Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist who went from near obscurity to a stunning win in the New York City mayoral Democratic primary over former governor Andrew Cuomo, has done it again: Mamdani was voted in as New York City’s new mayor on Tuesday.
The win was projected by both the Associated Press and NBC less than an hour after polls in the city closed.
By Election Day, all eyes were on the race in America’s most populous city as an electoral proxy for Donald Trump’s second stint in the White House. There was Mamdani, the upstart, a Ugandan-born political organizer turned state assemblyman representing the Astoria neighborhood in Queens since 2021, the anointed Democratic candidate. Republican Curtis Sliwa consistently polled last in the race, though he found a slice of TikTok virality with a subset of Gen Z voters. And then there was Cuomo, soundly defeated in the primary but keeping himself on the ticket anyway running as an independent, receiving a last-minute cash infusion of $1.5 million from former mayor Mike Bloomberg on Halloween, days before voters headed to the polls.
Incumbent Eric Adams, who has his place in the history books for being the first sitting New York City mayor to be indicted on corruption charges including fraud, bribery, and illegal campaign donations, halted his re-election campaign and dropped out of the race in late September. (Adams has denied wrongdoing.) Many of his former supporters, a notable segment of whom belong to an ultra-wealthy tax bracket, shifted their allegiances to Cuomo after Adams’ defection, and Adams himself endorsed Cuomo in late October, despite having called him “a snake and a liar” in September. (Adams shrugged off the comment when asked about it after his endorsement: “Brothers fight,” he said by way of explanation.)
Still, Mamdani didn’t forget, telling Vanity Fair‘s James Pogue via text in the days following Adams stepping back from the race that he had a message to voters: “I’d say listen to what Eric Adams said: ‘Andrew Cuomo is a liar and a snake.’”
The selfie-taking, meme-friendly Mamdani ran a campaign that captivated not just the city, but the world, and he has now been elected New York City’s first Muslim mayor, and the youngest to occupy Gracie Mansion in over a century. (Hugh John Grant, a two-term mayor, was 31 years old at his first inauguration in 1889, keeping his distinction as the youngest ever to win the office.) Running on a platform “relentlessly focused on affordability,” Mamdani won the endorsements of celebrities like Emily Ratajkowski and Lorde, popular progressive politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, and people who are a bit of both, like Cynthia Nixon, not to mention the coveted Hot Girl vote.
“I think to be a New Yorker is also to be an American,” Mamdani told VF of his lived experience, moving to the city after living his first seven years in Uganda and returning there most summers, becoming an outsider emigre there while also negotiating life as an outsider immigrant in the U.S. “To me, the city is the best of what our country has to offer. It’s a city where these identities are not necessarily in hierarchy or in contention, but where they’re all examples of what it means to belong here.”
In September, Mamdani responded to those who questioned whether his campaign’s idealistic goals would be achievable in office.
“For as much as this is an immense responsibility, it is also an opportunity, and one that deeply excites me, the prospect of delivering on this agenda,” he told VF. “People speak to me as if the campaign was one thing and then governing must be another. My job is to deliver on the promises that I have made. These are not anchors that I view tying my feet down. These are north stars that I will wake up every morning and head towards.”
The post Zohran Mamdani Wins NYC Mayoral Election 2025 In Historic Victory appeared first on Vanity Fair.
