Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani began his victory remarks with a direct challenge to President Donald Trump and an affirmation of New York’s identity. “New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant,” he said, adding for Trump: “To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.” He followed that with a four-word coda—“Turn the volume up”—and framed the election as a mandate to lower costs and widen access to basic services.
Mamdani cast the result as “a mandate for change,” saying New Yorkers chose hope “over big money and small ideas.” He pledged to move quickly on a cost-of-living agenda that centers a rent freeze for over 2 million rent-stabilized tenants, faster and fare-free buses, and universal childcare. The point, he said, is tangible relief: predictable rent bills, commutes that take less time and money, and child care that lets families stay close to home.
He paired those promises with a plan to rebuild day-to-day competence in city government. He said his administration will hire thousands of teachers, cut waste across a “bloated” bureaucracy and accelerate repairs in NYCHA buildings. “Excellence will become the expectation across government, not the exception,” he said.
Public safety, he said, needs to be pursued in concert with justice. Mamdani said he will work with police to reduce crime while launching a Department of Community Safety focused on mental health and homelessness. He called the approach “competence and compassion,” saying the city can do both.
The mayor-elect linked his platform to the experiences of workers whom, he said, have long been denied power: warehouse staff with bruised fingers, delivery riders with calloused palms, and kitchen workers with burn scars. He thanked more than 100,000 volunteers who “eroded the cynicism” around politics by knocking doors and having “hard-earned conversations,” and he asked supporters to “breathe this moment in” before the transition to governing begins.
Mamdani vowed to deliver a City Hall that stands “steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers” in their fight against antisemitism and to make more than a million Muslim residents “know that they belong — not just in the five boroughs, but in the halls of power.” He renounced politics that “traffic in division and hate,” saying New York must be the light in a “moment of political darkness.”
Turning again to national politics, he said the city can show how to confront “oligarchy and authoritarianism” by dismantling the conditions which allow them to flourish. Promising to “hold bad landlords to account,” he said he would work to rein in a “culture of corruption,” end special tax breaks for the well-connected, and expand labor protections with unions as partners. “When working people have ironclad rights,” he said, “the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed.”
Personal thank-yous punctuated the speech — to his campaign team (“You can sleep now”), to his parents, and to his wife, Rama. He promised to “wake each morning with a singular purpose: to make this city better for you than it was the day before,” and closed with a declaration of ownership to the crowd: “This power, it’s yours. This city belongs to you.”
About Zohran
Born in Uganda and raised in New York City, he has fought for the working class in and outside the legislature: hunger striking alongside taxi drivers to achieve more than $450 million in transformative debt relief, winning over $100 million in the state budget for increased subway service and a successful fare-free bus pilot, and organizing New Yorkers to defeat a proposed dirty power plant. The cost of living is crushing working people but Zohran believes that government can lower costs and make life easier in our city — he’ll use every tool available to bring down the rent, create world class public transit, and make it easier to raise a family.
Watch full speech (Video : CNN)
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