Supporters of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani celebrate on Election Night, November 4, 2025 (Angelina Katsanis/AFP)
Written for the Irish Examiner:
EA on Times Radio and BBC: Can Democrats Build on Momentum of Election Success?
EA on International Outlets: Mamdani’s Victory in New York…and Beyond
Zohran Mamdani, 34, put his right hand over his heart and took in the cheers of a rapturous crowd at the Brooklyn Paramount music hall in New York City.
Born in Uganda to Indian parents, a practicing Muslim, little-known a year ago, he had just been elected Mayor.
He beamed. He drew out each word: “The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said: ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.'”
It was an opening line that both captured his campaign’s “positive politics” and gently pushed back on those — from his opponent, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, to Donald Trump — who had tried to smear him as a “radical/Communist/Socialist”. Eugene Debs, five times a US Presidential candidate between 1900 and 1920, imprisoned for 3 1/2 years, was America’s best-known Democratic Socialist until Tuesday night.
After the crowd roared at the mention of Debs’ name, Mamdani drove home the point, “In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light.”
This was a beacon of a new politics, an alternative to the Trump-dominated rhetoric and division across much of US political culture and the national media. This was a real call for unity, not a throwaway line, as Mamdani paid tribute to the groups in New York City’s diverse 8.5-million community.
I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties. Yes, aunties.
To every New Yorker in Kensington and Midwood and Hunts Point, know this: this city is your city, and this democracy is yours too.
“We believe in standing up for those we love,” he said.
Instead of invective and insults, the Mayor-elect reiterated the concrete measures to deal with the cost of living, housing, food, child care, and transport. He pledged protection of tenants from bad landlords, an “end to the culture of corruption”, and support of unions and workers. He promised sanctuary from the assault on migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.
New York will remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.
So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.
But the light was not just in New York. In the Governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won by large margins, 15% and 12% respectively, over Trumpist opponents.. In Pennsylvania, three liberal justices won another 10-year term on the State Supreme Court, which could soon issue important rulings on abortion and voting rights. New York State’s capital Albany elected its first black woman Mayor, Dorcey Applyrs.
Voters in Maine approved a ballot measure to restrict a potentially dangerous person’s access to guns. In Colorado, they approved a tax increase on wealthy households to pay for free breakfast and lunch for all public school children and to bolster the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“Reports of Our Death Are Greatly Exaggerated”
Beyond the individual triumphs, this was a victory over those who been declaring that the Democratic Party is dysfunctional and in critical condition.
In the aftermath of the 2024 election, with Kamala Harris losing to Trump and Republicans gaining a majority in both houses of Congress, the jeremiad was that the Democrats had been held hostage by “culture warriors” with “extreme progressive ideas” and “wokeness”. Campaigns for civil rights — LGBT, women, racial and ethnic minorities — needed to be put away. The attention had to be on economic issues. Ground had to be ceded to the Trumpist portrayal of immigration.
That proclamation, maintained through the first nine months of the Trump Administration, was always based on a superficial glance at national headlines. The chaos of the President, channelled through his latest tweet, and his advisors’ destruction of Government agencies defined the agenda.
But the lifeblood of US politics is not in Washington. It is in the diversity of its 50 states and thousands of communities. And it was there that the essential call was made: it is possible to promote economic security *and* to defend civil rights. It is better to embrace the benefits of diversity, rather than use “DEI” as a weapon to beat down some in your community.
Governor-elect Spanberger, who promoted civil rights and rejected discrimination in a defining moment of the campaign, summarized, “Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship. We chose our Commonwealth over chaos.”
Governor-elect Sherrill invoked New Jersey’s State motto, “Liberty and Prosperity”: “Both are essential in our democracy. Liberty alone is not enough if the government makes it impossible to feed your family, to get a good education, or get a good job. In this country, that shouldn’t be too much to ask — but right now all of it seems at risk.”
She added, “We take oaths to a Constitution, not to a King.”
“Let Your Passion Flow”
These were “off-cycle” elections, with only a few states making choices. All of the US will be involved in the 2026 Congressional mid-terms for the Senate and House.
But for those celebrating, not just in the US but in other countries facing the politics of division, every daybreak begins with a glimmer.
Mamdani sees it in “the next generation of New Yorkers”: “You showed that when politics speaks to you without condescension, we can usher in a new era of leadership.”
And Sherrill found it in a 76-year-old native son of New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen: “To quote the Boss: The future is now. Roll up your sleeves. Let your passion flow. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.”
