Sadiq S BhatNew York City — The hum of yellow cabs filled Times Square like old friends reuniting, engines idling under the glow of billboards.
Inside, drivers like Raj Patel gripped wheels worn smooth from decades of double shifts, radios crackling with the first returns from precincts across the five boroughs. This was not numbers on a screen. It was the rhythm of tyres on asphalt.
When the news broke that Zohran Mamdani had won, the first cheers did not come from party headquarters. They came from the streets.
At Brooklyn Paramount Theater on Flatbush Avenue, Zohran’s supporters packed the pavement, waiting for hours to hear him speak; by 10.30pm, the crowd was still waiting.
Along Roosevelt Avenue, yellow cabs blared their horns in celebration, drivers waving from windows, headlights flickering like victory torches across the night.
For New York’s taxi workers, this was more than an election.
Years ago, they had watched their medallions collapse in value as ride-share apps devoured the industry. Many sank into impossible debt, some lost homes, some lost hope.
In 2021, Mamdani stood with them through a 15-day hunger strike in City Hall Park. One of the men fasting beside him, Richard Chow, was mourning his brother, a fellow driver who had taken his life under the weight of a $1,000 monthly loan.
Their protest forced then-Mayor Bill de Blasio to cap medallion debts and payments, a rare moment when working-class anguish made City Hall listen.
That struggle forged a bond no campaign slogan could manufacture. When Mamdani launched his mayoral run, cabbies became his ground army. They turned curbsides into campaign hubs, honked through rallies, ferried voters, and spread his message one fare at a time.
Mamdani’s home turf clapping back
Drivers pooled tips into coffee cans labelled “For the Fight.” They were not hedge-fund donors; they were the men and women who knew New York from the front seat, picking up nurses after graveyard shifts.
Raj remembered his first cheque: fifty dollars from a slow Tuesday, scribbled on a crumpled envelope. “This guy’s one of us,” he told his dispatcher. “He gets that the streets don’t sleep, and neither do we.”
Across Midtown, Andrew Cuomo’s war chest gleamed. Billionaires from Wall Street to Silicon Alley opened wallets wide, tens of millions flowing like the Hudson at high tide.
Cuomo’s backers — big names like Bloomberg, Ackman, Lauder, Diller, and Loeb — poured more than $40 million through super PACs such as Fix the City and Defend NYC. They saw Mamdani as a threat to low taxes, unfettered development, and control over the city’s financial pulse.
Cuomo called his campaign “restoring order,” but to cabbies tuning in from garages, it sounded like code for more medallion fees, predatory apps, and rent hikes while families crammed into peeling walk-ups.
The contrast was sharp. Mamdani’s rallies spilled onto Queens and Bronx sidewalks, where halal carts steamed beside folding tables piled with flyers promising eviction protections and a $30 minimum for rideshare drivers.
Rattling the right cages
Two million voters cast ballots in this mayor’s race thus far, for the first time since 1969, according to New York City’s Board of Elections.
Supporters arrived by subway, not limos. They included teachers from Bed-Stuy, baristas from Bushwick, clusters of drivers in faded TLC vests chanting, “From the wheel to City Hall!”
Snaking lines formed outside of Ayat, a Palestinian restaurant in Astoria, that held a free community dinner in honour of Mamdani.
US President Donald Trump weighed in, a last-minute endorsement warning of federal cutbacks if the “socialist” took the reins.
Mamdani framed the billionaire assault as proof he was rattling the right cages. “If they’re scared,” he told supporters, “then maybe we’re finally changing who this city belongs to.”
When polls closed, Brooklyn delivered a landslide — Mamdani’s home turf clapping back with young voters and union halls, doing better in Black and Hispanic neighbourhoods than he did in June, including flipping the Bronx.
By 10:30, with 90 percent of precincts in, Mamdani held 50.5 percent, Cuomo 41, Curtis Sliwa scraping 7.
Air thick with possibility
Out on the streets, tomorrow had already arrived. Word spread faster than a pothole rumour — through buzzing group chats, spilling into honks and whoops reverberating off the bridges.
In Jackson Heights, Raj and a dozen drivers leapt from their cabs, engines running, honking. “We did it,” Raj grinned, high-fiving a wiry Somali driver, Abdi Warsame.
Nearby, renters and artists joined, laughter cutting through the chill as a windswept New York celebrated.
Mamdani’s modest Flushing Meadows stage drew thousands in hoodies and work boots, the air thick with street food and possibility.
“This isn’t my win,” he said. “It’s ours - the drivers, the families holding the line against rent hikes. From medallions to rooftops, we’re taking back what’s always been ours.”
Tomorrow, New York will again wake to the rumble of engines. The billionaires kept their towers. The streets had claimed the wheel.
Abdi Warsame, the Somali cabbie, told TRT World: “We’ve been driving these streets for decades, picking up everyone, paying for everyone. Tonight, the city finally picked us back.”
