Zohran Mamdani, a 33 -year -old state legislator and democratic socialist self -described, was prepared on Tuesday to win the primary Democrats of New York City in a surprising discomfort about former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
In short comments to the supporters, Cuomo, 67, who had been looking for a political return four years after giving up in the midst of accusations of sexual harassment, said he had called Mamdani to congratulate him.
“Tonight is his night,” Cuomo said as he granted the race to Mamdani.
Mamdani, who entered the campaign as a virtual stranger, was ahead of Cuomo 43.5 percent to 36.4pc with almost 95 % of voting scanners reports, according to the City Electoral Board. Other nine democratic candidates were delayed.
The result will not be definitive until next week, due to the New York classified option system that allows citizens to collect up to five candidates in order of preference.
But Mamdani’s leadership in the preliminary results on Tuesday seemed too big for Cuomo, or any other candidate, particularly surpassed from the third finalist on Tuesday, the Comptroller of the city Brad Lander, encouraged his followers to enumerate Mamdani in second place.
The race was seen as an early reading about the direction in which the Democrats believe that the party should take five months after the tumultuous second mandate of Republican President Donald Trump.
His differences were clear: Cuomo, a moderate backed by the establishment that served a decade as governor, or Mamdani, a progressive newcomer who promised a break with the past.
Mamdani will probably be the favorite in the general elections of November in a city where the Democrats dominate. The current mayor, the Democrat Eric Adams, will also appear on the November electoral ballot as an independent, but a series of corruption scandals and their ties perceived with Trump have weakened their position.
The republican candidate is Curtis Sliwa, a radio presenter better known as the founder of the Anti-Crime Patrol of the Guardian Angels, who lost to Adams in 2021.
For some voters, Mamdani represented the opportunity to mark the beginning of a new era for the game.
“I think it’s time for someone young, a person of color, something different,” Ignacio also, a 28 -year -old actor, to a Reuters Reporter outside a voting station in Manhattan after putting Mamdani on his ballot.
Another voter, Leah Johanson, said he listed first to Mamdani even though he worried that he was too liberal. But she did not classify Cuomo.
“No. God, no,” said Johanson, 39, who voted on Tuesday in Queens, where Mamdani lives. “I will not vote for a man who is accused in a credible way of bothering women.”
Cuomo has denied the accusations of harassment, which has characterized as poorly conceived attempts to be affectionate or humorous.
Self -written democratic socialist
Born in Uganda of a family of Indian ancestry, Mamdani, who would be the first Muslim mayor of the city, has a history of pro-palestinian activism.
He was chosen for a seat in the State Assembly in the Queens district of New York and has obtained the support of the American senator Bernie Sanders and the representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two prominent progressives.
Cuomo accused Mamdani of lacking the required experience, while Mamdani attacked Cuomo for the accusations of harassment.
Cuomo, who emerged as Trump’s vocal critic during his first term as president, won the backs of former President Bill Clinton and former Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg.
In the classified vote, the candidate is eliminated in the last place after each round, and his votes are redistributed to the second option marked on the tickets of his followers. The process is repeated until a candidate achieves 50pc of the total.
Mamdani seems likely to expand his leadership when additional counts are carried out, after he and Lander backed each other and urged their followers to qualify for the other as their second option.
Lander, who was the first option at 11.6pc of tickets counted on Tuesday, reached the national headlines last week when he was briefly arrested while escorting a defendant of an immigration court.
