The shocking outcome of the June 24 New York City primary, in which 565,000 registered Democrats chose Zohran Mamdani, an avowed socialist and outspoken anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian activist, to be their candidate in the November 4 mayoral election, has left much of New York City’s political establishment in disarray. The previously little-known 33-year-old Muslim State Assemblyman from Queens, upset the favorite in the primary, Andrew Cuomo, who was hoping to make a political comeback, four years after having been forced by a scandal to resign in disgrace after 10 years as New York State’s governor. But despite enjoying the support of most of the party’s local establishment and a large initial lead in the polls, Cuomo lost to Mamdani by 12 points after running a lackluster campaign.
While Mamdani’s victory was hailed by the leaders of the progressive wing of the Democrat party, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Senator Bernie Sanders, New York’s most powerful Democrat elected officials, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand were clearly embarrassed, and declined to give Mamdani what would normally have been their automatic endorsement in the November 4 general election. However, by contrast, Crown Heights yeshiva-educated Congressman Jerry Nadler, whose mostly Manhattan-based congressional district is gerrymandered to include Boro Park, did not hesitate to quickly endorse Mamdani for mayor the day after he won the Democratic primary.
Meanwhile, other local Democrat leaders and campaign donors, appalled by the prospect of a socialist, antisemitic mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population in the world, are considering their options to defeat Mamdani in the general election. In addition to Mamdani, running on the Democrat Party line, Cuomo and New York City’s current mayor, Eric Adams, will each appear on the ballot in November as independent candidates, and conservative talk show host, Curtis Sliwa, will be running on the Republican party line.
Cuomo put an end Monday to the charade he had been promoting in the wake of his embarrassing loss in the Democrat primary, by pretending that he was seriously considering dropping out of the general election campaign, by issuing a video statement declaring that he was staying in the mayoral race “to win it.” His announcement came as no surprise because Cuomo was in second place in the polls, far ahead of both Sliwa and Adams, and just 10 points behind Mamdani, who was still well short of 50% voter support. Cuomo was also encouraged to stay in the race by the many moderate Democrat party leaders and donors who have been searching frantically since the primary for a more mainstream and electable alternative to Mamdani as New York City’s next Democrat mayor.
WHY MAMDANI WILL BE TOUGH TO BEAT IN NOVEMBER
At this point, however, as the official Democrat party candidate for mayor in a city where Democrats outnumber Republican voters by a six-to-one ratio, Mamdani is now the clear favorite to win the November election. The most recent poll of New York City voters by the consulting firm Slingshot Strategies has Mamdani comfortably in the lead with 35% of the vote, followed by Cuomo at 25%, Sliwa in third place with 14%, and incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams, bringing up the rear with only 11% support.
Since his upset primary victory, Mamdani has benefited from a great deal of positive mainstream national media coverage, which has depicted him as the new model for successful progressive Democrat candidates and the party’s long-sought answer to President Trump’s popularity.
Mamdani has also picked up the support of some of Cuomo’s donors in the primary. They were deeply disappointed by Cuomo’s half-hearted, over-confident campaign, in which he made the mistake of trying to sit on his big initial lead in the polls, based largely upon his widespread advantage in name recognition among New York City voters. Meanwhile, Mamdani was all over the mainstream and social media outlets, and meeting with voters everywhere in the city to deliver his populist message promising increased affordability for struggling city residents, mixed with his “woke” liberal social policy agenda. As a result, he was steadily gaining momentum, rapidly closing the gap and finally surpassing Cuomo by an impressive margin in the final days of the primary campaign.
HOW MAYOR ADAMS FELL OUT OF FAVOR WITH HIS FELLOW DEMOCRATS
As a Democrat incumbent in New York City, Adams would normally be the prohibitive favorite to win re-election. But since falling out of favor with fellow Democrats because of his public complaints about the impact on his city of the Biden administration’s open border policies, Adams has suffered more than his share of problems. These include a slew of federal criminal indictments against senior members of Adams’ mayoral staff, concluding with somewhat dubious political corruption charges filed against the mayor himself, which he has vigorously denied, and which were recently dropped by the Justice Department at President Trump’s request.
