Queens Assemblyman and socialist Muslim Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race with over 50% of the vote. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa took a combined 48.7% of the ballots with 91% of votes counted, meaning that even had Sliwa quit the race, Mamdani’s opposition would have fallen short.
Mamdani delivered a victory speech after Cuomo conceded the race in which he quoted socialists, leaned into identity politics, and made sweeping promises about a “new age” for New York. He mentioned the “new age” five times. That “new age,” he said, will deliver “relentless improvement,” defined by “competence and compassion.” He touted his win as a triumph for the “working people of New York.”
“The sun may have set over our city this evening,” he began, “but as Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity. For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands… The future is in our hands, my friends, we have toppled a political dynasty.”
The full quote from Debs, founder of the Industrial Workers of the World and a socialist, was “I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due time they will and must come to their own,” and he delivered it upon being convicted of violating the Sedition Act.
Later in his speech, Mamdani quoted Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister after independence from Britain and an anti-colonial nationalist. “A moment comes, but rarely in history,” Mamdani said, “when we step out from the old to the new when an age ends and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance.” Those words were first spoken by Nehru in his Tryst with Destiny speech as India gained independence in 1947.
Mamdani said that the voters “have delivered a mandate for change, a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city we can afford, and a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that on January 1, I will be sworn in as the mayor of New York City.”