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After winning a historic victory in the New York City mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani announced an all-female team to lead her transition to office, and promised to “work every day to honor the trust I now have.”
The 34-year-old former rapper will become the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first mayor of South Asian heritage, the first born in Africa and the youngest leader of the Big Apple in more than a century.
He campaigned on an agenda that included free buses, free child care, and a rent freeze.
But he wasted no time in challenging his archenemy, Donald Trump, who threatened not only to denounce New York but also to arrest and deport Mamdani if he won.
“If anyone can show a country betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it’s the city that birthed him,” the mayor-elect told cheering supporters.
Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to Indian parents and became a U.S. citizen after graduating from college, presented himself as the embodiment of resistance against the president’s aggressive anti-immigrant agenda.
He said, “New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, run by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.” “So listen to me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any one of us, you have to go through all of us.”
He said his election would “turn the page on a politics that excludes the many and answers only to the few” – and even echoed the words of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, when he said: “We have stepped out of the old and into the new.”
Trump, who has spent months insulting Mamdani, posted on Truth Social: “-And it begins!”
It’s unclear how else Trump plans to respond to the victory. New York City holds special significance for him, as the place where he ran his business empire and became a TV star.
Mamdani must now form an administration and plan how to deliver the ambitious but polarizing agenda that ensured his victory.
His promises included free child care, a free city bus service, city-operated grocery stores and a new Community Safety Department that would send mental health care workers to handle some emergency calls instead of police officers. But New York state’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, is opposed to raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for such measures.
Mamdani named political strategist Elana Leopold as executive director of the transition team. She will work with: Grace Bonilla, president of low-income assistance organization United Way of New York City; former Vice Mayor Melanie Hartzog, who was also the city’s budget officer; former Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Lina Khan; and former First Vice Mayor Maria Torres-Springer.
“I am confident in carrying out the same policies that we followed last year,” he said.
More than 2 million New Yorkers voted in the contest, the largest turnout in a mayoral race in more than 50 years. The result has shocked the city that is known globally as the bastion of capitalism.
“It’ll be an interesting experiment and we’ll see how much he actually tries to change New York City,” said Tim Grisky, senior portfolio strategist at brokerage firm Ingalls & Snyder in New York. Jamie Cox, managing partner of Harris Financial Group, said the election was “a huge wake-up call for Republicans”.
Democrats also won gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, although, in contrast to Mamdani’s insurgent populism, winners Abigail Spanberger and Mickey Sherrill are both liberals with national security backgrounds.
The party also won a trio of state Supreme Court races in swing-state Pennsylvania, and approved new congressional district boundaries that will help determine which party will control the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026.
Reuters and AP contributed to this report