But while Mayor Adams is currently running dead last in the polls for the November election, he argued, in a recent interview on the MSNBC cable news channel, that he is still the best hope for moderate city voters to defeat Mamdani in the general election. He claimed that Mamdani is unqualified to be mayor because he is out of touch with the average New Yorker and he is promising them things that he can’t deliver as mayor, such as imposing a freeze on all apartment rents, free and fast public bus service, and lower-prices on basic food items from a new network of city-owned grocery stores he plans to establish.
Adams described Mamdani as “an academic elitist. He studied poverty, [but] I lived poverty. His programs are going to [negatively] impact working-class people.”
Adams attributed Mamdani’s success in the primary to his ability to identify with and mobilize an “army” of progressive far-left Democrat voters in the city that was already in place.
“They were already on the college campuses. They were already protesting on our streets. The (pro-)Palestinian movement was already underway. There was already this energy in the streets, the anti-Trump movement,” Adams said. “All [Mamdani] had to do was pop his head up and say, ‘Hey, I’m in favor of all the stuff you guys are doing. Come join me.’ And people joined.”
WHICH TWO CANDIDATES WILL DROP OUT TO ALLOW THE THIRD TO WIN?
Adams claims that Cuomo asked him to drop out of the general election to give him a clear shot at defeating Mamdani, but Adams refused because he is convinced that even if he had agreed to step aside, Cuomo would still be likely to lose to Mamdani again:
“I gave you an opportunity to go one-on-one with [Mamdani in the primary],” Adams said in response to Cuomo’s request. “You spend $25 million [on your campaign]. The voters heard your message. . . You were up 32 points in the [early] polls, [but] you lost by 13 points. And now you want to have another bite at the apple when you didn’t get out and campaign like you should have? You didn’t walk the streets. You didn’t talk to people. You lived in a cocoon. Now, you [are asking me to give you] another shot?”
In an interview with Bloomberg Radio, Adams also said of Cuomo’s independent candidacy, “He created this scenario [which threatens to] divide the vote [against] Mamdani. . . He had his chance, $25 million spent — now it’s time for me to have an opportunity and we will win and beat [Mamdani].”
Adams also noted that only a small fraction of New York City’s more than 5 million registered voters participated in the Democrat primary, and that his campaign hopes to register 1 million new voters as Democrats before the general election in November, as well as attracting support from the city’s many independent voters.
But Rich Azzopardi, one of Cuomo’s spokesmen, issued a statement declaring that if Adams and Sliwa stayed in the race, they would split the anti-Mamdani vote, which would “all but ensure [that] a socialist” would win the election as the next mayor of New York City.
Cuomo’s spokesman then added that, “Mayor Adams did not run in the Democratic primary because he knew he was anathema to Democrats and unelectable. Nothing has changed. We do not see any path to victory for Mayor Adams,” he concluded.
In an interview with CNBC, Adams said indignantly, that when Cuomo asked him to withdraw from the November general election, he responded by saying, “I’m the sitting mayor of the City of New York, and you expect me to step aside when you just lost to Zohran [Mamdani] by 12 points?” Adams also said during the interview that, in light of Cuomo’s disappointing performance in the primary, he, rather than Adams, should be the candidate to drop out of the race now.
Adams also said that Cuomo is unsuitable to be mayor of New York City because he has a history of disrespect toward black elected officials like himself.
SLIWA SAYS HIS THE ONLY CANDIDATE WITH A REAL PATH TO VICTORY
However, in an interview with New York City’s Channel 11 WPIX TV news, GOP mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa accused Adams of trying to use the same tactic as Cuomo. “He is trying to poach on my Republican votes. He’s even floated the idea of making me the Deputy Mayor of Public Safety [if I agree to drop out of the mayor’s race]. Could you imagine me and Mayor Adams? We would be like two scorpions in a brandy glass,” Sliwa said.
