Welcome
to a high-drama, high-stakes Election Day in NYC
The race
between Mamdani and Cuomo is a statement on Democrats’ future.
By Emily
Ngo
11/04/2025
05:56 AM EST
NEW YORK
— The closely watched race for New York City mayor culminates Tuesday in a
final day of voting to decide whether a young, untested democratic socialist or
a scandal-scarred former governor will be the city’s next leader.
The
high-stakes contest pitting Zohran Mamdani against Andrew Cuomo — with the
eccentric Republican Curtis Sliwa as a potential spoiler — is a statement on
the future of the Democratic Party. It’s been one of the most competitive
general elections in recent New York City history.
In the
many twists and turns, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams abandoned his bid for
reelection and later endorsed Cuomo (despite calling him “a liar and a snake”);
influential New York Republicans urged their party’s nominee, Curtis Sliwa, to
drop out to boost Cuomo’s prospects; and a Long Islander who shares Bill de
Blasio’s name misrepresented himself as the former mayor — a Mamdani booster —
and duped a British news outlet.
The
constant has been Mamdani’s double-digit polling lead over Cuomo.
Beneath
the numbers lies a deeper struggle: a referendum on what kind of party
Democrats want — one led by progressive populists like Mamdani or reclaimed by
figures like Cuomo seeking to restore the center.
The
polarizing democratic socialist is barreling into Election Day with a massive
campaign volunteer force, a hard-left platform to freeze rents and many
establishment state Democrats behind him. The final sprint has found him
campaigning around the clock, appearing at churches and canvassing airport,
hospital and bodega workers. He’s continued to link Cuomo to President Donald
Trump, who said Sunday night he favors the former governor in the race.
“Andrew
Cuomo’s campaign is for Donald Trump’s billionaire donors and their
conglomerates,” Mamdani said at a bodega in the Bronx last week. “I’m running
on a B-E-C agenda, not a bacon, egg and cheese — ‘bringing economic change’ —
with some jalapeños on the side.”
Mamdani
appears to be on the cusp of running the country’s largest city as its first
Muslim mayor and one of few elected Democratic Socialists of America executives
in the country.
If he
wins, the 34-year-old state lawmaker will be further thrust under a microscope.
Mamdani will be nationally scrutinized on how he fulfills his promise to make
New York City more affordable, how he confronts a hostile Trump administration
that has already promised to make an example of him and how he impacts
Democrats’ chances at winning the House majority in the midterms.
Still,
Cuomo has clung to any sign that he can pull off an upset. He has attacked
Mamdani more forcefully in the last stretch of the campaign, describing him as
inexperienced and dangerous for the city. Early voting turnout has included a
formidable number of Boomers, and Mamdani’s base trends younger. Former Mayor
Michael Bloomberg also endorsed Cuomo, who is seeking political redemption
after being pushed out of office by sexual harassment allegations four years
ago. Bloomberg has contributed more than $8 million to a pro-Cuomo super PAC.
“You have
a civil war in the Democratic Party, where the extreme radical left, which is
Mamdani, is basically in a war with the moderate Democrats, which is what I
am,” Cuomo told reporters last week in southern Brooklyn, where he accepted a
GOP lawmaker’s endorsement as he courts Republican support. “And you have a
battle for the future of the city of New York.”
Mamdani
defeated Cuomo by nearly 13 points in a seismic June primary win, forcing the
former governor to run as an independent in the general election. He has
campaigned hard to win again, but it’s questionable whether he can get a
majority of the vote — and a mandate big enough to implement policies that
would ease the burden of working-class families in one of the globe’s most
expensive cities.
Mamdani
had rocketed from virtual obscurity in June to overnight fame for shocking the
Democratic landscape. He is now simultaneously lionized and vilified as the
future of the party — to some a savior, to others an albatross.
Progressives,
including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
(D-N.Y.), see a blueprint in how Mamdani has prioritized economic justice and
wielded charisma and social media prowess to expand his base. Republicans have
been drafting attack ads linking Mamdani — who has quoted Karl Marx and is a
harsh critic of Israel — to battleground Democrats who have disavowed him.
Those in between, including moderate Democrats and party leaders, are nervous
about what’s next.
“Zohran
Mamdani is the future of the democratic socialist party, not the Democratic
Party,” battleground Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), who recently endorsed Cuomo,
told POLITICO. “Democrats must address the genuine economic insecurity
Americans are feeling by returning to our roots as the party of the middle
class and those aspiring to the middle class.”
House
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he doesn’t believe Mamdani is where the
party’s future lies. After he endorsed Mamdani in the late stages of the race
with a tepid statement, House Speaker Mike Johnson pounced.
“The
House Democrats have chosen a side they were forced to by that far left that
they’re so terrified of, and they’ve shown the world what they really believe,”
Johnson said in Washington. “There is no longer a place for centrists and
moderates in their party.”
Mamdani’s
backers in New York, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and city Comptroller Brad
Lander, believe the Democratic tent is big enough for socialists, but they’ve
shied away from presenting Mamdani as the path forward for the party.
“The
Democratic Party has a bright future if it can find leaders who will stand up
and fight for working people,” Lander told POLITICO. “We want a lot of futures,
a lot of models across the country. And yes, one of them is Zohran Mamdani.”
In the
campaign’s final weeks, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez campaigned with Mamdani at a
recent rally that nearly filled a 13,000-person stadium in Queens under the
banner “New York is Not for Sale.”
Ocasio-Cortez
has used her far-reaching political platform to benefit him.
“It is
not a coincidence that the forces Zohran Mamdani is up against in NYC mirror
what we are up against nationally,” she wrote in a recent campaign email urging
supporters to phone-bank for Mamdani. “An authoritarian, criminal presidency —
fueled by corruption, bigotry, and an ascendant, right-wing extremist movement
— and an insufficient, eroded, bygone political establishment who, this time,
is in the form of Andrew Cuomo.”
Civil
rights leader Al Sharpton, who acted as a conduit between the Jeffries and
Mamdani camps in the tortured endorsement process, predicted that Mamdani — if
elected — will embrace both those who did and didn’t support his candidacy.
“I think
that those who did not endorse him should come together and I think that he is
a big enough person that he’s going to receive them,” Sharpton said. “It’s
about pulling people together if you’re going to make this city work.”
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