“He Won”: Andrew Cuomo Acknowledges Zohran Mamdani’s Stunning Primary Victory

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It would be an understatement to say that Zohran Mamdani was a bit of an unknown when he began his campaign for mayor of New York City. As recently as January, the democratic socialist state assembly member from Astoria, Queens, was polling at just 1 percent in some polls. But now Mamdani is poised to make history.

Mamdani held a commanding lead over former three-term Gov. Andrew Cuomo after the first round of voters were counted on Tuesday. The race won’t officially be over until the ranked-choice votes are tabulated next week, but Cuomo himself seemed to concede there was too much ground to make up, saying, “Tonight is his night. He deserved it. He won.” The result, if it holds, is a seismic event not just for the city but for the Democratic Party, making the 33-year-old the clear frontrunner heading into November.

As I explained in a story this week, and on a recent episode of Reveal, the mayoral race was the first really big primary since everything fell apart for the party last November, and it was unfolding in a city where Democratic support collapsed—at least at the presidential level. In neighborhoods like Corona, Queens, Donald Trump carried precincts he’d previously gotten just a quarter of the vote. Mamdani leaned into this uncertainty about the party’s direction. He soft-launched his mayoral campaign just a few days after Trump’s victory, with a series of man-on-the-street interviews in diverse outer-borough neighborhoods that had swung sharply toward the president.