
Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral race, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo. A year ago, Mamdani was polling at just 1%, but on Tuesday he became the first New York mayoral candidate to win over a million votes since the 1960s. Mamdani won despite being vastly outspent by Cuomo, who was backed by a group of billionaires. We play part of Mamdani’s victory speech to supporters at the Brooklyn Paramount, in which he vows to stand up to President Trump and acknowledges his unlikely path to Gracie Mansion: “I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.”
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, Democrats won major victories across the United States, including in California, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and here in New York, in what’s widely being seen as a repudiation of President Trump’s agenda.
In the most closely watched race, Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral race, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo. The 34-year-old democratic socialist state assemblymember will become the first Muslim and first South Asian to serve as New York mayor. In June, he shocked the political establishment when he beat Cuomo in the Democratic primary. Cuomo went on to run in the general election as an independent, but on Tuesday, Mamdani defeated him again. A year ago, Mamdani was polling at just 1%, but he built a historic grassroots coalition to fuel what Senator Bernie Sanders has called, quote, “one of the great political upsets in modern American history,” unquote.
On Tuesday, Zohran Mamdani became the first New York mayoral candidate to win over a million votes since the 1960s — more than Rudy Giuliani or Mike Bloomberg ever received. Mamdani has received 50.4% of the votes counted so far. Cuomo is at 41.6%. Republican Curtis Sliwa is at 7.1%.
Mamdani won even though many prominent Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the New York senator, refused to endorse him. Mamdani was also vastly outspent by Cuomo, who’s backed by a group of billionaires. President Trump endorsed Cuomo and repeatedly threatened to cut off federal funds to New York if Mamdani won.
On Tuesday night, Zohran Mamdani addressed supporters who packed into the Brooklyn Paramount. He began his speech by quoting the late labor leader and socialist Eugene Debs.
MAYOR-ELECT ZOHRAN MAMDANI: 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.
For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handle bars, 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. The future is in our hands. My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty.
I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life. But let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few.
New York, tonight you have delivered a mandate for change, a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city we can afford and a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that.
On January 1st, I will be sworn in as the mayor of New York City. And that is because of you. So, before I say anything else, I must say this: thank you. Thank you to the next generation of New Yorkers who refuse to accept that the promise of a better future was a relic of the past. You showed that when politics speaks to you without condescension, we can usher in a new era of leadership. We will fight for you because we are you, or, as we say on Steinway, ana minkum wa alaikum.
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 — yes, aunties. To every New Yorker in Kensington and Midwood and Hunts Point, know this: This city is your city, and this democracy is yours, too.
This campaign is about people like Wesley, an 1199 organizer I met outside of Elmhurst Hospital on Thursday night, a New Yorker who lives elsewhere, who commutes two hours each way from Pennsylvania because rent is too expensive in this city. It’s about people like the woman I met on the Bx33 years ago, who said to me, “I used to love New York, but now it’s just where I live.” And it’s about people like Richard, the taxi driver I went on a 15-day hunger strike with outside of City Hall, who still has to drive his cab seven days a week. My brother, we are in City Hall now. …
Standing before you, I think of the words of Jawaharlal Nehru: “A moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.” Tonight, we have stepped out from the old into the new.
So let us speak now with clarity and conviction that cannot be misunderstood about what this new age will deliver and for whom. This will be an age where New Yorkers expect from their leaders a bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than a list of excuses for what we are too timid to attempt.
Central to that vision will be the most ambitious agenda to tackle the cost-of-living crisis that this city has seen since the days of Fiorello La Guardia, an agenda that will freeze the rents for more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants. …
Together, we will usher in a generation of change. And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.
This is not only how we stop Trump, it’s how we stop the next one. So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.
We will hold bad landlords to account, because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks. We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections, because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed.
New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.
So, hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.
When we enter City Hall in 58 days, expectations will be high. We will meet them. A great New Yorker once said that while you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose. If that must be true, let the prose we write still rhyme, and let us build a shining city for all.
And we must chart a new path, as bold as the one we have already traveled. After all, the conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate. I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.
AMY GOODMAN: Zohran Mamdani speaking at his victory party Tuesday night at the Brooklyn Paramount after he won the New York City mayoral race, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo. After his speech, he was joined on stage by his wife, Rama Duwaji, and his parents, the filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani.
Coming up, we hear from New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the writer Naomi Klein, City Comptroller Brad Lander and many others at Mamdani’s victory party. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: “Flame in My Heart” by Cool Whip, featuring our very own archivist, Brendan Allen.











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