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Erika Kirk is making her beliefs about “career-driven” women and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani known.
The chief executive of Turning Point USA and widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk closed out a day of discussion at the 2025 DealBook Summit with a wide-ranging conversation alongside DealBook editor-at-large Andrew Ross Sorkin.
During the conversation, Kirk was asked her thoughts about Democrat Zohran Mamdani winning the New York City mayoral race on Tuesday, Nov. 4.
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With the win, Mamdani defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, becoming the first Muslim and democratic socialist leader of America’s biggest city.
Sorkin pointed out that Mamdani was actually “able to persuade the younger voter,” but on the “complete opposite end, if you will, of where someone like Charlie would have been.”
Charlie Kirk/Instagram
She reflected on her time living in Manhattan and said, “I loved this city,” before sharing her thoughts as a female voter, pointing out that “a high percentage of [Mamdani’s] voters were female.”
Kirk said that she believes there’s a “tendency, especially when you live in a city like Manhattan, where you are so career-driven, and you almost look to the government as a form of replacement for certain things, relationship-wise, even, so you see things a little bit differently.”
Taking a short pause, Kirk shared that she hopes young women in the city don’t “look to the government as a solution to put off having a family or a marriage because you’re relying on the government to support you instead of being united with a husband where you can support yourself and your husband can support and you can guys all combine together.”
“But I just find it so ironic and so interesting that a heavy percentage of the individuals that voted for him were female,” she continued.
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Mamdani won 75% of the votes from young voters (ages 18-29) in the New York City mayoral race, according to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University.
Among young women, Mamdani won 82% of the vote. He will be sworn in as mayor on Jan. 1, 2026.
