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Mamdani has been elected mayor. Here’s the latest.
Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old state lawmaker who transformed himself into an electrifying voice for New Yorkers disillusioned with runaway living costs and a scandal-plagued old guard, was elected the city’s 111th mayor on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.
His victory, stretching from the gentrified corridors of Brooklyn to the working-class immigrant enclaves of Queens, completed one of the most remarkable political upsets in New York history and will soon put a democratic socialist in City Hall.
Mr. Mamdani defeated former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in a rematch of June’s Democratic pri…
Pinned
Updated
Mamdani has been elected mayor. Here’s the latest.
Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old state lawmaker who transformed himself into an electrifying voice for New Yorkers disillusioned with runaway living costs and a scandal-plagued old guard, was elected the city’s 111th mayor on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.
His victory, stretching from the gentrified corridors of Brooklyn to the working-class immigrant enclaves of Queens, completed one of the most remarkable political upsets in New York history and will soon put a democratic socialist in City Hall.
Mr. Mamdani defeated former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in a rematch of June’s Democratic primary, as New Yorkers soundly rejected a man who was once the state’s most powerful figure for the second time in five months. Curtis Sliwa, the Republican, was in a distant third place, and conceded earlier in the night.
Turnout surged past two million voters, the highest level of participation in one of the city’s municipal elections since 1969.
A state assemblyman from Queens, Mr. Mamdani had entered the contest a year ago as little more than a protest candidate with a thin résumé and virtually no citywide profile.
But his intense focus on affordability, mastery of social media and relentlessly infectious optimism about New York galvanized record turnout among young voters and immigrant groups, catapulting him past more seasoned rivals.
Now, he is poised to make history. He will be New York City’s youngest mayor since the 19th century, and its first Muslim and first South Asian mayor. Born in Uganda to parents of Indian descent, he will also be the first naturalized immigrant to serve as mayor since Abraham Beame in the 1970s.
Mr. Mamdani campaigned as an insurgent against the city’s long-running political and business establishment. He has called for raising taxes on the wealthy, making buses and child care free, a rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments and overhauling a Police Department he has harshly criticized.
But he will face profound challenges when he takes office on Jan. 1. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Albany lawmakers hold the strings to the purse needed to fund his plans. Many Jewish New Yorkers and business leaders deeply mistrust him.
Looming over all of it is President Trump, who even before Mr. Mamdani’s victory had identified “my little communist mayor” as a target of his ire. The president officially backed Mr. Cuomo on the eve of the election.
Mr. Trump has threatened to make New York the next target in his fight with American cities, potentially cutting off federal funds and deploying the National Guard, if Mr. Mamdani pursues policies he does not like.
The results put a punctuation mark on a remarkable stretch for New York City. It began last fall when Mayor Eric Adams, who in a typical year would be the favorite for re-election, was indicted on federal corruption charges.
Mr. Adams did not run in the Democratic primary, and then abandoned his third-party bid for re-election in September. His late-stage endorsement of Mr. Cuomo did not seem to significantly help the former governor.
And the closing weeks of the campaign were exceptionally bitter, shaken by accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Mr. Mamdani accused Mr. Cuomo of selling out the city, its transit system and its housing stock to big-money donors. Voters ultimately seemed unwilling to give Mr. Cuomo another chance after he was run out of the governorship amid allegations of sexual harassment.
Mr. Cuomo, in turn, tried to portray Mr. Mamdani as a far-left radical who would endanger New Yorkers’ finances and security. The tone of Mr. Cuomo and his allies became notably menacing in the race’s final weeks, as he chased conservative voters with messages that played to fear about Mr. Mamdani’s Muslim faith and foreign origin.
Here’s what else to know.
Also on the ballot: Voters weighed in on a number of other contests including two citywide positions, comptroller and public advocate. In Manhattan, Alvin Bragg won re-election as the district attorney.
Housing proposals: On the back side of the ballot, voters were asked to consider six proposals, including three on housing development in the city. Those three, which have been contentious, are intended to remove some political and bureaucratic barriers to development that would allow some projects to bypass the City Council.
The New York State Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, issued a statement congratulating Mamdani. “Mayor-Elect Mamdani ran an inspiring, positive campaign that brought New Yorkers from every borough together around a shared fight for affordability. He ran on a message rooted in hope, inclusion, and offering solutions to the affordability crisis,” wrote Stewart-Cousins, who was the first statewide leader to endorse him. She added: “His victory reminds us what democracy can look like when people believe their voices matter.”
