A day after Mayor Adams announced he’s ending his re-election campaign, Zohran Mamdani slammed Andrew Cuomo’s record as governor, Cuomo campaigned in Manhattan and a longtime Adams ally said he’s already working the phones to try and rally support for the former governor.
The mayor’s exit from the race on Sunday marked a dramatic and historic turn for the race and has left a narrowed field that could potentially give a boost to Cuomo, who, recent polling showed facing a double-digit loss with all four candidates in the running. Adams’ political and donor bases are expected to migrate to Cuomo.
Frank Carone, Adams’ longtime political confidant who served as his campaign chairman, said shortly after the mayor’s Sunday announcement that he plans to start working in some way to help get Cuomo elected.
Afterward, Carone called a number of business leaders and asked if they would consider giving money to a super PAC supporting Cuomo, two sources directly familiar with the matter told the Daily News. Carone wasn’t specific about which PAC he’d like the business leaders to contribute to.
“Of course I did,” Carone told The News on Monday when asked if has already tried to line up financial support for Cuomo.
Carone said he hasn’t yet decided which pro-Cuomo PAC he’s hoping to line up donors for, and a source who works for Fix the City, the largest super PAC boosting the ex-governor, said there has been no talks about Carone joining that outfit.
On Monday, Cuomo was also making calls to drum up donor support ahead of a fundraising deadline this week, his spokesperson said.
“It’s the last day before the fundraising deadline, of course he is,” Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said of the ex-governor’s donor outreach, referring to the Campaign Finance Board filing period that ended Monday. The spokesman added that Cuomo did several television interviews and met with voters in Manhattan to kick off the week.
Meanwhile, Mamdani went on the attack Monday morning, slamming the former governor for slashing $65 million from a rental voucher program and insisted Adams’ shake-up would not impact the results of race.
“Nothing has changed,” the candidate said at a Washington Heights press conference. “Because it’s not just about who’s on the ballot. It’s about what’s on the ballot. And what we see still on that ballot, showcased by Andrew Cuomo, is a record of broken promises, a record of disgrace.”
Mamdani went after Cuomo’s state funding cuts to a rental voucher program, known as Advantage, he made as governor in 2011. Those cuts in turn prompted then-Mayor Bloomberg to pull the plug on the program in the city. The program, which began in 2007, offered subsidies for up to two years to help those in homeless shelters pay for apartments of their own.
In a statement, Azzopardi dismissed the cuts as a “drop in the bucket” that happened years ago during a time when the state was facing a $10 billion budget shortfall. “That funding has been replaced and increased many times over through other rental assistance programs,” Azzopardi said.
Separately, Cuomo’s campaign put out a press release accusing Mamdani of “lying” by telling the New York Times earlier this month that he would apologize to the NYPD for calling it racist but not publicly following through.
“He owes the public an explanation as to why he broke the promise he made 18 days ago to apologize for calling the NYPD racist and a threat to public safety,” Azzopardi said.
In a statement Cuomo called Mamdani a “33-year old, dangerously inexperienced social media influencer who is not up to the task of being Mayor.”
Mamdani’s team responded later in the day with tis own broadside:
“While Zohran Mamdani stood alongside a single mother who was driven into a homeless shelter as a result of Andrew Cuomo’s cuts to Advantage, the disgraced former governor spent his day hiding behind closed doors, working the phones…,” Dora Pekec, a spokesperson for Mamdani said.