Copyright New York Magazine
It’s 8 p.m. at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Midtown, shortly before the doors open for the Andrew Cuomo election night party and a handful of volunteers mill about, eating popcorn and chatting about what to do when the results come in. “I don’t know if I’m going to be here that long,” one said. No one has really touched the open bar. They already know there won’t be much to celebrate. Four years after resigning as governor due to sexual misconduct allegations, it wasn’t looking great for his chances of being mayor. Huge turnout pointed to a Zohran Mamdani rout, but Rich Azzopardi, Cuomo’s trusted campaign spokesman, remains upbeat as he walks the room making last minute fixes. “We feel good about the numbers,” he said, citing strong turnout in the Bronx. “This election broke the models, the primary broke the models. So we’ll wait and see.” The room is beginning to fill in 30 minutes before polls close. A large man stood up near the front. “I was a MAGA Republican candidate for mayor for New York City,” he said, before ripping on the other candidates: Republican Curtis Sliwa is a “spoiler,” Mamdani is a communist. “I have my own daughter, he said. “She’s woke. She wants free stuff.” It is David Rem, a self-proclaimed childhood friend of Donald Trump who gained the public eye last year when he spoke at last year’s election-eve rally at Madison Square Garden and called Kamala Harris the antichrist. He is not necessarily making a great case for Cuomo. “I’ll admit he ran a very bad primary,” Rem said, but he says Mamdani will bury the city. It is a similar message to the one issued by the president, who has become a reluctant supporter of Cuomo before endorsing him for mayor this week. The message is also similar to the many billionaires who rallied around Cuomo in the fears that four years of Mamdani would be bad for their interests. The party is starting to heat up. One man in a blue bucket hat and a red drug rug is kicked out for allegedly “not being on the list” and definitely looking like he might heckle the former governor. Another walks around handing out “Marxicrat” buttons for an opposition research group of the same name: he claims that Mamdani is a “cutout” for Pakistani intelligence. “Hopefully we win tonight,” he said. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” played as the polls closed. At 9:21, the TV reported that Mamdani dipped below 50 percent, which was greeted by a few scattered claps for Cuomo. The DJ turns up the music and cuts to “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This.” Cuomo trails by 100,000 votes. When Sliwa appears on the TV to announce he is conceding, there is another large round of boos. The crowd seems palpably angry with the Republican candidate, who was lobbied by Cuomo’s allies to drop out of the race. Rem, now by the bar, called Sliwa a “scumbag.” At 9:36, the Associated Press called the election for Mamdani. “The AP is controlled by the communists, they’re calling it early?” said one man. “This city is fucked,” said another, who admits he lives in Florida. The mood in the room hardly shifts. Billy Joel is played over the speakers on repeat to comfort the mostly older, mostly white crowd. About an hour later, Cuomo arrives on stage, flanked by his daughters, and one son in law. “This campaign was the right fight to wage,” he said, noting that his coalition “transcended normal partisan politics” — a polite way to say that Eric Adams, his former nemesis and a disgraced mayor, endorsed his effort to stop Mamdani. He also noted the record turnout north of 2 million, of which he earned 42 percent as an independent. For a politician who has lived in the shadow of his father’s career, he was happy to note that it was “just higher than when Mario Cuomo got 40 percent on an independent line” when he ran for mayor in the 1970s. Cuomo said little about his opponent directly and condemned the crowd when they began booing Mamdani. Still he warned that “we are heading down a dangerous, dangerous road. They heard us and we will hold them to it.” Behind him was a blue campaign banner that read “Cuomo: Ready on Day One.” When his campaign came up with the slogan, it was to highlight his decades of experience — from serving as his father’s enforcer in Albany to his own reign as governor. But on Tuesday night, losing to a candidate over 30 years his junior, he was facing a new version of a day one: life after politics.
