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Democrat Zohran Mamdani has won New York’s mayoral race, NBC News projects, after the 34-year-old democratic socialist energized progressives in the city and across the country while generating intense backlash from President Donald Trump and Republicans, as well as some Democratic moderates.
In his victory speech after vanquishing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani claimed a broad mandate and set himself up in direct opposition to Trump, who made a late endorsement against him. “In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light,” Mamdani said.
“Together, we will usher in a generation of change, and if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves,” Mamdani said later, before challenging Trump directly.
“This is not only how we stop Trump, it’s how we stop the next one,” Mamdani said. “So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.”
Trump wasn’t the only subject of Mamdani’s speech, which he started by quoting the 19th- and 20th-century American socialist Eugene Debs and continued by promising the “most ambitious agenda” to address costs in New York City since the administration of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia nearly 100 years ago.
Mamdani defeated Cuomo, who ran as a third-party candidate after losing the Democratic primary in June, by about 9 points, with Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa trailing far behind. Mayor Eric Adams, who also mounted a third-party campaign for re-election after he won as a Democrat in 2021, dropped out of the race in September and endorsed Cuomo last month.
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The victory caps a meteoric rise through New York politics for Mamdani since he launched his campaign roughly one year ago, transforming him from a virtually unknown state assemblyman who barely registered in polling to the incoming leader of America’s largest city.
Along the way, he pushed aside the heir to one of New York’s most iconic political dynasties not once but twice within five months.
Now a nationally known political figure, Mamdani will attempt to enact the sweeping policy platform that inspired his supporters while managing an enormous municipal bureaucracy — and influencing national politics, as one of the most prominent democratic socialists and Democrats in the country. Among other goals, Mamdani wants to freeze rent on rent-stabilized units, enact universal child care, create a free bus program and launch city-run grocery stores.
“It is tempting to believe that this moment was always destined,” Mamdani said before thousands at a rally in Queens late last month, before he noted that when he started his campaign, “there was not a single television camera there to cover it.”
“Four months later and as recently as this February, our support had reached eye-watering heights of 1%,” Mamdani continued. “We were tied with noted candidate ‘someone else.’”
Mamdani’s victory is sure to reverberate not just throughout New York City but around the nation.
In New York, Mamdani’s next challenge will be the tall task of uniting leaders in Albany and on the City Council — many of whom were not eager to line up behind him — to advance his ambitious agenda.
Nationally, many Democrats will examine his rise from obscurity, his successful messaging on social media and his focus on affordability for clues about how to navigate their own races.
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