Zohran Mamdani, whose insurgent campaign has inspired hope among progressives worldwide, has won the race to become mayor of New York, a historic political upset that wealthy landlords and billionaires fought hard to prevent.
Mamdani, a Muslim and democratic socialist, was the clear favourite as polls closed at 9pm local time on Tuesday, having won broad support for his plans to tackle the escalating cost-of-living crisis in the US’s largest city.
He pledged to freeze rents, build more affordable housing, make buses free, provide free childcare up to the age of five, open non-profit supermarkets to cut food prices and raise the minimum wage to $30 (£23) an hour by 2030.
His platform also includes plans to halve fines for small businesses while raising the corporate tax rate and applying a wealth tax – a 2% increase for those earning above $1m (£766,000) a year.
He is one of the few prominent US politicians who has labelled Israel’s assault on Gaza a genocide, and has said he will enforce an international criminal court arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he travels to New York.
Tuesday’s runner-up, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, ran as an independent after losing to Mamdani in a Democratic Party primary in June.
Various billionaires poured tens of millions of dollars into Cuomo’s campaign. Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia donated $3m (£2.3m) to two political action committees (PACs). Trump-supporting hedge fund manager Bill Ackman gave $1.75m (£1.3m).
Among Mamdani’s supporters are Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two other superstar Democrats who challenged the pro-corporate establishment wing of their party during their campaigns. Former New York mayor Bill de Blasio also endorsed Mamdani.
Sanders said earlier this week that a Mamdani victory would be “one of the great political upsets in modern American history.”