Zohran Mamdani, after winning the Mayoral race (Source: Reuters)
Warta Kema – On Wednesday (05/11/25), the 2025 United States elections had largely concluded with its projected winners mostly decided. Across the states, the positions of mayors, governors, and state supreme court justices are being filled with fresh new faces. With Trump’s increasingly assertive governing style in how he rules the White House, it came as a surprise to many that the opposition managed to sweep the floor in this election. Thousands of voters came to their voting booth to choose the candidate who they believed would represent their interest best. As luck would have it, the majority of them cast their votes for the candidates from the Democratic Party.
In the Old Dominion state of Virginia, the executive powers of governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general were all clutched by members of the Democratic Party. Abigail Spanberger, the former Representative for Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, won 57.5% of the votes against the former lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears. Accompanying Spanberger is her lieutenant governor, Ghazala Hashmi, a progressive state senator from the Richmond area who won 55.6% of the votes. This occasion marks her as the first-ever Muslim woman to be elected to a statewide office in the history of the country.
In the position of Virginia’s attorney general, former member of Virginia’s House of Delegates Jay Jones won 53.1% of the votes. Jones’ win came despite leaked text messages where he advocated for violence against Todd Gilbert, the Republican Speaker of the House, stating that if he were put in a room with Gilbert, Hitler, and Pol Pot and was given a gun with two bullets, then “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.” The text was then made public by National Review, a conservative magazine, to smear his campaign. Jones has since received condemnation from both sides of the aisle and would go on to apologize for it.
All three election results owed their success to Virginia’s urban centers. Large counties such as Fairfax, Albemarle, and Richmond City each had more than 60% of voters leaning toward the Democrats, continuing the trend of urban voters in populous areas voting for the liberal option in every election. This is clearly seen in the state’s most populous county, Fairfax, which contributes around 300,000 votes to the trio.
Up north in the Garden State of New Jersey, former Representative for New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, Mikie Sherrill, won the Gubernatorial election with 56.2% of the votes and a total of 1.792.760 votes against former state assemblyman, Jack Ciattarelli. Now, they are opening a new future for the party in their respective states. New Jersey’s election differs from Virginia’s in that the lieutenant governor was elected concurrently with the governor rather than separately. To fill this position, Sherrill picked Centenary University president, Dale Caldwell, as her running mate, making him the first African-American man to hold this position.
Aside from the two main parties, some third-party candidates nominate themselves in New Jersey’s Gubernatorial election. The Libertarian Party, a longtime fringe party that always manages to cling to relevancy every time an election occurs, nominated Vic Kaplan, the former chair of the party’s New Jersey branch. The party ran on the platform of free-market capitalism, laissez-faire economics, and cultural liberalism. On the opposite end of the political spectrum is the Socialist Workers Party, which nominated Joanne Kuniansky, a left-wing political activist. She ran on the platform of dismantling capitalism, affordability, and critical support to the state of Israel. As expected, both candidates barely reached 0.5% of the total votes.
New Jersey has long been considered a blue state or Democrat-aligned since the turn of the millennium, electing only one Republican governor back in 2013. Despite this fact, every election since has been a neck-and-neck battle between the two sides. Starting from the first Trump presidency, there’s been a noticeable rightward shift in the state. During the last presidential election, Harris won a mere 5%, a sharp drop from Biden’s 15% in 2020. The fact that Sherrill won 13% against Ciattarelli signals a shift back to the way it’s supposed to be.
Aside from the Gubernatorial elections on the East Coast, the Golden State of California, on the West Coast, also held an election regarding a constitutional amendment that will redraw the Californian congressional map. The amendment, titled Proposition 50, is intended to gerrymander California districts in favor of the Democrats. In short, electoral district boundaries are redrawn so that the outcome of a specific electoral issue could favor specific political interests within the political bodies. Though seemingly illegal and unfair, gerrymandering is a practice that American politicians have used since gaining independence.
Proposition 50 was deliberately designed by Governor Greg Newsom to combat Governor Greg Abbott of Texas’ own gerrymander effort in favor of the Republicans. The new Californian electoral map, drawn by Democrats, will flip five Republican seats and further diminish their influence on the state. The proposition is projected to pass with 63.8% of voters voting to redraw the map.
Aside from California’s Proposition 50, the Centennial State of Colorado also held an election on a proposition titled Proposition MM. This statute would allow the state government to increase taxes on high-income families so that their money could be used to fund universal free breakfast and lunch for students. Originally, a past statute, Proposition FF, guaranteed that all students could enjoy free meals regardless of family income. However, with Trump’s constant cuts to social benefits, the free meal program became another discontinued act. Proposition MM intended to reverse this, as Colorado Democratic legislators would allow any excess funds to be used for this.
