The rise of Zohran Mamdani in New York politics has culminated this Tuesday morning – for the Spanish – with a victory that will make him the next mayor of New York. At 34 years old, Bernie Sanders’ pupil has defeated a former governor Andrew Cuomo who ran as an independent after losing the Democratic Party primaries.
Mamdani has obtained 50.5% of the votes, well above the 41.3% of Cuomo and the Republican Curtis Sliwa, who has only obtained 7.3% of the votes, according to the count published by Associated Press with 83% of the votes counted.
New York recorded the highest turnout in a mayoral election since 1969 early this Wednesday. According to the city’s Electoral Board, more than two million people They voted in the close race.
The campaign has strained the relationship, even more so, between the two major parties in the United States. The president Donald Trump He even supported Cuomo and threatened to restrict federal funding to the city if Mamdani prevailed. The Republican leader tried to dissuade New Yorkers from voting for him because he was a “communist.” A label that Mamdani has carried throughout the campaign, such as “jihadist” for being Muslim.
None of this has stopped him from mobilizing the support of millions of fellow citizens alarmed by the price of housing, the increase in inequality and the increase in the cost of living, in general, in one of the richest cities in the world.
What the winning candidate proposes is to increase taxes on large fortunes and multinationals, freeze regulated rents and expand the stock of subsidized public housing. These plans worry Wall Street and the old guard of the Democratic Party.
Its distance from establishment Democrat explains a good part of his success. On June 24, he left analysts stunned by sweeping the primaries. Since then, he has added relevant endorsements, such as those of the former vice president. Kamala Harris and the governor Kathy Hochul. The campaign has also received an avalanche of microdonations, and has contrasted with that of a Cuomo who has received millions of dollars from the great fortunes of New York.
The former president himself Barack Obama He contacted Mamdani in recent days to congratulate him and offer himself as an “advisor” if he reached City Hall. The candidate’s spokesperson, Dora Peckhighlighted the harmony between the two regarding “the need for a different policy for the city.”
At 67 years old, Cuomo bet the success of his campaign on his experience as governor. Of course, it did not help him that his departure from the state government in 2021 was due to the sexual harassment committed against several workers, nor his strange harmony with President Trump.
The Republican Curtis Sliwafounder of the Guardian Angels, was relegated to a distant third place in a city with a strong Democratic majority. When asked on CNN if he would accept a Mamdani victory, he responded clearly. “Of course,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
In Mamdani phenomenon in Virginia and New Jersey
To the candidate demócrata Abigail Spanberger will become Virginia’s first female governor, ending four years of Republican rule in the competitive state, according to projections NBC, CNN y Fox.
Virginia voters on Tuesday elected Abigail Spanberger as governor, who will become the first woman to govern the state with 55% of the votes surpassing her main opponent, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, by more than 10%, according to the provisional result with more than 40% counted.
Democrat Abigail Spanberger with her family on stage after her victory speech.
Reuters
The Mamdani phenomenon has also reached New Jersey. The Democrat Mikey Sherrill has defeated to Republican Jack Ciattarelli, who had Trump’s backing. He will succeed Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, whose term is limited by law, marking the first time since 1961 that a party has won three consecutive terms in the New Jersey governor’s mansion.
Sherrill, a Navy veteran who represented a northern New Jersey district in the U.S. House of Representatives for four terms, will be the state’s second female governor.