By Andy O’Brien
November 4 saw historic election victories for Muslim Americans in New York City and Virginia. Democratic State Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, 34, became the first Muslim elected as mayor of New York City. On the same night, Virginia State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi became the first Muslim American elected to statewide office in the U.S. with her victory in the Virginia lieutenant governor’s race.
Mamdani was born in Uganda to parents of Indian descent and moved to New York when he was 7. He went to Bowdoin College, where he founded the college’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. After graduation in 2014, he worked as a foreclosure prevention housing counselor and musician. A member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Mandani was elected to the mayoralty with over 50 percent of the vote over former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo (41 percent) and Republican Curtis Sliwa (7.1 percent). He ran on an ambitious economic platform that included freezing rent, building affordable housing, providing fare free bus rides, taxing corporations, creating city owned grocery stores, and raising the minimum wage to $30 by 2030.
At one time seen as a long-shot candidate, Mamdani defeated Cuomo in an upset victory in the Democratic primary in June. He was the target of constant anti-Muslim attacks throughout his campaign. He publicly criticized Israel over the war in Gaza. The Center for the Study of Organized Hate identified 35,522 original Islamophobic and xenophobic posts on X (formerly Twitter) about Mamdani authored by 17,752 unique accounts between June 24 and October 31.
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In his victory speech, the mayor-elect noted that his campaign had 104,000 volunteers who made over 4.4 million calls to voters and knocked on 3 million doors to help him get elected. He spoke of the diversity of the public he met, including, “Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses, Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties,” said Mamdani.
“Whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many Black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall, your struggle is ours too,” he said.
“And we will build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism. Where the more than one million Muslims know that they belong, not just in the five boroughs of this city, but in the halls of power. No more will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election.”
Exit polling showed Mamdani won 56 percent of Black voters, 52 percent of Latino voters, 65 percent of Asian voters, 45 percent of white voters and roughly a third of Jewish voters.
First Muslim American elected to statewide office
Virginia saw two historic victories on Nov. 4. These were Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who won office to become the first woman governor of Virginia, and Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi, who will become the first Asian American and Muslim elected to statewide office in the U.S. Hashmi previously made history as the first Muslim elected to the Virginia Senate in 2019. She was born in India and raised in Georgia.
“My own journey from a young child landing at the airport in Savannah to now being elected as the first Muslim woman to achieve statewide office – the first Muslim woman to achieve statewide office not just in Virginia, but in the entire country … was possible because of the depth and the breadth of the opportunities made available in this country and in this commonwealth,” Hashmi said in her victory speech.
Hashmi has pledged to stand up to President Donald Trump, and has been an outspoken critic of the president’s treatment of federal workers. She has stated her support for repealing Virginia’s anti-union “right to work” law. She also ran on a platform of fully funding public education, strengthening reproductive rights, and addressing federal Medicaid cuts.
