The two leading Democratic mayoral candidates, Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani, traded blows during a series of radio interviews on Monday morning, with just hours before the June 24 primary.
The two candidates launched their broadsides during a blitz of interviews with WNYC host Brian Lehrer, in which the nine leading Democratic mayoral contenders made their closing arguments to voters.
Cuomo: ‘My record is indisputable’
Cuomo, the former governor and frontrunner for much of the race, argued that the city is in “real trouble” — facing issues like crime and homelessness — and that he is the only candidate with the government experience to do the job.
“Who can actually make government work?” Cuomo asked rhetorically. “Who can get the garbage picked up? Who can get the mentally ill off the streets? Who can make the city safe? My record is indisputable for making government work.”
Cuomo, who resigned nearly four years ago amid multiple sexual misconduct allegations that he denies, pointed to the infrastructure projects he pushed through as governor and his nationally televised COVID-19 press briefings as evidence of his leadership prowess.
When Cuomo was asked how he would work with Gov. Kathy Hochul and Albany lawmakers, many of whom still have bad blood with him from his days as governor, he pointed to all that he got accomplished with the legislature during those years. Hochul was Cuomo’s lieutenant governor and took over after he resigned in 2021.
“As mayor, you’re going to have to fight with Albany,” Cuomo said. “There is a tension between the mayor of New York and the governor of New York.”
However, the governor and the state legislature hold far more power in that relationship than the mayor does — power that Cuomo often exercised over former Mayor Bill de Blasio when he was in office.
Cuomo also sought to hit Mamdani, his greatest competitor, over his relative lack of experience in government. He blasted Mamdani, who has served in the Assembly for three years, as someone more interested in messaging than governing.
“He thinks the job of being a mayor is being a messenger,” Cuomo said, referring to a comment Mamdani made to the New York Editorial Board. “He’s about public relations. And these jobs are operating CEO jobs.”
Mamdani: New Yorkers ‘done with cynical politics’
Meanwhile, Mamdani — a Democratic socialist — touted the success of his long-shot bid in energizing young voters with his affordability-focused message. His campaign is built on core pledges such as freezing the rent for the city’s one million stabilized tenants, making public buses free and faster, and implementing universal free child care.
“This agenda has mobilized the greatest grassroots campaign the city has ever seen,” Mamdani said. “Nearly 50,000 volunteers, 1.4 million doors knocked, 20,000 donors who gave an average of 80 bucks. But New Yorkers are done with the cynical politics of the past. They want a future they can afford.”
In recent weeks, Mamdani has gained on Cuomo in the polls, even eclipsing his lead by four points in an Emerson College survey released on Monday.
The Assembly member addressed mounting questions, driven by Cuomo, over how realistic his platform is, given that it relies on funding from raising taxes on the state’s highest earners. Hochul told Pix11 last week that she has little appetite for that.
“I’ve seen in the legislature, year after year, an appetite within the Assembly and the Senate to do exactly that, to raise those corporate taxes, to raise income taxes on the top 1%,” Mamdani said.
In recent days, Mamdani has taken heat from Cuomo, other elected officials, and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC for declining to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which many Jewish New Yorkers see as inciting violence against them. When asked by Lehrer to clarify the situation, Mamdani repeated his argument that the phrase has a “variety of meanings for a variety of people.”
“That is not language that I use,” Mamdani said. “The language that I use is that of clarity, and I do not believe it is the mayor’s position to the policing language. … However, I know that this is a moment when many Jewish New Yorkers are fearful and are concerned, and I’ve had many of those conversations.”
Mamdani also took Cuomo and a super PAC supporting his campaign — “Fix the City” — to task for flooding the airwaves with ads that he said demonize him.
“What Andrew Cuomo is doing is weaponizing this very real crisis and using billionaire money to spew hate,” he said. “He and other candidates have used words describing me as a monster as dangerous as being at the gates, language that is more befitting of a beast than a person.”