Sliwa also has said that he is the only candidate in the race with “a real path to victory” over Mamdani, because “Andrew Cuomo couldn’t defeat Zohran Mamdani in a primary, and Eric Adams has failed to win the support of either party and is now polling dead last. I’m running on the issues, and I will beat Mamdani on November 4. I will bring this city back!”
Adams angrily rejected Sliwa’s accusation that he tried to bribe him into stepping aside. “In no way have I ever offered Curtis Sliwa a job to drop out of the race — that’s simply false,” the mayor insisted. “I have not said one word to Curtis in months.”
Adams has also called the New York City mayoral campaign, “one of the most important races of our lifetime. This campaign is about results, not stunts. I’m focused on keeping our city safe, growing jobs, and lifting working-class New Yorkers — and that’s exactly what I intend to keep doing.”
But with Mamdani now the official Democrat mayoral candidate, and commanding the support of more than a third of New York City voters, he will likely remain the clear favorite as long as the general election remains a four-way race.
ANTI-MAMDANI CAMPAIGN DONORS WAITING FOR A LEADER TO EMERGE
Meanwhile, there is a pile of campaign money from a variety of Wall Street investors being put together for the most likely of the three candidates opposing Mamdani to prevent New York City, the financial capital of the world, from falling under the control of a socialist mayor whose longtime goal has been the destruction of Israel.
The Wall Street Journal reports that an independent group called “New Yorkers for a Better Future Mayor 25” has put together at least $20 million to fund a campaign to defeat Mamdani in November. Separately, hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman has already announced his intention to support Adams’ re-election campaign, and has asked Cuomo to drop out of the race. Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is working with Bo Dietl, a former NYPD detective, who is now a member of President Trump’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, on a new PAC with the goal of raising another $10 million for the candidate who is judged to be most likely to defeat Mamdani in the November general election.
JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon last week called Mamdani “more a Marxist than a socialist” and dismissed his campaign’s talking points as “ideological mush that means nothing in the real world.”
On one level, aside from their concerns about Mamdani’s radical socialist and antisemitic views, these donors, who represent the elites of New York’s business and financial communities, are reluctant to turn the great city over to a person with no management experience at all. Mamdani’s political experience is also severely limited to what he learned during his three terms in the Albany State Assembly and as the co-founder of Bowdoin College’s branch of Students for Justice in Palestine. Their even greater fear is that somehow Mamdani could succeed in keeping the promises he has made in running the city, by letting the criminals continue to run free, paralyzing the city’s private housing market with a rent freeze, protecting leftist domestic terrorists as they riot in the streets, and incentivizing more millionaire New Yorkers to flee the city by raising their taxes even further.
MAMDANI KEEPS CAMPAIGNING HARD AND GAINING SUPPORT
Meanwhile, in the wake of his primary victory, Mamdani has continued campaigning at a blistering pace. He has been blitzing the town, speaking directly to all kinds of New York City community groups, business leaders, and local labor union heads, emphasizing his promises to deliver increased affordability and “economic equity.” He has also won the support of the politically powerful local teachers’ union, the United Federation of Teachers, which remained neutral during the Democrat primary election campaign. He has even reached out to some leaders of New York’s Chassidic communities, promising as mayor to protect their yeshivos from intrusive demands for the expansion and improvement of their secular studies curricula by the New York State Department of Education. During the primary campaign, Mamdani sought to calm the fears of Jewish voters by repeatedly pledging to fight antisemitism if elected mayor.
MAMDANI’S STUBBORN ANTISEMITISM PROBLEM
But the secular Jewish Anti-Defamation League has called Mamdani’s longstanding advocacy for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement inherently antisemitic, because it is part of a broader campaign to “delegitimize and isolate the State of Israel.” In a separate statement, the ADL has also called out Mamdani for his repeated refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.” It said that the phrase, which is used by supporters of Hamas to justify its heinous October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, was “playing into dangerous antisemitic canards that time and time again have been used to incite hatred and violence against Jews.”