Miscellaneously, in the Keystone State of Pennsylvania, three Democratic justices from the state supreme court retained another term. Justice Dougherty, Justice Donohue, and Justice Wecht each won more than 61% of the votes, allowing them to serve for another ten years. Meanwhile, in Bucks County, the incumbent Republican District Attorney, Jennifer Schorn, was defeated by Joe Khan, marking him as the first Democratic District Attorney in the county since the 1800s.
In the state legislatures, the Democrats in the Virginian House of Delegates flipped 13 Republican seats, further expanding their majority. The Republican supermajority in the Mississippi Senate was lost after Democrats Johnny DuPree and Theresa Gillespie Isom replaced two incumbent Republican senators. This was flipped in the New Jersey General Assembly, where the Democrats secured a comfortable supermajority after taking 5 seats from the Republicans. This would mean that it would be easier for New Jersey’s Democratic legislators to pass laws and execute certain legal procedures as opposed to Mississippi’s Republican Senate.
In the Mayoral races, the city of Detroit elected its very first female mayor, former city councilor Mary Sheffield. The victory came after she won 77.4% of the votes against Reverend Solomon Kinloch Jr., a pastor of a megachurch based in the city. Heading east to the city of Cincinnati, incumbent mayor Aftab Singh Pureval secured a second term with 78.2% of the votes against coffee shop owner and Vice President JD Vance’s half-brother, Cory Bowman. Although both parties ran as an independent, it is clear that both Pureval and Bowman were backed by the two main parties. Finally, in the city of Boston, incumbent Democratic mayor Michelle Wu ran virtually unopposed and was reelected to a second term by 93.23% of the total votes. She was initially slated to face Josh Kraft, son of the owner of an American football team, but he dropped out after the preliminary election in September where he lost by 48 points.
However, not all elections went the way of the increasingly progressive, left-leaning voters. In particular, the election of the mayor of Minneapolis that was largely contested by incumbent Jacob Frey and democratic socialist candidate Omar Fateh, both are officially Democrats. Frey has been mayor since 2018, leading the city through the killing of George Floyd and its aftermath. He was endorsed by Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’ running mate in her presidential bid last year, and Senator Amy Klobuchar, both represented a more left-leaning side of the Democratic party yet still took caution in introducing actual progressive statewide legislations. Meanwhile Fateh is a member of the Minnesota Senate, the first Somali-American and Muslim there. He ran on the platform of rent stabilization and an increase in public safety resources. The race was tight, but ultimately Frey won with 53% and the total votes of 73.723 against Fateh’s 47% and the total of 65.377 votes.
Last but not least, the spotlight of the day surely fell on the City that Never Sleeps. Zohran Mamdani won the Mayoral election for New York City. Netting 50.4% in the polls with the total count of 1.036.051 votes. All eyes were on the Empire State for the past few months as Mamdani butt heads with the disgraced former governor of the state of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and the leader of a vigilante group, the Guardian Angels, Curtis Sliwa.
Mamdani, a fresh-faced young democratic socialist, ran on the platform of affordability, planning to make public services and goods as affordable as it can be for everyone. He also advocated for higher tax rates for the billionaires, stating that they had lived far too comfortable lives at the expense of others. Commenting in a segment on NBC News when he stated that he “don’t think that we should have billionaires.”
In social issues, he advocates for LGBTQIA+ rights by attending rallies in support of the queer community, and cosponsoring the Gender Recognition Act which makes it easier for an individual to change their gender on official documents. In addition, Mamdani supports the Shield Law which prohibits law enforcement and other state officials from hindering efforts of someone getting gender-affirming healthcare. He also came in support of abortion rights, urging residents to vote in favor of Proposition 1 which would safeguards abortion back in 2024. In October, he released a campaign ad telling the story of trans activist Sylvia Rivera, doubling down on the importance of trans rights in New York.
As previously mentioned, the New York City Mayoral election was contested between Mamdani, Cuomo, and Sliwa. Mamdani represents the Democratic Party, Sliwa represents the Republicans, and Cuomo ran as an independent. Cuomo, who resigned in his previous position as governor of New York following multiple sexual misconduct allegations, was very clearly the face of the “old guard” of the Democrats. A relic of the Clinton-era neoliberalism, socially and culturally liberal while also preferring a hands-off approach towards the economy, favoring the “invisible hand” to do all the work. An approach that, in the business capital of the world, is increasingly becoming less preferable.
