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This time last year, few people outside New York City knew the name of Zohran Mamdani. Now, he is set to be the mayor of the nation’s largest city. Lilia Luciano spoke with organizers about how he connected with voters.
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After months of forecasting disaster, real estate responded to Zohran Mamdani’s election victory with a resounding shrug.
Leading up to the election, industry players across sectors threw their money and their mouths behind the mayor-elect’s opponents, including shelling out $13 million for political action committees aimed at defeating Mamdani and/or putting former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in Gracie Mansion.
Since the results were called late Tuesday night, several of Mamdani’s most vocal adversaries in real estate appear to be backing off of some of their more grim predictions. Some are extending olive branches in the hopes for a seat at the table with the incoming administration.
“I want to give the guy a chance,” Brown Harris Stevens CEO Bess Freedman told TRD on Wednesday. “He wants to achieve great things and make people’s lives better, and I respect that.”
The chief executive’s tone seems to have shifted from July, when she told the New York Times she considered Mamdani inexperienced, among other concerns.
“He’s never even worked at a McDonald’s, let alone run the greatest city in the world,” Freedman told the outlet (though she added that “the world will clearly not come to an end” if Mamdani were to win the election).
Peter Riguardi, president of JLL’s New York office, on Wednesday sent employees what he described as a unifying email urging them to “give him a chance to lead,” adding that “maybe for those of us who doubt him, he’ll surprise us.” (Not everyone at the company adopted the same conciliatory attitude. A top broker at the firm, Scott Pranzer, was fired later that day over his response to the email, which included comparing Mamdani to Hitler.)
Even Compass agent Jason Haber, who led a fundraising push for a PAC benefitting Cuomo, changed his tune — though only slightly.
After Mamdani’s win was announced, Haber said it “would be foolish to reject everything carte blanche” — this coming from the man who previously said, “every one of his policies, every one, will make the city less affordable and less livable and less safe” and that Mamdani “seems to have an allergy towards entrepreneurs in this city.”
But a win is a win, and it appears real estate is ready to forgo some of its more harsh criticisms of Mamdani to rally behind the one thing they may have in common with the Assembly member: bringing more housing to New Yorkers.
What we’re thinking about: During third-quarter earnings calls, brokerage executives routinely touted their investments in artificial intelligence technology for agents. But which of those tools are agents actually using and which are just noise? Send your thoughts to sheridan.wall@therealdeal.com.
A thing we’ve learned: Roughly 125 million commercial airline passengers traveled through
the three largest airports in the New York City metropolitan area last year, according to data from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Those airports — JFK, LaGuardia and Newark — are among the 40 ordered to reduce operations this week amid the government shutdown.
Elsewhere…
Closing time
Residential: The top residential deal recorded Friday was $19 million for 40 Fifth Avenue, PHC. The Greenwich Village co-op unit last sold in 2023 for $17 million. The seller is listed as Randolph Lerner.
Commercial: The top commercial deal recorded was $33.3 million for 765 First Avenue. The Turtle Bay rental building has 32 units and is 15,500 square feet. The sale is between two United Nations missions of Qatar and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
New to the Market: The highest price for a residential property hitting the market was $65 million for 70 Vestry Street, Unit PHS. The Tribeca condo is 7,800 square feet. The Modlin Group has the listing.
Breaking Ground: The largest new building permit filed was for a proposed 47,386-square-foot, two-story building at 1200 Manhattan Avenue in Brooklyn. Sherri Privitera of Populous is the applicant of record.
— Joseph Jungermann
The Daily Dirt: Here’s how much real estate spent on the mayoral race
NYC resi players dismiss “nonsense from Florida brokers” after Zohran Mamdani’s victory
JLL fires top broker who compared Mamdani to Hitler
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Sheridan Wall
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He’s going to dominate the midterms just like he dominates his party.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
While presidents are always a dominant influence over the political parties they lead, that sway tends to fade toward the end of their tenures if they serve two terms. This is why they are typically called “lame ducks” at some point after being reelected. But Donald Trump is already well past the usual sell-by date because he has been his party’s presidential nominee three times. The prior politician with such an extended hold on a major party was Richard Nixon (nominated and defeated in 1960, elected in 1968, and reelected in 1972). Though Nixon won his last race in 1972 by a huge landslide, that didn’t turn out well for Republicans (Nixon resigned in 1974, and the GOP subsequently lost the White House).
At the moment, Trump seems to be defying the lame-duck precedent. No president has ever had a more dominant position in his own party, having crushed all intraparty dissent in his triumphant 2024 reelection campaign and then reduced the usually proud congressional leaders of the GOP to the status of loyal satraps. Whatever their private misgivings, all Republicans publicly sing his praises. And the most frequently uttered excuse for the major Republican underperformance in the off-year elections on November 4 was that Trump wasn’t on the ballot to bring those low-propensity voters who tilted his way in 2024 back to the polls.
The problem now, of course, is that Trump won’t be on the ballot in the 2026 midterm elections, either. So if the key to victory is to turn out every single pro-Trump voter, that would mean making the midterms even more of a referendum on the incumbent president than it will be in any case. That would certainly be Trump’s preference, of course; the Sun King always believes he is the source of all radiance. Unfortunately, as his steadily eroding job-approval ratings show, his agenda is not very popular. And when it comes to his administration’s greatest weakness, a perceived inability to reduce living costs, his current prescription seems to be to claim things are better than they appear, as the Associated Press reports:
President Donald Trump took a victory lap on the economy on the one-year anniversary of his successful election, boasting of cheaper prices and saying the U.S. is the envy of the globe even while the Republican Party faced a rebuke from voters anxious about their own finances in Tuesday’s off-year elections.
Trump, speaking Wednesday at the America Business Forum, said he thinks that communication was the problem, insisting that “we have the greatest economy right now” and that “a lot of people don’t see that.”
“These are the things you have to talk about,” Trump told a packed arena at Miami’s Kaseya Center that included top business executives, global athletes and political leaders. “If people don’t talk about them, then you can do not so well in elections.”
This, too, was the economic-messaging strategy of Joe Biden for much of his term in office, and it rather clearly did not work. It’s true that owning the status quo and treating it as threatened by the nefarious opposition is a way to mobilize already-loyal base voters. But it’s a bad idea if swing voters aren’t happy, and they definitely aren’t happy now. So looking ahead to the midterms, Republicans have a classic base voter–swing voter dilemma that won’t resolve itself.
Perhaps swing-voter-sensitive Republicans can convince their leader to modify his policies and priorities to make them more generally popular. But Trump is not exactly renowned for taking advice, particularly if that means admitting error. And for his entire career, he has pursued a base-in, rather than a center-out, political strategy, counting on polarization to put him in a position to win with superior voter mobilization and the mistakes of his opponents.
If Republicans decide on yet another MAGA messaging extravaganza with Trump at the center as always, then the one thing we know for sure is that the GOP’s persuasion strategy for swing voters will be strictly negative. If you cannot occupy the political center, you try to push the other party out of the center by regular assertion that it is extremist. Trump is without question a master of this tactic, and we’re already seeing him warming up for 2026 by calling Zohran Mamdani a communist and treating the entire “radical left” Democratic Party as beyond the pale. One question Republicans will have to answer, however, is whether key elements of the electorate will get tired of polarization theater and finger their president as the main perpetrator. Any way you slice it, though, he will not get out of the spotlight until his political career has ended, if then. And that’s a problem for the GOP.
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Less than 48 hours after Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s mayoral election, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., sent a fundraising email for her gubernatorial campaign that targeted Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor-elect.