The passage of the pro-housing ballot proposals, which shift power from the City Council to City Hall, may give Zohran Mamdani an advantage if he wants to enact his full housing agenda, including the construction of 200,000 new affordable apartments.
Scenes From Election Day
Queens
Vincent Alban/The New York Times 1.
Brooklyn
Todd Heisler/The New York Times 1.
Manhattan
Anna Watts for The New York Times 1.
Manhattan
James Estrin/The New York Times
- QueensVincent Alban/The New York Times
- ManhattanAnna Watts for The New York Times
- ManhattanVictor J. Blue for The New York Times
- ManhattanHiroko Masuike/The New York Times
- ManhattanHiroko Masuike/The New York Times
- ManhattanJames Estrin/The New York Times
- QueensJuan Arredondo for The New York Times
Staten Island
Ang Li/The New York Times
- QueensVincent Alban/The New York Times
Queens
Zohran Mamdani and his wife, Rama Duwaji.
StringersHub, via Associated Press
Manhattan
Andrew Cuomo
Anna Watts for The New York Times
Queens
Curtis Sliwa
Dave Sanders for The New York Times
- BrooklynMayor Eric AdamsJonah Markowitz for The New York Times
- BrooklynMichelle V. Agins/The New York Times
- QueensZohran Mamdani and his wife, Rama Duwaji.Amir Hamja for The New York Times
Queens
StringersHub, via Associated Press
- BrooklynDave Sanders for The New York Times
- ManhattanAndrew CuomoAnna Watts for The New York Times
- BrooklynDave Sanders for The New York Times
- QueensCurtis SliwaDave Sanders for The New York Times
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It’s a mix of raw celebration and political discourse at the party hosted by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. People are standing on tables and drinking beer out of pitchers. Some are talking about how to hold Mamdani accountable to his campaign promises. The crowd is diverse, young and exhilarated. It feels like a sporting event, but with the left wing of New York’s political spectrum.
“I feel electric, I feel very unified and there’s something so nice being in this moment,” said Grace Duah, 28. “Today, to be standing here in front of all these people, it feels like history.”
Zohran Mamdani did not reveal his support for the three contentious housing measures until he cast his ballot on Election Day, despite being asked repeatedly by reporters and attacked by his rivals for not weighing in during the campaign. He may have felt he did not have to take on unnecessary controversy, as the polling pretty strongly indicated the measures would pass without his endorsement.
New York City voters expressed strong support for two housing ideas that are often though to be in competition: stricter rent regulation, via Zohran Mamdani’s victory, and more development, through the ballot proposals.
Ballot proposal 5, which replaces the official borough-controlled paper maps of New York City with a consolidated digital map, has unsurprisingly sailed through. It was the least controversial of the measures on the back of the ballot.
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The New York City electorate is sending a very strong pro-development message. A set of ballot proposals that make it easier to develop housing — 2, 3 and 4 — have passed comfortably, according to the Associated Press, despite furious opposition from the City Council and influential labor unions.
As expected, the New York Republican Party immediately pivoted to trying to paint the entire Democratic Party as Mamdani’s. That strategy is likely to last through next year, when Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, will face off against a close Trump ally, Elise Stefanik, an upstate Republican congresswoman.
In a statement, Ed Cox, the New York Republican chair, said: “Americans must assume that any Democrat who does not explicitly say otherwise stands with Mamdani and his support of Islamic terrorism, communism, and defunding the police. New Yorkers already know that Kathy Hochul does — and the Worst Governor in America will answer to voters for her support of this lunacy next November.”
Shane Pielocik, 30, a bartender from Bushwick, picked up an extra shift at the Brooklyn Paramount this week and couldn’t believe his luck when it turned out to be the results party for Mamdani, whom he supported for mayor.
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Credit...Amir Hamja for The New York Times
The Mamdani event at the Brooklyn Paramount is becoming ever more of a party, with the music growing louder and the drinks flowing freely. One man asked a bartender, “How many shots can I get?” to which the bartender replied, “As many as you can carry.” The D.J. is playing Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” and pausing the song as the crowd sings in its place.
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Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, among the most impassioned (if not fearmongering) of the anti-Mamdani activists, on Tuesday offered Mamdani his help. “Congrats on the win,” he said on social media. “Now you have a big responsibility. If I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do.”
Mamdani is expected to travel to San Juan, P.R., later this week, for the political conclave known as Somos. He will mingle with elected officials at beachfront parties as members of the City Council move to select a new speaker.
