LONDON (AP) \u2014 He\u2019s the left-leaning Muslim mayor of the country\u2019s biggest city, and U.S. President Donald Trump is one of his biggest critics.<\/p>\n
London\u2019s Sadiq Khan<\/a> has a lot in common with New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani<\/a> \u2014 but also many differences.<\/p>\n Khan, who has been mayor of Britain\u2019s capital since 2016, welcomed Mamdani\u2019s victory<\/a>, saying New Yorkers had \u201cchosen hope over fear, unity over division.\u201d<\/p>\n Khan\u2019s experience holds positive and negative lessons for Mamdani, the 34-year-old Democrat who beat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in Tuesday\u2019s election.<\/p>\n Khan has won three consecutive elections but routinely receives abuse for his faith and race, as well as criticism from conservative and far-right commentators who depict London as a crime-plagued dystopia.<\/p>\n Trump has been among his harshest critics for years, calling Khan a \u201cstone cold loser,\u201d a \u201cnasty person\u201d and a \u201cterrible mayor,\u201d and claiming the mayor wants to bring Sharia, or Islamic law, to London.<\/a><\/p>\n Khan, a keen amateur boxer, has hit back<\/a>, saying in September that Trump is \u201cracist, he is sexist, he is misogynistic and he is Islamophobic.\u201d<\/p>\n Khan told The Associated Press during a global mayors\u2019 summit in Brazil on Wednesday that it\u2019s \u201cheartbreaking\u201d but not surprising to see Mamdani receiving the same sort of abuse he gets.<\/p>\n \u201cLondon is liberal, progressive, multicultural, but also successful \u2014 as indeed is New York,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you\u2019re a nativist, populist politician, we are the antithesis of all you stand for. \u201d<\/p>\n Attacked for their religion<\/p>\n Mamdani and Khan regularly receive abuse and threats because of their Muslim faith, and London\u2019s mayor has significantly tighter security protection than his predecessors.<\/p>\n Both have tried to build bridges with the Jewish community after being criticized by opponents<\/a> for their pro-Palestinian stances during the Israel-Hamas war.<\/p>\n Both say their political opponents have leaned into Islamophobia<\/a>. In 2016, Khan\u2019s Conservative opponent, Zac Goldsmith, was accused of anti-Muslim prejudice for suggesting that Khan had links to Islamic extremists.<\/p>\n Cuomo laughed along with a radio host who suggested Mamdani would \u201cbe cheering\u201d another 9\/11 attack. Mamdani\u2019s Republican critics frequently, falsely call him a \u201cjihadist\u201d and a Hamas supporter.<\/p>\n Mamdani vowed during the campaign that he would \u201cnot change who I am, how I eat, or the faith that I\u2019m proud to call my own.\u201d<\/p>\n Khan has said he feels a responsibility to dispel myths about Muslims, and answers questions about his faith with weary good grace. He calls himself \u201ca proud Brit, a proud Englishman, a proud Londoner and a proud Muslim.\u201d<\/p>\n Very different politicians<\/p>\n Mamdani is an outsider on the left of his party, a democratic socialist whose buzzy, digital-savvy campaign energized young New Yorkers and drove the city\u2019s biggest election turnout<\/a> in a mayoral election in decades.<\/p>\n Khan, 55, is a more of an establishment politician who sits in the broad middle of the center-left Labour Party.<\/p>\n The son of a bus driver and a seamstress from Pakistan, Khan grew up with seven siblings in a three-bedroom public housing apartment in south London.<\/p>\n He studied law, became a human rights attorney and spent a decade as a Labour Party lawmaker in the House of Commons, representing the area where he grew up, before being elected in 2016 as the first Muslim leader of a major Western capital city.<\/p>\n Mamdani comes from a more privileged background as the son of an India-born Ugandan anthropologist, Mahmood Mamdani, and award-winning Indian filmmaker Mira Nair. Born in Uganda and raised from the age of 7 in New York, he worked as an adviser for tenants facing eviction before being elected to the New York State Assembly in 2020.<\/p>\n Similar big-city problems<\/p>\n Khan and Mamdani govern huge cities with vastly diverse populations of more than 8 million. Voters in both places have similar worries about crime and the high cost of living \u2013 big issues that many mayors struggle to address.<\/p>\n Khan was won three straight elections, but he\u2019s not an overwhelmingly popular mayor. As Mamdani may also find, the mayor gets blamed for a lot of problems, from high rents to violent crime, regardless of whether they are in his control, though Mamdani made freezing rents a pillar of his campaign.<\/p>\n Mamdani campaigned on ambitious promises<\/a>, including free child care, free buses, new affordable housing and city-run grocery stores.<\/p>\n \u201cWinning an election is one thing, delivering on promises is another,\u201d said Darren Reid, an expert on U.S. politics at Coventry University. \u201cThe mayor of New York definitely does not have unlimited power, and he is going to have a very powerful enemy<\/a> in the current president.\u201d<\/p>\n The mayor of London controls public transit and the police, but doesn\u2019t have the authority of New York\u2019s leader because power is shared with the city\u2019s 32 boroughs, which are responsible for schools, social services and public housing in their areas.<\/p>\n Khan can point to relatively modest achievements, including free school meals for all primary school pupils and a freeze on transit fares. But he has failed to meet other goals, such as ambitious house-building targets.<\/p>\n Tony Travers, a professor at the London School of Economics who specializes in local government, said one lesson Mamdani might take from Khan is to pick \u201ca limited number of fights that you can win.\u201d<\/p>\n Khan, who is asthmatic, has made it one of his main missions to clean up London\u2019s air \u2014 once so filthy the city was nicknamed the Big Smoke. He expanded London\u2019s Ultra Low Emission Zone<\/a>, which charges the drivers of older, more polluting vehicles a daily fee to drive in the city.<\/p>\n