Hashmi, an Indian-American Democrat, won the lieutenant governor’s race in the US state of Virginia.
Published November 5, 2025
Zoran Mamdani was not the only Muslim politician in the United States to win the New York mayor’s race on a historic election night.
Fellow Democrat Ghazala Hashmi won Tuesday’s election for lieutenant governor, becoming the first Indian American and first Muslim to hold a statewide office in Virginia.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
“This was possible because of the depth and breadth of opportunity we have in this country and this Commonwealth,” she said in her victory speech.
Hashmi, 61, came to the United States as a child from Hyderabad, India, with her family to visit her father, who taught at Georgia Southern University in Savannah.
Mr. Hashmi currently serves in the State Senate, representing a district south of Richmond, Virginia. Prior to that, he worked as a university professor in Virginia. She entered politics in 2019 by flipping a Republican-held Virginia Senate seat and won a crowded Democratic primary for lieutenant governor in June.
Mamdani’s campaign has sparked calls of Islamophobia, primarily from Republicans and officials from President Donald Trump’s administration.
The pivotal election night turned into a blistering rebuke of Trump and the Republican Party.
Democrats won gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, the Proposition 50 vote in California, and the mayoral race.
