NEW YORK — After former New York governor Andrew Cuomo conceded New York City’s Democratic party mayoral primary on Tuesday, the presumed winner of the race, State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, took to the stage at a raucous victory party in Queens.

Mamdani told the crowd that he would “be the mayor for everyone, every New Yorker,” whether they voted for him or not.

And in an apparent allusion to his anti-Israel activism that has alarmed many Jews, he said that he will “not abandon my beliefs” about “what happens overseas,” adding that he will grapple with the perspectives of those who disagree with him.

Mamdani’s stunning win in the primary leaves him as the heavy favorite to win November’s general election in the mostly Democratic city. His record of anti-Israel activism, and his vow to adhere to those beliefs while representing the city with the world’s largest Jewish population, is forcing Jewish political organizers to wrestle with their strategies going forward, and with the prospect of an anti-Zionist mayor who has said the Palestinian cause is central to his identity.

Cuomo leaned into the Jewish vote and his pro-Israel track record throughout his campaign, and polls showed that he was the leading candidate for the city’s Jews. Mamdani had some Jewish support and was the second or third choice candidate for Jews, but caused repeated controversies with his rhetoric. The most notable was likely his defense of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which many Jews view as a call to violence. His statements on the slogan came after violent attacks against Jews in Boulder, Colorado, and Washington, DC.

“I think the broader implication is that antisemitism has become mainstream,” said Yaacov Behrman, the founder of the Jewish Future Alliance, a group based in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, the stronghold of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, said of Mamdani’s win.

Behrman cited Mamdani’s intifada statements and his refusal to recognize Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

Mamdani has acknowledged Israel’s existence, but refuses to recognize its right to exist specifically as a Jewish state.

“If he continues along the path of his campaign and the path of his youth, Jews are going to be hurt in New York, and it’s going to be on him and we’re going to hold him responsible,” Behrman said.

Jews are targeted in hate crimes more than all other groups combined in New York City; Mamdani has acknowledged the problem of antisemitism and released plans for combating anti-Jewish discrimination.

Phylisa Wisdom, the head of the New York Jewish Agenda liberal advocacy group, said the race showed that “It no longer is a barrier, to win citywide office, you have to toe a certain Israel line.”

Pro-Israel New Yorkers have long enjoyed support from their mayor, who marches in the city’s pro-Israel parade every year. Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly voiced support for Israel and mainstream Jews, including since the October 2023 attack on Israel and in recent months, bolstering his support in the Jewish community, despite his overall unpopularity.

Some organizers are looking to the November election. Mamdani is likely to win, but other candidates have a chance. Adams officially launched his candidacy on Thursday alongside Jewish community leaders. Cuomo can also run as an independent, but has not committed to the race yet. Cuomo and Adams are both centrists, to Mamdani’s left, with a similar base. Around 13% of the city’s voters are Jews.

Adams built out strong ties with Brooklyn Jewish communities before becoming mayor, when he was a state senator and the borough president.

“Antisemitism is going to be talked about a lot, and they know that he is someone where there’s a historically really strong relationship,” Wisdom said.

The city uses a ranked-choice voting system in primaries that allows voters to select up to five candidates. Only data on voters’ first-choice candidates have been made public. The electoral picture will become clearer when the rest of the data is released next week.

“It’s really too early to tell what this means. We need to see the ranked-choice voting and understand what the big picture looks like,” said Sara Forman, the head of the New York Solidarity Network, a pro-Israel political group.

Questions remain about the role Jewish voters will play in future elections, and for future candidates, and whether Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian activism was an asset, an obstacle, or a non-factor, including for Jews. Mamdani focused on affordability in the city during his campaign.

“There’s a real fixation on, because we are Jews, we must be primarily focused on Israel, we must be primarily focused on antisemitism. This is not to say those issues don’t matter to Jews, of course they do,” said Sophie Ellman-Golan, a spokesperson for Jews for Economic and Racial Justice (JFREJ), a leftist group that backed Mamdani. “But we are also New Yorkers and we are dealing with the same material conditions that other New Yorkers are.”

Maury Litwack, the founder of the Jewish Voters Action Network, a get-out-the-vote group, encouraged the community to register more voters, work to increase turnout, build bridges between different factions of the Jewish community, and foster coalitions with other groups, such as Black voters, who favored Cuomo.

“My community, my family, and my Rabbis have always taught that the Jewish people must keep moving, keep building, and keep growing. In politics, that’s even more important,” Litwack wrote on X. His group does not endorse candidates.

Behrman said Mamdani’s victory “is automatically going to make more people register as Democrats because they understand now what’s at stake.”

“I really think that whoever runs against Mamdani, the Orthodox Jewish community is going to get behind,” Behrman said. He added that he believes the only way to defeat Mamdani in the general election is if only one of his opponents runs. The election could become a five-way race, splitting centrist and right-wing votes and boosting Mamdani’s chances.

Some activists called for outreach from Mamdani to assuage Jewish community concerns.

“It’s on Mamdani to shape up, it’s on Mamdani to stop defending slogans that incite violence, it’s on Mamdani to show empathy for the Jewish people,” Behrman said.

Forman encouraged Mamdani to commit to fully funding security grant programs that are used by synagogues, clarify his positions on what constitutes an antisemitic hate crime, and state that he is opposed to anti-Israel protests outside synagogues and in Jewish neighborhoods and will allow for police enforcement at those rallies.

“All we’re asking is that he recognize the personal attacks against him for being a Muslim are actually in the same category as something like ‘globalize the intifada’ is for Jews,” she said. “If he apologized instead of doubling down or evading it, we would be able to move on, but it’s really on him that he’s refusing to budge.”

Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The national implications for the race are also still unclear. Centrist, pro-Israel candidates supported by Jews have won other races against leftist Israel critics, including in last year’s Democratic party primary in New York’s 16th Congressional district. That race pitted then-Westchester County Executive George Latimer against incumbent Jamaal Bowman. Latimer won by a wide margin, with the support of Jewish activists.

That race had some similarities to the New York primary. Latimer and Cuomo were both openly supportive of Israel during their campaigns and are veteran politicians with local name recognition. The war in Gaza played a significant role in both votes. Mamdani and Bowman, who are political allies from the party’s left flank, both caused controversies with their criticism of Israel during the campaigns.

Bowman was a more flawed candidate who ran a less effective campaign than Mamdani, though, and Cuomo’s candidacy came with baggage, including among Jews. The constituencies in the two areas are also different. Mamdani’s support was strongest among young, white, educated progressives in areas like gentrified Williamsburg, while Bowman’s district was more suburban, with some lower-income minority communities.

“What excites left-leaning, highly educated white people in Bushwick is not necessarily something I think that’s going to translate very well nationally for Democrats,” Forman said.

New York’s Democratic leadership is split over Mamdani’s win, with some congratulating him and others expressing concern.

Meanwhile, Mamdani’s win has energized his Jewish base, which will keep campaigning for him ahead of the general election.

“We feel incredibly proud and incredibly hopeful,” Ellman-Golan said.