New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani celebrated his win on Tuesday as a referendum on generational politics after he defeated Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa to become the city’s first Democratic socialist mayor, saying he “toppled a political dynasty.”
“The future is in our hands,” Mamdani said in a fiery victory speech from the Brooklyn Paramount venue. “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. New York, tonight, you have delivered a mandate for change.”
Mamdani won the mayoral race on Tuesday, part of a sweep of Democratic candidates and Democratic-backed ballot initiative wins throughout the country. Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger won the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, respectively, while the Democratic-backed Proposition 50, which redraws congressional districts in California, overwhelmingly passed.
Mamdani centered much of his opening speech on President Donald Trump while advocating for his agenda of accountability, referring to him as a “despot” whom the city would hold to account.
“If there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power,” Mamdani said. “This is not only how we stop Trump, it’s how we stop the next one.”
Mamdani used the speech to try and reach out to all groups that have been touched by his campaign, promising to be a mayor for New Yorkers across gender, religious and ethnic lines.
“We will build a city hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism,” Mamdani said. “Where more than 1 million Muslims know that they belong, not just in the five boroughs of this city, but in the halls of power. No more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election.”
But he spared his most intense remarks for Trump, who has tried to label Mamdani as a “Communist” and who threatened to withhold anything more than the “bare minimum” of federal funding for the city.
“Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up,” Mamdani said. “We will hold bad landlords to account because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks. We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections, because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have iron-clad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed. You, New York, will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant.”
“So hear me, President Trump, when I say this, to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us,” he added.
The White House did not respond to an immediate request for comment on Mamdani’s speech, and Trump has not addressed Mamdani’s win specifically on Truth Social.
But he has urged Republicans to fight back after the Democratic wins, issuing multiple posts on a variety of topics — including the ratings of his “60 Minutes” interview, a pitch to abolish the filibuster and his desire to pass “Voter Reform, Voter ID, No Mail-In Ballots.”
“…AND SO IT BEGINS!” Trump wrote in the last of his Truth Social post-storm.
