Zohran Mamdani has won a resounding victory in the New York mayoral election, heralding in a new era for the city as he promises to be “Trump’s worst nightmare”.
In his victory speech, Mamdani threw the gauntlet down to President Donald Trump, warning “if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power”.
The 34-year-old Democrat led a grassroots campaign with unyielding momentum as he stormed to victory over former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent, and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.
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Democratic candidate for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has won the 2025 New York City Mayoral race (REUTERS)
A self-described Democratic socialist and state assemblyman, his campaign was supported by endorsements from Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The Uganda-born son of a Columbia University professor and a celebrated Indian film director is projected to receive 50.4 per cent of the vote by CBS News, to Cuomo’s 41.6 per cent and Sliwa’s 7 per cent. He is the first candidate to win more than one million votes since 1969.
But where does New York City’s first ever Muslim mayor stand on key issues?
Donald Trump
Mamdani’s positioning on the left was always likely to put him at odds with the president, who was born and raised in New York but now pours scorn on his hometown. Sure enough, the younger man has cheerfully pronounced himself “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”
“If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him,” he said in his victory speech after winning the election.
“And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up,” Mamdani said.
The animosity is set to take centre stage as Mamdani succeeds former mayor Eric Adams in City Hall, given the office’s outsized influence on the national stage.
“Should he prevail, Mamdani instantly becomes the ringleader of The Resistance,” Philip Elliott of Time argued before the election. “As the elected chief of the nation’s largest city – with a budget of $115 billion and 300,000 employees – he would command a platform that has few peers.”
Supporters attend an election watch party for Mamdani in Brooklyn (Getty Images)
Israel
On the eve of June’s Democrat primary election, in which Mamdani stormed to a shock victory against front-runner Andrew Cuomo, he appeared on CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and was grilled about his history of pro-Palestinian activism.
He said of Israel: “Yes, like all nations, I believe it has a right to exist – and a responsibility also to uphold international law.”
Pressed on whether New York’s Jewish population could depend on him to protect them with antisemitic attacks on the rise in the United States, the candidate answered emphatically: “Antisemitism is not simply something that we should talk about. It’s something we have to tackle.”
He pledged an 800 percent increase in funding for anti-hate crime funding and sought to make clear that he opposed some of “the Israeli government’s policies” in Gaza, not the Jewish people. He has consistently described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.
He has, however, been attacked by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for his endorsement of the protest slogan “Globalize the Intifada.”
Mamdani appears on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (The Late Show/CBS)
ICE raids
A poll earlier this year by Marist indicated Mamdani has picked up significant support from New York’s Hispanic and Latino community at a time when Trump’s Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have ramped up raids on blue cities, suggesting they see him as the right man to stand up to the president’s aggressive mass deportation push.
Attacking Cuomo in an interview with The Bulwark, the candidate said: “A disgraced former governor who describes undocumented immigrants as ‘illegals’ is not what we need as a city under attack by an authoritarian.
“He’s not the leader we need to fight against this administration. Ultimately, you want someone who can take on bullies, not who looks just like him.”
He called ICE “fascist” after it arrested fellow mayoral candidate Brad Lander last week, commenting: “If this is what ICE is willing to do to a comptroller of the city of New York, imagine what they are willing to do to immigrants whose names you don’t even know.”
Mamdani meeting voters on the campaign trail (Getty)
Tax, housing and rent
Mamdani’s campaign primarily centered around policies for making New York City more affordable, calling for higher taxes for the Big Apple’s wealthier residents, a rent-freeze for more than two million impoverished city dwellers, more permanent affordable housing, free bus rides and child care and even government-run grocery stores to prevent cost of living crises erupting.
Olivia Reingold of The Free Press has argued that it was precisely these “pie-in-the-sky policies” that Cuomo underestimated, to his cost.
“We see that this affordability crisis is pushing New Yorkers out, which is especially true for immigrant New Yorkers,” Mamdani told The Bulwark. “Social justice without economic justice is like clapping with one hand.”
