New York’s down-to-the-wire mayoral primary tests deep Democratic divide
Not long ago, New York City’s mayoral race seemed to offer a quick path to redemption for former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The scion of a New York political dynasty, Mr. Cuomo had been plotting a return to public life ever since he resigned in 2021 amid multiple sexual harassment allegations (which he has denied). When incumbent Mayor Eric Adams was indicted on corruption charges last fall, it created a sudden vacuum in the race – and a golden opportunity for someone with Mr. Cuomo’s name recognition and decades of experience.
But in the run-up to Tuesday’s primary, the Democratic contest has tightened considerably.
Why We Wrote This
In New York City’s mayoral race, a generational confrontation is testing a polarized Democratic electorate. The outcome may prove an early indicator of how the party at large will confront the Trump administration.
The three-time governor is fending off a late-surging challenge from Zohran Mamdani, a New York state assemblymember from Queens and a democratic socialist in his early 30s who has galvanized the city’s younger, left-wing voters with a pledge to freeze rents, make buses free, and build more affordable housing.
City Comptroller Brad Lander has also drawn attention in the closing days, after being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last week while escorting a migrant out of court. A fourth candidate, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (no relation to the mayor), is trying to mobilize middle-class Black voters, a key Democratic demographic that Mr. Cuomo is also counting on to win. The remaining candidates are polling in the low single digits.
While Mr. Cuomo has consistently led in the polls, the race has become less a Cuomo coronation than a generational confrontation – and a microcosm of the Democratic Party’s larger struggle to settle on a clear vision and strategy for retaking power in the Trump era.
New York’s mayoral election comes at a time when America’s largest cities, most of which are heavily Democratic, are grappling with how to push back against Trump administration policies. President Donald Trump has been threatening to focus his deportation efforts on blue cities in particular. The candidate New York voters choose to lead them through the next few years will indicate what kind of fighter they want – and whether the Democratic Party’s ideological leftists or pragmatic moderates may have the upper hand going forward.
“This is about ideology and the best way to fight back against the Trump administration’s anti-blue city and state policies,” says Kathy Wylde, CEO of Partnership for New York City, which represents the city’s business leaders. “Is it better to revolt and create civil unrest from the left, or try to navigate trade-offs? If Zohran wins, it’s a revolt. If Cuomo wins, it’s, ‘Let’s make a deal.’”
The winner of Tuesday’s ranked-choice election may not be clear right away. If no candidate gets to 50% on the first ballot, votes will be redistributed from the lowest-performing candidates, according to their voters’ ordered preferences, until a winner emerges.
Whoever wins will face off in November’s general election against Mayor Adams, who is now running as an independent, after the charges against him were dropped by the Trump Justice Department. The mayor’s job approval ratings hit an all-time low this spring. The Republican candidate is Curtis Sliwa, a radio talk show host and founder of the Guardian Angels crime stoppers, who has mounted repeated unsuccessful mayoral bids.
A city unhappy with its leaders
Although Democrats outnumber Republicans among the city’s registered voters by 6 to 1, New Yorkers have chosen Republican mayors in the past. Republican Rudy Giuliani won two terms in the 1990s, followed by Michael Bloomberg, also a Republican, for another two terms (Mr. Bloomberg became an independent in 2007).
After the Bloomberg era, however, the city’s politics shifted left. Park Slope progressive Bill de Blasio, who campaigned on reducing rising inequality, was elected for two terms. He left office in 2021 with dismal poll numbers after implementing controversial policies on policing and prosecutions, and amid the broader challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mayor Adams, a former police officer who ran as a more moderate Democrat, succeeded Mr. de Blasio by appealing to Black, Latino, and Asian American working- and middle-class voters who worried the city had become more lawless and dysfunctional.
Since then, the city’s Asian American and Latino communities have grown, thanks to a migration boom, while many young families priced out of housing and child care have moved away. New York lost 546,000 residents between April 2020 and July 2023, much of which happened on Mr. Adams’ watch, before adding 87,000 people last year, according to census data.
Mayor Adams has highlighted a drop in homicides and shootings during his tenure. But his record has been marred by his federal indictment on charges that he accepted foreign campaign donations and airline and hotel discounts in exchange for expediting the building and safety permits for a Turkish Consulate skyscraper.
Shortly after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, Mayor Adams began lobbying the president and his advisers to drop the charges, while saying he would cooperate with the White House’s deportation plans. When Justice Department officials dismissed the charges in February, city and state leaders called on the mayor to resign.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, ultimately declined to remove the mayor, saying she would leave Mr. Adams’ political future to the city’s voters. Polls show more than 3 out of 4 likely Democratic primary voters think the city is moving in the wrong direction, and nearly three-quarters want their candidate to oppose President Trump.
“There’s a sense that things are out of control, but not from a crime perspective,” says Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based political consultant. “Young people want to stay, but they don’t want to pay as much for rent. They want to put more money back in their pockets.”
