🔗 Share this article

Residents of the Big Apple will find out who will be their next mayor this Tuesday, in a contest that will determine who governs and protects the country's largest city at a time when the former president has threatened to deploy military troops to the urban center.

In this context, New York has experienced a race for mayor that has pitted two distinctly opposing Democratic figures against one another. The election has become an increasingly bitter showdown, laced with accusations of racism and Islamophobia, but it is the political differences between the two main candidates that could have significant consequences for how the Democratic party performs in next year's congressional races.

The Rising Progressive

In the progressive corner is Zohran Mamdani, the young democratic socialist whose meteoric rise and people-powered movement has brought international attention. On the establishment side is the former governor, the former Democratic New York governor now running as an independent – and benefiting from the support of ultra-rich donors and big business.

With days to go, it is the progressive, the one-time underdog who beat Cuomo in the Democratic primary who is solidly positioned as the leading candidate. The candidate, who has campaigned on a platform of economic justice and pledged to halt rent increases for about 2 million city residents, has led his rival by double-digits across all surveys taken in the fall, and it is very much the progressive's election to throw away.

The Controversial Campaign

However, Cuomo, who stepped down as governor in recent years amid allegations of sexual harassment, has stated clearly he will battle to the end, and not necessarily in an fair fashion. He has trashed his opponent's objectives as unrealistic, and in recent days chuckled along as a radio host made Islamophobic remarks about Mamdani, who is a Muslim. Two weeks ago, the independent was widely condemned as racist after posting an AI-generated ad that included a series of racist stereotypes and showed his opponent freeing a convicts.

This represents a particularly ugly conclusion to an election that could be key to the path that the Democratic party, floundering in its response to the former president's power moves, adopts in the coming years.

National Implications

If Mamdani wins convincingly, the establishment party leaders who have refused to endorse his campaign will be forced to reckon with a platform that has appealed to Americans' anger at economic disparity, inflation and the political elite. It would be difficult for Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries not to embrace at least some of the candidate's ambitious ideas about affordability, given the fresh face has created an enthusiasm within the party arguably not seen since the Vermont senator ran for president in 2016.

Conversely, if the former governor, who had been predicted to win easily in the June primary, achieve a surprising riches-to-rags-to-riches victory, it could reinforce national Democrats' existing approach of considered, uninspiring resistance – a tactic that has angered the party base. A New York defeat of Mamdani's optimistic platform could persuade Schumer and Jeffries that the best plan is to remain in the center – even as surveys show the current iteration of the Democratic party is widely disliked across the country.

Voter Enthusiasm

Residents of New York seem to prefer the Mamdani vision. Surveys show that Mamdani supporters are much more excited about their choice than his opponent's supporters, something that has been apparent during the race. Mamdani's engaging content on social media, his optimistic vision for New York and his willingness to actually get out and meet people in the city has attracted an force of over fifty thousand supporters, many of them youth or first-time voters.

Negative Tactics

Yet, Cuomo, 67, continues to fight. And with the stakes stacked against him, the ex-leader has turned to ugly messaging in the final days.

Following extensive throwing basically everything at Mamdani to see what might stick, Cuomo has narrowed his focus on targeting the candidate directly. He has called his rival, who was born in Uganda to South Asian heritage, an “extremist”, and popped up on conservative media for an interview with Maria Bartiromo, where the candidate claimed the city “will not survive” Mamdani as mayor. It reached a nadir last week, when the former governor chuckled and said “that’s another problem” after a broadcaster said Mamdani would “cheer” another terrorist attack.

Campaign Dynamics

This strategy echoes much of what the former president, who has sent the national guard to the capital and threatened to do the same to New York, has said about Mamdani, and maybe that is expected. A group of billionaire New Yorkers, including some who contributed to Trump in the 2024 election, have pumped millions into trying to elect Cuomo into office, as other powerful voices have urged the Republican candidate to drop out from the race.

Candidate Backgrounds

As far as the Cuomo camp, and his billionaire supporters, are concerned, it should not have reached to this point. When Mamdani, one of one hundred fifty state legislators, launched his campaign for mayor in last year, not many had known him, and in reality, few even noticed.

Cuomo, by comparison, eased his way into the race in this year and became the instant favorite. He was the political heavyweight who apparently held every edge. The classic political insider, he had wed a political dynasty member and served in a Democratic presidency. He assumed office as New York governor in over a decade ago, 17 years after his parent, the former governor, left office from the identical role.

Mamdani, who was voted in to the state legislature in recently, does not have the same political heritage. But his commitment to providing no-cost transit and affordable child services – along with the freeze-the-rent pledge – present a more positive vision of the future than his opponent's pessimistic predictions about “mayhem” and unfettered crime, and his vow to hire more police officers.

Campaign Controversies

Still, Mamdani has encountered difficulties in the final phase, after footage surfaced suggesting him implying the NYPD and the IDF were intertwined.

“We have to make clear that when the pressure of the police is on your throat, it’s been influenced by the Israeli military,” Mamdani said in the clip, recorded at a Democratic Socialists of America convention in recent years. The progressive, a longtime critic of Israel who has said the country is engaging in atrocities in Gaza, suggested he was questioning joint training exercises between the NYPD and Israeli forces.

Emotional Response

With the election nearing, the candidate appears to have won sympathy and support, however, for his reaction to Cuomo’s increasing rhetoric.

The progressive responded to the independent's 9/11 remarks in an emotional video. In it, Mamdani remembered how, when he first ran for the legislature, a family member advised to him that he did not have to disclose about his religion. It was a realization, Mamdani said, that many Muslim New Yorkers had been taught “again and again”: “That safety could only be found in the margins of our city. That it is in those hidden spaces alone where followers of Islam could express their true selves, and that if we were to emerge from those shadows, then it is in those silence that we must set aside our beliefs.”

Speaking to the behavior of Cuomo and Sliwa, who has claimed Mamd