Under the words “Stop Muslim radicals,” the Nov. 6 email framed Mamdani’s victory as a civilizational battle. “Republicans must treat the rise of Islamic radicalism as another 9/11,” it said, referring to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The email said, “New Yorkers — the same people directly impacted by 9/11 — voted to elect a man who’s bringing SHARIA LAW to America.”
Mace’s email resurrects a talking point that peaked in the 2010s, usually inspired by the false belief that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and was actually a Muslim, a movement that came to be known as “birtherism.“
During that time, PolitiFact consistently debunked the notion that Shariah was usurping traditional law in the U.S.
The talking point reemerged after Mamdani — who was born in Uganda and moved to the U.S. when he was 7, becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018 — gained national attention for his bid to run the nation’s most populous city.
Between June 24 and Oct. 31, there were at least 2,868 social media posts by 2,132 distinct users that referred to Shariah or Islamic theocracy in relation to Mamdani’s campaign, according to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.
Laura Loomer — a confidante of President Donald Trump, who played a key role in spreading birtherism before he ran for president — posted on X on June 26 that “this isn’t hyperbole. This is reality for New Yorkers. Sharia Law is coming.”
We reviewed media coverage of Mamdani’s campaign and interviewed experts and found no evidence that Mamdani seeks to implement Shariah.
“I’m not aware of anything he has said or done that suggests that he supports imposition of Shariah or even advocates policy positions that are based on Shariah,” said Nathan J. Brown, a George Washington University professor of political science and international affairs.
Further, it would be impossible to accomplish in the U.S.
“No one can impose religious law on anyone in the United States because we have such a thing as the Constitution,” said Cyra Akila Choudhury, a Florida International University law professor. “The First Amendment prohibits the state from establishing a religion, so just as Christians and Jews cannot impose either canon law or Jewish law on anyone, Mamdani cannot impose Shariah.”
Mace’s campaign pointed PolitiFact to three pieces of evidence for the statement.
One was an Oct. 22 X post from the account Wall Street Apes that includes a compilation of video clips of Mamdani. In one clip, a man asks Mamdani about Shariah, saying he has to renounce it, and Mamdani responds, “What does Shariah law have to do with this? I am running for mayor of New York.” In another clip, Mamdani, wearing a red bandana across his face, says, “We came here to remake this state in the image of our people.” The X post’s caption says, “Zohran Mamdani is a practicing Muslim. Islam tells them to lie to advance takeovers.”
The second link is an Oct. 20 Republican National Committee blog post that criticized Mamdani for meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a New York City Muslim religious leader; the blog post linked to a New York Post report identifying Wahhaj as an unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. (Others, including critics of Wahhaj, dispute the Post’s characterization of him as a co-conspirator.)
The third point is a Fox News article in which Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., called on Mamdani to denounce the phrase “globalize the Intifada,” saying, “People that glorify the slaughter of Jews create fear in our communities. The global intifada is a statement that means destroy Israel and kill all the Jews.”
However, the X post the Mace campaign cited doesn’t show Mamdani advocating for Shariah, and the RNC blog post, the New York Post article it’s based on and the Fox News article do not mention the word Shariah. Individually or collectively, they are not proof that Mamdani is seeking to implement Shariah.
Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to an inquiry for this article.
Timothy P. Carney and Sadanand Dhume — two commentators with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. — have expressed reservations about some of Mamdani’s stances, but both agreed that the claim that Mamdani wants to implement Shariah is bogus.
Mamdani “obviously doesn’t believe in Sharia law,” Carney wrote in the Washington Examiner.
Dhume wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “Is Zohran Mamdani a radical Islamist? Contrary to what some Republicans have suggested, the answer is clearly no.”
Dhume told PolitiFact that Mamdani’s support for gay rights and decriminalizing sex work, among other positions, “are the antithesis of Sharia law as understood by those who seek to impose it. This line of attack is a scare tactic aimed at ignorant voters by conflating being a Muslim with supporting Islamism.”
Mamdani’s background does not include anything to suggest that he supports Islamic fundamentalism. “My mother’s side of the family is Hindu, and I grew up celebrating Diwali, Holi and Raksha Bandhan,” he told The Indian Eye. “Though I identify as Muslim, these Hindu traditions and practices have shaped my worldview.”
There was no evidence during Mamdani’s lengthy campaign that he would undertake “the kinds of things that Islamists typically do when they take power in Muslim-majority countries,” Dhume said, such as cracking down on alcohol sales, encouraging or forcing female students in public schools to wear a hijab and shutting gay clubs.
Muslims living in the United States can put marital disputes and other personal matters in front of a tribunal made up of faith leaders. That’s allowed and has been used by Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, Baptists and other religions for decades. It falls under the umbrella of mediation, when people agree to work out their differences through a process outside of the courts.
For any other situation, the Constitution reigns, legal experts said. In 2009, the trial judge in a New Jersey domestic abuse case deferred to Shariah tenets, but the state’s Superior Court rejected that decision. And in no American community does a code based on Islamic, Jewish, Catholic or other religious precepts take precedence over American law.
“The laws that apply in New York City come from the legislature of New York state as well as local ordinances and regulations created by New York’s city council,” said Peter Mandaville, a George Mason University government and politics professor. “While the mayor of New York can propose legislation, it is not possible to unilaterally decree laws that have not been passed by the city council.”
Mace’s email said Mamdani “is bringing Sharia law to America.”
Mamdani has expressed no intention to implement Shariah in New York City. Mamdani’s background and policy positions do not include anything to suggest that he supports Islamic fundamentalism, and an expert told PolitiFact that Mamdani’s support for gay rights and decriminalizing sex work are the “antithesis” of Shariah.
No one can implement Shariah in the United States, given legal protections under the Constitution.
We rate the statement Pants on Fire!
PolitiFact Staff Writer Nick Karmia and PolitiFact News Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
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After Zohran Mamdani handily won the New York City mayoral election, becoming the city’s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor-elect, Republican detractors in Washington said they would try to stop him from taking office.
President Donald Trump, who threatened to withhold federal funds to New York City if Mamdani won, lent credence to misleading questions about Mamdani’s citizenship and falsely accused the Ugandan-born 34-year-old of being a communist.
Some Republican lawmakers requested investigations into Mamdani’s naturalization process and have called for stripping him of his U.S. citizenship and deporting him, accusing him without evidence of embracing communist and terrorist activities.
“If Mamdani lied on his naturalization documents, he doesn’t get to be a citizen, and he certainly doesn’t get to run for mayor of New York City. A great American city is on the precipice of being run by a communist who has publicly embraced a terroristic ideology,” Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., said in an Oct. 29 press release after asking U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Mamdani. “The American naturalization system REQUIRES any alignments with communism or terrorist activities to be disclosed. I’m doubtful he disclosed them. If this is confirmed, put him on the first flight back to Uganda.”
Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., misrepresented Mamdani’s time in the U.S. when he said Oct. 27 on Newsmax, “The barbarians are no longer at the gate, they’re inside. … And Mamdani, having just moved here eight years ago, is a great example of that, becoming a citizen. Look, it is clear with much of what I have read that he did not meet the definition to gain citizenship.”
PolitiFact found no credible evidence that Mamdani lied on his citizenship application.
Born in Uganda, Mamdani moved to the U.S. in 1998 when he was 7 and became a U.S. citizen in 2018. For adults to become U.S. citizens, they generally must have lived continuously in the country as a lawful permanent resident for five years, or three years if married to a U.S. citizen.
Denaturalization, the process of revoking a person’s citizenship, can be done only by judicial order. It’s been used sparingly, such as for removing Nazis who fled to the U.S. after World War II or people convicted of or associated with terrorism.
