Zohran Mamdani Elected New York City Mayor, First Indian-American Muslim To Hold Post

A file photo of Zohran Mamdani (AFP)

Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani was on Wednesday elected the mayor of New York City, after he won the crucial poll, emerging as a front-runner.

Mamdani faced off against former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent candidate and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa on the ballots.

Eric Adams, who had been the mayor of New York City until Mamdani won, had dropped out of the mayoral race in September.

Polls across the US opened at 6 am on Tuesday (local US time) and were underway until 9 pm there. The early voting period, which commenced on October 25, ended on Sunday.

This was the first national election in the second term of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Soon after his win, Mamdani posted a video on his official X handle.

WHO IS ZOHRAN MAMDANI?

Mamdani, 34, born in Uganda and raised in New York City, is a New York State Assembly member and democratic socialist running for Mayor.

He is the son of renowned Indian filmmaker Mira Nair and Mahmood Mamdani, a Ugandan author of Indian ancestry.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI’s VOWS AS NYC MAYOR

Mamdani has vowed that as Mayor, he will immediately freeze the rent for all stabilised tenants, and use every available resource to build the housing New Yorkers need and bring down the rent.

Promising fast, fare-free buses, his campaign said that as Mayor, he’ll permanently eliminate the fare on every city bus, and make them faster by rapidly building priority lanes, expanding bus queue jump signals, and dedicated loading zones to keep double parkers out of the way.

Mamdani would also implement free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years, ensuring high-quality programming for all families.

With food prices out of control, his campaign also promised that as Mayor, he would create a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low, not making a profit.

Mamdani has a plan to bring down the cost-of-living through city-owned grocery stores, universal childcare, and other bold proposals, and he knows exactly how to pay for it, too, the campaign said.