On Nov. 4, 2025 at 6:47 P.M. PST, the Associated Press called the New York City (NYC) mayoral race a win for Zohran Mamdani, and he was declared the next mayor of NYC. He beat his main competitor, Andrew Cuomo, with over half of the total votes.
Mamdani’s policies and ideologies are different from those seen in the city (and in most of the nation) in recent history. His policies include free public transport, government grocery stores, rent control, and free childcare.
Ranya Jafry is a senior at Sage Creek who lived in NYC for 14 years. She imparts her knowledge of the city onto her opinions on the new mayor.
“Mamdani is a new view for New York,” Jafry said. “He speaks about a lot of things that I think are important to New Yorkers, like a lot of his views on public transit and how to deal with the homelessness issue in New York.”
Mamdani, age 34, is one of the youngest mayors and first Muslim mayor the city has ever seen. This is likely correlated with youth growing increasingly discontent with the current economic and political climate, as seen in the drastic increase in voter turnout.
“Mamdani is so young compared to everyone,” Jafry said. “I can definitely see the impact on these elections that Gen Z had.”
Mamdani’s opponents have used his age as a criticism, claiming it shows his inexperience.
“I believe that Mamdani can kill New York City,” Cuomo said. “[He’s an] incompetent 34-year-old socialist.”
President of Democrat Club at Sage Creek, Cole Miller, voices his praise for Mamdani’s ideologies.
“He wants to reduce spending by […] combining some socialistic policies,” Miller said. “I feel like socialism has a negative tone to it, but in reality, if done right, it can be very useful and helpful to the people.”
President Donald Trump endorsed Cuomo the day before the election. He called Mamdani a “‘liddle’ communist.”
“I know that a lot of people don’t really like his socialist views, which they claim are communist,” Jafry said. “But to be honest, I don’t think that Cuomo would have been much better.”
Mamdani and Trump have both outwardly voiced their negative feelings towards each other. Part of Mamdani’s victory speech was directly about standing up against Trump.
“We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks,” Mamdani said.
Some speculate this tension could lead to further polarization.
“It’s just going to make the country more divided,” Miller said. “He [Mamdani]’s going to split the nation in half even more.”
Additionally, this increased tension could affect the effectiveness of Mamdani’s policies.
“I’m honestly a little scared for New York. I definitely don’t think it’s great that they’re so against each other,” Jafry said. “I am a little worried because we’ve seen how Trump has reacted to colleges when they do not agree with everything he says; he tries to take their funds away.”
Trump had repeatedly threatened to withhold funds to New York if Mamdani won.
“It’s empty threats,” Miller said. “At the end of the day, Mamdani just has to hold his ground.”