The phrase has become a call to violence “code word” for pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the streets and college campuses of New York City, not only against Israel and its Jewish citizens but also against the 1.3 million Jews living in New York City. But Mamdani has defended its use as a legitimate expression of “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.” He also declared in a nationally televised NBC News interview that he would not see it as his role as mayor to “police” such hate speech to protect Jewish New Yorkers and college students who feel directly threatened by it.
MAMDANI BLAMED ISRAEL INSTEAD OF HAMAS AFTER THE OCTOBER 7 ATTACK
On the day following Hamas’ notorious October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, Mamdani’s first public reaction carefully avoided any mention Hamas’ role as the aggressor and its deliberate commission of heinous war crimes against hundreds of innocent and defenseless Israeli civilians, including women and children, and the kidnapping of more than 250 hostages.
Instead Mamdani began by saying, “I mourn the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours,” and then quickly tried to shift the blame to “[Prime Minister] Netanyahu’s declaration of war, the Israeli government’s decision to cut electricity to Gaza, and Knesset members calling for another Nakba [the Arabic term meaning “disaster” which is how Israel’s enemies describe the creation of Israel as an internationally recognized state in 1948].” Mamdani concluded his statement with the claim that “the path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the [Israeli] occupation and dismantling [its] ‘apartheid.’”
During the final weeks of the primary campaign, Cuomo tried to use Mandani’s refusal to condemn the phrase as evidence that as mayor he would pose an antisemitic threat to the safety of New York City’s Jewish community, but by that time it was too late to halt the gathering momentum of Mamdani’s grass roots campaign.
ADAMS ACCUSES NYC COMPTROLLER LANDER OF BOYCOTTING ISRAEL
Last week, Mayor Adams called for a review of the decision by New York City’s Jewish Comptroller, Brad Lander, who cross-endorsed Mamdani during the Democrat mayoral primary, to eliminate almost all of the tens of millions of dollars of State of Israel bonds that were in the city’s pension fund portfolios, in apparent support of Mamdani’s pro-boycott position against Israel.
A letter to Lander from first deputy mayor Randy Mastro, on Adam’s behalf, last week, said that his decision was against the financial interests of the retired city employees who are the pension fund’s beneficiaries because the Israeli bonds financially outperformed most of the other bonds held by those pension funds.
“This divestment, occurring amid a global ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ campaign against Israel, appears to be in furtherance of that BDS campaign, regardless of the adverse financial consequences for city pensioners,” Mastro wrote. “You have a fiduciary duty to the city’s pensioners that is now called into question by your decision in this regard.”
In a campaign statement, Adams declared that Lander “was elected [comptroller] to safeguard New York City’s financial future, yet, [in cooperation with Mamdani] he continues to pander to the antisemitic BDS movement at the expense of taxpayer dollars and our city’s best interests, and New Yorkers deserve to know why.”
“Israel is not just the world’s only Jewish state,” Adams added. “It’s a vital economic partner to both our city and country.”
HOW MAMDANI EXPLOITED WOKE DEI STANDARDS FOR HIS OWN BENEFIT
According to Jewish News Service (JNS) editor-in-chief, Jonathan Tobin, the controversy which erupted last week over the disclosure by the New York Times that when Mamdani applied for admission as an undergraduate to Columbia University 15 years ago, he checked off a box on the application stating that he was an African-American because he was born in Uganda when, in fact, both of his parents are of South Asian descent, illustrates the hypocrisy of the progressive diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement that Mamdani advocates for.
Tobin writes that when Mamdani insists “that Americans are all essentially defined by [arbitrary and often inaccurate] determinations of race and ethnic origin. . . [and that] ‘people of color’ are always the victims of ‘white’ oppressors [apparently including Jews of all skin colors or ethnic backgrounds] who are always in the wrong. . . [he] is part of a [‘woke’ Marxist-style] effort to create a permanent race war between [them].”
According to Tobin “the problem with Mamdani’s application [to Columbia in which he claimed to be an African-American] was not so much a case of cultural appropriation as it was [an example of a] system that allows wealthy people to gain an advantage over middle- and working-class Americans by means of identity politics.
