I’d been paying attention to the NYC mayoral primary against my will – so many media outlets are NY-based, and they tend to oversaturate the coverage of their city’s local politics. Well, there were two big candidates for the Democratic nomination for mayor: disgraced failson and former governor Andrew Cuomo versus a 33-year-old Indian-American state assemblyman named Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani, like Cuomo, is a nepo baby – his mother is the acclaimed director Mira Nair. Mamdani is also closely aligned with the whole ultra-left “Democratic Socialist” movement. There was some really bad polling for Mamdani last week, polling which indicated a blowout victory for Cuomo. That’s not what happened on Tuesday though. The night ended with Cuomo conceding to Mamdani, and Mamdani is now the presumptive Dem nominee for mayor.
Andrew Cuomo has conceded to Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. On Wednesday, June 25, the former governor, 67, said that he saw no path to victory in the election and declared Democratic Socialist and New York state assemblyman Mamdani, 33, the victor.
Mamdani emerged victorious after the first round of ranked-choice voting, narrowly defeating the dynasty democrat in a stunning upset. Though he was once polling at just 1%, Mamdani’s victory comes after he rallied momentum in the final weeks of the race by harnessing the power of social media to mobilize young progressives.
“Tonight was not our night. Tonight was Assemblyman Mamdani’s night, and he put together a great campaign, and he touched young people and inspired them and moved them and got them to come out and vote, and he really ran a highly impactful campaign,” Cuomo told the press, according to NBC News. He added, “I called him. I congratulated him.”
NBC noted that Mamdani is unlikely to secure more than 50% of the vote in the primary, which is done via ranked-choice. According to The New York Times, he currently holds 43.5% of the vote with more than 430,000 supporters. Cuomo trails in second place with 36.4%. Brad Lander falls even further behind in third with only 11.3% of the vote.
“Tonight is his night. He deserved it, he won,” Cuomo told the press in his concession speech.
Mamdani addressed his success in the race while speaking to his supporters. He also laid out a vision for his term in office, if he were to win the mayoral election.
“The mayor will use their power to reject Donald Trump’s fascism, to stop masked ICE agents from deporting our mayor, and to govern our city as a model for the Democratic Party, a party where we fight for working people with no apology,” he said, per NBC.
While Cuomo has conceded, he is still able to run in the actual mayoral election under his own political party should he wish to do so. Mamdani is also going to compete against Mayor Eric Adams, who is in the race as an independent, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.
I actually forgot that Eric Adams (the current mayor) is technically an Independent. Adams managed to somehow weather a hurricane of investigations, indictments, corruption allegations and more. I was under the impression that Adams has always been a terrible mayor and very unpopular, and yet there is some indication that Adams might win reelection, especially if he’s facing such a relatively inexperienced candidate like Mamdani. As for Mamdani… I’ve already seen some oppo research on him and he really needs to clean up some of his past statements and clarify many of his positions. But congrats to him – people really thought he would lose badly, but they were wrong.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Avalon Red.
