Zohran Mamdani won the race for mayor of New York, American media reported on Wednesday.
Mamdani scored a landslide victory, beating former state governor Andrew Cuomo with the highest turnout in a decade, according to the AP.
Mamdani wooed liberal voters with plans for free child care, free busing and a rent freeze that would affect roughly one million rent-regulated New Yorkers.
“Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as a third-party candidate after also defeating Cuomo in the June primary,” NBC reported in one of its reports.
Mamdani got 9,72,905 votes, while his nearest rival Cuomo got 7,97,715 votes, according to the New York Times.
Mamdani, whose triumphant campaign was built on progressive ideas and a relentless focus on affordability, will become the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century, the New York Times reported. Mamdani is 34.
Mamdani’s victory is a boost for Democrats looking to expand their support base amid growing disillusionment with the party. Mamdani’s campaign attracted hundreds of thousands of first-time voters—many of whom were young, people of color, or both.
Mamdani, who calls himself a democratic socialist, will become the city’s first Muslim mayor. Mamdani is hoping to win over liberal voters with promises of free child care, free busing and a rent freeze that will affect roughly a million rent-regulated New Yorkers.
What am I Zohran Mamdani?
Born in 1991 in Kampala, Uganda, Mamdani is the son of Indian-born filmmaker Mira Nair and scholar Mahmood Mamdani.
Mamdani spent his early years in Uganda and South Africa before his family moved to New York in 1999 when Mahmood joined the faculty at Columbia University.
Mira Nair, Mamdani’s mother, was born in 1957 in Rourkela, India. She is an acclaimed filmmaker renowned for her explorations of identity, migration and cultural intersections. A Harvard graduate, Nair’s debut film Salaam Bombay! (1988) won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes and earned an Oscar nomination.
Nair’s works — Mississippi Masala (1991), Monsoon Wedding (2001) and The Namesake (2006) earned her a reputation for mixing narrative with social insight.
Mamdani’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, was born in Mumbai in 1946 and grew up in Kampala. Mahmood is one of Africa’s most respected scholars of colonialism and political violence. He was expelled from Uganda in 1972 during the Idi Amin regime, and in 1974 he received his doctorate from Harvard University.