President Trump, who gave Cuomo an 11th-hour endorsement on Monday, urging Republicans to abandon Sliwa, their party’s candidate, is now absolving himself of any responsibility for Cuomo’s defeat. “‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters,” he wrote on social media shortly after 10 p.m.
The UJA-Federation of New York, a major Jewish group, released a statement: “We recognize that voters are animated by a range of issues, but we cannot ignore that the mayor-elect holds core beliefs fundamentally at odds with our community’s deepest convictions and most cherished values.”
The group added: “We will continue to work across every level of government to ensure that our city remains a place where our Jewish community, and all communities, feel safe and respected. We call on Mayor-elect Mamdani and all elected officials to govern with humility, inclusivity, and a deep respect for the diversity of views and experiences that define our city.”
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While Mamdani’s margin of victory over Cuomo was similar to his edge in the Democratic primary, he fared better in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods than he did in June, including flipping the Bronx.
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Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times
The crowd at Cuomo’s party is chanting, “Shame on Sliwa!”
The Cuomo watch party continues to empty out. The last three attendees I spoke with were from Westchester and New Jersey.
In a hint of possible battles to come, The New York Post, which has been relentless in its critical coverage of Mamdani, just released the front page of tomorrow’s print newspaper. Notably, The Post was no friend of Cuomo for much of the election, running tough coverage and biting editorials.
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Supporters continued to celebrate at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, where Zohran Mamdani is expected to speak tonight.
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Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times
In Washington Square Park, people are celebrating Mamdani’s win by dancing to “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys — a signature song of the current mayor, Eric Adams — and popping champagne, which is spraying everywhere.
Bill de Blasio, the former mayor who endorsed Mamdani’s campaign, said in an interview that Mamdani’s victory on Tuesday showed that “New Yorkers are sick of the status quo, ready for very different leadership, and they came to believe that Zohran could do it.”
Diversity Plaza, in the heart of Jackson Heights, is unusually empty. Residents have instead gathered in nearby restaurants and bars to watch the TV screens displaying Mr. Mamdani’s victory. Inside the Shanai restaurant, a group of three high-school seniors who have been campaigning for Mamdani since February described themselves as “excited,” “overstimulated,” and “very hopeful.” Before volunteering for his campaign, 17-year-old Mahbuba Mohini said, “I didn’t know what politics really was. I feel like everyone’s voices, everyone’s efforts do make a change.”
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Mamdani was elected with a thinner résumé than his predecessors as mayor.
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Zohran Mamdani, 34, will be New York City’s youngest mayor in more than a century.Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times
The job has beckoned borough presidents, jurists, members of Congress and a billionaire chief executive, candidates whose thick résumés played an outsize role in their election as mayor of New York City. Their credentials defined them: the university president, the U.S. attorney and other citywide office holders.
And then there is Zohran Mamdani, who was elected on Tuesday to lead the nation’s most populous city despite not having the kind of résumé that has been traditionally associated with the mayor’s office.
In choosing Mr. Mamdani, a 34-year-old state assemblyman and democratic socialist, voters appeared willing to overlook what might have been a vulnerability for other politicians: inexperience.
The city’s electorate put greater weight on Mr. Mamdani’s progressive vision for New York, one rooted in promises of free buses, frozen rents, free child care and a multibillion-dollar tax increase on the city’s corporations.
Mr. Mamdani has served in the Legislature for nearly five years, introducing 20-odd bills during his three terms representing parts of Queens. Just four of those bills have become law, none of which were major pieces of legislation.
In 2024, state lawmakers declined to extend a free bus pilot program that had been championed by Mr. Mamdani. In the Legislature, his proposal to strip tax-exempt status from nonprofit groups if their funds were used to support Israel’s military and settlement activity did not gain traction.
Outside of politics, Mr. Mamdani’s first and only full-time job involved counseling struggling homeowners at the Chhaya Community Development Corporation, a small nonprofit in Queens, for about a year.
During the campaign, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who ran for mayor as an independent after losing to Mr. Mamdani in the Democratic primary, frequently attacked his chief rival as a neophyte.
“You’ve never accomplished anything,” Mr. Cuomo said during an Oct. 22 debate. “There’s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight-and-a-half million lives. You don’t know how to run a government. You don’t know how to handle an emergency.”
