- News code: 1687971
Muslim lawmaker Zohran Mamdani has been elected as the 111th mayor of New York, the first person of South Asian descent and the first person born in Africa to lead the largest city in the United States.
The 34-year-old mayoral candidate and assemblyman from Queens emerged victorious in the race on Tuesday to lead New York after polls closed in a heated contest that grabbed the world’s attention.
Mamdani outperformed his chief opponent — former governor Andrew Cuomo — with at least 50 percent of support after 85 percent of the votes had been counted.
"We are on the brink of making history in our city. On the brink of saying goodbye to a politics of the past. A politics that tells you what it can't do, and really what it means to say is what it won't do, and to usher in a new era," Mamdani told reporters earlier in the day.
"We do not get to choose the scale of the crisis we face. We simply get to choose the manner in which we respond," he added.