Immigration law experts said they have seen no evidence to support Ogles and Fine’s assertions about Mamdani’s application.
“Denaturalization is an extreme, rare remedy that requires the government to prove either illegal procurement or a willful, material lie — at a minimum, clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence that the fact would have changed the outcome at the time of naturalization,” said immigration lawyer Jeremy McKinney. “I’ve seen no credible proof he was ineligible when he took the oath or that any omission was material.”
Ogles and Fine did not respond to PolitiFact’s requests for comment by publication.
The push to question Mamdani’s citizenship started in the summer when he became the Democratic mayoral nominee.
In a June letter to Bondi, Ogles asked the Justice Department to pursue denaturalization proceedings against Mamdani, “on the grounds that he may have procured U.S. citizenship through willful misrepresentation or concealment of material support for terrorism.”
Ogles cited rap lyrics Mamdani wrote in 2017 supporting the “Holy Land Five,” a reference to five men in the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim charity, convicted in 2008 of providing material support to the terrorist group Hamas. Some lawyers have criticized the case’s evidence and use of hearsay.
Ogles and Fine said Mamdani did not disclose his Democratic Socialists of America membership on his citizenship application form; the lawmakers say it’s a communist organization and Mamdani’s involvement could have disqualified him from citizenship.
The U.S. naturalization form asks whether applicants have been a member, involved in or associated with any communist or totalitarian party. But the Democratic Socialists of America is not a communist party.
Democratic socialism emerged as an alternative to communism, Harvey Klehr, an Emory University expert on the history of American communism, previously told PolitiFact. Democratic socialists’ generally “reject the communist hostility to representative democracy, as well as the communist belief in state ownership of the means of production,” Klehr said.
McKinney said, “DSA membership isn’t a bar to citizenship; failing to list a lawful political group on the (naturalization form) doesn’t become fraud unless disclosure would have led to a denial. A lyric referencing the Holy Land Five is protected speech absent actual material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.”
PolitiFact reached out to Mamdani for comment but did not hear back.
RELATED: NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is not a communist
The New York Young Republican Club is taking a different tactic, citing the 14th Amendment, the New York Post reported.
The amendment bars from office anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or who has “given aid or comfort to the enemies” of the country. The state GOP group said Mamdani provided “aid and comfort” to U.S. enemies by supporting “pro-Hamas” groups and said he supports gangs through his calls to resist Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
This would be a longshot push for Congress to declare Mamdani ineligible for office, requiring a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. If passed, it still could be challenged up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Immigration experts told PolitiFact that calls to resist ICE agents do not trigger the 14th Amendment, as the relevant clause targets insurrection and aid to wartime enemies, not domestic policy criticism.
A woman clutches a U.S. flag as she and applicants from 20 countries prepare to take the oath of citizenship in commemoration of Independence Day during a Naturalization Ceremony in San Antonio, July 3, 2025. (AP)
The Justice Department can strip U.S. citizenship by filing criminal charges for naturalization fraud or a civil lawsuit.
In either case, the government would have to prove that an applicant made a false statement in a citizenship application, and show that the statement would have affected the application.
The government’s standard to clear in a criminal case — proving guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt”— is higher than a civil case standard of presenting “clear and convincing evidence.” The more common civil process lacks certain constitutional protections such as the right to a court-appointed lawyer, Cassandra Burke Robertson, a Case Western Reserve University law professor who studies denaturalization, said.
Robertson said it’s “extraordinarily unlikely that a proceeding against Mamdani would gain any traction.”
“The bigger risk, in my mind, is the potential chilling effect on individuals with fewer resources who might be afraid to speak out against the government,” Robertson said.
Although denaturalizations generally have been rare in the U.S., they’ve become more frequent under the Trump administration, Irina Manta, a Hofstra University law professor who studies denaturalization, said.
In June, the Justice Department issued a memo directing attorneys to prioritize denaturalization cases. The memo’s list of priority categories includes people who the administration says pose national security concerns, gang members and a catchall category for “any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”
If Mamdani were to have his citizenship revoked, his immigration status would revert to his previous one — lawful permanent residence. That would disqualify him from serving as New York City mayor.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
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Cornell University has agreed to pay $60 million to restore federal research funding and end investigations into the Ivy League school.
Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff announced the agreement Friday. The New York-based university will pay $30 million directly to the U.S. government and another $30 million toward agriculture and farming research programs.
The agreement upholds the university’s academic freedom while restoring more than $250 million in research funding that the government withheld amid investigations into alleged civil rights violations, Kotlikoff said.
IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS RECEIVED $6.4 BILLION IN FEDERAL FUNDING IN 2024
Cornell points to “core values of inclusion, engagement, impact, and community” on their DEI page. The school has agreed to pay the government $60 to restore federal funding. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)
“The decades-long research partnership between Cornell and the federal government is critical to advancing the university’s core mission and to our continuing contributions to the nation’s health, welfare, and economic and military strength,” he said.
“This agreement revives that partnership while affirming the university’s commitment to the principles of academic freedom, independence and institutional autonomy that, from our founding, have been integral to our excellence,” he added.
Kotlikoff said the agreement recognizes Cornell’s right to independently establish its own policies and procedures, choose whom to hire and admit, and determine what is taught without government monitoring or approval.
FOX NEWS ‘ANTISEMITISM EXPOSED’ NEWSLETTER: FULL LIST OF STUDENTS DETAINED OVER CAMPUS HATE
The six-page agreement requires the university to comply with federal civil rights laws, including those involving antisemitism and racial discrimination. In addition, the university agreed to provide the Department of Justice’s “Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful Discrimination” as a training resource to faculty and staff, and will continue to conduct annual surveys to evaluate the campus climate for Cornell students.
“Recipients of federal funding must fully adhere to federal civil rights laws and ensure that harmful DEI policies do not discriminate against students,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Today’s deal is a positive outcome that illustrates the value of universities working with this administration — we are grateful to Cornell for working towards this agreement.”
In April, the Trump administration froze more than $1 billion in federal funding for Cornell over potential civil rights violations.
President Donald Trump suspended federal funding to every Ivy League school except the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth College amid investigations into anti-Israel protests that have taken place on their campuses since October 2023.
An aerial view of Cornell University. The Daily Sun, the student newspaper, came under fire for publishing an image of a bloodied Star of David and a Nazi “SS” symbol scrawled on the back of a Palestinian person in a recent issue. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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The administration said it was taking a more aggressive role in addressing campus antisemitism, accusing President Joe Biden of failing to hold universities accountable for violent protests.
“The months of stop-work orders, grant terminations, and funding freezes have stalled cutting-edge research, upended lives and careers, and threatened the future of academic programs at Cornell,” Kotlikoff said.
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LONDON (AP) — He’s the left-leaning Muslim mayor of the country’s biggest city, and U.S. President Donald Trump is one of his biggest critics.
London’s Sadiq Khan has a lot in common with New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani — but also many differences.
Khan, who has been mayor of Britain’s capital since 2016, welcomed Mamdani’s victory, saying New Yorkers had “chosen hope over fear, unity over division.”
Khan’s experience holds positive and negative lessons for Mamdani, the 34-year-old Democrat who beat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in Tuesday’s election.
Khan has won three consecutive elections but routinely receives abuse for his faith and race, as well as criticism from conservative and far-right commentators who depict London as a crime-plagued dystopia.
Trump has been among his harshest critics for years, calling Khan a “stone cold loser,” a “nasty person” and a “terrible mayor,” and claiming the mayor wants to bring Sharia, or Islamic law, to London.
