Hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers and supporters rallied in Queens on Sunday for NYC mayoral candidate and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the independent who has been vocal about standing with Israel and Jewish New Yorkers.
Cuomo addressed the group, led by the Bukharian Action Council, at the Kew Gardens Hills Library on Vleigh Place on Oct. 26 to express his support for defending Jewish values and Israel. More than 300 people attended the event.
“The Jewish community made New York, New York,” said Cuomo, a borough native who graduated from Archbishop Molloy High School in nearby Briarwood. “New York is not New York without the Jewish community.”
Cuomo went on to discuss key issues that New Yorkers of all backgrounds are concerned about, including housing, crime and transit, while making jabs at one of his adversaries in the race, frontrunner Zohran Mamdani.
“This is an important election,” the candidate said. “First, the city itself. There is work that we need to do. There is an affordability crisis, and the real answer is to build more affordable housing, and I’m going to build 500,000 additional units. We need more public safety, and we have to hire 5,000 more police and put 1,500 in the subways. We have to send a different signal to business, and we have to say to the businesses, ‘We want you to stay here.'”
Cuomo said Mamdani is not equipped to lead the city, citing a lack of experience in city government — something he passionately reiterated during the second mayoral debate on Oct. 22.
“There is no on-the-job training for mayor,” Cuomo said. “God forbid there’s a crisis, there’s a hurricane, there’s a flood, a terrorist attack. You need a mayor who knows and has the experience.”
Ruben Davidoff attended the event in support of Cuomo. A Bukharian Jew who escaped the Soviet Union 37 years ago, he said his vote will be for the former governor, and not Mamdani, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
“Why did we come to this country? Why did we run away from the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union was a socialist country. It does not work,” he told the crowd. “We had over 2 million people in the Soviet Union, most of them fled, fled from oppression, flee, whatever other things we’ve been oppressed. If we become a socialist country or socialist city, only a few people up top would be getting basically the best out of the best. Everybody else will suffer. Do not vote for Mamdani.”
The rally took place just one day after early voting began in NYC and in the middle of a heated mayoral race in which frontrunner Mamdani has often been criticized for his statements made about Israel and the war in Gaza.
The crowd passionately chanted various messages in support of Israel, including, “We will not be erased” and “We will stand for our Jewish community.”
Paul Brody, M.D., who attended the rally, said Cuomo will “do great” as mayor of NYC.
“I think he’s the most prepared person for the job,” the doctor said. “The fact that he was the governor for the state, so therefore, he knows about New York City, which is integral, the most integral part of the whole state, from certain aspects. Certainly, we don’t want to get any other parts of the state upset by that statement. He just has the experience, and he’s been around.”
Roman, who came from Brooklyn to attend the event, said Cuomo has a resume that makes him fit to lead the city.
“He’s done everything from helping New York at the local level with homelessness. Andrew has been in D.C. with [Housing and Urban Development],” the Cuomo supporter said. “So he’s done everything that it comes to from housing and affordability, and these days, quality-of-life really takes everything from affordability straight through quality-of-life. So I trust Andrew much more on crime than some of Mamdani’s policies.”
