THE NEW YORK TIMES: The 34-year-old assemblyman won the Democratic primary by defying the city’s all-powerful establishment. He secured the mayoralty by delicately disarming it.
Zohran Mamdani was still asleep early in the morning after June’s Democratic primary when the phone calls started flooding in. There were the usual congratulations, certainly, but also signs of something more worrying.
A young democratic socialist, Mr. Mamdani had just toppled former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, upending New York’s power structure in an upset so stunning and so swift that even he had not fully seen it coming.
Now, titans of the city establishment were clogging up the phones of the candidate and his small team, looking for belated introductions. Most did not sound happy.
“It’s a great day in New York,” Morris Katz, Mr. Mamdani’s 26-year-old political adviser, told the real estate magnate William C. Rudin in one of the conversations. » | Nicholas Fandos | Tuesday, November 4, 2025