Khan, a keen amateur boxer, has hit back, saying in September that Trump is “racist, he is sexist, he is misogynistic and he is Islamophobic.”
Khan told The Associated Press during a global mayors’ summit in Brazil on Wednesday that it’s “heartbreaking” but not surprising to see Mamdani receiving the same sort of abuse he gets.
“London is liberal, progressive, multicultural, but also successful — as indeed is New York,” he said. “If you’re a nativist, populist politician, we are the antithesis of all you stand for. ”
Mamdani and Khan regularly receive abuse and threats because of their Muslim faith, and London’s mayor has significantly tighter security protection than his predecessors.
Both have tried to build bridges with the Jewish community after being criticized by opponents for their pro-Palestinian stances during the Israel-Hamas war.
Both say their political opponents have leaned into Islamophobia. In 2016, Khan’s Conservative opponent, Zac Goldsmith, was accused of anti-Muslim prejudice for suggesting that Khan had links to Islamic extremists.
Cuomo laughed along with a radio host who suggested Mamdani would “be cheering” another 9/11 attack. Mamdani’s Republican critics frequently, falsely call him a “jihadist” and a Hamas supporter.
Mamdani vowed during the campaign that he would “not change who I am, how I eat, or the faith that I’m proud to call my own.”
Khan has said he feels a responsibility to dispel myths about Muslims, and answers questions about his faith with weary good grace. He calls himself “a proud Brit, a proud Englishman, a proud Londoner and a proud Muslim.”
Mamdani is an outsider on the left of his party, a democratic socialist whose buzzy, digital-savvy campaign energized young New Yorkers and drove the city’s biggest election turnout in a mayoral election in decades.
Khan, 55, is a more of an establishment politician who sits in the broad middle of the center-left Labour Party.
The son of a bus driver and a seamstress from Pakistan, Khan grew up with seven siblings in a three-bedroom public housing apartment in south London.
He studied law, became a human rights attorney and spent a decade as a Labour Party lawmaker in the House of Commons, representing the area where he grew up, before being elected in 2016 as the first Muslim leader of a major Western capital city.
Mamdani comes from a more privileged background as the son of an India-born Ugandan anthropologist, Mahmood Mamdani, and award-winning Indian filmmaker Mira Nair. Born in Uganda and raised from the age of 7 in New York, he worked as an adviser for tenants facing eviction before being elected to the New York State Assembly in 2020.
Khan and Mamdani govern huge cities with vastly diverse populations of more than 8 million. Voters in both places have similar worries about crime and the high cost of living – big issues that many mayors struggle to address.
Khan was won three straight elections, but he’s not an overwhelmingly popular mayor. As Mamdani may also find, the mayor gets blamed for a lot of problems, from high rents to violent crime, regardless of whether they are in his control, though Mamdani made freezing rents a pillar of his campaign.
Mamdani campaigned on ambitious promises, including free child care, free buses, new affordable housing and city-run grocery stores.
“Winning an election is one thing, delivering on promises is another,” said Darren Reid, an expert on U.S. politics at Coventry University. “The mayor of New York definitely does not have unlimited power, and he is going to have a very powerful enemy in the current president.”
The mayor of London controls public transit and the police, but doesn’t have the authority of New York’s leader because power is shared with the city’s 32 boroughs, which are responsible for schools, social services and public housing in their areas.
Khan can point to relatively modest achievements, including free school meals for all primary school pupils and a freeze on transit fares. But he has failed to meet other goals, such as ambitious house-building targets.
Tony Travers, a professor at the London School of Economics who specializes in local government, said one lesson Mamdani might take from Khan is to pick “a limited number of fights that you can win.”
Khan, who is asthmatic, has made it one of his main missions to clean up London’s air — once so filthy the city was nicknamed the Big Smoke. He expanded London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone, which charges the drivers of older, more polluting vehicles a daily fee to drive in the city.
The measure became a lightning rod for criticism of Khan, spurring noisy protests and vandalism of enforcement cameras. Khan staunchly defended the zone, which research suggests has made London’s air cleaner. His big victory in last year’s mayoral election appeared to vindicate Khan’s stance on the issue.
Travers said that beyond their shared religion and being the targets of racism, both mayors face the conundrum of leading dynamic, diverse metropolises that are “surprisingly peaceful and almost embarrassingly successful” — and resented by the rest of their countries for their wealth and the attention they receive.
He said London is “locked in this strange alternative universe where it is simultaneously described by a number of commentators as sort of a hellhole … and yet on the other hand it’s so embarrassingly rich that British governments spend their lives trying to level up the rest of the country to it. You can’t win.”
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Associated Press writer Eléonore Hughes in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this story.
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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — As the polls closed on Tuesday across Virginia, it quickly became clear it was a night of firsts: Voters overwhelmingly elected a slate of candidates who broke race and gender barriers in contests considered among the most consequential nationally.
Republicans in Virginia also fielded a historically diverse statewide ticket that would have set records.
The results come as President Donald Trump has made his opposition to diversity initiatives a cornerstone of his platform, dismantling federal civil rights programs that sought to rectify a complicated history of racial discrimination. He has justified those moves by saying that race and gender equity programs overcorrect for past wrongs and foment anti-American sentiment — a position shared among many conservatives across the country.
Still, Virginia’s election results — in tandem with high-profile Democratic victories across the U.S. — call into question whether Trump’s staunch positions on race, gender and gender identity are resonating with voters.
Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the Virginia governor’s race Tuesday, giving Democrats a key victory heading into the 2026 midterm elections and making history as the first woman ever to lead the Commonwealth. Her victory was decisive, with about 57% of the vote.
The race was bound to make history regardless of who came out on top: Spanberger was running against Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, marking the first time two women were the front-runners in a general election for governor.
In her acceptance speech, Spanberger recalled how her husband said to their three daughters, “Your mom is going to be the governor of Virginia.”
“And I can guarantee you those words have never been spoken in Virginia, ever before,” she said, beaming.
Spanberger said her victory meant Virginians were choosing “pragmatism over partisanship” and “leadership that will focus on problem solving and not stoking division.”
Democrat Ghazala Hashmi defeated Republican John Reid in the race for lieutenant governor, becoming the first Indian American woman to win statewide office in Virginia. She is also the first Muslim woman to be elected statewide in the U.S.
Firsts are not new to Hashmi. She was the first Muslim woman elected to the Virginia Senate five years ago. Hashmi, a former English professor born in India, said at the time that her opposition to Trump’s Muslim ban motivated her to break into politics.
This time around, her campaign for lieutenant governor focused less on her identity and more on key issues, such as health and education. Still, some said her identity was a prominent factor in the race. Reid recently took to social media to tie Hashmi to Zohran Mamdani, the first Muslim elected mayor of New York City, despite marked differences in their platforms, nationalities and ages — a comparison critics said was Islamophobic.
Like the governor’s race, the battle for lieutenant governor would have been historic either way: Reid was the first openly gay man nominated to statewide office in Virginia, and he faced hurdles on the trail in connection to his sexuality. GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked him to leave the ticket after opposition research linked him to a social media account with sexually explicit photos of men. At the time, Reid said he felt betrayed.
In her victory speech, Hashmi said her candidacy reflected progress in the state and nation.
“My own journey — from a young child landing at the airport in Savannah, Georgia, to now being elected as the first Muslim woman to achieve statewide office in Virginia and in the entire country — is only possible because of the depth and breadth of opportunities made available in this country and in this commonwealth.”
Democrat Jay Jones defeated Republican incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares, becoming the first Black person elected as top prosecutor in the former capital of the Confederacy.
