TOI correspondent from Washington: Zohran Mamdani , a Uganda-born Indian-American is on track to become the next mayor of New York City, potentially signaling a sharp left turn in urban America at a time the right-wing MAGA has swept the country's heartland and captured Washington DC.
In a shock result on Tuesday, Mamdani, 33, took down front-runner former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and several other Democratic candidates in the primary, putting the self-described Democratic Socialist on course to become the Big Apple's first Muslim and Indian-American Mayor .
Final and formal results of the election won't be officially confirmed until July 1 because of the city's ranked choice voting system which will involve several rounds of counting. With 91 percent of the votes counted, Mamdani leads with 43.5 percent, or 428,995 votes, while Cuomo received 36.4 percent, or 358,740 votes, according to the Associated Press. Counting will go on till a candidate reaches the 50 per cent mark while eliminating lower ranked contenders.
Mamdani, who was born is Kampala, Uganda, is the son of Indian film-maker Mira Nair and Indian-Ugandan intellectual Mahmood Mamdani, a postcolonial studies professor at Columbia University. His parents gave him the middle name Kwame, after the Pan-African hero and the socialist President of Ghana around the 1960s.
In an electrifying campaign that had a unique outreach to immigrants from the Indian subcontinent using Bollywood themes, including riffs from the movie Deewar and Roti Kapda aur Makaan, Mamdani plugged for populist ideas like free public buses, free child care, rent freezes, taxing the wealthy, and city-owned grocery stores for affordable food to surge ahead in a race that was watched closely across the country.
"I am Donald Trump's worst nightmare as a progressive, Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things I believe in... We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city that they can afford." Mamdani, a three-term state legislator, said in his victory speech, pledging to use his mayoral power in the world's richest city to reject Trump's fascism.
Mamdani's surge, powered by backing from liberal- progressive federal lawmakers like Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasia-Cortex (AOC), has larger political implications for American polity, including potentially moving the Democratic Party further to the left despite Trump's demonisation of "radical left" as "lunatics." Cuomo was backed by the Clintons among others in the Democratic establishment.
"Congratulations to Zohran Mamdani and his thousands of grassroots supporters for their extraordinary campaign. You took on the political, economic and media Establishment and you beat them. Now it's on to victory in the general election," Sanders, a spry 83 year old Senator who is spurring the leftist surge in urban America, along with his understudy AOC, said.
"A New Political Star Emerges Out of a Fractured Democratic Party," read the NYT headline on his victory, characterising it as a "generational and ideological break with the party’s mainstream."
"Mamdani’s success in one of the first major Democratic primaries since President Trump returned to the White House reverberated across the country and offered a potential road map for Democrats searching for a path back to power," the paper said.
The Republican right, including many Hindu-Americans were agitated about his victory because he has been a critic of the BJP in India, among other things comparing PM Narendra Modi to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. In one interview, he spoke of his Gujarati Muslim legacy and claimed there were hardly anyone of his heritage in Gujarat now -- even though Modi has a large following of Bohra Muslims in the state.
Trump's MAGA constituency also seized on past interviews of his mother Mira Nair in which she spoke of Mamdani being born in Uganda and raised as an Indian in America, and how thinks of himself as an Ugandan and an Indian, not American. One MAGA lawmaker, referring to his slogan like "globalize the intifada," called him a a “Hamas Terrorist sympathizer.”
Mamdani is the second Muslim of Indian heritage to become the chief executive of a major western city, after Sadiq Khan, who has Lucknow origins and has been Mayor of London since 2016.
In a shock result on Tuesday, Mamdani, 33, took down front-runner former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and several other Democratic candidates in the primary, putting the self-described Democratic Socialist on course to become the Big Apple's first Muslim and Indian-American Mayor .
Final and formal results of the election won't be officially confirmed until July 1 because of the city's ranked choice voting system which will involve several rounds of counting. With 91 percent of the votes counted, Mamdani leads with 43.5 percent, or 428,995 votes, while Cuomo received 36.4 percent, or 358,740 votes, according to the Associated Press. Counting will go on till a candidate reaches the 50 per cent mark while eliminating lower ranked contenders.
Mamdani, who was born is Kampala, Uganda, is the son of Indian film-maker Mira Nair and Indian-Ugandan intellectual Mahmood Mamdani, a postcolonial studies professor at Columbia University. His parents gave him the middle name Kwame, after the Pan-African hero and the socialist President of Ghana around the 1960s.
In an electrifying campaign that had a unique outreach to immigrants from the Indian subcontinent using Bollywood themes, including riffs from the movie Deewar and Roti Kapda aur Makaan, Mamdani plugged for populist ideas like free public buses, free child care, rent freezes, taxing the wealthy, and city-owned grocery stores for affordable food to surge ahead in a race that was watched closely across the country.
"I am Donald Trump's worst nightmare as a progressive, Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things I believe in... We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city that they can afford." Mamdani, a three-term state legislator, said in his victory speech, pledging to use his mayoral power in the world's richest city to reject Trump's fascism.
Mamdani's surge, powered by backing from liberal- progressive federal lawmakers like Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasia-Cortex (AOC), has larger political implications for American polity, including potentially moving the Democratic Party further to the left despite Trump's demonisation of "radical left" as "lunatics." Cuomo was backed by the Clintons among others in the Democratic establishment.
"Congratulations to Zohran Mamdani and his thousands of grassroots supporters for their extraordinary campaign. You took on the political, economic and media Establishment and you beat them. Now it's on to victory in the general election," Sanders, a spry 83 year old Senator who is spurring the leftist surge in urban America, along with his understudy AOC, said.
"A New Political Star Emerges Out of a Fractured Democratic Party," read the NYT headline on his victory, characterising it as a "generational and ideological break with the party’s mainstream."
"Mamdani’s success in one of the first major Democratic primaries since President Trump returned to the White House reverberated across the country and offered a potential road map for Democrats searching for a path back to power," the paper said.
The Republican right, including many Hindu-Americans were agitated about his victory because he has been a critic of the BJP in India, among other things comparing PM Narendra Modi to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. In one interview, he spoke of his Gujarati Muslim legacy and claimed there were hardly anyone of his heritage in Gujarat now -- even though Modi has a large following of Bohra Muslims in the state.
Trump's MAGA constituency also seized on past interviews of his mother Mira Nair in which she spoke of Mamdani being born in Uganda and raised as an Indian in America, and how thinks of himself as an Ugandan and an Indian, not American. One MAGA lawmaker, referring to his slogan like "globalize the intifada," called him a a “Hamas Terrorist sympathizer.”
Mamdani is the second Muslim of Indian heritage to become the chief executive of a major western city, after Sadiq Khan, who has Lucknow origins and has been Mayor of London since 2016.
You may also like
Crisis for Keir Starmer as even his friends say it's 'start of the end'
Mumbai Crime: Govandi Man Booked For Objectionable Instagram Comment On Lord Ram; Shivaji Nagar Police Register Case Under BNS
Keir Starmer battles to save disability benefit cuts - as Labour rebellion grows
Indian Entrepreneur Vasundhara Oswal Cleared Of All Charges By Ugandan Court After Weeks Of Detention
These Symptoms Signal Vitamin B12 Deficiency — What to Eat to Boost It?
