Zohran Mamdani vows to 'hit the ground running' on ambitious agenda following historic victory

NEW YORK (AP) — Fresh off winning New York City’s mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani said Wednesday that he would immediately begin preparing to implement his affordability agenda, while also seeking to persuade skeptical New Yorkers that “no matter what your politics, we’re all facing the same issues.”

“We owe it to this city to be ready on Jan. 1st to start delivering,” Mamdani said in his first television interview since claiming victory Tuesday night. “We have 57 days and those are 57 days to start to do the work of preparing for Jan. 1 to hit the ground running.”

“I’m looking forward to delivering a city where New Yorkers can expect more from their leaders,” he added.

With his win over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, the 34-year-old democratic socialist will soon become the city's first Muslim mayor, the first of South Asian heritage, the first born in Africa and the youngest mayor in more than a century.

He now faces the tall task of following through on his ambitious promises while navigating the bureaucratic challenges of City Hall and a hostile Trump administration.

“I’m confident in delivering these same policies that we ran on for the last year,” he said.

Mamdani also said he had not heard from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo or the city’s outgoing mayor, Eric Adams. He did speak with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.

A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, said he would “let their respective speeches be the measuring stick for grace and leave it at that.”

In his victory speech to supporters, Mamdani had wished Cuomo the best in his private life, before adding: “Let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few.”

Asked about the comments on Wednesday, Mamdani said he was “quite disappointed in the nature of the bigotry and the racism we saw in the final weeks.” He noted the millions of dollars in attack ads that were spent against him, some of which played into Islamophobic tropes.

More than 2 million New Yorkers cast ballots in the contest, the largest turnout in a mayoral race in more than 50 years, according to the city’s Board of Elections. With roughly 90% of the votes counted, Mamdani held an approximately 9 percentage point lead over Cuomo.

Mamdani, who was criticized throughout the campaign for his thin resume, will now have to begin staffing his incoming administration and planning how to accomplish the ambitious but polarizing agenda that drove him to victory.

“The directive here has to be one of ensuring that it is excellence that characterizes the people I surround myself with, both in the appointments in the team and in the general expectation that is being set for my City Hall,” Mamdani said.

Among the campaign’s promises are free child care, free city bus service, city-run grocery stores and a new Department of Community Safety that would send mental health care workers to handle certain emergency calls rather than police officers. It is unclear how Mamdani will pay for such initiatives, given Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s steadfast opposition to his calls to raise taxes on wealthy people.

On Wednesday, he touted his support from Hochul and other state leaders as “endorsements of an agenda of affordability.”

His decisions around the leadership of the New York Police Department will also be closely watched. Mamdani was a fierce critic of the department in 2020, calling for “this rogue agency” to be defunded and slamming it as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.” He has since apologized for those comments and has said he will ask the current NYPD commissioner to stay on the job.

Mamdani has already faced scrutiny from national Republicans, including President Donald Trump, who have eagerly cast him as a threat and the face of a more radical Democratic Party that is out of step with mainstream America. Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut federal funding to the city — and even take it over — if Mamdani won.