Jones, a former Virginia delegate, comes from a long line of racial-justice trailblazers — a fact he emphasized throughout his campaign and after his victory.
“My ancestors were slaves. My grandfather was a civil rights pioneer who braved Jim Crow,” Jones said Tuesday. “My mother, my uncles, my aunts endured segregation, all so that I could stand before you today.”
That said, Jones’ victory is as much a referendum on dissatisfaction with the government shutdown and Trump’s mass firings, which have hit Virginia especially hard due to its high concentration of federal workers.
Ever since Democrat Jimmy Carter won the White House in 1976, every time a new president has been elected, Virginia has voted in a governor the following year from the opposite party.
Jones’ win comes after Miyares, elected in 2021, became the first Latino to hold a Virginia statewide office.
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Before Tuesday’s elections in other states, Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly said a win in the New York City mayor’s race by Democrat Zohran Mamdani would be a boon for Florida real-estate agents as New Yorkers would move.
After Mamdani’s dominant win Tuesday, DeSantis continued the trolling by posting a poll asking how Florida should respond: “Build a FL border wall” “Tariff all transplants” or “Recruit new transplants.”
The poll closed Thursday morning with 45,282 responses. The border-wall proposal got more than 48 percent. Tariffs were second.
When state Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman, R-Highland Beach, posted online that “Florida should tariff everyone fleeing NYC,” DeSantis replied, “Have you filed that bill?”
Meanwhile, Republican state Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia called Mamdani’s victory “a sad day for NYC.”
“The ‘Big Apple’ is now government issued and will be rationed accordingly,” Ingoglia posted on X.
But Florida Democrats offered a much different outlook after Tuesday night, combining Mamdani with Democrats winning gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia and the results in the Miami mayor’s race where Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins will face former Miami City Manager Emilio González in a runoff.
“Last night was not an anomaly or a blip. It’s a rational call to restore order amidst chaos and a resolute reminder that hope is still on the ballot,” Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried said Wednesday during a conference call with reporters.
“They (voters) want the government back open,” Fried said. “They want to make sure that their kids are fed. They want to make sure that they have access to affordable health care. They want prices to come down. They want the economy to grow, and they want to stop the chaos in Washington.”
Fried said national “momentum” could help Florida Democrats, who do not hold any statewide offices and are far outpaced in voter registration by Republicans.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do. I’m not overstating the amount of work that needs to get done,” Fried said. “But I do think that we are on the right course to start picking up some of these really important elections across the state.”
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His lawsuit accuses Planned Parenthood of falsely advertising that abortion medication is “safer than Tylenol.”
Spooky season had one final and belated hurrah on Conduit’s stage this week
‘SB 164 could be the beginning of a slippery slope where the state treats embryos and fetuses as ‘persons’ under the law.’
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Federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building on October 14, 2025, in New York City.
Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Donald Trump has long vowed to target New York City if Zohran Mamdani were elected mayor and went so far as to tell people they “must” vote for Andrew Cuomo on the eve of the election. Three days later, his administration’s first foray into the city is a strategic troll: ICE is attempting to recruit disgruntled members of the NYPD — as well as send a pointed political message in the aftermath of Mamdani’s victory.
On Thursday, the agency’s official X account shared a post asking members of the city’s police force to “join an agency that respects you, your family, and your commitment to serving in law enforcement.” The recruitment attempt clearly attempts to capitalize on fears expressed by critics of Mamdani that many members of the NYPD will choose to leave their posts and the city rather than serve under Mamdani’s administration.
This is not the first time that the Trump administration has made such overtures to local law enforcement. In October, the Associated Press reported that ICE had spent millions of dollars on targeted television advertising across the country, using partisan messaging to recruit police officers employed in sanctuary cities. It was also an effort to meet the White House’s goal of hiring 10,000 new ICE officers by year’s end. Per the outlet, the 30-second ads aired in cities like Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Denver, among others.
President Donald Trump has made no secret of his feelings about the mayor-elect, inaccurately describing him as a “communist” and threatening to withhold federal funding from the city or even have Mamdani arrested if he doesn’t cooperate with ICE if elected. In turn, Mamdani has been a fierce critic of Trump throughout his mayoral campaign, though on Wednesday he expressed an openness to working with the president on lowering the cost of living in the city, his trademark issue.
This was not the only time the Trump administration has sent out official posts referencing Mamdani’s win. Shortly after Mamdani was elected, the White House X account shared an image styled like the iconic logo of the New York Knicks featuring the words, “Trump Is Your President.” The post was later removed after the Knicks organization reportedly reached out to the Trump administration.
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Nia Prater
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Everything changed on Tuesday.
And nothing changed.
Bear with me.
THE RESULTS ARE IN: 2025’S BIGGEST WINNER AND LOSERS FROM THE OFF-YEAR ELECTIONS
Perhaps the most important thing that happened with the Democrats winning big in the off-year elections is the psychological boost. The Democrats haven’t had anything to celebrate for a year. Now, they’re high-fiving themselves. This is clearly a protest against President Donald Trump and Trumpism, which makes the victory a little sweeter.
Two women had especially big nights. In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill is the new governor-elect. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger is the commonwealth’s first female governor-elect. Hell, even Jay “two bullets” Jones, who sent those awful texts about wanting to kill the then-House speaker, won his race for Virginia Attorney General.
If you live in those states, your life may change a bit.
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger celebrates as she takes the stage during her election night rally at the Greater Richmond Convention Center on Tuesday, Nov. 4, in Richmond, Va. Spanberger defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears to become the first female governor in the commonwealth’s history in an election that was seen as a national political bellwether leading into the midterms. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
But, it’s also a reminder that politics is not just about policy. Sure, the Democrats were shrewd to run on affordability, given that the president had promised to bring prices down. But ultimately, voters want someone they feel comfortable with, someone who can deal with unforeseen crises.
Yet on the national front, Trump still controls the White House. He still controls the House. He still controls the Senate. He’s largely backed by the Supreme Court, despite skepticism at yesterday’s oral argument about whether tariffs fall under his emergency powers.
So what has really changed?
The continuing government shutdown fueled a sense of frustration and impatience with the president, as he acknowledged in that terse response to the GOP losses — which extended to California, where Gavin Newsom pushed through a redistricting plan in response to Republican gerrymandering.
KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE 2025 ELECTIONS
Trump was quick to note that he wasn’t on the ballot. But, in a very real sense, he was on every ballot.
The media invariably overinterpret these off-year elections in two left-leaning states. Trump sensed disaster so he just opted out, not wanting to be tainted by the coming losses.
But he’s still got all his power.
Let’s imagine it’s six months from now and the shutdown, now the longest in American history, is a distant memory. Let’s say the economy has improved somewhat — a big if, to be sure. Who knows whether that means the Democrats will romp in the midterms?
Joe Biden suffered no midterm losses when predictions of a blue wave never materialized. Barack Obama lost the House in his first midterm, and then lost the Senate in his second midterm. George W. Bush lost the House in his second midterm, making Nancy Pelosi speaker. Trump lost the House in his first midterm, in 2018.
Bush called it a “thumpin’,” Obama a “shellacking.”
It’s just too early to say whether Trump will suffer a similar fate in next year’s midterm elections, when Democrats would only need to pick up a handful of seats to take control.
Zohran Mamdani delivers a victory speech at a mayoral election night watch party, on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in New York City. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)
The other unfolding drama is in the media capital, where Zohran Mamdani was elected New York City’s first Muslim mayor, beating Andrew Cuomo for the second time. Cuomo refused to make the traditional concession call, a petty move that was beneath him.
