Mamdani promises 'new age' of 'relentless improvement' where government will solve all problems

Queens Assemblyman and socialist Muslim Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race with over 50% of the vote. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa took a combined 48.7% of the ballots with 91% of votes counted, meaning that even had Sliwa quit the race, Mamdani's opposition would have fallen short.

Mamdani delivered a victory speech after Cuomo conceded the race in which he quoted socialists, leaned into identity politics, and made sweeping promises about a "new age" for New York. He mentioned the "new age" five times. That "new age," he said, will deliver "relentless improvement," defined by "competence and compassion." He touted his win as a triumph for the "working people of New York."

"The sun may have set over our city this evening," he began, "but as Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity. For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands... The future is in our hands, my friends, we have toppled a political dynasty."

The full quote from Debs, founder of the Industrial Workers of the World and a socialist, was "I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due time they will and must come to their own," and he delivered it upon being convicted of violating the Sedition Act. 

Later in his speech, Mamdani quoted Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister after independence from Britain and an anti-colonial nationalist. "A moment comes, but rarely in history," Mamdani said, "when we step out from the old to the new when an age ends and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance." Those words were first spoken by Nehru in his Tryst with Destiny speech as India gained independence in 1947.

Mamdani said that the voters "have delivered a mandate for change, a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city we can afford, and a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that on January 1, I will be sworn in as the mayor of New York City."

He praised foreign-born voters, calling out Yemenis, Mexicans, Senegalese, Uzbeks, Trinidadians, and Ethiopians. He mentioned single moms and grandparents, but made no mention of fathers or families. And he leaned into the concept of "hope," saying "we chose hope together, hope over tyranny, hope over big money and small ideas, hope over despair. We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible, and we won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us. Now, it is something that we do."

Mandani listed his agenda, "to freeze the rent for all rent-stabilized apartments, make buses fast and free, and deliver universal child care." He promised to hire thousands of teachers, while making budget cuts, and to put new lighting in public housing. He plans to create a Department of Community Safety to deal with mentally ill and homeless New Yorkers and reduce crime. 

Rent-stabilized apartments are in privately owned buildings where landlords can take tax breaks for offering rent-stabilized homes. A landlord-tenant board negotiates percentage increases for the entire city, which in 2025 was 3% for one-year leases and 4.5% for two-year leases. Under the rent stabilization program, rent can only be raised once per year. Mamdani lives in a rent-stabilized apartment, as do about 2 million New Yorkers, but in January can move into Gracie Mansion.

He promised to fight antisemitism and show Muslims "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."

"This new age will be defined by a competence and a compassion that have too long been placed at odds with one another, we will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about," he said.

Mamdani complained about the 123 New Yorkers in the "billionaire class," saying, "the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour. They want the people to fight amongst ourselves so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking a long, broken system."

"We refuse to let them dictate the rules of the game anymore. They can play by the same rules as the rest of us. Together, we will usher in a generation of change, and if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves."

And he had a message for President Donald Trump directly, the man he spent more time running against than his actual opponents. "If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him," Mamdani said, "and if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. This is not only how we stop Trump, it's how we stop the next one. So Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you. Turn the volume up."

"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 said. Mamdani quoted opponent Cuomo's father, the late and former Governor Mario Cuomo, who said, "while you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose."

"If that must be true," he went on, "let the prose we write still rhyme and let us build a shining city for all. And we must chart a new path as bold as the one we have already traveled."

"I am a Muslim," he said to wild cheers, "I am a Democratic Socialist, and most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this."

He slammed the Democratic Party for leaving working people behind, saying, "too many among us have turned to the right for answers as to why they have been left behind."

Cuomo led in Staten Island, Manhattan's Upper East Side, parts of Brooklyn and Queens, but Mamdani's support was overwhelming in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bedford-Stuyvesant, hipster Williamsburg, Bushwick, Greenpoint, Prospect Heights, Flatbush, his own district of Astoria in Queens, Washington Heights, Harlem, and so many other parts of the city.

His coalition of foreign-born New Yorkers merged with progressive voters to create a force that gives a message to the Democratic Party that the future, and most definitely the present of the party lies with these far left factions. Mamdani won the support of establishment Democrats as well, like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and New York Reps Jerry Nadler and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.