Before they became famous, many past New York City mayors had colorful backgrounds — Fiorello LaGuardia was a translator at the Ellis Island Immigration Center, John Lindsay was a “ski bum” and the scandal-plagued Jimmy Walker was a Broadway lyricist.
The four men running this November for what’s often called the second-toughest job in America also bring unique experiences to the table that may give voters a glimpse into their leadership style, and help inform them of making the right choice to serve as mayor for the next four years.
The field includes a rapper-turned state lawmaker, a three-term former governor whose father held the same position before him, and an incumbent mayor who walked the city streets as a cop for two decades. Those candidates are Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, and independent Democrats Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams. Also running is GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa, an activist who has patrolled the city’s streets and subways since the 1970s.
Jim Walden, a high-powered attorney who has a history of representing powerful politicians in legal matters, will be on the ballot in November, but on Tuesday, he announced he was terminating his campaign. Walden had barely registered any support in recent polls.
Below, amNewYork dives into the backgrounds and experiences of each remaining mayoral candidate.
Eric Adams
Eric Adams has served as New York City’s 110th mayor since the start of 2022, after overcoming a crowded field of challengers in the 2021 Democratic primary and blowing out Republican Curtis Sliwa in that year’s general election. The 65-year-old Democrat is the city’s second Black mayor.
Adams, like most mayors, lives in the mayor’s official residence at Gracie Mansion and owns a row house in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. However, questions have been raised about how much time he spends at a co-op he co-owns with his long-time partner Tracey Collins in Fort Lee, NJ.
In 2006, he retired from the NYPD, ran for, and won a Brooklyn state Senate seat — a position he held for the nearly a decade. He then successfully ran for Brooklyn borough president in 2013 and served in that post until he won the mayoralty in 2021.
He counts double-digit drops in the city’s shooting and murder rates, passing a massive zoning overhaul known as “City of Yes,” and launching a push to containerize the city’s trash among his major accomplishments.
Adams brought an enthusiasm and “swagger” to the mayoralty that greatly contrasted with the style of his predecessor, Bill de Blasio. Nearly every day during Adams’ first two years in office, he boasted a packed public schedule, traveling to all corners of the city for ribbon cuttings, flag raisings, and the rollout of new initiatives.
But it did not take long before Adams’ mayoralty was derailed by both external and internal challenges.
First, there was the migrant crisis, which suddenly confronted Adams’ young administration with a series of logistical, financial, and legal challenges. He has often cited the deluge of over 200,000 new arrivals as a reason for making steep budget cuts and stifling his agenda.
Second was a series of corruption scandals that led many of Adams’ top aides to resign and culminated in his own now-dismissed federal indictment last fall. The case involved Adams allegedly recieving illegal foreign campaign donations and luxury travel perks in exchange for official favors.
The charges were dropped by a federal judge at the behest of President Trump’s administration earlier this year — though the judge said his decision was not based on the case’s merits. While Adams has maintained the indictment was “lawfare,” the manner in which it was dismissed led many to accuse him of securing Trump’s help by pledging his support for the president’s mass deportation push.
Andrew Cuomo
Andrew Cuomo, a 67-year-old Democrat, served as New York’s 56th governor from 2011 to 2021 before resigning amid two massive scandals.
He lives in the Sutton Place neighborhood of Manhattan. He moved back to the city last September after residing in Westchester and Albany.
Cuomo’s nearly decade-long tenure as governor was marked by significant policy wins, such as legalizing gay marriage and raising the statewide minimum wage to $15 an hour. He also completed several major infrastructure projects, including the first leg of the Second Avenue Subway, an overhaul of LaGuardia Airport, and Moynihan Train Hall.
Cuomo drew the national spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic for his daily televised briefings, which sharply contrasted Trump’s handling of the crisis.
However, many in state government who interacted with Cuomo’s bare-knuckle politics accused him of bullying and of running a toxic work environment. In early 2021, Cuomo faced the first of two major scandals.
State Attorney General Letitia James’ office released findings that Cuomo’s administration undercounted the number of COVID-19 nursing home deaths across New York, following his Health Department’s heavily criticized 2020 guidance that the facilities readmit hospital patients who tested positive for the virus. The former governor has insisted his administration followed all federal guidelines.