Talk about the power of personality. The obscure assemblyman, who’s never run anything, is a self-described socialist who started at 1 percent in the polls. He is beloved by younger people and put together a coalition that somehow combined wide-eyed liberals with working-class immigrants in Brooklyn and Queens.
Mamdani did blunder by making a fiery speech, almost yelling at times, rather than a more inclusive one.
WHAT THE RESULTS OF THE 2025 ELECTIONS MAY MEAN FOR DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS
He fared poorly among Jewish liberals, who are upset by his refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and threatend to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu if he comes to the U.N.
The mayor-elect will inevitably fail to fulfill many of his promises–free buses, free child care, free everything — because he won’t have the power and needs help from Albany. And some of his past comments from his defund-the-police, abolish-ICE days would have sunk a less charismatic candidate.
Mamdani now has 81 percent name recognition, in keeping with the high profile of New York City mayors, from John Lindsay and Ed Koch to Rudy Giuliani, Mike Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio.
AOC is thrilled, but it’s the Republicans who couldn’t be happier.
The National Republican Congressional Committee just launched a digital ad against Mamdani, which is running in nearly 50 swing districts.
Independent mayoral candidate and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks to the press after voting at a polling location at the High School of Art and Design in the Manhattan borough of New York City on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)
“A radical left earthquake just hit America. The epicenter: New York,” the spot says.
They had already been campaigning against Mamdani in trying to make him the face of an increasingly left-wing party. Some starry-eyed supporters see socialism as the answer, but it hardly plays as well in Butte or Baton Rouge as in the Bronx.
Circling back to Trump, who slams Mamdani as a communist: Does he moderate a bit? Not his style.
He is always about firing up his base and the party he has remade in his image, even if Hill Republicans are resisting his demand to abolish the filibuster.
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The media are heavily anti-Trump, and in a visceral way, especially since their corporate owners keep settling his lawsuits. That’s why you’re seeing so many on-air smiles as they replayed the victory speeches all day long.
But these early proclamations of Trump’s inevitable demise may well turn out to be exaggerated.
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Zohran Mamdani’s historic win as New York City’s first Muslim mayor has sparked global reactions — from pride in Uganda to anxiety in Israel, to jubilation among leftists in Europe, and even praise from an Iranian lawmaker and a Hamas social media channel.
The 34-year-old Democratic Socialist, born in Uganda to Indian parents, has become a symbol of a new, intersectional left — and a flashpoint for debates over socialism, Israel and U.S. foreign policy.
In Uganda’s capital of Kampala, Ugandans told Fox News Digital that Zohran Mamdani’s victory as New York City’s first Muslim mayor “felt like a homegrown win.” Although his family left Uganda when he was an infant, many in the East African nation say they view him as one of their own — proof that Ugandans and immigrants alike can rise to global leadership.
Siraje Kifamba Nsamba, a social worker at Uganda’s Islamic Center for Education and Research, said Mamdani “has made history for Uganda.”
MAMDANI TAKES COMMANDING 22-POINT LEAD OVER CUOMO IN NEW POLL
Zohran Mamdani delivers a victory speech at a mayoral election night watch party, on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in New York City. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)
“He did not hide his identity as Ugandan by birth,” Nsamba said. “Against all odds, he broke every record. He showed the world that you can come from here and lead anywhere.”
Nsamba added that Mamdani’s campaign — built on promises of rent freezes, free public transit, and affordable living — resonated not only with struggling New Yorkers but also with Ugandans who saw in him an example of immigrant success.
“It motivates so many young people here,” he said. “He’s an example that you can come from home and become a leader in any field.”
Another Ugandan citizen said: “I want to cry out load because we lost such a great leader to New York. We’ve missed out because we believe in a system where there is a classless society where rich work for the poor… New York, I want to tell you there are more Mamdani here in Kampala, more for you”.
A Kampala rapper and local politician echoed that pride, calling Mamdani’s victory “a triumph for artists, dreamers, and immigrants.” Tom Mayanja, a musician known by his stage name The Myth UG, recalled interviewing Mamdani years ago and remembering him as “focused, witty, and deliberate.”
MAMDANI RIPPED BY RIVALS FOR UNPOPULAR STANCE DURING FIERY NYC DEBATE: ‘YOU WON’T SUPPORT ISRAEL’
Supporters of New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani celebrate during an election night event at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater in Brooklyn, New York on Nov. 4, 2025. (Angelina Katsanis/AFP via Getty Images)
Elsewhere, global reactions to Mamdani’s win were mixed, reflecting both admiration and alarm.
Jusoor News, a pan-Arab media outlet, shared content from Hamas-affiliated Telegram channels hailing Mamdani’s win as “a moral victory for humanitarian politics.”
The Hamas-linked channel Kol al-Hakika described Mamdani as “a supporter of Hamas and a hater of Israel,” claiming “everyone is cheering after the great winning of Mamdani.” Other terrorist-affiliated accounts framed the result as “a change in Western power structures.”
SOCIALIST SHOCKWAVE: ZOHRAN MAMDANI STUNS NYC AS VOTERS HAND POWER TO DEMOCRATS’ FAR-LEFT FLANK
Socialist Zohran Mamdani won his New York City mayoral race, beating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
In Israel, reactions were far more severe. Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, said New York “handed over its keys to a supporter of Hamas,” warning that “New York will no longer be the same, especially for its Jewish community,” and urging Jewish New Yorkers to move to Israel.
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that Mamdani’s election “will be remembered forever as a moment when antisemitism triumphed over common sense,” calling him “a supporter of Hamas” and “a hater of Israel.”
In Iran, lawmaker Abolqasem Jarareh told Iran International that Mamdani’s win was “a sign of the strength of the slogan ‘Death to Israel.’”
In the U.K., London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan congratulated Mamdani on X stating, “New Yorkers faced a clear choice – between hope and fear – and just like we’ve seen in London – hope won.”
Former Labour Party leader and hard-left politician Jeremy Corbyn, who has been embroiled in accusations of antisemitism and who volunteered for Mamdani’s campaign, wrote, “This is a seismic victory — not only for the people of New York, but for all those who believe that humanity and hope can prevail.”
French MEP Manon Aubry, co-chair of the Left bloc in the European Parliament, called the victory “a huge breath of hope in the world of Trump.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani hold hands during the town hall “Fighting Oligarchy” event at Brooklyn College on Sept. 6, 2025. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
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“He overcame the media, economic, and political establishment that spent tens of millions of dollars to block his path,” Aubry wrote, praising his refusal to “turn a blind eye to racism and Gaza,” she wrote.
In Canada, leader of the leftist NDP, Jagmeet Singh tweeted, “At a time when the odds feel so stacked against working-class people, the people of New York made history.”
Adriana James-Rodil contributed to this article.
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NEW YORK (AP) — For many years, New York voters have found candidates listed twice, three times or even more on their ballots when they go to the polling booth.
It isn’t an error — it’s a practice known as fusion voting that allows candidates to appear under multiple political parties.
But such intentional duplications on the New York City ballot this year, along with other layout choices, have some outside observers around the country wondering whether they are seeing evidence of rigged voting in Tuesday’s widely-watched mayoral race.
Billionaire X owner Elon Musk, who briefly served as a top advisor to President Donald Trump, was among those criticizing the ballots.
“The New York City ballot form is a scam!” he wrote in an X post. “No ID is required. Other mayoral candidates appear twice. Cuomo’s name is last in bottom right.”
But there is nothing amiss about the ballots, which are in keeping with New York’s voting laws.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
CLAIM: New York City ballots are proof of election fraud because some candidates appear twice and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is listed low in the order.
