Zohran Kwame Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral race marked a singular moment in municipal politics. The Associated Press called the race roughly half an hour after polls closed, and more than 2 million voters cast ballots, a level of participation not seen since 1969. In different tallies reported election night, Mamdani led by nine points with most votes counted and, in the final three-way breakdown, secured 50.4 percent to Andrew Cuomo’s 41.6 percent, with Curtis Sliwa just over 7 percent. The state assemblymember from Queens will be the city’s first Muslim mayor and one of the few openly socialist politicians to lead the nation’s largest city. His campaign rose from 1 percent in early polls to a decisive victory built on a working-class ground game, a multilingual appeal, and a platform centered on affordability.
At his victory party in Brooklyn, Mamdani framed his mandate in stark class terms. “The working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands,” he said. He continued with a description of who that power should serve: “Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor; palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars; knuckles scarred with kitchen burns—these are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it…We have toppled a political dynasty.”
The campaign’s promise was concrete and repeatedly distilled into a few repeatable commitments. Leading a call and response, Mamdani told supporters, “Together, New York, we’re going to freeze the… [rent!] Together, New York, we’re going to make buses fast and… [free!]Together, New York, we’re going to deliver universal… [child care!] Let the words we’ve spoken together, the dreams we’ve dreamt together, become the agenda we deliver together.” He tied that agenda to a longer project beyond any single race. “This is part of a lifelong struggle,” he told volunteers. “Not an electoral one. You have joined a movement for the rest of your life. Now, however you want to be a part of that movement is your decision, just as long as you continue to be a part of it.”
Those lines captured how a campaign that began without media attention or establishment support became a mass operation. The 11,000-member New York City Democratic Socialists of America served as the core of a turnout program that, according to campaign figures, marshalled 104,400 volunteers and knocked on 3 million doors. Outreach was multilingual and personal, from a get-out-the-vote video series in Arabic, Spanish, Urdu, and Hindi to speeches that named the workers the campaign aimed to represent. “I am young. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this,” Mamdani said in his victory speech. He cast the coalition as a full reflection of the city’s working class: “Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city, who made this movement their own. I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.”
For voters like Brian Levy, a librarian and member of AFSCME District Council 37, the turnaround was visible. “I remember not being very optimistic about the Zohran campaign at all last November,” Levy said. “He’s talking about affordability, but I don’t know… If Cuomo enters the race, he’s toast. And the Democratic establishment ain’t behind him. There’s a lot of cards stacked against him.” By the spring, however, public financing milestones and ranked-choice cross-endorsements helped consolidate progressive blocs and animate volunteers who were watching the field expand. Another supporter, retired District Council 37 member Steve Beck, connected the campaign’s street-level organizing to an older tradition. “Zohran has gone back to the old playbook of politics, which is canvassing and people on the street and people in the neighborhoods, and it’s very refreshing.”
The ground game was paired with a platform that sought to materially alter daily life: a rent freeze for 2.5 million rent-stabilized tenants, fast and free buses, city-owned groceries to lower food costs, universal childcare starting at six weeks, and a build-out of affordable housing. Supporters read the campaign as proof that economic policy and social equality were not competing issues but part of the same project. “In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light,” Mamdani said. He explicitly addressed identity and belonging in the city. “New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant,” he said. “To get to any of us, you will have have to get through all of us.”
Labor alliances evolved over the course of the race. Early endorsements came from AFSCME District Council 37, PSC-CUNY, and UAW Region 9A, with broader support coalescing after the primary from unions like the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the New York State Nurses Association, and 32BJ SEIU, and later from 1199SEIU, the United Federation of Teachers, Communications Workers District 1, and the New York City Central Labor Council. For UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla, the appeal was consistent with previous fights. “He’s been front and center at every single one of our fights, whether it’s in higher education at Columbia or at the Mercedes-Benz first contract rally,” he said. Mancilla also looked ahead to how a governing coalition might operate across city and state. “We’re going to have a common agenda going into the next legislative session in Albany to fight not just for Zohran’s priorities for the city that our members in the city really care about,” he said, “but some of those things, like childcare and the cost-of-living crisis, that all workers in places like Buffalo and Rochester and Ithaca all care about.”
Among the campaign’s most visible relationships was with New York’s taxi workers, forged during the 2021 medallion debt hunger strike. Bhairavi Desai of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance recalled how trust was built. “Members witnessed this humble state assembly member insist on being the last in line behind them to be checked by physicians during the hunger strike,” she said, “huddle in circles with them during campaign updates and strategy sessions, and introduce them by name to other elected officials.” That experience informed how drivers read the mayor-elect. “So of course drivers feel that Mamdani is one of their own. They see themselves reflected in a campaign focused on immigrants and workers, and they see Mamdani carrying the working class with him in every step he takes toward power.”
The opposition also organized. Billionaires and major donors heavily funded anti-Mamdani efforts, while national headlines focused on his religion and his stance on Palestinian human rights. The Trump administration publicly backed Cuomo, and a House Republican pushed for an investigation into Mamdani’s citizenship. On the trail, those moves were woven into a narrative about elite resistance to a working-class agenda. A yellow cab driver, Kadir Gaurab, captured expectations succinctly. “Zohran has the same expectation [to deliver] of a Tom Brady, a LeBron James, a Aaron Rodgers,” he said. “He’s a historic figure.”
Governing will require translating a movement infrastructure into policy and budget. Mamdani and his allies have signaled support for raising revenue by taxing corporations and the wealthiest households to fund childcare, transit, and housing, a strategy that will require cooperation from Governor Kathy Hochul and the legislature. Campaign organizations are already planning for that fight in public. At the same time, unions and community groups have created rapid-response coalitions in case of federal intervention in the city. Hands Off NYC has trained thousands to mobilize if agents or troops are sent. “NYC is doing just fine without masked goons kidnapping hardworking immigrants off our streets,” said Hae-Lin Choi of Communications Workers of America. “We don’t need them here, we don’t want them here, and every time they show up they’re going to get the same welcome they got on Canal Street,” she said. “Trump’s troops have no business here,” Choi added. “Hands Off NYC is training thousands of New Yorkers to make sure we’re ready for whatever comes next.”
For Mamdani, the standard he invoked was historical as much as it was local. He linked a mandate on affordability to a city-building tradition reminiscent of Fiorello La Guardia’s era and argued that rights and material improvements are won through organizing. “When organized labor won the weekend, so that working people would have time to rest—that was power won, not given,” he said. He asked supporters to choose ambition over caution in the face of entrenched wealth. “For too long, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it,” he said. “The oligarchs of New York are the wealthiest people in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. They do not want the equation to change. They will do everything they can to prevent their grip from weakening.”
If the path forward is uncertain, the campaign argued that the city’s power will come from the same coalition that delivered the vote. For many, that is the meaning of a movement mayor. As Mamdani told supporters after his primary win, “We can be free and we can be fed.” On general election night, he closed with a nod to a century-old socialist who spoke to a similar hope. “The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.’”
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