Around the same time, Cuomo was hit with several accusations of sexual harassment, many of which came from staffers, prompting him to enlist AG James’ office to investigate the alleged misconduct. That August, James’ office released its report, which found that Cuomo had sexually harassed 11 women. He stepped down as governor soon after the report came out.
In his resignation speech, Cuomo apologized to the women he “deeply offended,” but still denied the allegations and has continued to do so in the years since.
Cuomo’s general election campaign is his second attempt at a political comeback after he lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani, despite polling showing him to be the frontrunner throughout that contest. He has positioned himself as a moderate and the only candidate with the experience to keep the city safe and address its affordability and housing crises.
Zohran Mamdani
Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, shocked the world with his upset nearly 13-point Democratic primary victory over Cuomo in June. He has represented western Queens neighborhoods, including Astoria and part of Long Island City, since 2021.
Mamdani grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan and attended the Bronx High School of Science.
According to his legislative website, Mamdani graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine in 2014 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Africana Studies. He co-founded the college’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which is part of the history of pro-Palestinian activism.
After graduating from college, Mamdani worked as a housing foreclosure prevention counselor, helping Queens residents fight eviction proceedings — the position he says inspired him to seek public office. At the same time, he pursued a side-hustle as a rapper named “Mr. Cardamom.”
Mamdani broke into local politics by working on several campaigns, including managing freelance opinion columnist Ross Barkan’s failed 2018 state Senate bid. According to a published report, he joined the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) the previous year.
In 2020, Mamdani was elected as the first South Asian man to serve in Albany’s lower chamber, after narrowly defeating incumbent Aravella Simotas in the Democratic primary with the backing of DSA. Since then, he has handily won reelection in 2022 and 2024.
Mamdani’s signature legislative accomplishment was passing a nearly one-year pilot program making MTA bus routes in each of the five boroughs free. But while Mamdani has proposed 20 bills, his rivals have roundly criticized him for only getting three of them over the finish line during his four years in Albany.
The democratic socialist won the primary with an affordability-focused platform that includes proposals like making city buses free, freezing rent increases for the city’s nearly one million stabilized tenants, and implementing universal free child care. He proposes funding his expensive platform by getting the state to raise taxes on millionaires and corporations.
However, throughout both the primary and the general election, Mamdani has faced a torrent of criticism from opponents and others over his relative lack of experience, socialist ideology, ties to the DSA, and opposition to Israel. Cuomo and Adams have both argued that his platform is unrealistic and that he is unprepared for the mayoralty after just four years as a state lawmaker.
Detractors, including Trump, have even gone so far as to falsely label Mamdani “a communist” and call him antisemitic.
Curtis Sliwa
Curtis Sliwa, a 71-year-old long-time activist and radio personality, is the Republican Party’s mayoral nominee. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with his wife, Nancy Sliwa, and their cats.
Rarely seen without his signature red beret, Sliwa is known for founding the vigilante group The Guardian Angels and his attention-grabbing stunts over the past few decades. He was also the Republican nominee in 2021, but he soundly lost to Mayor Adams.
Over the years, Sliwa and the Guardian Angels drew attention for flashy incidents both real and fake, according to published reports.
For instance, he was shot and nearly killed by associates of the mob boss John Gotti Jr. in the early 1990s. After that incident, Sliwa confessed to fabricating several stories about The Guardian Angels’ heroics in order to burnish the group’s reputation, such as returning a wallet full of cash to its owner and kicking a shotgun away from a man on the subway. A 1992 New York Times piece further accused Sliwa of exaggerating the group’s membership and fabricating other instances beyond the six he confessed.
Sliwa apologized for the falsehoods, saying he deeply regretted them.
Sliwa and his group have drawn accusations of racism and anti-immigrant sentiment over the years. He was a vocal critic of Mayor Adams’ administration’s efforts to shelter tens of thousands of migrants.
The Guardian Angels founder has also had a long and successful career as a talk radio host. He has mainly appeared on WABC 770, the network owned by conservative supermarket magnet John Catsimatidis.
Sliwa is running on growing the NYPD’s ranks by 7,000 officers and creating a direct line of communication between the mayor’s office and the NYPD’s 78 precincts. He has also pledged to repeal Mayor Adams’ City of Yes zoning reforms, which are aimed at making it easier to build housing in the city.
