In a heated battle for New York City’s next mayor, New Yorkers ran to the polls to vote on Tuesday, Nov. 4. The candidates included New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (D), former New York governor Andrew Cuomo (I) and Curtis Sliwa (R).
The polls were open between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. By 9:34 p.m., the Associated Press called the race, confirming that Mamdani, who had captured 50.4% of the vote, would become the city’s next mayor. At that time, Cuomo had 41.6% of the votes and Sliwa had lagged behind with 7.1% of the votes.
In the months leading up to the election, Mamdani had amassed a large follower base, especially among young people, boasting a nine-million-follower count on Instagram. With catchy phrases like “fast, fare-free buses” and “freeze the rent,” he won over the votes of many with his socialist-democratic stance. In the process, he received endorsements from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Bernie Sanders, but also opposition from President Donald Trump.
“It’s going to be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York. Because if you have a communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there,” Trump said in an interview in 60 Minutes with CBS, two days before the election. “I’m not a fan of Cuomo one way or another, but if it’s going to be between a bad Democrat and a communist, I’m going to pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you.”
The race has fascinated students at CWRU as well. On Tuesday night, the Ohio Student Association (OSA) hosted an election night watch party from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m. in Fribley’s Conference Room to see the poll counts came in.
“During the watch party, a variety of CWRU students came together on campus from different organizations with different interests. Everyone in the room had a vested stake in an election, whether it was for the governor of New Jersey, the mayor of Cincinnati, or a local Cleveland City Council member. Overall it was a generally lighthearted evening with a lot of camaraderie,” Moses Fleischman, the communications lead for OSA, said.
However, it’s not just New York City’s high-stakes mayoral election that has roused political spirit at CWRU; it has been a trend this year, stemming from conflicts with the federal government.
“The political spirit on campus this election season feels more awake than I’ve seen in my last three years here,” Amrita Saini, a third-year student and vice president of OSA, said.
She hopes that OSA will continue to create a space for discussing and understanding political issues on campus following their successful watch party.
“In light of the research cuts and recent executive orders, there’s been this heightened awareness of how politics is tied directly into our day-to-day lives,” Saini said. “People are realizing that these decisions don’t just happen in the background; they affect our labs, our funding and our academic futures.”