New York: US voters focus on the mayoral contest in as they travel to state and municipal polls
New York: Tuesday’s elections will choose state and municipal leaders, resolve important local concerns, and highlight controversial progressive Zohair Mamdani, who is running on the Democratic Party ticket in New York City, the biggest city in the country.
Despite the fact that the dispersed polls cannot be considered a vote on US President Donald Trump, his looming presence is driving the polls in either direction.
However, some of the contests, such as the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey, might provide a clue as to the results of the midterm elections that Congress will be deciding next year.
Additionally on the ballot is a referendum to restructure California’s congressional districts in order to elect more Democrats and balance the Republicans, changing them to their benefit in Texas and elsewhere.
California’s Democrat-leaning electorate is anticipated to support congressional district delimitation, which is a state-level process.
When registering to vote in the US election system, citizens may choose to join a party or remain independent. New York is a Democratic state, with 56% of people supporting the Democratic Party, 26% supporting the Republican Party, and 18% supporting the Independent Party.
Mamdani defeated incumbent Mayor Eric Adams and former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the June primary, which is an intraparty election to choose the party’s candidates. The victory was fueled by the city Democrats’ hatred of Trump and the candidate’s promises of free city buses, a rent freeze, and taxes on the wealthy. Mamdani was supported by a strategically astute army of young people who had just returned from anti-Israel protests that shook the city.
Cuomo, an independent centrist, and Curtis Sliwa, a vigilante group founder, are his opponents on the Republican ticket.
According to the polls, Mamdani may lose if Cuomo and Sliwa’s votes were added together. Trump has even expressed support for Cuomo, claiming that a “bad” Democrat is preferable than a communist.
Trump and others base their use of the disputed communist label on Mamdani’s pledge to Democratic Socialists to eventually seize control of the means of production, which is a distinctly communist stance, as well as other similar claims that he and his allies now minimize.
Despite Cuomo’s late rise in surveys, Sliwa defied Trump by refusing to drop out of the campaign, giving Mamdani the advantage in a three-way contest.
Mamdani is the son of Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani, who claims Indian ancestry, and film director Mira Nair, who comes from a Hindu family and has not openly converted to Islam.
If elected, Mamdani, who asserts his father’s faith and radicalism, would become the city’s first Muslim mayor, holding a position similar to that of Sadiq Khan, the British-Pakistani mayor of London, the nation’s capital.
He has also identified himself as “African American” and bears the middle name Kwame.
If Prime Minister Narendra Modi were to visit the city, a Khalistan fan who attended their gathering when derogatory slurs against Hindus were yelled has said he would shun him.
Some claim that he is deeply anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic. He has also made the ridiculous threat of employing local police to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, who is protected by his personal bodyguards and the federal Secret Service.
In this way, a lot of his campaign pledges are beyond the mayor’s authority.
He has claimed that the city’s police force, which he has threatened to abolish, is connected to Israel’s armed forces.
Jewish voters, who are typically liberal and Democratic, are divided, however, and many of them support Mamdani because they oppose Trump.
This also applies to Hindus. Congressman Ro Khanna ran for Mamdani in a mostly South Asian neighborhood at an event that was dominated by Americans of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ancestry.
In terms of strategy, the Republicans would benefit from a Mamdani victory in the next election, as they might attempt to link his radicalism to moderate Democrats in swing districts.
Several Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and the party’s Senate leader Chuck Schumer, have not backed him for this reason, while other party lawmakers have deviated from the party line to support Cuomo.
Republicans have lodged a legal notice against a Democrat seeking the elected position of public prosecutor in neighboring Nassau County for his association with Mamdani.
According to the most recent poll, Democrat Abigail Spanberger is 10 percent ahead of incumbent Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears in Virginia, which borders Washington, and is on track to unseat Republicans from the state.
The Democratic candidate for attorney general, however, is losing ground in the polls after threatening to kill the governor and his spouse despite receiving the party’s support.
Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a businessman and former state assemblyman, is slightly ahead of Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and congresswoman, according to New Jersey polls.
Trump ignores local problems in both of these contests, as he does in many others around the nation, and Democrats connect him with Republicans who attempt to distance themselves from some of the president’s policies.
In other significant mayoral contests, Democrats are predicted to keep control of Democratic-run cities including Minneapolis, Detroit, Boston, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and Charlotte, while Republicans are predicted to maintain control of Miami.
The son of a Sikh father and a Tibetan mother, Mayor Aftab Karma Singh Pureval of Cincinnati, is predicted to beat Cory Bowman, the half-brother of Vice President JD Vance.