Rebutting Mr. Cuomo’s criticism about his lack of experience that night, Mr. Mamdani assailed his rival’s record as governor, from his handling of the coronavirus pandemic to Mr. Cuomo’s resignation amid multiple sexual harassment accusations against him.
“You will hear from Andrew Cuomo about his experience, as if the issue is that we don’t know about it,” Mr. Mamdani said. “The issue is that we have all experienced your experience.”
Grace Ashford contributed reporting.
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How Zohran Mamdani beat back New York’s elite and was elected mayor.
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Zohran Mamdani in June held the first of three campaign rallies with leaders of the left, appearing with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Manhattan.Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times
Zohran Mamdani was still asleep early in the morning after June’s Democratic primary when the phone calls started flooding in. There were the usual congratulations, certainly, but also signs of something more worrying.
A young democratic socialist, Mr. Mamdani had just toppled former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, upending New York’s power structure in an upset so stunning and so swift that even he had not fully seen it coming.
Now, titans of the city establishment were clogging up the phones of the candidate and his small team, looking for belated introductions. Most did not sound happy.
“It’s a great day in New York,” Morris Katz, Mr. Mamdani’s 26-year-old political adviser, told the real estate magnate William C. Rudin in one of the conversations.
The businessman paused. That’s certainly not how I see it, he replied.
Many past primary winners had instantly been anointed as mayor-elect in this overwhelmingly Democratic city. But it took just hours to become clear that the power brokers and civic gatekeepers accustomed to running New York saw Mr. Mamdani’s ascent as something closer to hostile takeover — one that many would do anything to block.
A top aide for Mr. Cuomo was already phoning unions and Democratic officials urging them to withhold support. Old real estate friends soon began pitching President Trump on a possible White House intervention.
And Bill Ackman, the billionaire financier, fired off a warning on X, saying “hundreds of millions of dollars” would be available to clobber the young interloper in November and “save our City.”
Mr. Mamdani’s political rise may be remembered for what came first: the buoyant, flamboyant, rule-breaking primary run that united a new coalition of Brooklyn gentrifiers and Queens cabbies around the city’s growing affordability crisis and the birth of a megawatt talent.
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One of Mr. Mamdani’s first notable actions as a lawmaker was to help taxi drivers deal with excessive debt caused by predatory lending practices.Credit...Vincent Alban/The New York Times
But his election on Tuesday as the 111th mayor of New York owes as much to the equally improbable backroom campaign that followed. In Midtown C-suites and intimate phone calls, a left-wing populist who had built his brand on taxing the rich wooed, charmed and delicately disarmed some of the most powerful people in America.
The arc of his success is nothing short of staggering. At the start of the year, Mr. Mamdani was polling at 1 percent, tied, as he likes to say, with the candidate known as “someone else.” Few New Yorkers recognized his name, and his own political team put the odds of winning as low as 3 percent.
Now, at age 34, he will be New York City’s youngest leader in more than a century, amid a pile of historic firsts: the first Muslim mayor, the first South Asian and arguably the most influential democratic socialist in the country.
This account of how he did it draws from interviews with Mr. Mamdani’s top advisers and allies, as well as his critics and rivals. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity to share previously unreported exchanges.
The final chapter was a high-wire act that at times appeared at risk of collapsing, as internal forces clashed over how much ground to give around the war in Gaza and policing, and Mr. Cuomo deftly sought to undermine him.
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Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo sought to amplify fears that Mr. Mamdani’s views of Israel would leave Jewish New Yorkers at risk.Credit...Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Behind the scenes, it featured a key apology to Gov. Kathy Hochul at a Midtown hotel; renewed contact with Mr. Rudin, after a horrific shooting touched the core of his business; a courtship of Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor, that bought Mr. Mamdani time, if not an alliance; and more than a bit of luck.
The meetings with establishment leaders turned out to be crucial. “I don’t think anything he said was nearly as important as the fact that he knew they were important enough to spend time on,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, the head of a leading business group.
Deep misgivings still remain among the city’s elite that could affect his tenure. But, Ms. Wylde added, “It quieted the hysteria — just enough.”
Ignoring the referees
As Mr. Mamdani began sketching out a potential campaign a year earlier over cups of chai at a Yemeni cafe in Astoria, his challenge was far more basic: getting noticed at all.
A backbench assemblyman who had immigrated to New York City at age 7, he had almost no citywide profile. Even fellow socialists thought his views on policing and Israel would put a hard ceiling on his support. And the field running against the scandal-plagued mayor, Eric Adams, was growing by the day.
