New York City mayoral candidates Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo escalated their attacks against each other on the campaign trail on Monday, less than 24 hours after Mayor Eric Adams’ exit from the race effectively set up a two-man clash in the race’s final weeks.
Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, slammed Cuomo, the former governor who is running as an independent, over his “record of disgrace.” Meanwhile, Cuomo blasted out statements criticizing Mamdani, a democratic socialist state assemblyman, over a litany of his past statements and challenged him to a slate of debates ahead of the November election.
The back-and-forth suggests that Mamdani, who has held a consistent lead in the polls, is aiming to deny Cuomo the momentum he is seeking after Adams dropped out. The former governor is hoping that he can cobble together an anti-Mamdani coalition that would allow him to close the gap with just over five weeks to go before Election Day.
But given Adams’ relatively low standing in the polls, political strategists who are watching the race closely said they were skeptical his decision to end his campaign would alter Mamdani’s status as the race’s front-runner.
“The fact that this happened when we’re five weeks out, that suggests to me there isn’t much of an opportunity to significantly change the narrative of this race,” said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist who previously served as the executive director of the New York State Democratic Party. Smikle also noted that early voting begins on Oct. 25.
“Voters are really starting to lock in,” he continued. “A lot of momentum has been building [for Mamdani] since the primary. Not only has he raised more money, but he’s also gotten a lot of endorsements. There has to be a really compelling move for the voter to sort of radically change how they view this race — and I don’t know that that’s possible.”
Mamdani defeated Cuomo in the June Democratic primary, prompting Cuomo to continue his bid as an independent. Adams was elected as a Democrat in 2021, but decided to seek re-election as an independent following federal corruption charges that the Justice Department ultimately sought to dismiss.
The public polling of the race conducted before Adams dropped out has shown Mamdani well ahead of Cuomo, with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa trailing even further behind and Adams running in a distant fourth place.
Even with Adams out of the race, Cuomo doesn’t have a straightforward path to consolidating the anti-Mamdani vote.
For one, Adams’ name will remain on ballots this fall, since his decision to drop out came after the deadline to print them.
And while polling that has been conducted to test who voters support in the event of Adams’ exit has shown Cuomo benefiting, a substantial number of those voters also flock to Sliwa. Those surveys indicate that Cuomo’s strongest shot at the mayoralty would come from a one-on-one race against Mamdani.
Mamdani, at a brief campaign event in Washington Heights, in Uptown Manhattan, ripped Cuomo over what he said were cuts his gubernatorial administration made to a state housing program that had provided rental subsidies to people who’d live in homeless shelters.
Standing next to a woman he said was affected by those cuts, Mamdani said that, “What we see still on that ballot showcased by Andrew Cuomo is a record of broken promises, a record of disgrace.”
He also said that a Cuomo win would “clear the way for Donald Trump’s agenda.”
Within the hour, the Cuomo campaign blasted out an email criticizing Mamdani for his what it said was a refusal to apologize for having called the New York Police Department “racist.”
Cuomo has frequently attacked Mamdani over comments from 2020, when he called the NYPD “racist” and “anti-queer.”
Cuomo also challenged Mamdani to five debates — one in every borough of New York City — before the Nov. 4 election. Cuomo also attacked Mamdani in a statement as “a 33-year old, dangerously inexperienced social media influencer who is not up to the task of being Mayor,” calling him “unqualified” and “untrustworthy.”
Mamdani has more recently softened the years-old comments about the NYPD, saying that he made them during “the height of frustration” following the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis in 2020, and said this month he’d apologize for the remarks.
Later Monday, at a candidate forum at a studio inside the Apollo Theater, Mamdani and Cuomo, appearing separately, took a less hostile approach, discussing issues like affordability, education, homelessness and how to deal with threats from the Trump administration.
The event, hosted by a volunteer service nonprofit and billed as a mayoral forum to address Black women, put the candidates front and center before one of the city’s most crucial voting blocs.
Cuomo and Adams had both leaned heavily on Black communities across New York City for support. A New York Times analysis of the results of the June Democratic primary found that when it came to precincts where more than 70% of the residents were Black, Cuomo, for example, carried more than twice the number Mamdani did.
Mamdani has focused on making inroads with various Black communities in recent months, putting his campaign’s focus on affordability at the center of those efforts.
Polls released this month by The New York Times/Siena College and Quinnipiac University, before Adams dropped out, both showed Mamdani leading Cuomo among Black voters.
Meanwhile, Trump weighed in on the race on Monday, issuing a threat on social media to withhold federal funding to New York City if Mamdani were elected November.
“He is going to have problems with Washington like no Mayor in the history of our once great City. Remember, he needs the money from me, as President, in order to fulfill all of his FAKE Communist promises,” Trump wrote in a lengthy post on Truth Social. “He won’t be getting any of it, so what’s the point of voting for him?”
Trump in recent weeks has also criticized Sliwa, saying earlier this month during a television interview that he is “not exactly prime time.”
Sliwa, during his appearance at Monday’s event in Harlem, addressed the insult and rejected any insinuation that he would follow Adams in exiting the race.
“Guess what, I ain’t droppin’ out,” he said, raising his voice. “Let the people vote on Nov. 4.”