Zohran Mamdani has been elected mayor of New York City, delivering a decisive win in a three-way race that divided and in many cases distressed the city’s Jews.
Mamdani received a significant enough majority of votes that major news agencies declared the election less than 40 minutes after polls closed in the city, following the highest turnout in more than half a century.
The results mean that Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist who ran on a platform of affordability, will get a chance to try to turn his vision into reality as the leader of the United States’ largest city. They also solidify Mamdani as the vanguard of the progressive movement at a time when more Democrats have begun to subscribe to his harshly critical views about Israel.
A sweeping effort by many in the Jewish establishment to halt Mamdani’s march to City Hall fell short. In recent weeks, prominent Jewish voices in the city mounted a campaign to direct votes to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary. It was not enough: Cuomo came in second in the general election, too, followed in distant third by a Republican, Curtis Sliwa.
Many Jews opposed Mamdani because of his long-held, strong pro-Palestinian views and commitment to the movement to boycott Israel. Polls showed his support among Jewish voters ranging widely but always lower than his overall support among New Yorkers, even as some Jews in the city supported him in spite of or because of his pro-Palestinian views.
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