“As a person of South Asian origin and a Shia Muslim, Mamdani was [legitimately] part of [certain] ethnic, racial and religious minority groups,” Tobin writes. But this was not a disadvantage in Mamdani’s case. While he campaigned successfully for the votes of New York City’s economically struggling working-class Asian immigrants by posing as one of their own, in fact,] “as the son of a successful, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker from India [his mother] and a tenured professor at Columbia University [his father], he is a child of privilege in terms of [family] income and [his] access to the [best schools in America’s] educational system.”
MAMDANI DENIES ISRAEL’S RIGHT TO EXIST AS A JEWISH STATE
During a June 4 mayoral primary debate, Mamdani refused to acknowledge the State of Israel’s right to exist in the Middle East as a Jewish homeland and safe haven for the victims of antisemitic oppression around the world. He later explained in a Fox News interview that he opposes Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, “Because I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship based on religion or anything else,” However he has never criticized the Islamic majority states across the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, which treat all non-Muslim “infidels” as second-class citizens under Sharia law.
Mamdani has also said that as New York City mayor, he would push for an increase in property taxes, but only for those living in the city’s “whiter” neighborhoods, in clear violation of federal civil rights laws against racial discrimination in the housing market.
MAMDANI IS TOO YOUNG AND INEXPERIENCED TO GOVERN NEW YORK CITY
One of the political megadonors committed to the defeat of Mamdani in the November general election is John Catsimatidis, the 76-year-old billionaire owner of the Gristedes and D’Agostino supermarket chains, which serve neighborhoods across New York City. Catsimatidis also hosts a nationally syndicated weekly conservative radio talk show, as well as a local daily show on New York City’s popular WABC talk radio station, which Catsimatidis also now owns.
But before he launched what he promised would be an all-out effort to prevent Mamdani from becoming New York City’s next mayor, Catsimatidis called him on the phone to get a personal feel for the young candidate. Catsimatidis described their conversation to reporter David Freedlander as follows:
“I said to him, ‘Look, you’re a very nice guy and, you know, a very smart guy,’ and he says to me, ‘Oh, when you get to know me, you might like me.’”
But in the end, Catsimatidis came away unimpressed. He told Freedlander, “I try to be a very civilized person. I’ve hired company executives for 40, 50 years, and, you know, he’s a nice kid, but he’s 33 years old. He’s not qualified. He’s a great debater and a great orator, but can he run the city?”
ANTI-MAMDANI DONORS ABANDON CUOMO AND PLAY A WAITING GAME
Catsimatidis and several other New York political activists, including former governor David Paterson and wealthy attorney Jim Walden, whose name is also on the November mayoral ballot, launched their effort to engineer Mamdani’s defeat at a Midtown Manhattan press conference on July 7. They promised to wait and see which of Mamdani’s three major challengers manages to generate the most public support by September, when most voters first start paying serious attention to the candidates, and then throw their support behind him. They would then join in an effort, with many other community-minded people who are alarmed by the prospect of a Mamdani victory, to try to convince the other two challengers to step aside, for the good of the city.
In separate comments, former governor Paterson ridiculed the assertion by Mamdani’s supporters that his style of campaigning is the new approach that Democrats nationwide need to recover from their loss to Trump last November. “If [Mamdani is] the cure to what ails the party,” Paterson said derisively, “then cyanide is the cure for a headache.”
Paterson also said that, “what we are doing is calling on the candidates who are still in the [general election] race to find a way to unite behind one of them.”
Keith Wright, the chairman of the Manhattan Democrat party organization, was one of the prominent supporters of Cuomo during the primary campaign. He has announced that he is withdrawing his support because the former governor’s chance to become the next mayor of New York City has passed.
According to the New York Times, Wright said about Cuomo that, while he was governor, “he had a good run, [but] the [primary] electorate spoke loudly and they spoke clearly.
“Sometimes you’ve got to know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em,” Wright added, borrowing a popular catchphrase often used by poker players.
