With Mayor Eric Adams now out of the campaign picture, Democratic nominee and frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and rival former Gov. Andrew Cuomo wasted little time in laying into one another on Monday.
Adams’ long-anticipated move to abandon his reelection campaign on Sunday could benefit Cuomo, but it may not significantly alter the race dynamic, as Republican nominee and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa remains a factor and could draw moderate, independent and centrist Republican votes away from both candidates.
Nonetheless, Adams’ exit puts some pressure on Mamdani — who has mostly coasted on his strong polling lead since the Democratic primary — to go on the offensive against the former governor.
Mamdani went after Cuomo during an Upper Manhattan news conference on Sept. 29, taking him to task for slashing a state housing assistance program for homeless New Yorkers — known as Advantage — when he was governor in 2011. The Democratic nominee hosted the event with Kasha Phillips-Lewis, a local tenant who stated that she lost her housing after Cuomo implemented the Advantage cuts and suffered for years thereafter.
Mamdani charged that homelessness dramatically increased in the city following the cutbacks.
“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 said.
The lawmaker characterized Cuomo’s $65 million cut to Advantage as a “decision he made so he would have to avoid taxing his rich donors…[and] led to what we are now seeing as a spike in homelessness.”
In response, Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi issued a statement to amNewYork downplaying Cuomo’s cuts to the program as ancient history.
“This is a moot issue that happened 14 years ago — when Mamdani was in college – amid a $10 billion shortfall, and that funding has been replaced and increased many times over through other rental assistance programs,” he said.
Cuomo camp presses Mamdani on police apology
Azzopardi then pivoted to blasting Mamdani for not yet making a public apology to NYPD officers for calling the department “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety” in 2020, 18 days after the New York Times published an interview in which he said he would.
On Monday morning, prior to Mamdani’s press conference, Cuomo had issued a press statement noting the Democratic nominee’s apology pledge more than two weeks ago and questioning the candidate’s sincerity.
“Not only is he unqualified, he’s untrustworthy, changing the answers to his positions depending on the audience he’s in front of, flat out lying to the press and the public,” Cuomo said. “His reckless extremist policies are both dangerous to public safety and destructive to New York’s economy. He knows these views aren’t what New Yorkers want and is doing everything he can to hide the truth until Election Day.”
When asked during the news conference when he is planning to apologize to the NYPD, Mamdani sidestepped the question and focused on his “conversations with rank-and-file officers.”
“I’m saying that these are conversations that I’m having right now with these officers,” the Democratic nominee said, while not making it clear if those conversations include an apology.
“A lot of times, the conversations have been on questions of statements around defunding the police,” Mamdani continued. “What does that mean? Is that a part of this campaign? And making it very clear that that’s never been a part of this campaign. And also speaking about the fact that our focus is about addressing the retention crisis, delivering on public safety, and ensuring that officers are actually able to do their jobs.”
