Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City on Tuesday, defeating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa in the race to replace scandal-plagued New York Mayor Eric Adams as the leader of the nation’s largest city.
More than 2 million votes were cast — the most in more than 50 years — in an election that drew intense national interest and was billed as a fight over the future of the Democratic Party.
Mamdani, a 34-year-old state assemblyman and democratic socialist, will be New York’s first Muslim mayor and its youngest in more than a century when he takes office on Jan. 1.
“The conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate,” Mamdani said in his victory speech in Brooklyn on Tuesday night. “I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.”
Mamdani was joined onstage by his parents and his wife, Rama Duwaji, a 28-year-old Syrian American illustrator and animator. The couple met on the dating app Hinge and married earlier this year.
“There is still hope in those dating apps,” Mamdani said in an interview with the Bulwark podcast in June.
Who is Zohran Mamdani?
Zohran Mamdani joins members of the Teamsters Local 210 during a strike outside the Perrigo manufacturing facility in the Bronx on Sept. 15. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Zohran Kwame Mamdani was born on Oct. 18, 1991, in Uganda, where he spent most of his early childhood. Mamdani’s family moved to New York City when he was 7. He became an American citizen in 2018.
“New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant,” Mamdani said in his speech on election night.
His mother, Mira Nair, is an award-winning filmmaker whose credits include Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala and Vanity Fair. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is an anthropology professor at Columbia University.
Mamdani attended the Bronx High School of Science, where he cofounded his school’s first-ever cricket team. By his junior year, Mamdani was a fledgling rapper who unsuccessfully ran for student-body vice president. (Mamdani said his social studies teacher told him that his rap campaign video cost him the election.) He graduated high school in 2010.
He then attended Bowdoin College in Maine, where he cofounded his college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. Mamdani graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Africana Studies in 2014.
Mamdani’s unlikely rise
Zohran Mamdani waits for a train after a campaign stop on April 1. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
After college, Mamdani worked as a foreclosure prevention housing counselor in Queens, helping low-income families fight off eviction. According to his legislative bio, it “was this job that led him to run for office.”
Mamdani worked on political campaigns for local Democratic candidates before he was elected to the New York Assembly in 2020, representing its 36th district, which includes Astoria, in Queens, where he lives. He was reelected without opposition twice.
In October 2024, Mamdani announced his bid for mayor. He used social media platforms and viral campaign videos to appeal to younger voters, some nodding to his alter ago as a “B-list rapper.”
In June’s Democratic primary, Mamdani upset Cuomo, New York’s former governor and the scion of one of its most famous political families, who decided to remain in the race as an independent.
Zohran Mamdani with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a rally at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens on Oct. 26. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
The contest was seen as a battle between the old and new. Mamdani received dozens of endorsements from elected officials, including Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two of the nation’s leading progressives who appeared alongside him at a raucous rally in Queens last month.
Cuomo, who stepped down as governor in 2021 following sexual harassment allegations, received only a few notable endorsements, including one from President Trump, who urged Republicans to cross party lines to keep Mamdani out of office.
“I’m not a fan of Cuomo one way or the other,” Trump said in an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday. “But if it’s gonna be between a bad Democrat and a communist, I’m gonna pick the bad Democrat all the time.”
How Mamdani responded to Trump
Zohran Mamdani is joined by his wife, Rama Duwaji, and his parents, Mahmood Mamdani and Mira Nair, during an election night rally in Brooklyn. (Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In his victory speech, Mamdani directly challenged Trump and promised to “dismantle” the system that allowed him to come to power.
“If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani also responded directly to Trump’s threat to withhold federal funds from New York if he became mayor.
“Hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us,” he said, “you will have to go through all of us.”