Mr. Mamdani later told an ally that he had confided in his fiancée, Rama Duwaji, that he didn’t really think he could win. The goal was to build a template for the kind of muscular leftist campaign that might one day crack the Democratic establishment’s hold.
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Mr. Mamdani, voting on Election Day with his wife, Rama Duwaji, told her months ago that he doubted he would win the mayoralty.Credit...Amir Hamja for The New York Times
How that long-shot candidacy caught fire has been amply dissected by political observers here and in Washington. Mr. Mamdani foregrounded the city’s affordability crisis when rivals focused elsewhere, lapped them with viral social media videos and benefited from Democrats’ hunger for generational change.
But as seen by Mr. Mamdani and his cadre of advisers, not one of whom had ever run a citywide campaign, none of it was going to work if they waited for traditional gatekeepers in media, civic institutions and elected office.
Forget the New York conjured by political strategists, one future adviser, Zara Rahim, advised him over coffee last summer. Make a campaign about the actual New York City.
Jonathan Rosen, a Democrat who helped mastermind Bill de Blasio’s 2013 mayoral victory and was advising a rival campaign, compared the strategy to those deployed by two other New Yorkers, Mr. Trump and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who “went direct, ignored all the institutions and referees and built a relationship with New Yorkers.”
“Mediums matter,” he said, “and who understands them first matters.”
The campaign decided to forgo selling branded swag, a revenue stream for many candidates, and adopted what it called “the Mets bobblehead strategy of merch.” It produced special items in limited quantities — a blue beanie, paper fans, bandannas — that could only be earned, incentivizing supporters to give not money but time.
It hosted a series of events — a citywide scavenger hunt, a soccer tournament at Coney Island — that opponents laughed off as gimmicks but attracted thousands of supporters. Many later became part of an unmatched army of volunteers.
Mr. Mamdani’s campaign drew supporters to nontraditional events like a scavenger hunt and a soccer tournament.
“My experience of politics in the last nine years has been a lot of people being mean to each other on Twitter,” said Katie Riley, who oversaw campaign operations. “We wanted people to get out in the world together in real spaces.”
The contrast to Mr. Cuomo could not have been more jarring. The scion of a political dynasty, he had been run out of the governor’s office in a sexual harassment scandal. But when he entered the race in March, he acted as if he were still in charge.
He rarely appeared in public, threatened unions and fellow Democrats into creating an air of inevitability around him and relied on $25 million in big-money donations to a super PAC supporting him.
By the time Mr. Mamdani and aides gathered at a Holiday Inn on June 24, primary night, they thought their approach was working. But they were so certain they would not win outright that first night that they had not prepared a victory speech.
Yet not long after 10 p.m., Mr. Mamdani found himself letting congratulatory calls go through to voice mail, as he and a shocked clutch of aides raced to write one.
Speaking later on a rooftop near the hotel, he declared victory over the “billionaires and their big spending” and “elected officials who care more about self-enrichment than the public trust.” He proudly disclosed he had already spoken to Mr. Cuomo “about the need to bring this city together.”
The sentiment, it turns out, would last about eight hours.
‘Everything is about to change’
Patrick Gaspard, who began advising Mr. Mamdani late in the primary, had spent a lifetime accumulating contacts as a top Democratic organizer. The morning after the primary, so many of them were trying to reach him that he set his phone to do not disturb.
Many messages sounded outright panicked, including from prominent Black New Yorkers who knew little about the candidate. Why do you trust him? He seems shady. He is misleading our children, Mr. Gaspard recalled the messages saying.
Inside the campaign, Mr. Mamdani and his advisers were exhausted. They had planned to plot their next steps while on retreat for a week. They had mere hours to face a new reality.
Look, everything is about to change, Ms. Rahim and Mr. Katz told Mr. Mamdani as they idled in a car outside 30 Rockefeller Plaza after a post-primary television appearance.
He would need to quadruple his staff, delicately reassign longtime aides to less high-profile roles and begin more seriously planning for the possibility that he could be mayor, they said. If he needed any reminder, a police detail now accompanied his every movement.
“The exhausted disbelief was palpable,” Mr. Gaspard said. “You could tell they were having a tough time absorbing they were going to have to do it all over again.”
Some post-primary consolidation came quickly, especially as labor unions and local party leaders embraced his candidacy. But others, including some of the nation’s top Democrats, held back, worried that associating with Mr. Mamdani’s far-left views could tank the party’s chances in next year’s midterms.
