Zohran Mamdani elected New York mayor: What this means for Democrats in the age of Trump

Zohran Mamdani defeated former state governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday in the New York mayoral elections that became as much a referendum on the Democratic Party’s future as it was about governing the United States’ largest city.

Thirty four-year-old Mamdani, the first Muslim and South Asian to be elected as the city’s mayor, won 50.6% of the vote to Cuomo’s 41.2%.

The result comes at a moment when the Democratic party faces its most acute crisis in a generation, steadily losing registered voters across the United States while struggling to articulate a coherent response to US President Donald Trump’s authoritarian actions.

The New York mayoral race became a clash of two very different Democrats. On one the progressive side was Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist state assemblyman whose grassroots campaign drew international attention. On the other was Andrew Cuomo, disgraced by a sexual harassment scandal and running as an independent with backing from billionaire donors and major corporations after failing to win the party’s nomination.

In recent weeks, the race has become a bitter and personal face-off with racist and Islamophobic attacks against Mamdani. It could have major implications for how the Democratic party performs in next year’s midterm elections for the US House of Representatives and...

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