Youth vs. experience
Mr. Mamdani has seized the imagination and enthusiasm of the left with a fresh, vibrant campaign aimed at addressing the economic anxieties of the city’s youngest voters. An immigrant who came to the U.S. at the age of 7, he would be New York’s first Muslim mayor.
Vincent Alban/The New York Times/AP
He has released a slew of crisp ads on social media addressing the city’s affordability crisis, collected endorsements from New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and earned fawning praise on his debate performance from Mr. de Blasio.
Mr. Cuomo, meanwhile, has called in his own Democratic heavy-hitters, with last-minute endorsements from former President Bill Clinton and South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn. Mr. Cuomo served as Mr. Clinton’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
The former governor declined to participate in multiple candidate forums during the campaign, while racking up endorsements from some of the same union leaders and elected officials who called on him to resign four years ago.
“People call it a Rose Garden [campaign], but it’s less than a Rose Garden,” says George Arzt, a political consultant who suggests that Mr. Cuomo’s effort to play it safe could turn out to be a miscalculation. “He’s depending on his name recognition.”
Most polls point to a two-person race. In a Marist poll, Mr. Cuomo outlasted Mr. Mamdani 55% to 45% after seven rounds of voting, while Mr. Lander was eliminated in the sixth round after topping out at 13%.
But Mr. Mamdani’s rapid rise has made the city’s business community nervous. This month, former Mayor Bloomberg, the billionaire media executive and philanthropist, endorsed Mr. Cuomo and has contributed $8.3 million to a Cuomo-affiliated super PAC, Fix the City. The political action committee has raised $24 million, much of it donated by Wall Street and real estate executives, which it has poured into anti-Mamdani TV ads and mailers. Mr. Mamdani, for his part, has amassed $8 million from 19,000 donors and the city’s campaign matching-funds program.
The New York Times and New York Post have also urged their readers not to rank Mr. Mamdani on their ballots, with the Times calling his experience “too thin.” The paper underscored its objections to Mr. Cuomo’s “ethics and conduct,” but said he would be “better for New York’s future than Mr. Mamdani.”
Ms. Wylde says business leaders are eager not to repeat the de Blasio era, particularly at a time when the White House seems to be hatching new ways to torment New York City.
“We had a very progressive mayor who was quite divisive, going after the wealthy, the real estate industry, and corporate greed,” she says. “We need to unite our diverse interests in the face of very serious threats of federal funding cuts and mass deportation efforts that could destabilize the city and send it into an economic downturn.”
Voters just tuning in to the race have been bombarded by TV ads criticizing Mr. Mamdani’s limited experience, as well as his previous support for defunding the police and his position on Israel’s war in Gaza. In recent days, Mr. Cuomo has attacked Mr. Mamdani for appearing to defend the phrase “globalize the intifada” in an interview. New York City has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.
In response, Mr. Mamdani told reporters, “It pains me to be called an antisemite,” and criticized the super PACs funding attack ads against him. In the middle of this controversy, ICE agents arrested Mr. Lander at an immigration courthouse and charged him with assault and impeding a federal officer after he linked arms with a person they were trying to detain. Mr. Lander, who denied both charges, was later released, and the charges were dropped. The incident sparked national headlines and may have given Mr. Lander a late burst of momentum.
Ranked-choice voting adds a twist
The city’s unusual ranked-choice voting system could also complicate the outcome.
Voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference. If no candidate gets 50% in the first round of tabulations, the candidate with the fewest votes is dropped, and their votes are then redistributed among the remaining candidates. That process repeats until one candidate emerges with a majority.
Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Lander have cross-endorsed one another, urging their supporters to rank the other candidate as their second choice.
Turnout during the city’s summer primaries has historically ranged between 20% and 25% of the electorate. But participation in early voting this year was more than twice as high as it was in 2021. Early voters in Brooklyn and Manhattan outpaced those in the other three boroughs, while more than one-fifth of those who cast their ballots before Election Day were between the ages of 25 and 34, according to the Board of Elections.
That could be a good sign for Mr. Mamdani, who has led Mr. Cuomo among Brooklyn residents and polled well with voters under the age of 45. Mr. Cuomo will likely need Black and older voters to show up at polling sites on Tuesday to match Mr. Mamdani’s likely early gains.
Meanwhile, the drama could continue well past June.
The Working Families Party, a progressive political party, could select Mr. Mamdani to run on its ballot line this fall should he fall short on Tuesday. And Mr. Cuomo could keep running on his own third-party line if he loses the Democratic primary.
Regardless of the results, some observers say Mr. Mamdani has shaken up New York’s stultified politics.
“Zohran has been running a much smarter campaign directed toward people under the age of 40 experiencing a crisis of affordability,” Mr. Sheinkopf says. “In Mamdani, voters are looking for an unknown quantity to ease their pain.”