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Mr. Mamdani, at a news conference with Senator Elizabeth Warren, quickly amassed support from labor unions like District Council 37, which hosted the event.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Mr. Adams, who sat out the primary, looked to be regaining strength with support from the city’s rattled business class. And though Mr. Cuomo had initially signaled a willingness to bow out, he threw himself back into the race as an independent with a newfound furor after taking a brief retreat in the Hamptons.
“I was not aggressive enough,” he told supporters. “I promise you, I will not make that mistake again.”
Mr. Mamdani also took a post-primary break, traveling to Uganda in late July for a long-planned marriage celebration at a lavish family compound. The campaign was jittery, hiring an outside lawyer as a precaution in case immigration agents hassled him when he returned. Mr. Mamdani went through the airport in a mask and a hat to avoid a public spectacle.
But when a crisis did arrive, it was not the one they expected. Seven thousand miles away, back in New York, a gunman walked into a Midtown office tower and carried out a deadly mass shooting, including killing an off-duty police officer. The attacker had targeted a building that happened to house the offices of Mr. Rudin, the real estate executive, and killed one of his employees.
Aides woke Mr. Mamdani in the night to put out a statement, and he rushed to get on the first flight back to New York City. But by the time he landed two days later, Mr. Cuomo was on television screens across the city all but blaming his opponent, who once called for defunding the police, for the massacre.
It was a disaster. And the unfavorable optics might have changed the course of the whole campaign, but for one twist of fate: The officer killed turned out to be Bangladeshi and, like Mr. Mamdani, a Muslim. The family invited the candidate to join them at home, and he arrived directly from Kennedy Airport.
Afterward, he called a news conference that would be his longest since Primary Day. He chastised Mr. Cuomo for politicizing the moment but also used the platform to stress that his views on policing had evolved from the days when he called the institution “racist” and called for funding cuts.
For the first time in weeks, aides breathed a sigh of relief.
“To me, it was the first moment I felt like he was the mayor of New York,” Mr. Katz said.
A C-Suite Charm Offensive
Mr. Mamdani knew he still had a problem.
No mayor has led New York without at least some tacit support from the business elite since the fiscal crisis of 1970s. Running aggressively against them had worked in the primary, but as summer slid toward fall, his advisers worried that leaders of the group could push both Mr. Adams and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, out of the race.
A one-on-one matchup with Mr. Cuomo in a more conservative general electorate could be disastrous.
So Mr. Mamdani got busy. He asked Ms. Wylde, the head of the Partnership for New York City, for a list of every major business leader he should call and began reaching out one by one, including to Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, and Hamilton E. James, the former head of Blackstone.
The only child of two prominent cultural figures, Mr. Mamdani was at ease with rich and powerful people. He explained why his core positions would not change, but he also solicited advice and signaled more flexibility that his reputation suggested.
His goal was to expand free child care and buses, Mr. Mamdani said in some groups, but he was open to scrapping a proposed tax hike if he could find another funding stream.
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One of Mr. Mamdani’s signature proposals is to introduce free universal child care.Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times
At a packed meeting with the Association for a Better New York, a civic-minded group of business leaders, in a Midtown office suite in early August, he began by offering condolences to Mr. Rudin, whose father co-founded the organization, over the recent shooting. (The men had also spoken by phone in the days after it happened.) Then, he surprised attendees by proposing a regulatory change developers had longed for to speed up construction.
Some who were expecting a strident ideologue came away impressed. For others, his willingness to engage was at least a welcome contrast to Mr. de Blasio, a progressive who had made a point of conspicuously thumbing his nose at Manhattan elite, and to Mr. Cuomo’s bruising style.
“He asked more questions and listened more intently to me and others in the room than I’ve ever seen any politician — surely in this city — do,” said Mr. Rosen.
Mr. Mamdani also took on a new tone with fellow Democrats.
When Chi Ossé, a progressive City Council member he was close to, began talking in October about potentially running in the primary next year against Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the moderate House Democratic leader, Mr. Mamdani and his team tried to shut it down.
Mr. Mamdani himself had been a thorn in side of Ms. Hochul for years, once saying her actions were why “people don’t trust politicians.” But he knew she had the trust of business leaders and would hold the keys to moving his ambitious plans through Albany.
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Mr. Mamdani, who, as a state lawmaker often had differences with Gov. Kathy Hochul, moved to make peace with her after his primary win.Credit...Amir Hamja for The New York Times
When the pair sat down in late June after the city’s Pride parade, he apologized for his earlier criticism of her and asked to work together, particularly around a shared interest in child care.