SOME OF CUOMO’S FORMER SUPPORTERS BACKING MAMDANI NOW
On the other hand, the Times reported that “Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, a state assemblywoman who leads the Brooklyn Democratic Party, backed Mr. Cuomo in the primary but now supports Mr. Mamdani after his [primary] victory.
Times reporters Jeffery Mays and Nicholas Fandos also noted that Cuomo has lost the support of the city’s largest labor unions, which ran his primary campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation. Since the primary, they have now switched their support to Mamdani, and the union leaders say that they are now ready to “spend generously on his behalf.”
The same New York Times story also reported that several other prominent local Democrats who supported Mr. Cuomo in the primary and who remain opposed to Mr. Mamdani said that it is untenable for both the mayor and former governor to keep running, [even] though they declined to say what they thought should happen instead [or which one of the two candidates should step aside.]
MAMDANI’S OPPONENTS NOW ATTACKING EACH OTHER
As a result, since the primary, Adams, Sliwa, and Cuomo have been ferociously attacking one another in a cutthroat competition to be chosen by the end of the summer as Mamdani’s sole surviving major challenger. Adams and Cuomo, in particular, are both actively pursuing the support of many of the same deep-pocketed campaign donors.
The pressure to drop out of the general election campaign is now highest on Mayor Adams, due to his weak trailing position in the polls. But his campaign manager, Frank Carone, argues that, “It’s really the height of arrogance to ask the second black mayor [of New York City], who has a record of success, [due] to a poll, then somehow ask him to move out of the way to [make way for] somebody [Cuomo] who just lost [to Mamdani] in a convincing fashion.”
Carone claims that, aside from donations to pro-Adams PACs, his campaign has been raising a lot of money from leaders of the city’s real-estate industry, which has the most to lose from Mamdani’s promise to impose a rent freeze on all regulated apartments in the city, and expects to reach its direct campaign fundraising limit of $8 million by the end of July.
Whitney Tilson was another candidate in the Democrat primary who finished far behind Mamdani. He has predicted that even though he believes that Mamdani is dangerous and unqualified, and expects that opposition groups to Mamdani will eventually raise a total of more than $100 million in the effort to defeat him, beating the controversial upstart Democrat candidate in November will still be a challenge.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Mamdani campaign issued a statement criticizing both Cuomo and Adams for “tripping over each other to win the approval of Trump’s favorite billionaires. [This] is embarrassing, dangerous, and disqualifying. While they fight over the support of the very people who put Donald Trump in office, Zohran is focused on earning the votes of working New Yorkers who deserve a city that’s safe and affordable for all.”
THE MISSING ELEMENTS IN THE ANTI-MAMDANI STRATEGIES
Several veteran political strategists have also told the Wall Street Journal that part of the problem facing Mamdani’s general election opponents is that they have been waging an entirely negative campaign against him, while failing to offer the voters any clear positive message or vision for New York City’s future of their own.
In addition, many other potential anti-Mamdani donors in New York’s financial and business communities are still on the sidelines, like Catsimatidis and the other members of his group, waiting for a clear favorite from the top three to take on Mamdani to emerge by the end of the summer before committing their campaign contributions.
According to Intelligencer reporter Freedlander, the main problem with the Catsimatidis September elimination strategy is that “in a city of 8.5 million, it is hard to find three people less likely to take one for the team than Sliwa, Adams, and Cuomo. All three have been civic figures since at least the 1990s. Each one views the prize of City Hall as some combination of their rightful due and a chance at redemption.”
MAMDANI’S OPPONENTS UNLIKELY TO STEP DOWN FOR THE “GREATER GOOD”
Freedlander also quoted an unnamed political operative who has experience working with all three of them as saying, “What do all three of these people have in common? They are all egomaniacal sociopaths. And to imagine that any of them would step down for the so-called greater good is to pretend that they are three completely different people.”
But until one of Mamdani’s three main opponents can show himself to be clearly superior to the others, forcing them to drop out of the race, the brash, antisemitic young socialist is likely to remain the prohibitive favorite to be elected in November as New York City’s next mayor.