Along the campaign trail, the Cuomo team employed many controversial tactics, including uploading AI-generated videos to the internet that portrayed Mamdani in a negative light. In it, Mamdani was often depicted as a demagogue, seeking to undermine American values and promote his dangerous political ideology across the city.
When he’s not being portrayed as a violent communist, robbing an honest, pure-blooded American family so that he could give back to the barbaric lower class, Mamdani was depicted as a jihadist who will institute sharia law the second he steps into the office. These ads range from the unintentionally comedic premise of mandatory usage of burqas for every woman, including Lady Liberty herself, and others contained imagery that critics viewed as borderline harmful for minority communities, which were often depicted in a negative or stereotypical light. Overall, the campaign appeared to focus more on identity-based narratives than on addressing Mamdani’s political experience or policy proposals.
Cuomo’s loss in this race would mark a second time in history where Mamdani beat him in the polls. During the Democratic mayoral primary, Mamdani won 56.39% of the votes against Cuomo’s 43.61%. On the city map, Mamdani won the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Meanwhile, Cuomo only got the Bronx and Staten Island. Although he had seemingly conceded to Mamdani during his official party nomination, Cuomo persisted in blocking his rise to power. Cuomo remained on the ballot for the general election and would then confirm that he would run as an independent.
The independent Cuomo would then receive support from all over the aisle, from Democratic billionaire Michael Bloomberg to the Republican president himself, Donald Trump, and even the owner of Twitter, Elon Musk. The establishment, ranging from social liberals to economic liberals to the conservatives, is visibly threatened by Mamdani’s rise. Thus, they would throw their support to the most likely candidate to beat him, in this case, Andrew Cuomo. Supports that further alienate the increasingly progressive-leaning voters of New York City.
The third candidate who represented the Republicans, Curtis Sliwa, was the founder and leader of a vigilante organization called the Guardian Angels. The organization was created in 1979 to combat criminal activity on the New York City Subway lines, which were ramping up back then. Sliwa ran unopposed in the Republican primary. Many considered Sliwa to be an unorthodox candidate. Despite running as a Republican, he had long been opposed to the current Republican landscape that is centered around Trump’s cult of personality. He criticized ICE’s heavy-handed tactics regarding the detainment of immigrants and deportations without due process, stating that everyone should get due process in America.
In his campaign, Sliwa began getting close to unions across the city to court left-leaning voters, portraying himself as pro-worker and anti-big business. He also vowed to hire 7000 new NYPD officers and upgrade their crime-prevention strategies. He also suggested that the government should let feral cats loose in the city to deal with the rat infestation, a problem that has plagued the city for a very long time.
Sliwa had repeatedly been told by multiple parties to drop out of the race so that Cuomo could defeat Mamdani with less difficulty. Polls by the New York Times showed that the largely right-leaning, pro-capitalist vote from the city’s upper class and conservatives would be split between the two candidates. Therefore, various billionaires, national Republicans, and online pundits all urged Sliwa to back down to help Cuomo win. He flatly denied this notion and stayed on the ballot until the last votes were counted.
With Mamdani winning the elections in all but one in Staten Island, a new dawn has arrived in the Five Boroughs. The first democratic socialist Muslim mayor, making the Big Apple officially red.
In his victory speech, Zohran boldly exclaimed, “The sun may have set over our city this evening, but I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.”
Addressing New York’s status as a city where cultures meet and assimilate in a huge Melting Pot, he said, “I speak of the Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas, Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses, Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties. This city is your city and this democracy is yours too.”
The saying goes that if someone can make it in New York City, then they can make it anywhere. And so it could be concluded that if a progressive, democratic-socialist, Muslim man could rule the business capital of the world and turn it in his image, there’s hope that change for the better could also be made in other cities, other states, even the whole nation of America, from sea to shining sea. To quote Zohran’s closing statement, “Let the words we’ve spoken together, the dreams we’ve dreamt together, become the agenda we deliver together.”
The Blue Wave, meant to represent a political sweep in favor of the Democratic Party, has finally swept. Across the nation, conservatives are starting to feel politically threatened. The “drunk on power” attitude MAGA (Make America Great Again) Republicans felt after Trump’s second victory started to fade away. With it, came the realization that the average working class citizens want no extreme right-wing policies such as forced deportation, racial profiling, and courting big business. It also gave out a signal to both parties that, not only did they reject Trump and the Republican’s hyperconservative status quo, they also would like a change from the Democratic Party’s neoliberal status quo that was upheld by the party since the days of Clinton.
And so the Blue Wave swept, showing no signs of holding back.
Reporter: Maheswara Adla Wibowo
Editor: Andrea Hillary, Syafina Ristia Putri, Ammara Azwadiena Alfiantie