Ms. Hochul was pleasantly surprised. She initially told Mr. Mamdani that she would consider endorsing him, but she wanted him to agree to keep Jessica Tisch, a well-respected technocrat appointed by Mr. Adams, as police commissioner. Mr. Mamdani initially balked, explaining he had never even met her.
The question cut to the heart of one of the campaign’s leading conflicts: How far could Mr. Mamdani go courting the powerful without compromising his beliefs or, crucially, alienating his progressive base?
Mr. Katz described the general election campaign as a “story of a constant friction between trying to unite a party and not lose a populist edge.”
While he saw a political advantage in locking in Ms. Tisch quickly, Elle Bisgaard-Church, Mr. Mamdani’s longtime chief of staff, wanted to take a slower approach. The appointment would be one of the most significant he would make, and Mr. Mamdani needed to know he would have a partner to implement a series of progressive reforms he had pitched for the Police Department.
Ultimately, both Ms. Hochul and Mr. Mamdani came around. The governor endorsed him in September after he agreed to involve her when he selected a commissioner. Weeks later, after private conversations with Ms. Tisch, Mr. Mamdani said publicly he intended to keep her.
A similar argument played out around how forcefully Mr. Mamdani should distance himself from “globalize the intifada,” a phrase that many Jewish New Yorkers heard as a call to violence.
Mr. Mamdani, a pro-Palestinian activist, told business leaders in July that he would “discourage” the use of the phrase, but the decision not to condemn it outright eventually helped fan a full-fledged backlash from prominent Jewish institutions, which aided Mr. Cuomo.
Mr. Mamdani’s harsh criticism of Israel played a role in another, less successful courtship of Mr. Bloomberg.
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Mr. Mamdani sought to get Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor who supported Mr. Cuomo in the primary, to align with him or stay neutral in the general election.Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times
The candidate knew the former mayor had the unique stature and fortune to influence the general election. Mr. Mamdani needed to sideline him.
The campaign struggled to get a meeting, but when the two finally met at Bloomberg’s Midtown headquarters this fall, they spent a convivial hour debating management styles and looking at old photos of Mr. Bloomberg’s time in City Hall. Mr. Bloomberg had privately told associates over the summer he was done with Mr. Cuomo after spending more than $8 million to back him in the primary. Mr. Mamdani left the meeting thinking he had done enough to keep it that way.
He was wrong. Angry over Mr. Mamdani’s comments on Israel and worried about his inexperience, Mr. Bloomberg ultimately sent $5 million to two super PACs attacking Mr. Mamdani and re-upped his endorsement of Mr. Cuomo — but did so only six days before Election Day.
By then it was too late.
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A late-stage rally for Mr. Mamdani nearly filled Forest Hills Stadium in Queens.Credit...Amir Hamja for The New York Times
Mr. Mamdani had fortified his unlikely coalition for the general election, its strength on display a week before Election Day, when he nearly filled Forest Hills Stadium in Queens.
Onstage were Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, giants of the left, but also, awkward as it seemed to all involved, Ms. Hochul and the top legislative leaders in Albany. They were all uniting around the Democratic nominee.
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New York has not elected a mayor this young for more than a century.
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John Purroy Mitchel was 34 years old when he was elected mayor of New York City.Credit...Library of Congress
The last time a man in his 30s was mayor of New York City, ground had not yet been broken on what would become the world’s tallest building: the Empire State Building.
World War I was wreaking havoc on the cost and availability of food in the United States, which spawned a series of riots in the city.
That youthful chief executive, John Purroy Mitchel, was nicknamed the “Boy Mayor.” He was 34 years, 3 months and 16 days old when he won election in 1913.
Still, that’s nearly three months older than Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and state assemblyman who was elected the city’s 111th mayor on Tuesday.
Mr. Mamdani, who turned 34 on Oct. 18, will become the city’s youngest mayor since the 1898 consolidation that added Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island to New York City to create the five boroughs.
“There are some similarities between Mitchel and Mamdani in terms of their age and ambition and desire to shake things up,” said Lilly Tuttle, a curator at the Museum of the City of New York.
There have been 23 mayors in the post-consolidation era, averaging 50.7 years of age at the time of their election, according to the museum.
To find a New York City mayor younger than Mr. Mamdani, you have to go back to the 19th century: Hugh J. Grant was believed to have been 31 when he was inaugurated in 1889.
