Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected mayor of New York City, issued a direct call to Donald Trump in his victory speech on Tuesday night, saying he would enter City Hall with a firm plan to counter the politics of division and cronyism that helped elevate him to the White House.
Mamdani, speaking to supporters in Brooklyn after a decisive victory over Andrew Cuomo, the former governor, said New York had shown it would be the “light” in a “moment of political darkness”.
“Here we believe in standing up for those we love, whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many Black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall,” Mamdani, who will be the city’s first Muslim mayor, said. “No more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election.”
The mayor-elect then issued a direct message to the president, saying if any city could show the nation how to defeat Trump, it was the “city that gave rise to him”.
“So, 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,” Mamdani said, to raucous applause.
He was leading Cuomo by more than 8 percentage points, with 91% of the vote counted, around midnight ET. The result capped a stunning surge for the Democratic socialist after he won the June primary, and a dramatic fall from grace for Cuomo, who had waged a well-funded independent bid.
Mamdani reiterated a slate of his key policies to supporters on Tuesday night and how they would counter the Trump agenda. They included a plan to hold landlords to account for how they treat tenants; ending a “culture of corruption” that has benefited the billionaire class; and expanding labor protections and standing alongside unions “because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed”.
“New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant,” Mamdani said. “So hear me President Trump when I say this: to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.
“When we enter city hall in 58 days, expectations will be high,” he added. “We will meet them.”
Mamdani’s projected win was just one of a many for Democrats on Tuesday night. Mikie Sherrill was elected governor of New Jersey in a closely watched race and Abigail Spanberger was elected Virginia’s first female governor.
Trump responded to the slate of Democratic victories on Truth Social late Tuesday night, urging lawmakers to immediately move to end the filibuster and pass voting rights reform. That would include, the president wrote, stricter voter ID laws and a ban on mail-in ballots.
As Mamdani was speaking, mere moments after telling the president to turn the volume up, Trump also posted a cryptic note on Truth Social: “…AND SO IT BEGINS!”
