New York, 3 Nov

New York City is all set to elect a new mayor on Tuesday as the mayoral race enters its final lap, with Indian-descent Zohran Kwame Mamdani emerging as the front-runner to take up the top political post in America's biggest city.

Mamdani, 34, born in Uganda and raised in New York City, is a New York State Assembly member and democratic socialist running for Mayor.

The Democratic nominee will face off against former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent candidate and the Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa on the ballots.

Current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, whose administration has been plagued by scandals, dropped out of the mayoral race in September.

4 November is election day across the US, with polls opening from 6 am to 9 pm. The early voting period, which commenced on October 25, ended on Sunday.

Mamdani, the son of renowned Indian filmmaker Mira Nair and Mahmood Mamdani, a Ugandan author of Indian ancestry, upset Cuomo in the Democratic primary race for New York City mayor and was declared victorious in June.

The Board of Elections has said that more than 735,000 people voted early in this election, which is about four times more than the number of ballots cast during the 2021 elections.

Mamdani has emerged as the front-runner in the NYC Mayoral election race and has promised to “lower costs and make life easier” for New Yorkers as the city gets “too expensive.”

Mamdani has vowed that as Mayor, he will immediately freeze the rent for all stabilised tenants, and use every available resource to build the housing New Yorkers need and bring down the rent.

Promising fast, fare-free buses, his campaign said that as Mayor, he’ll permanently eliminate the fare on every city bus – and make them faster by rapidly building priority lanes, expanding bus queue jump signals, and dedicated loading zones to keep double parkers out of the way.

Mamdani would also implement free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years, ensuring high-quality programming for all families.

With food prices out of control, his campaign also promised that as Mayor, he would create a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low, not making a profit.

Mamdani has a plan to bring down the cost-of-living through city-owned grocery stores, universal childcare, and other bold proposals, and he knows exactly how to pay for it, too, the campaign said.

US President Donald Trump has been critical of Mamdani and has described him as a “communist” and “far worse than a Socialist.”

In an interview with CBS 60 Minutes on Sunday, Trump said that Mamdani “will do a worse job” than former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio by far.

“And it's gonna 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. So I don't know that he's won, and I'm not a fan of Cuomo one way or the other, but if it's gonna be between a bad Democrat and a Communist, I'm gonna pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you.”

The New York Times reported that former President Barack Obama called Mamdani on Saturday, saying his "campaign has been impressive to watch.”

Obama also offered to be a “sounding board” if Mamdani wins the election, the NYT said.

A group called ‘Hindus for Mamdani’ held a prayer gathering in support of the mayoral candidate Saturday in the city, offering “blessings for Zohran’s protection and strength ahead of Election Day.

Addressing the event, Nair had said that her son’s campaign is not for one community or one faith, but for all New Yorkers, for a city that holds every colour, every tongue, every prayer within its vast and generous embrace.

“As his mother, I've watched him walk this path with grace and grit and humour and humility, qualities I know that come from his father also who taught him that the truest joy is found in serving, in thinking about others,” she said.

“May this gathering itself be a blessing, a reminder that our unity across faith and difference is the true strength of this city, and may Zohran bring the new dawn to our day with hope, with courage and with love,” she added.