Elon Musk is stepping back into politics. The former Trump cabinet official is endorsing Independent Andrew Cuomo. Meanwhile he stirred up controversy with a misspelled name.
“Remember to vote tomorrow in New York! Bear in mind that a vote for Curtis is really a vote for Mumdumi or whatever his name is. VOTE CUOMO!” Musk wrote on X. The post on his own platform set off a storm. Some users defended him. Others accused him of being disrespectful for purposely misspelling the name of Democratic candidate Zohran Momdani, who’s seen as the frontrunner for mayor.
One user fired back, “Seriously, Elon Musk, are you sinking so low that you cannot even write Mamdani’s name correctly in some pathetic attempt to make him seem extra ‘foreign?’ Were you also one of the white South Africans struggling with common names there like Sipho?”
Remember to vote tomorrow in New York!
Bear in mind that a vote for Curtis is really a vote for Mumdumi or whatever his name is.
VOTE CUOMO!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 3, 2025
Momdani, 34, was born in Uganda and still holds Ugandan citizenship. If he wins, he could become New York City’s first Muslim mayor and the first of Indian descent. He faces Republican Curtis Sliwa and former governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent. Tuesday is the final day of voting.
The Associated Press also spoke with Angelo Izama, a Ugandan journalist who mentored Momdani in 2007 while he was training in Kampala. “I think he’s basically global, not so much Ugandan and not so much American,” Izama said.
“He told me himself: He had to go every evening and have a conversation with his dad about the current affairs of the day,” Izama recalled. “He was very, very curious as a young person,” he added. “This is something that will stay with him forever.”
Izama said he wasn’t surprised by Momdani’s rise in U.S. politics. He called him a role model, not just for Ugandans and other Africans, but for young people everywhere.
Mamdani was born in Kampala in 1991. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a Columbia professor and an influential scholar in postcolonial studies. His mother, Mira Nair, is an acclaimed filmmaker whose work has earned an Academy Award nomination and who is worth an estimated $22 million.
The 2025 New York mayoral race reveals a new wave of unfiltered Islamophobia.
Zohran Mamdani isn’t attacked for his policies, but for who he is.
Politicians, commentators and journalists accuse him of “Islamizing America,” hiding a religious project, even turning the country… pic.twitter.com/kpbOfis694
— Dna (@dnatechbro) November 3, 2025
The campaign’s final stretch has been intense — from the end of early voting to President Donald Trump weighing in on the race, and Cuomo releasing AI-driven attack ads.
More than 735,000 New Yorkers voted early which is four times the turnout from the city’s only other early-voting mayoral race in 2021. That’s still short of the nearly 1.1 million early votes in last year’s presidential election, but crowds grew large by Sunday, the final day. At one polling site in downtown Brooklyn, the line wrapped around the building, with voters waiting up to an hour to cast their ballots.