THE FACTS: This is false. Candidates may appear more than once on ballots in New York if they are nominated by multiple political parties — a practice called fusion voting. Cuomo is in the eighth spot because he filed to run as an independent later in the process.
New York, along with Connecticut, is one of few states where fusion voting is legal and commonly used. The practice has existed in New York since at least the mid-20th century. It is also legal in Oregon, Vermont and Mississippi.
“This occurs pretty frequently and it enables the Democratic candidate to get the votes of people who don’t normally vote for Democrats and Republicans to get the vote of people who don’t vote Republican etc.,” said Richard Briffault, an expert on election administration and a professor at Columbia Law School, said of fusion voting in New York.
Two mayoral candidates appear twice this year on New York City ballots. Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani is also the nominee of the Working Families Party, while Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa is also the candidate for the independent “Protect Animals” party.
Fusion voting does not allow candidates to receive more than one vote from the same voter, as voters may only vote for a candidate under one party.
Cuomo is a Democrat, but is running as an independent under a new party he created called “Fight and Deliver” after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June.
Under state law, there are currently four official parties on the ballot in New York — Democratic, Republican, Conservative and Working Families Party — based on the number of votes their candidate received in the most recent gubernatorial and presidential elections. That vote count also determines the order they appear on the next ballot, from highest to lowest.
Candidates must file a petition to run as an independent. Boards of elections determine the ballot order of independent parties, which must appear below the official parties.
“In the case of the New York City Board of Elections, this is determined by the date and time stamp when the independent nominating petition was filed with that board,” said Kathleen McGrath, a spokesperson for the New York State Board of Elections.
According to McGrath, Cuomo’s “Fight and Deliver” party was the fourth out of five independent parties to submit a nominating petition, meaning that Cuomo is listed eighth on the ballot.
Mamdani is listed first under the Democratic Party and fourth under the Working Families Party. Sliwa appears second under the Republican Party and fifth under the “Protect Animals” party. Two other candidates running as independents — incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and attorney Jim Walden — dropped out of the race too late to be taken off the ballot.
“In short, Cuomo is only listed once because he was only nominated once, and he is low in the order because no recognized political party nominated him,” said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director at Verified Voting. “Surely Elon Musk has people who could have looked this up for him.”
New York City does not require voters to show ID to vote unless they did not provide identification with their registration. The nation’s multilayered election processes provide many safeguards that keep voter fraud generally detectable and rare, the AP has reported.
Representatives for Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
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On the day after election night, Democrats are celebrating major victories in Virginia, New Jersey, California and New York City. Ed O’Keefe breaks it down.
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(CNN) — Democrats’ dominance in Tuesday’s elections reset expectations ahead of next year’s midterm battle for House and Senate control, reinvigorating a party that has been in the political wilderness and leaving Republicans lamenting that the gains President Donald Trump made a year ago with key portions of the electorate all but evaporated.
“Last night, if that wasn’t a message to all Republicans, then we’ve got our head jammed in the ground,” said West Virginia GOP Sen. Jim Justice.
The list of Democratic winners spanned the party’s ideological spectrum — from Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist elected mayor of New York City, to Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, the moderates with strong national security credentials elected governors of Virginia and New Jersey, respectively.
Their wins could rally Democrats in competitive House, Senate and governor’s races next year around a message all three made central to their campaigns, in different forms: pledges to reduce the cost of living.
But the playing field won’t be easy for Democrats. Strategists in both parties agree that control of the House will be in play, but the net effect of redistricting moves around the country — particularly if the Supreme Court decides to weaken the Voting Rights Act — could leave fewer competitive seats for Democrats. And the 2026 Senate map includes only a handful of GOP-held seats that appear to be in play and multiple seats Democrats will have to defend.
Still, Tuesday’s results may embolden Democrats to continue their strategy in the ongoing government shutdown, while igniting new debates over what kinds of candidates can win, and where.
Margie Omero, a Democratic pollster, said the elections should be viewed within the broader context of a year in which the party’s voters have packed town halls and rallies, won key races like the Wisconsin Supreme Court contest in the spring and a slew of special elections, and scored candidate recruitment victories for next year’s midterms.
“Take the whole year into account and it tells a pretty similar story, which is that Democrats are motivated and Republicans are less motivated,” Omero said.
Trump, she said, “lost popularity and he’s lost altitude on all of his top issues, like the economy and immigration.”
“Where does that leave his supporters in a midterm or off-year election?” Omero said. “What are they coming out for, if he’s less popular and his policies are less popular and his agenda’s less popular?”
In addition to the wins in governor’s races and mayoral elections, and a critical victory in a statewide vote to green-light a redistricting effort to add five more seats that favor Democrats in California, the party also scored a long list of lower-profile victories on Tuesday.
They broke the GOP’s supermajority in the Mississippi state Senate. They flipped two seats on Georgia’s Public Service Commission. They defeated a voter identification ballot initiative in Maine. Their incumbent Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices prevailed in retention votes.
The results showed that many of the gains Trump had made in 2024 have evaporated. In New Jersey, Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli couldn’t match Trump’s support levels with Latino and Black voters. In Virginia, Spanberger notched the most impressive Democratic performance in recent years — besting the margins of the party’s last two presidential nominees and carrying a scandal-plagued nominee for attorney general, Jay Jones, to victory on her coattails.
For the GOP, the fallout could come in a number of forms — including altering the party’s push for redistricting to add winnable congressional seats in deep-red states, and changing how Republicans in competitive midterm races approach Trump.
“The picture is pretty clear,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “It is not a muddled message.”
Ayres pointed to several lessons Republicans should take from Tuesday’s results. In Virginia and New Jersey, two states Trump lost in all three of his presidential runs, Republican gubernatorial candidates tied themselves to the president, a “losing strategy from the start,” he said.
Republicans might also be inclined to rethink their strategy on redistricting, he said.
“Given the Democratic margins yesterday, about the last thing you want to do if you want to hold on to the House is weaken Republican incumbent House members, and that’s exactly what will happen if you’re trying to carve out more Republican districts,” he said.
For his part, Trump and his top allies publicly downplayed the election results, with the president noting on social media that he wasn’t on the ballot. He partially blamed the ongoing federal government shutdown, telling Republican lawmakers in a closed-door session Wednesday morning that they are getting “killed” politically by the impasse, a source told CNN.
Vice President JD Vance said that “it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states.” But he also warned that the GOP needs “to do better at turning out voters than we have in the past.”
“I said it in 2022, and I’ve said it repeatedly since: our coalition is ‘lower propensity’ and that means we have to do better at turning out voters than we have in the past,” Vance said Wednesday morning on X.
Vance also urged Republicans to focus on affordability. He said the Trump administration “inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz called the election results a “great lesson for the Republican Party,” blaming the losing Virginia gubernatorial nominee, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, for failing to excite Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
“Your candidate needs to be able to turn out ALL FACTIONS of our party, and they do that by being MAGA all the way,” he wrote on X.
Though Tuesday’s GOP losses were wide-ranging, Republicans focused on elevating one Democratic winner: Mamdani, the 34-year-old Muslim and democratic socialist mayor-elect of New York City.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called Mamdani “the new leader of the Democrat Party.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is “apparently a socialist now,” since Jeffries endorsed Mamdani.
Mamdani’s victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City emboldened the left wing of the Democratic Party. Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, a group created to oust “corporate Democrats” and elect progressives, said Mamdani’s win marks a “turning point” for their movement and shows the importance of competitive races.
One long-simmering debate Tuesday’s results didn’t settle is the ideological battle within the Democratic Party over the way forward, with a host of competitive House and Senate primaries just months away and the 2028 presidential primary already looming large.
