Trump backs former rival Andrew Cuomo over Zohran Mamdani for high-stakes NY mayoral election

IT’S 4 NOVEMBER, and in the United States of America, it’s polling day for residents of New York City as they go to elect their new mayor.

New Yorkers are projected to elect leftist Zohran Mamdani, opening a new front in opposition to Donald Trump and raising the specter the president will retaliate against the city where he made his name.

The mayoral race has garnered a surprising amount of interest outside of the US, mainly due to the uncertain political climate in America and the three candidates vying to replace incumbent Democratic mayor Eric Adams.

Polls are open from 6am to 9pm today but record numbers have already cast early voting ballots. 

NYC Board of Elections data showed 275,006 registered Democrats had cast ballots, as had 46,115 Republicans, along with 42,383 voters unaffiliated with any party in the first five days of early voting which ended on Sunday. 

Going off polling, Mamdani is the frontrunner but following a particularly nasty campaign all eyes will be on the result. 

The rundown

New York City is a Democratic stronghold: of registered voters, Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one.

In June, the Democrats held their primary to allow voters to decide who would represent the party in the race – seasoned former governor Andrew Cuomo, who was forced to resign after facing allegations of sexual misconduct, or Zohran Mamdani, a then 33-year-old socialist (he’s since turned 34) and relative political newcomer?

It was a charged primary and the results shocked many. Mamdani beat out Cuomo for the Democratic nomination and is now the frontrunner in the election.

As for Cuomo, he accepted defeat and then decided he was going to contest the election anyway as an Independent.

New York hasn’t elected a Republican since Rudy Giuliani’s second term in 1997 (and before him it was John Lindsay, who was elected for two consecutive terms, the first in 1965), but that hasn’t stopped them from trying.

Radio talk show host, activist, and former leader of a volunteer crime-fighting group Curtis Sliwa is running for mayor on the Republican ticket.

Who are the candidates?

Andrew Cuomo is the best known of the three. The son of former governor Mario Cuomo, the 67 year old is from Queens in New York. He studied to be a lawyer and in 1997, under the Clinton administration, was US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

He was Attorney General of New York from 2007 to 2010 and Governor of New York from 2011 to 2021, but he resigned from his position as governor after a string of allegations of sexual misconduct from several women emerged.

He denied the most serious of the accusations but admitted he had been “insensitive or too personal”. All criminal cases pursued against him were ultimately dismissed.

Cumo is also remembered internationally as being the governor during the Covid-19 pandemic when his leadership was initially praised before he faced criticism for understating the number of deaths in state nursing homes.

Cuomo has received the endorsement of former mayor of the city, billionaire Micheal Bloomberg, and still enjoys some popularity from his handling of the city as governor throughout the Covid pandemic.

He has faced some criticism for his negative campaigning in recent weeks, which has focused on displaying the frontrunner as someone who is anti-business, anti-law enforcement, and unqualified for the role of mayor of a city that is home to 8.5m people.

Zohran Mamdani, said frontrunner, has a less typical CV. 

Born in Uganda, he is the son of a Columbia professor and an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. He left Uganda for the US as a child but regularly returned, and kept his citizenship. He became a naturalised American citizen in 2018.

If elected, he would be the city’s first Muslim mayor.

Advertisement

Mamdani had a brief career as a hip-hop musician before entering politics. He was elected to the New York State Assembly in 2020. He announced his candidacy for mayor in October last year, and his star has risen since he won the Democratic primary this summer. He has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders.

Mamdani describes himself as a “democratic socialist” and is campaigning on a platform of making buses in the city free, introducing state-run grocery stores, and freezing rents. He plans to finance these plans with additional taxes on New Yorkers who make more than $1m a year.

Curtis Sliwa, whose presence in the race is seen as a helping hand to Mamdani, is polling well below both his opponents. He has attracted attention for his contributions to the election debates – such as when he told the story of being shot five times in the back of a cab in 1992 after criticising the mob on his radio show.

He was born and raised in Brooklyn to a family that claimed Italian and Polish ancestry.

In the 1970s, he founded non-profit crime prevention group Guardian Angels in an effort to crack down on the crime wave sweeping the city. Members of the group wear red suits and red berets and retain a considerable presence in the city today.

Sliwa contested the mayoral election in 2021 but lost to Democrat Eric Adams. 

Sliwa, although a Republican, remains unaffiliated with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and is considered a populist member of the party. He supports gay marriage, gun control, abortion, and ranked choice voting.

He is a strong supporter of the city’s police department and vehemently opposes the movement to defund NYPD.

Trump backs Cuomo

In a final push for votes, Mamdani toured nightclubs over the Halloween weekend, making a pit stop at one event called “Papi Juice” without ditching his trademark dark suit.

Last week he issued in Arabic to his supporters that has been seized upon by far-right Republicans who have scorned the video.

Cuomo visited all five city boroughs yesterday while Sliwa crisscrossed the city pushing his “tough on crime” message.

The race has centered on cost of living, crime and how each candidate would handle Trump, who has threatened to withhold federal funds from the city.

“If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home,” Trump wrote on social media.

A vote for Curtis Sliwa (who looks much better without the beret!) is a vote for Mamdani. Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice. You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!

Mamdani fired back during a canvassing event in Queens.

“What was rumored, what was feared has become naked and unabashed — the ‘MAGA’ movement’s embrace of Andrew Cuomo,” he said.

Mamdani’s improbable ascent to the cusp of leading America’s biggest city has also sent shock waves through the Democratic Party, which is struggling to decide whether to embrace a centrist or a populist, leftist path.

“I think that this has to be a party that actually allows Americans to see themselves in it and not just be a mirror image of just a few people who are engaged in politics,” Mamdani said at a dance event with the elderly on Friday.

Big test of US mood

Elsewhere in the US, voters in the states of New Jersey and Virginia will pick a new governor. 

In New Jersey, Democratic Party candidate Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, faces off against Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a businessman backed by Trump, with the two neck-and-neck according to polling.

In Virginia’s race for governor, Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger has been polling comfortably ahead of Virginia’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears.

Both sides have wheeled out big guns, with former president Barack Obama rallying support for Spanberger and Sherrill at two separate events over the weekend and Trump scheduling tele-rallies for both Virginia and New Jersey on the eve of voting.

Obama also reportedly spoke to Mamdani over the weekend but – reflecting the internal party debate – held off endorsing him.

- With reporting by © – AFP 2025

Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone...
A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.
Learn More Support The Journal