Zohran Mamdani cements his win over Cuomo as final election results are released
The final round ranked-choice voting results show that state assemblyman Mamdani obtained 56 percent of the vote, beating former New York governor Cuomo by 12 percent.
First round results showed Mamdani leading Cuomo 43.5 percent to 36.5 percent a few hours after the polls closed. Cuomo conceded the primary the same night.
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Gulf Today
a day ago
- Gulf Today
The unique candidate
The Democratic party's candidate for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani could face three rivals in the November election. In addition to uninspiring Republican candidate Curtis Silwa, two veteran Democrats have declared they are running as independents: incumbent Eric Adams and former New York state governor Andrew Cuomo. While Adams has fought off federal indictments for bribery, fraud, and seeking illegal foreign campaign donations, Cuomo was compelled to resign in 2021 after 11 women charged him with harassment. Mamdani is not burdened with such negative baggage and is unique on the US political scene. At 33, he is much younger than his rivals. He is the first South Asian to win a major party primary. As a foreign-born Muslim, Mamdani would be New York's first Muslim mayor if elected. He is a socialist and has a pro-Palestinian record in politics. He does not shy away from his record. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, of the nine-member 'State Socialists in Office' bloc in the in New York assembly and of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York. His record appears to be free of corruption. For decades US citizens have been fearful of socialists who are falsely regarded as Communists and enemies of sacrosanct capitalism. US citizens pay a high price for such beliefs. During the 1950s, the country was plagued by a Communist witch-hunt led by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy. His successors lurk in today's Republican party ranks and leadership. Erratic, explosive Donald rump calledMamdani a '100 percent Communist lunatic.' For decades US citizens have rejected sensible federal and state policies on a variety of issues. For example, by refusing as 'socialist medicine,' they do not enjoy coverage by a national health system and are forced to rely on insurance companies which exact huge premiums to cover the high costs of expensive medical treatment. To make matters worse, the Trump administration seeks to defund Medicare and Medicaid and there are fears that social security, adopted in 1935, may not be able to meet the needs of pensioners who have paid into the system during their working lives. After al-Qaeda's 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, there has been widespread suspicion and antagonism towards Muslims. This has been exacerbated and exploited by Trump. During both his terms in office, he sought to ban citizens of majority Muslim states from entering the country by claiming that some might be planning to harm the US. Mamdani has won the support of young voters by being honest. He refused to renounce his support for the Palestinians and for the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement which seeks to punish Israel for its anti-Palestinian policies and actions. Sociology professor at New York's City University, Heba Gowayed told Al-Jazeera, 'The fact that he refused to back down from his position on Palestine is huge.' Furthermore, she added that he did this in 'an atmosphere where we've been told that holding that position is politically disqualifying [and] insisted on taking this position.' She remarked, 'The old guard personified [by Cuomo] was beaten by a democratic socialist, a young, pro-Palestinian brown Muslim kid who had 1 per cent name recognition as of February. It is phenomenal and remarkable.' While Mamdani has adopted a pro-Palestinian stand, he has visited Jewish temples and social centres to reassure voters among the 2.1 million Jews in New York City that he intends to serve their interests. In his view, local politics should have nothing to do with the foreign Palestine-Israel conflict. He has been adopted by two influential mainstream Jewish Democrats Chuck Schumer and Jerry Nadler as well as Democrat leftist Alexandra Ocasio Cortez and Independent Bernie Sanders who is also Jewish. The progressive Jews for Racial and Economic Justice declared they were 'thrilled' by his nomination. However, during the campaign, Mamdani encountered racist attacks from New York City councilwoman Vickie Paladino and Congressman Randy Fine, both Republicans. After Mamdani won, conservative Islamophobe Republican Congressman Andy Ogles called for Mamdani to be deported and denaturalised. On Palestine-Israel, Mamdani stated, 'There are millions of New Yorkers who have strong feelings about what happens overseas. Yes, I am one of them. And while I will not abandon my beliefs or my commitments, grounded in a demand for equality, for humanity, you have my word to reach further, to understand the perspectives of those with whom I disagree, and to wrestle deeply with those disagreements.' Mamdani was born in Uganda to Indian parents and immigrated to the US when he was seven years old but did not become a naturalised US citizen until 2018, presumably, after deciding on a political career. He earned a bachelor's degree in Africana studies from Bowdoin college and worked as a housing counsellor for non- white homeowners faced with eviction. He was a hip-hop musician before being elected to the New York state assembly in 2020, 2022, and 2024. His work on housing has prompted him to make affordable housing, as well as police reform and prison reform, a major issue in his campaign. He is married to Syrian American artist Rama Duwaji and the couple lives in an apartment in the Astoria neighbourhood. Mamdani shadowed Cuomo for much of the campaign although once ballots were counted, was ahead by 43.51 per cent to Cuomo's 36.42 per cent. Although they had raised similar funding, Cuomo relied on traditional 'fat cat' donors while Mamdani appealed to a wide range of small contributors whose donations committed them to vote for him. His campaign strategy involved creating a movement, recruiting mainly young volunteers through social media and, ahead of voting day, he asked them to 'knock on a million doors.' This is not a new strategy as it was used in 2008 by the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Mamdani 's primary victory was an upset, an upset for traditional power brokers, for anti-Asian racists, anti-Muslim sectarians, and conservatives. They argued he was not a realist and too inexperienced a politician to manage New York's huge bureaucracy and deal with the city's mountain of problems. Nevertheless, New York is a Democrat city and unless he loses votes to Democrat rivals Adams and Cuomo who are running as independents, Mamdani is likely to defeat Republican Silwa in the November election. Photo: TNS
Middle East Eye
3 days ago
- Middle East Eye
Zohran Mamdani cements his win over Cuomo as final election results are released
Zohran Kwame Mamdani has officially bested Andrew Cuomo according to final round results of the New York City Democratic primary mayoral election that were released on Tuesday. The final round ranked-choice voting results show that state assemblyman Mamdani obtained 56 percent of the vote, beating former New York governor Cuomo by 12 percent. First round results showed Mamdani leading Cuomo 43.5 percent to 36.5 percent a few hours after the polls closed. Cuomo conceded the primary the same night.
