Progressive state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, NBC News projects, marking a stunning rise by the 33-year-old democratic socialist over powerful former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The projection comes as the New York City Board of Elections released the initial round of ranked-choice voting results, with Mamdani emerging as the top candidate.
Mamdani won 56% of the vote after the initial ranked-choice tabulation narrowed the race to Mamdani and Cuomo, who won 44%. The initial tabulation includes ballots cast in person and mail ballots received and processed as of last week’s primary Election Day. Voters could rank up to five candidates in order of preference, and the candidates with the lowest number of voters are eliminated first. Their votes are then reallocated to their supporters’ next choice, and the process continues until two candidates remain.
Mamdani’s surprise victory over Cuomo, who had long been viewed as the front-runner, received attention far outside New York City, raising more questions for a Democratic Party establishment that is struggling with its path forward after its 2024 losses.
Mamdani’s status as the Democratic nominee will no doubt be a boost in the heavily Democratic city, but he will have to face Mayor Eric Adams, who was elected as a Democrat but decided to run for re-election as an independent after Trump’s Justice Department dropped corruption charges against him. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa will also be on the fall ballot along with other candidates.
It’s also unclear whether Mamdani has defeated Cuomo for good. Cuomo will still be on the November ballot after forming his own political party, declining to remove his name by last week’s deadline. But it remains to be seen if Cuomo will actively campaign as a third-party candidate.
Cuomo campaign spokesman Rich Azzopardi said Monday that the campaign did not expect the ranked choice results to be “all that revelatory,” given the results of primary voters’ first choices released last week.
“We’ll be examining the expected makeup and opinions of general electorate voters while determining next steps,” Azzopardi said in a statement.
Mamdani, though, is confident that he can beat both Adams and Cuomo in November.
“We can beat anyone that’s in this race because what we’ve shown is that this is a campaign that has the support of more than 400,000 New Yorkers,” Mamdani told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday, adding that the race will be a “referendum” on how Adams “made this city so unaffordable.”
“For too long, politicians have pretended to simply be bystanders to a cost of living crisis,” Mamdani said. “They’ve actually exacerbated it. And our vision is one that will respond to it and make this a city affordable for every New Yorker.”
Primary victory
Running in the highest-profile race of his life, Mamdani took down Cuomo, a former governor who had been one of the most prominent Democrats in the country before his downfall in 2021, when he resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.
Cuomo had asked Democratic voters for a second chance by framing himself as uniquely suited to run the city given his past executive experience and history pushing back on President Donald Trump. Backed by prominent Democrats and wealthy donors, Cuomo and his allies blanketed the city with ads and vastly outspent his rivals.
But in the end, Mamdani emerged victorious, as Democrats signaled they’re ready to move on to a fresh face promising a new, progressive direction for the city. Now, he could become the city’s first Muslim mayor.
Mamdani won his seat in the New York state Assembly in 2020, representing parts of Queens. Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Mamdani grew up primarily in the city as the son of an academic and a filmmaker, leaving the city to attend Bowdoin College in Maine before returning to Queens to work as a foreclosure prevention counselor. He became an American citizen in 2018 and narrowly defeated an incumbent Democratic legislator in his 2020 run for office, in which he was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America.
Mamdani has embraced that democratic socialist moniker at a time where Democratic Party faces an identity crisis across the country. His campaign has been centered on a call to “put working people first” and provide a new direction for the city funded by tax increases on the wealthy.
Mamdani has drawn the ire of Republicans, including Trump, who wrote in a Truth Social post that Democrats “crossed the line” to support Mamdani, who is “a 100% Communist Lunatic,”
Mamdani told “Meet the Press” that Trump “wants to distract from what I’m fighting for. And I’m fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower, that he has since then betrayed.”
“And when we talk about my politics, I call myself a democratic socialist in many ways inspired by the words of Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] from decades ago who said, ‘Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism. There has to be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country,’” Mamdani said.
Mamdani did face charges during the primary that he was too radical for the city. He also drew significant blowback from Cuomo and prominent Jewish leaders for not denouncing the slogan “globalize the intifada” when asked about it during a podcast interview. Mamdani referred to the slogan as “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights,” and added that the U.S. Holocaust Museum had used the Arabic word “intifada” in a translated description of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against Nazi Germany.
The museum, as well as a handful of Jewish leaders, criticized those comments and accused Mamdani of stoking antisemitism, while Cuomo and his allies pointed to the episode to claim Mamdani shouldn’t be elected to lead a city with a sizable Jewish population.
Asked why he would not condemn the slogan, Mamdani told “Meet the Press”: “My concern is to start to walk down the line of language and making clear what language I believe is permissible or impermissible takes me into a place similar to that of the president, who is looking to do those very kinds of things — putting people in jail for writing an op-ed, putting them in jail for protesting.”
“Ultimately, it’s not language that I use,” Mamdani said. “It’s language I understand there are concerns about. And what I will do is showcase my vision for this city through my words and my actions.”