“I think it’s very fair to say that office was very different pre-consolidation,” Ms. Tuttle said. “You’re looking at a very different city.”
Grant belonged to Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine that dominated the city for decades and was known for corruption.
Over the years, his age has been the subject of significant confusion, according to the New York Historical, which said it had found some compelling evidence — Grant’s mausoleum, death certificate and census information from a young age — that he might have been as young as 30 when elected.
In the 1913 election, Mitchel vowed that he would reform City Hall and root out corruption, winning a landslide as a Republican and fusion candidate. He was raised in the Bronx and his mother was partly of Spanish and Venezuelan descent.
Mitchel overwhelmingly lost his 1917 bid for re-election and was killed in a flight training accident while an officer with the Aviation Section of the Army Signal Corps in 1918.
Greg Young, a co-host of the “Bowery Boys,” a popular podcast about New York City history, said that Mr. Mamdani’s political ascent — he has presented himself as a clean break from business as usual — had some parallels with Mitchel’s. In September, the podcast rereleased a 2013 episode focusing on Mitchel.
“People get sick of Tammany Hall,” Mr. Young said. “People get sick of politics as is, so they put in this kind of reform mayor.”
Andy Newman contributed reporting.
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Alvin Bragg is re-elected as Manhattan’s district attorney.
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Alvin Bragg in 2022 became only the fourth district attorney in 80 years and the first Black person to lead the office. Credit...Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times
Alvin L. Bragg, the incumbent Manhattan district attorney and the first prosecutor to convict a president, won re-election on Tuesday, securing a second term running one of the largest prosecutor’s offices in the nation.
Mr. Bragg faced a Republican and an independent. The other candidates tried to make the campaign a referendum on his record during his first term, arguing to voters that crime had increased and that the office had pulled back on prosecutions under Mr. Bragg’s tenure.
However, Manhattanites gave a landslide victory to Mr. Bragg, who won his re-election bid with The Associated Press calling the election in his favor within an hour of the polls closing. Mr. Bragg was leading with about three-quarters of the vote.
As news of his victory flashed onto the screen at a party at the Harlem Tavern, the crowd erupted into a chorus of cheers and applause.
“I love democracy,” Mr. Bragg told the crowd, adding that voters “spoke loudly.”
“They spoke specifically about having safety and fairness together,” Mr. Bragg said.
Mr. Bragg, 52, has held the job since 2022, when he became only the fourth district attorney in 80 years and the first Black person to lead the office. He also became the first prosecutor to win the conviction of a president when Donald J. Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies last year, a case Mr. Bragg has rarely discussed.
In his first race, Mr. Bragg had a relatively low profile — he was a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and had worked at the state attorney general’s office, where he led a unit responsible for investigating police killings of unarmed civilians.
On the campaign trail, he often recounted his story of growing up in Harlem when residents faced both high rates of crime and harassment from the police. He had been personally affected by gun violence, he said, pledging to balance public safety with fairness for all defendants.
He survived a contentious eight-way Democratic primary and won handily in the general election. Mr. Bragg was among a wave of progressive prosecutors who promised to reshape criminal justice with a focus on alternatives to prosecution. And after taking office, he quickly became one of the nation’s most recognizable prosecutors.
In his first year, he created a division called Pathways, which identifies defendants who would benefit from mental health or substance abuse programs more than incarceration. He also established another division to focus on sexual violence and child abuse.
During his campaign this year, Mr. Bragg pointed to drops in murders and shootings since he took office and promised to intensify similar efforts in a new term.
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In photos
Scenes From the N.Y.C. Mayoral Election
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In an election with historic turnout, Zohran Mamdani was elected as the first Muslim mayor of New York City. Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times
More than two million New Yorkers went to the polls on Tuesday to cast their votes in a pivotal mayoral race that has drawn worldwide attention for its big personalities and clashing ideological visions of the city’s future.
It has been decades since so many people voted in a New York City mayoral election, and the robust turnout from brownstone Brooklyn to suburban Staten Island and the concrete canyons of Manhattan underscored the high stakes of Tuesday’s contest.
The victory by the front-runner and Democratic nominee, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, is poised to shake up the city’s longstanding power structure and sent a powerful message about the direction of the Democratic Party during the second Trump administration.
Mr. Mamdani is a democratic socialist who ran on a platform of making New York City — the global capital of capitalism — a more affordable place to live, in part by fun