Gulf Today
4 days ago
- Gulf Today
Zohran Mamdani and NYC's unaffordable economy
Daniel Wortel-London, Tribune News Service The promise of taxing the rich to fund social services propelled Zohran Mamdani to victory in Tuesday's New York City Democratic mayoral primary. His campaign vows to reverse decades of social service cuts and tackle NYC's pervasive unaffordability. Taxing the rich for the sake of the poor, however, contains an inherent contradiction. The wealthy are, in part, the very group whose concentrated economic activity has displaced working-class housing and jobs for decades. To rely on them to finance an affordable city risks merely perpetuating the problem, a lesson previous mayors learned too late. For Mamdani to truly succeed, he must do more than just tax the rich — he must remake the city's economy in the interests of its workers. This is not a new insight. As my book 'The Menace of Prosperity' details, as far back as Henry George, perceptive New Yorkers understood the intrinsic link between the growth of local wealth and the groth of local poverty. Escalating land values directly translate to higher rents and increased homelessness. Unchecked real estate speculation displaces working-class enterprises and communities. This cycle inevitably leads to growing poverty, elevated crime rates, and declining public health. These social costs, largely generated by an economy designed around the wealthy, are then inevitably passed on to the public sector. Welfare spending and critical social services, for instance, become downstream necessities, mitigating the precarity and homelessness that directly result from an economic model built to serve the needs of the rich. And such high costs repeatedly led to public bankruptcy — in the 1870s, the 1930s, and again in the 1970s. The administration of liberal Mayor John Lindsay perfectly exemplifies this tendency. Throughout the 1960s, New York City's financial sector boomed, yet simultaneously, poverty rates soared, deindustrialization accelerated, and housing costs skyrocketed. Lindsay attempted to tax corporations to fund welfare services for the poor, but in the same breath, he actively subsidized the very corporations whose presence contributed to making the city unaffordable. Such expenditure on behalf of both the rich and the poor ultimately sank the city's finances. This argument is not to deny the crucial role of social spending, nor to dismiss the importance of robust wealth taxation. However, if Mamdani truly intends to fulfill his campaign promise of making New York City affordable, he must move beyond merely treating symptoms and confront the ultimate cause: an economy fundamentally designed to render the city unaffordable for most. Fortunately, compelling examples exist both within NYC and globally that demonstrate a path forward. Worker-owned cooperatives, social housing initiatives, and community-led nonprofit enterprises offer models for providing residents with decent livelihoods without driving up urban unaffordability. Cooperatives, for instance, have shown a proven ability to increase employment faster than conventional firms and to better preserve well-paying jobs during economic recessions. Cities can actively promote these models. A prime example is Preston, U.K., which successfully halved its poverty rate by strategically redirecting economic development funds and municipal contracts towards local cooperatives and community-owned businesses. New York can replicate and expand upon these principles. Instead of wastefully channeling billions to corporations whose promises of jobs and increased tax revenue frequently fall short, we must redirect strategic economic development funds and pension investments towards worker-owned enterprises and small businesses. Instead of selling off vacant city land to for-profit developers, we must transform it into vibrant hubs of small business and cooperative enterprise, stewarded by community land trusts and nonprofit organizations. Rather than sacrificing equity for growth, we must unlock the full economic potential of all our citizens, leveraging the city's power as an institutional investor to encourage progressive worker representation in our business dealings. All this promises to both help make our city affordable and reduce our tax burdens. All this is not to deny that robust wealth taxation remains essential for building an affordable city. But as we tax the rich, we must strategically deploy those revenues to fundamentally displace their outsized hold on our economy, fostering a truly democratic and sustainable future for all New Yorkers.
