Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani delivered a fiery victory speech late Tuesday, promising to deliver on his progressive agenda and declaring his election a historic mandate for change.
Mamdani, 34, who will become New York City’s first socialist, first Muslim, and first mayor of South Asian descent, claimed victory at Brooklyn’s Paramount Theatre, The New York Post reported.
The Uganda-born lawmaker said his win belonged to all immigrant New Yorkers and condemned Islamophobic attacks on his campaign.
“As Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity,” Mamdani said, quoting the early 20th-century socialist presidential candidate.
He also invoked the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, saying, “A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new.”
Raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Mamdani thanked working-class New Yorkers who powered his campaign.
“Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns — these are not hands that have been allowed to hold power,” he said. “And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it.”
Mamdani’s remarks mixed gratitude with defiance, targeting President Trump and former Governor Andrew Cuomo while promising sweeping reforms.
“New York, tonight you have delivered a mandate for change, a mandate for a new kind of politics,” Mamdani said. “We won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now, it is something that we do.”
Mamdani vowed to pursue his campaign proposals, including freezing rent for two million residents in regulated apartments, creating free citywide bus service, providing universal child care, and launching a Department of Community Safety to handle mental health calls instead of the NYPD.
He said the policies would help working-class and marginalized New Yorkers struggling with the cost of living.
“This will be an age where New Yorkers expect from their leaders a bold vision of what we will achieve rather than a list of excuses for we are too timid to achieve,” he said.
“In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light,” Mamdani added.
He declared that his victory marked the end of an era dominated by establishment figures.
“My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty,” Mamdani said to cheers. “I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life. But let 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.”
Citing former Governor Mario Cuomo’s famous line, Mamdani said, “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.”
“When we enter City Hall in 58 days, expectations will be high. We will meet them,” he said.
Mamdani closed by promising tangible results for ordinary New Yorkers.
“New York, this power, it’s yours,” he said. “This city belongs to you.”