Democratic mayoral nominee and frontrunner Zohran Mamdani said on Friday he feels the first general election mayoral debate the night before “went well” for him.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist Assembly member from Queens, appeared prepared for most of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa’s attack lines on subjects including his experience level and Israel, while constantly shifting the focus back to his core campaign issue: affordability.
As for Cuomo, the independent candidate took to talk radio to tout his performance and argue that he had exposed Mamdani. Sliwa, meanwhile, rebuffed any notion that he would drop out of the race to potentially help Cuomo win, charging that the former governor has already given up based on his debate performance Thursday.
During an unrelated Friday campaign event, Mamdani told reporters that he was happy with his debate performance because it gave him a chance to show voters the choice between himself and Cuomo.
“I do feel that the debate went well because it was an opportunity to speak directly to New Yorkers about our agenda, to speak about our agenda,” Mamdani said. “To have that opportunity on the same debate stage as the architect of this affordability crisis shows New Yorkers the real choices as it comes on Election Day.”
The Assembly member slammed Cuomo over the upwards of $60 million the state has spent on legal matters related to the nursing home and sexual harassment scandals that led to his resignation — money Mamdani said could have been spent on programs to make the city more affordable instead.
A Cuomo spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
Cuomo thinks Mamdani ‘got exposed’
On Friday, Cuomo told conservative talk radio host Sid Rosenberg the opposite: that Mamdani exposed himself as a fraud during the debate.
“I think Mamdani got exposed, I think there’s no there there, he changes his answers, and I think it was obvious yesterday,” Cuomo said. “I got a chance to call him on a few of them and he did a total flip-flop.”
The former governor has gone after Mamdani for shifting toward the center on some of the harder left stances he embraced before running for mayor. For instance, Mamdani has disavowed past social media posts in which he endorsed defunding the police and called the NYPD racist.
Mamdani, who holds a commanding polling lead over Cuomo, expressed that he no longer sees the former governor’s candidacy as much of a threat to his winning the general election.
“He has a very narrow path to winning this race, because what New Yorkers saw is the fact that it’s more of the same with Andrew Cuomo,” Mamdani said about Cuomo’s debate performance. “It’s more of the same with the affordability crisis. It’s more of the same with the style of politics. It’s more of the same with the cow town to the very billionaires who gave us Donald Trump.”
The Democratic nominee’s comments came in response to Cuomo telling Rosenberg that it will be “very, very hard mathematically” for him to win the race if Sliwa stays in. The former governor picked up a significant 10% boost when current Mayor Eric Adams exited the race late last month, but that was not enough to catch up to Mamdani.
Cuomo insisted, as he has repeatedly, that Sliwa is “a spoiler,” who will hand the mayoralty to Mamdani by splitting the moderate and Republican votes between the two of them.
“There’s no way he wins, but all he can do is make Mamdani a winner,” Cuomo said, while charging that the Republican County party bosses who nominated Sliwa want Mamdani to serve as a GOP bogeyman. “That’s why the bosses are keeping him there.”
Sliwa, during a Friday morning interview on Pix11, rejected that notion, charging that Cuomo has already “tossed in the towel” by saying he cannot win unless Sliwa drops out.
“He’s already given up, going no mas, no mas,” Sliwa said of Cuomo. “He lost the primary, he’s just admitted he can’t win if I’m in the race. So, why not Andrew Cuomo drop out?”
However, a Fox News poll of likely voters out Thursday night showed Mamdani with over 50% of the vote for the first time. If those numbers hold, Cuomo would have a hard time overcoming him even if Sliwa were to drop out.
