What Zohran Mamdani’s Defeat of Andrew Cuomo Means for the Democrats

On Tuesday, the thirty-three-year-old left-wing mayoral candidate sent an unmissable message to his party: be new.
A photo of a worker removing a sign for the New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo after an electionnight watch...
A worker removes a sign for Andrew Cuomo, after a primary-night watch party, in June, 2025.Photograph by Andres Kudacki / Getty

In 2002, The New Yorker’s John Lahr visited Morningside Heights to write a Profile of the filmmaker Mira Nair, and took notice of her nine-year-old child: “Nair’s talkative doe-eyed son, Zohran, who exudes the charm of the well-loved, is known by dozens of coinages, including Z, Zoru, Fadoose, and Nonstop Mamdani.”

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