent poll published by the Hispanic Federation, 48 percent of Latino voters favored Mamdani — 36 percent indicating “strong support” — with just 24 percent of Latinos supporting Cuomo and 14 percent picking Sliwa.

Cuomo’s hopes laid with the traditional Democratic base of Black voters in the city, but Mamdani had been making headway on that front as well, with weekly visits to Black churches and a recent appearance with Al Sharpton.

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Ultimately, Dandia said, it was Mamdani’s core message of affordability that broadened his support far beyond committed leftists and South Asian and Muslim voters.

“He wasn’t running on his identity — he was running on a platform that appealed across so many communities,” Dandia said. “His success has shown the value of embodying what it means to be a humanistic person, justice-oriented person, and that’s equally as important if not more so than his identity.”

Those who worked on the Mamdani campaign weren’t surprised that voters came out in historic numbers to back their candidate. “For those of us who have been on ground, it’s amazing but it’s not really shocking when you’ve been out there knocking on doors, hearing how people are feeling,” said Annaliese Estes, a campaign field lead since April.

Celebrating Mamdani’s win, an attendee at his party asked Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y.: “Can you believe it?”

“I believed it a year ago,” she said.

This story has been updated with additional information.