London has just elected Sadiq Khan, Labour Party candidate, as Mayor of the city, and the campaign was as brutal, as nasty, and as racist as you can imagine.
Sadiq Khan, a practicing Muslim and Labour Party politician, has been elected mayor of London, marking a political milestone in the Western world.
Londoners voted in Khan, 45, as the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital city. He will take office in a metropolis where his fellow Muslims comprise about 12% of the population.
His victory followed an unusually bitter campaign against Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith, the son of a billionaire, in which race and religion have proven ugly flashpoints.
The London-born son of Pakistani immigrants, Khan grew up with his six brothers and sister in a three-bedroom, public housing apartment. He studied law, became a university lecturer and the chairman of a civil liberties group, and was elected to Parliament in 2005.
Affordable housing in a city increasingly drawing the super-rich, aging infrastructure and transportation are top issues facing the new mayor.
Khan is replacing incumbent Boris Johnson, a colorful and popular figure who took office in 2008 and was a rare Conservative mayor in the Labour-leaning British capital.
Johnson is leading the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union at a referendum on June 23. He is clashing with Prime Minister David Cameron, who is in favor of the United Kingdom remaining.
By the way, Goldsmith definitely played the terror card as it became clear he was going to lose, accusing the Labour Party of allowing the city to fall to Islamic terrorists that had attacked the city on July 7, 2005.
If that wasn't bad enough, there's the whole separate issue of Labour's leader being Jeremy Corbin, somebody very much considered to be wildly far left with that party having definite problems with those who are anti-Semitic making some very ugly comments.
Even PM David Cameron stepped into the fight, openly accusing Khan of being an ISIS sympathizer.
In the end, Khan won by a nearly 60-40% margin, but I fear this is going to have a major effect on the referendum for the UK to exit the EU next month.
We'll find out soon.
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