From its earliest days, there were signs that the 2025 mayoral race would be anything but typical, from scandal plagued Mayor Eric Adams’s beleaguered reelection campaign, which ultimately came to an anticlimactic end, to the late entry of former governor Andrew Cuomo , who is attempting a political comeback after his abrupt resignation in 2021 amid his own set of swirling scandals. But the biggest surprise is the one that has come to define the race: the unexpected rise of Zohran Mamdani , a virtually unknown Queens assemblyman and Muslim democratic socialist who went from clearing one percent in the polls to building an inspiring grassroots campaign and defeating the Albany veteran Cuomo to secure the Democratic nomination for mayor. Now Mamdani faces an unusually competitive gener

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