In a stunning rebuke to establishment politics, 34-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani has been projected the winner of the 2025 New York City mayoral race, becoming the city’s first Muslim mayor, its first South Asian leader, and the youngest in over a century.
Mamdani, a Ugandan-born Queens assemblymember and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, twice vanquished Cuomo: first in June’s ranked-choice Democratic primary (56%-44%) and now in the general election. Cuomo, the scandal-scarred former governor who resigned amid sexual harassment allegations in 2021, mounted a bitter independent bid backed by billionaires like Mike Bloomberg and Elon Musk, but failed to recapture City Hall.