“Democratic primaries can and should be the battleground for the control of our party’s direction,” Andrabi said.
However, in New Jersey and Virginia, the winning Democratic candidates are moderates with strong national security credentials. Spanberger, the Virginia governor-elect, criticized Mamdani in an interview with CNN just days before the election, suggesting his proposals aimed at reducing the cost of living will ultimately disappoint his supporters.
“We don’t need to settle,” said Omero, the Democratic pollster. “We’re able to have more moderate candidates in some places and more progressive candidates in some places. That feels like an important lesson.”
One area where Democrats appeared broadly on the same page Wednesday is the ongoing government shutdown — fueled in part by Democrats’ demand that Republicans make concessions on health care funding in order to pass a measure that would fund the government.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy wrote on X that it is “not a coincidence these big wins came at the exact moment when Democrats are using our power to stand for something and be strong. A huge risk to not learn that lesson.”
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Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani declared on Wednesday that he has made the final decision to keep Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. However, it remains unclear if she wants to stay in the position under the new mayor.
Photo by Dean Moses
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani declared on Wednesday that he has made the final decision to keep Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. However, it remains unclear if the city’s top cop wants to remain at the helm under the new mayor.
Appearing on Good Morning America the morning after declaring victory as the Big Apple’s 111th mayor, Mamdani stated that he wanted to keep Tisch on top of the NYPD because of her efforts to stamp out corruption.
“I’ve made my decision to retain Commissioner Tisch. I’ve done so because Eric Adams had stacked the upper echelon of the NYPD with incompetence and corruption. She came in and tackled and started to deliver accountability and reduce crime across the five boroughs,” Mamdani said.
While the second-youngest-ever mayor-to-be says he is decisive in his decision, Commissioner Tisch has kept a tight lip about the situation.
When amNewYork reached out to the NYPD for comment, a spokesperson referred us to previous comments made by Tisch in which she refused to dabble into city politics.
“As I’ve said many times, it is not appropriate for the Police Commissioner to be directly involved or to seem to be involved in electoral politics,” Tisch said.
Still, this has not stopped members of the department from internally speculating on what exactly her next moves will be.
Some police insiders, speaking anonymously to amNewYork, believe Tisch has established a strong track record for herself through record-low crime numbers and suggest that she may have aspirations to run for mayor herself in the future.
Other sources within the department speculate that they do not believe she will stay because her ideals and religious background do not align with Mamdani.
On Wednesday morning, Mamdani held a press conference in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, where he was again questioned about his conversations with Tisch and whether he felt he had convinced her to stay.
“I look forward to having conversations with her on that very subject,” he added.
Although he has made several public overtures that he wished to keep Tisch as his top cop, he has not publicly stated that he has spoken directly to her about it, or if she had informed him of an agreement to stay.
amNewYork reached out to the Mamdani campaign, asking whether the mayor-elect has spoken with Tisch since announcing, in an Oct. 22 New York Times report, his intention to retain her as the city’s top cop. We are waiting for a response.
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A familiar face will be helping Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani set up his new administration before he takes office in 2026. Lina Khan, former Federal Trade Commission Chair under President Joe Biden, has been officially announced as one of Mamdani’s transition co-chairs, alongside Grace Bonilla, Maria Torres-Springer and Melanie Hartzog.
Mamdani’s platform is focused on affordability, with fighting corporate corruption a key way he hopes to lower prices for New Yorkers. Mamdani’s proposed policies include working to ban hidden fees and non-compete clauses, while funding challenges to utility company rate hikes. It’s not surprising that Khan and Mamdani would be aligned. As Chair, Khan is best known for trying to rebuild the FTC’s anti-monopolist backbone, but she was similarly interested in banning non-compete clauses and hidden junk fees. Khan has also publicly expressed her appreciation for the Mamdani campaign’s focus on small businesses in The New York Times Opinion section.
“I think what we saw last night was New Yorkers not just electing a new mayor, but clearly rejecting a politics where outsized corporate power and money too often end up dictating our politics,” Khan said at a press conference announcing her new role. “And a clear mandate for change, where New Yorkers can get ahead and where all workers and small businesses can thrive, not just get by.”
While Mamdani has served as a New York state assemblyman, his relative lack of experience has been used as a consistent criticism of his candidacy for mayor. Clearly, that didn’t matter to voters, but Mamdani’s chosen transition team members suggest he plans to surround himself with people who are experienced. In the case of Khan, that includes a transition co-chair who’s willing to be openly critical of corporate power. The Trump administration has effectively remade the FTC in its image, but there’s more than one place the influence of big businesses can be checked.
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Radio host Charlamagne tha God told CNN host Van Jones to shut up Wednesday after he criticized New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s fiery victory speech.
Jones accused Mamdani of a “character switch” during an impassioned election-night address on Tuesday, arguing that he had missed an opportunity to bring more New Yorkers into his camp after a contentious election.
“I think he missed a chance tonight to open up and bring more people into the tent,” Jones told the election night panel on CNN. “I think his tone was sharp. I think he was using the microphone in a way that he was almost yelling. And that’s not the Mamdani that we’ve seen on TikTok and the great interviews and stuff like that, so I felt like there was a little bit of a character switch here where the warm, open, embracing guy that’s close to working people was not on stage tonight, and there was some other voice on stage.”
Charlamagne blasted Jones for his comments the following morning, nominating him in his signature “Donkey of the Day” segment.
Radio host Charlamagne tha God objected to CNN commentator Van Jones’ criticism of NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech. (Charlamagne photo from Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images I Van Jones photo via Paul Marotta/Getty Images)
“Man, shut the F up forever, Okay? Damn. There was no opportunity missed. The man just won. Alright? He just won. After you won, yes, you’re going to celebrate. Yes, you’re going to talk loud,” Charlamagne responded to Jones’ comments. “What do you mean he wasn’t warm enough? He took a victory lap, and he deserved to take a victory lap because he won. I just don’t understand how in the era of Trump, we’re still telling people how to talk. The language of politics is dead, and Donald Trump killed it. And you know when you can really talk that talk? After you win.”
Charlamagne struggled to discern which part of the speech Jones possibly could have objected to, saying his best guess was Mamdani’s rhetoric where he condemned landlords and the wealthy in the city by comparing them to President Donald Trump.
“If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him,” Mamdani said in his victory speech.
Charlemagne argued that there was nothing divisive in Mamdani’s speech.
“The reason a lot of things don’t change in this country is because you don’t have enough politicians that are willing to challenge capitalism, and Zohran is doing that. So, how can Van Jones be mad that someone is challenging capitalism and authoritarian strategy?,” he said.
BILL MAHER WARNS FELLOW DEMOCRATS OF MAMDANI’S IMPACT, SAYS THE ‘WHOLE’ PARTY IS ON THE BALLOT
Zohran Mamdani delivers victory speech on election night, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, in New York City. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)
He then turned to his guest, former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, asking him to explain why Jones might have found the speech divisive.
Hasan answered that it would be hard to get inside Jones’ mindset, but offered the context that Jones had once praised Trump’s first speech before a Joint Session of Congress in 2017, and declared Trump “became President of the United States in that moment.”
“So Van Jones thinks that Donald Trump gives unifying speeches that make him president, but thinks Zohran Mamdani, who’s united a multi-racial, multicultural, multi-income coalition, is divisive? That tells you more about Van Jones than it does tell you about Zohran Mamdani,” Hasan argued.
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Mehdi Hasan mocked Van Jones’ past commentary about President Donald Trump. (David Livingston/Getty Images)
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