The Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani seems to be on track to win the Democratic primary for the mayor of New York City, defeating former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
After 91% of votes were counted in the primary’s first round, Mamdani, a state representative, had 43.5% of the vote. Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor who had been a heavy favorite until recent weeks, was at 36.4%, and conceded on Tuesday night. Speaking at a campaign rally Cuomo said Mamdani had run a “really smart and good and impactful campaign”.
“Tonight is his night. He deserved it. He won,” Cuomo said. Brad Lander, the progressive New York comptroller, was third with 11.4%.
New York City uses a ranked-choice voting system, and as neither candidate is likely to reach 50%, the board of elections will now tally people’s second-choice candidates. Mamdani, who cross-endorsed with Lander last week, is predicted to benefit more than Cuomo from the count.
Mamdani’s stunning rise will serve as a rebuke to the Democratic establishment, and give hope to other progressives hoping to run in elections around the country. Cuomo was backed by deep pocketed donors and endorsed by a wave of centrist figures including Bill Clinton, but Mamdani benefitted from a surge of grassroots support among young people in particular.
Cuomo is an awful person and was backed by some awful people in addition to the awful Bill Clinton.
Money has been one of Cuomo’s biggest assets in the primary, which he entered in March this year. Fix the City, an organization supporting Cuomo’s bid, has raised about $20m – the most raised by any Super Pac in New York City history, the New York Times reported – including $5m from the billionaire former mayor Michael Bloomberg. Other backers include donors typically known for donating to Republicans, including John B Hess, the billionaire oil company CEO; Ken Langone, the billionaire Home Depot co-founder, and Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager and Donald Trump supporter.
….For all Cuomo has attempted to sell voters on his record, his past has sometimes proved to be a drawback, with rivals seeking to profile the allegations that led to him resigning as governor in 2021. An investigation by the New York’s attorney general found that Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, most of whom worked for him, and reported that the governor retaliated against some of those women after they made complaints.
Now Mamdani has to win the general election in November where he will have to run against the current mayor Eric Adams, another awful person who won as a Democrat but is now running as an independent after sucking up to Trump.
Although this was just a primary race for the mayor of a city, it is significant because it is a rebuke of the Democratic party establishment and big money interests.
It was thought that Cuomo might win a plurality in the first round and for Mamdani to win he would need to gain sufficient second and lower-ranked preference votes of the candidates who did not make the top two. But Mamdani would have won even in the old first-past-the-post system.
May the regressive center-right Democratic leadership and its enablers of Republican policies, campaign donation corruption and endless war all go the same way as sleazy Cuomo.
grassroots support from young voters?
there is hope!
the dems need new, younger candidates that are in touch with younger voters.
He manages to be supportive of transgender folks, including youth while being Muslim. That’s the kind of leaders we need in America.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/25/mamdanis-nyc-victory-leaves-wall-street-alarmed-and-depressed.html
Im not sure whether the American public at large thinks that Wall street “alarmed” is a bad thing or good thing
What’s perhaps most remarkable is that the Democratic establishment couldn’t find a less grubby candidate than Cuomo -- or just didn’t bother because they thought they could get away with anything. What dirty tricks will they pull to try to ensure that Mamdani doesn’t actually win the mayoralty?
@KG:
In some ways that’s the interesting part, yes… I mean, Mamdani’s win was probably at least in part an ‘anybody but Cuomo’ vote. But really, who on the Democratic side thought that someone with Cuomo’s sordid history was their best bet? Who thought it was a good idea for Democrats to back someone that Bill freakin’ Ackman was endorsing?
The most fun thing would be if Adams and Cuomo split the conservative vote among themselves. (Hey, maybe RCV isn’t that bad for conservatives after all?)
Another fun news item: A former Brit conservative leader voices criticism that might be word for word what I could have written.
The Guardian: “John Major condemns ‘callous’ aid cuts and growing national self-interest ”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/26/john-major-aid-cuts-and-trump-xi-national-self-interest
-We have arrived to a point where Thatcher’s successor is one of the good guys.
birgerjohansson @#8,
That was a very good speech by Major. Thanks for linking to it.
At this point, I think I’d take the re-animated corpse of Thatcher herself -- bearing in mind that I’m a Scottish leftie who came to political consciousness during the miner’s strike, and therefore exactly the sort of person of whom Frankie Boyle said, when remarking on the cost of her state funeral, “For 3 million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person.”
In fairness, Major was always one of the good guys. I mean, I would never have voted for him, but I always felt sorry for him -- he seemed and continues to seem a generally decent bloke, surrounded on all sides by absolute, for want of a less obvious word, bastards. (If you don’t get this reference, just google “major bastards”). Obviously it was his choice to join a party populated almost exclusively by such vermin, but still.
Specifically, there was a LOT of backstabbing going on while he was PM. Many on his own side were anonymously undermining him to the press, jostling to replace him, publicly disagreeing with his leadership and so on. His response was to resign as leader -- basically saying to the people involved “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough”. And not a single one of the fucking cowards stepped forward to challenge him for leadership. He went up a LOT in my estimation that day -- balls of steel.
And he did again, on the day of his extremely inevitable landslide defeat in 1997. There was no self-justifying speech, no recriminations, no promises that the party would learn and definitely be back in five year or any of the usual bullshit you’d expect in that situation. He wrote a by all accounts lovely letter to Tony Blair wishing him good luck in the job, quietly packed his things, and fucked off to watch the cricket at Lords. It was the classiest exit of a PM I’ve ever seen.
I know a few people who’ve met him, and they all said despite the public persona (largely the creation of the TV satire Spitting Image) of a grey, boring man, he is in person remarkably charismatic and a good politician.
Like I say, I’d never vote for the guy but he’s on a very short list of Conservatives I’d hesitate to set fire to.