{"id":29644,"date":"2025-11-05T16:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T16:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/29644\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T16:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T16:09:07","slug":"nycs-newly-elected-zohran-mamdani-says-he-is-confident-in-delivering-an-ambitious-agenda-as-mayor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/29644\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC’s newly elected Zohran Mamdani says he is confident in delivering an ambitious agenda as mayor"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Fresh off winning New York City\u2019s mayoral election<\/a>, Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday that he would immediately begin preparing to implement his affordability agenda, while also seeking to persuade skeptical New Yorkers that \u201cno matter what your politics, we\u2019re all facing the same issues.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWe owe it to this city to be ready on Jan. 1st to start delivering,\u201d Mamdani said in his first television interview since claiming victory Tuesday night. \u201cWe have 57 days and those are 57 days to start to do the work of preparing for Jan. 1 to hit the ground running.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to delivering a city where New Yorkers can expect more from their leaders,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

With his win over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, the 34-year-old democratic socialist<\/a> will soon become the city\u2019s first Muslim mayor, the first of South Asian heritage, the first born in Africa and the youngest mayor in more than a century. <\/p>\n

He now faces the tall task of following through on his ambitious promises while navigating the bureaucratic challenges of City Hall and a hostile Trump administration<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m confident in delivering these same policies that we ran on for the last year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mamdani also said he had not heard from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo or the city\u2019s outgoing mayor, Eric Adams. He did speak with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa. <\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, said he would \u201clet their respective speeches be the measuring stick for grace and leave it at that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his victory speech to supporters, Mamdani had wished Cuomo the best in his private life, before adding: \u201cLet tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about the comments on Wednesday, Mamdani said he was \u201cquite disappointed in the nature of the bigotry and the racism we saw in the final weeks.\u201d He noted the millions of dollars in attack ads that were spent against him, some of which played into Islamophobic tropes<\/a>. <\/p>\n

More than 2 million New Yorkers cast ballots in the contest, the largest turnout in a mayoral race in more than 50 years, according to the city\u2019s Board of Elections. With roughly 90% of the votes counted, Mamdani held an approximately 9 percentage point lead over Cuomo.<\/p>\n

Mamdani, who was criticized throughout the campaign for his thin resume, will now have to begin staffing his incoming administration and planning how to accomplish the ambitious but polarizing agenda that drove him to victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe directive here has to be one of ensuring that it is excellence that characterizes the people I surround myself with, both in the appointments in the team and in the general expectation that is being set for my City Hall,\u201d Mamdani said.<\/p>\n

Among the campaign\u2019s promises are free child care, free city bus service, city-run grocery stores and a new Department of Community Safety that would send mental health care workers to handle certain emergency calls rather than police officers. It is unclear how Mamdani will pay for such initiatives, given Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s steadfast opposition to his calls to raise taxes on wealthy people.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, he touted his support from Hochul and other state leaders as \u201cendorsements of an agenda of affordability.\u201d<\/p>\n

His decisions around the leadership of the New York Police Department will also be closely watched. Mamdani was a fierce critic of the department in 2020, calling for \u201cthis rogue agency\u201d to be defunded and slamming it as \u201cracist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.\u201d He has since apologized<\/a> for those comments and has said he will ask the current NYPD commissioner to stay on the job.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has already faced scrutiny from national Republicans, including President Donald Trump<\/a>, who have eagerly cast him as a threat and the face of a more radical Democratic Party that is out of step with mainstream America. Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut federal funding to the city \u2014 and even take it over<\/a> \u2014 if Mamdani won.<\/p>\n

\u201d\u2026AND SO IT BEGINS!\u201d the president Trump posted to his Truth Social site Tuesday evening. <\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Jake Offenhartz contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Fresh off winning New York City\u2019s mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday that he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[80,2847,5287,154,153,416,81,417,18367,6211,426,9,24,56,63,65,64,87,3863,11324,1211,421,420,82],"class_list":["post-29644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-andrew-cuomo","tag-ap-top-news","tag-child-care","tag-curtis-sliwa","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-eric-adams","tag-general-news","tag-inaugurations","tag-islam","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-politics","tag-racism","tag-rich-azzopardi","tag-socialism","tag-u-s-news","tag-washington-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}