Residents of the Big Apple will find out who will be their next mayor this Tuesday, in a contest that will decide who runs and protects the country's largest city at a moment when the former president has threatened to send military troops to the city.
Against that backdrop, New York has witnessed a mayoral election that has pitted two very different Democratic figures against one another. The election has turned into an increasingly bitter face-off, laced with accusations of racial bias and Islamophobia, but it is the ideological divide between the two leading candidates that could have significant consequences for how the party fares in next year's midterm elections.
In the progressive corner is the democratic socialist, the young progressive candidate whose meteoric rise and grassroots campaign has attracted global notice. On the establishment side is the former governor, the former New York governor now campaigning independently – and enjoying the support of wealthy contributors and big business.
As the election approaches, it is the progressive, the former longshot who defeated his opponent in the party primary who is solidly positioned as the leading candidate. The candidate, who has campaigned on a agenda of economic justice and pledged to halt rent increases for about 2 million New Yorkers, has outpaced Cuomo by double-digits in every poll conducted in October, and it is very much the progressive's election to throw away.
However, the former governor, who resigned as the state's leader in 2021 amid allegations of misconduct, has stated clearly he will battle to the finish, and not necessarily in an fair manner. He has trashed his opponent's objectives as unrealistic, and in recent days laughed as a broadcaster made Islamophobic remarks about the candidate, who is Muslim. Recently, the independent was widely condemned as racist after sharing an artificial intelligence video that included a series of racist stereotypes and showed Mamdani freeing a convicts.
This represents a particularly ugly end to an race that could be critical to the path that the Democratic party, struggling in its response to the former president's authoritarian grabs, adopts in the coming years.
Should the progressive wins convincingly, the establishment party leaders who have refused to endorse his campaign will be compelled to address a message that has appealed to Americans' anger at inequality, soaring price rises and the establishment. It would be hard for Chuck Schumer and the House leader not to adopt at least some of Mamdani's ambitious ideas about affordability, given the fresh face has created an excitement within the party arguably not seen since Bernie Sanders ran for president in 2016.
However, if the former governor, who had been expected to sail to victory in the Democratic primary, achieve a remarkable comeback victory, it could cement national Democrats' existing approach of cautious, uninspiring opposition – a tactic that has infuriated the party base. A NYC rejection of Mamdani's optimistic platform could persuade Schumer and Jeffries that the best plan is to stick to the center – even as surveys show the present version of the Democratic party is widely disliked across the country.
Residents of New York appear to favor the progressive agenda. Surveys show that Mamdani supporters are far more enthusiastic about their candidate than his opponent's supporters, something that has been apparent throughout the campaign. The candidate's engaging content on social media, his optimistic vision for the city and his willingness to actually venture out and connect with voters in the city has drawn an army of more than 50,000 volunteers, many of them young or first-time voters.
However, Cuomo, in his late sixties, isn't giving up. And with the stakes against him, the former governor has turned to negative campaigning in recent weeks.
After spending months throwing basically everything at Mamdani to see what might resonate, Cuomo has narrowed his focus on attacking the candidate personally. He has labelled his rival, who was born in Uganda to Indian parents, an “extremist”, and appeared on conservative media for an interview with Maria Bartiromo, where the candidate asserted New York “will not survive” Mamdani as mayor. It hit bottom last week, when the former governor chuckled and said “that’s another problem” after a radio host said Mamdani would “cheer” another terrorist attack.
The line of attack mirrors much of what Trump, who has sent the national guard to Washington DC and threatened to take similar action to New York, has said about the progressive, and perhaps that is expected. A set of wealthy residents, including some who contributed to the Republican in the last presidential race, have invested heavily into trying to elect Cuomo elected, as other influential figures have urged the Republican candidate to withdraw from the contest.
For the Cuomo camp, and his billionaire supporters, are concerned, it should never have come to this. When the assemblyman, one of one hundred fifty New York state assembly members, launched his campaign for mayor in October 2024, few had heard of him, and in reality, few even noticed.
The former governor, by comparison, entered smoothly into the race in this year and became the instant favorite. He was the big beast who seemingly held all the advantages. The classic political insider, he had married a Kennedy and worked in Bill Clinton’s administration. He became New York governor in 2011, 17 years after his father, the former governor, left office from the same position.
The progressive, who was elected to the New York state assembly in recently, does not have the same political heritage. But his dedication to providing free buses and affordable child services – along with the freeze-the-rent pledge – offer a brighter outlook of the future than Cuomo’s pessimistic predictions about “mayhem” and rising criminal activity, and his promise to increase police presence.
Nevertheless, the candidate has faced difficulties in recent days, after footage emerged appearing to show him implying the NYPD and the IDF were connected.
“We have to make clear that when the pressure of the NYPD is on your throat, it’s been laced by the Israeli military,” Mamdani said in the recording, filmed at a Democratic Socialists of America convention in recent years. Mamdani, a vocal opponent of the Israeli government who has said the nation is engaging in atrocities in Gaza, indicated he was questioning joint training exercises between the city police and Israeli forces.
As the race closes, Mamdani appears to have won empathy and backing, however, for his response to his opponent's escalating attacks.
Mamdani responded to the independent's terrorism comments in an emotional video. In it, the candidate remembered how, when he first campaigned for state assembly, a family member advised to him that he did not have to disclose about his Muslim faith. It was a lesson, he said, that many Muslim New Yorkers had been taught “again and again”: “That security could only be found in the margins of our city. That it is in those hidden spaces alone where Muslims could express their true selves, and that if we were to step out from those shadows, then it is in those silence that we must set aside our faith.”
Speaking to the behavior of his opponents, who has claimed Mamd
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