ZOHRAM MAMDANI, a self-proclaimed ‘democratic socialist’, was elected the 111th mayor of New York yesterday.
He is the first person of South Asian descent and the first person from Africa to lead the largest city in the United States.
The 34-year-old mayoral candidate and assemblyman from Queens emerged victorious against his chief opponent – former governor Andrew Cuomo – with at least 50 per cent of support after 85 per cent of the votes had been counted.
‘We are on the brink of making history in our city. On the brink of saying goodbye to a politics of the past. A politics that tells you what it can’t do, and really what it means to say is what it won’t do, and to usher in a new era,’ Mamdani said.
In the campaign, he promised rent control and free bus travel, funded by a proposed increase in taxes on the wealthiest residents of New York City.
Mamdani’s support for Palestine and condemnation of Israeli genocide in Gaza helped him seal the win.
On January 1, 2026, he will be sworn in to run the largest and most diverse city in the United States with a population of 8.5 million.
According to the City Board of Elections, of the 4.7 million registered voters there, more than two million people voted in this election.
This is the first time this has happened since 1969 – only 1.15 million voted in the last race in 2021.
Largely unknown before winning the Democratic primary over the summer, supporters hail him as representing a new wave of progressive politics, while Trump, lambasts him as a ‘communist’.
Born in Kampala, Uganda, Mamdani moved to New York with his family aged seven. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and later earned a degree in Africana Studies from Bowdoin College, where he co-founded the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Mamdani has referenced his identity as a way to build support across the diverse city, posting campaign videos of himself speaking Urdu and Spanish.
He promises affordable housing, free public buses, rent freezes and universal childcare for children under five.
‘This is a city where one in four of its people are living in poverty, a city where 500,000 kids go to sleep hungry every night,’ he said.
Ahead of the election, Mamdani called Cuomo a ‘puppet and parrot of Trump’ who would be a ‘mirror image’ of him in City Hall.
In his victory speech he described landlords and ‘tax-evading billionaires’ as ‘the Donald Trumps of our city’.
In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the race for governor, the first woman to do so. Her fellow Democrat, Mikie Sherrill, has also won the governor race in New Jersey. They’ll both take office in mid-January.
Yesterday, in a post on his social media platform X, Trump-supporting billionaire Elon Musk called Mamdami’s election a ‘scam’.
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