Dem
47
GOP
53
There has been a lot of news recently related to the New York mayoral election, and it's time to get caught up.
When we last visited this subject, we had reports from readers J.R. in New York City and D.C. in Manhattan, both of whom had positive things to say about the campaign of Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani and critical things to say about the campaign of Democrat Andrew Cuomo. This prompted a response from reader J.A. in New York City, which we wanted to share:
I was very interested to read analysis of both J.R. in New York City and D.C. from my home borough of Manhattan. I agree with J.R. that Andrew Cuomo is a deeply flawed candidate and that this race presented New Yorkers with bad options (one could easily draw parallels between this race and the 2016 Presidential Election). And D.C. is correct that Mamdani ran an amazing race against an opponent who seemed to think that this was his race and so ran a terrible campaign. Democrats should carefully study what Mamdani did.
However, unlike what (Z) wrote in his analysis, a deep dive into the election shows that this race was ultimately decided by liberal white voters, mostly those of higher economic strata. The New York Times has a wonderful map that can be broken down to a very granular level. Mamdani ran up numbers in:Cuomo's strongest areas were:
- "Brownstone Brooklyn" (Brooklyn almost single-handedly decided the race)
- Morningside Heights (Columbia University neighborhood) and the area around NYU (Bernie Sanders' endorsement was very helpful)
- Many Hispanic neighborhoods (AOC's endorsement helped tremendously)
- Muslim neighborhoods
The general election, as was noted in (Z)'s write-up, is NOT RCV, so it is quite possible (even likely) that we will end up with a mayor who receives less than 50% of the vote. Cuomo, Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa are all very flawed, but each has a base of support that will vote for them, thus keeping Mamdani below 50%. Even if Cuomo, Adams and Sliwa were to agree that two of the three would step down so as to make it a 2-person race, I don't see their supporters completely uniting to keep Mamdani from winning.
- Working Class whites
- African-American neighborhoods
- Politically moderate neighborhoods
- Hasidic / Yeshiva Neighborhoods (contrary to what J.R. wrote). In Borough Park and Williamsburgh, Cuomo took as much as 90% of the vote.
- In Riverdale (also heavily Jewish), Cuomo beat Mamdani better than 2:1
One other thing—and in this I'm going to disagree with J.R.—while criticism of the current Israeli government does not definitionally make one antisemitic (just as criticism of the current U.S. administration does not, definitionally, make one anti-American), Mamdani is unquestionably antisemitic. To whit:
- He has called for the ending of the Celebrate Israel Day Parade, while leaving all other ethnic pride parades alone
- He has publicly called Israel not to be a Jewish state (which is the same as calling for its destruction)
- He has a long history of calling for academic boycotts of Israel
- As a member of the New York State Assembly, he has consistently refused to support resolutions condemning the Holocaust
Needless to say, Mamdani would not agree with J.A. that he (Mamdani) is antisemitic. But, at very least, the would-be mayor is walking a fine line. For example, he concedes that he has not been a co-sponsor of the last three annual "condemn the Holocaust" resolutions passed by the New York State assembly, because he largely does not co-sponsor any "symbolic" resolutions. Instead, he points to social media posts he made each year in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, as well as his vote to increase funding for support of Holocaust survivors.
A very much related issue that J.A. does not mention is that Mamdani refuses to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada." It is something that he's been asked about several times, including during his first nationally televised interview, on Meet the Press. In short, many/most Jews regard that slogan as a call for violence against Jewish people and/or against Israel, while Mamdani takes the position that "intifada" actually means "resistance" and that it's a statement of Palestinian solidarity. So, while he does not use the phrase himself, he does not condemn it, either.
We are not here to take a position on who is right, and who is wrong, when it comes to "globalize the intifada." What we can say, however, is that this particular issue, and more broadly the concern that Mamdani is antisemitic, is a problem for him. Modern politics does not do nuance well, particularly when it comes to Israel and Palestine. And Mamdani, to be blunt, is not great at explaining where he is coming from. There are undoubtedly many voters who will not accept any explanation for his position on "globalize the intifada." However, even those voters who might be open to his viewpoint, well... we had to read three different statements from him on the subject before we began to grasp his argument. The same is true, to a large extent, of his approach to Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Between the Israel/intifada issue, as well as Mamdani's very lefty political program, other Democrats have been grilled about the race, with some of them doing a lot of tap dancing to avoid stepping on any toes. Some members of the blue team have literally run away from reporters, to avoid answering questions about Mamdani. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who is Jewish, has issued a statement of support for Mamdani, while making clear it is NOT an endorsement. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has done the same. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has implied that she supports Mamdani in the general, but said he should condemn the use of "globalize the intifada." Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who is staunchly pro-Israel, opined that Mamdani is "not even a Democrat, honestly." The candidate does have the endorsements of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jerry Nadler (both D-NY). Sanders and Nadler are both Jewish, it should be noted.
Meanwhile, many Republicans' response is somewhere between "scared witless" and "infuriated." New York-based billionaire Bill Ackman took a break from his burgeoning pro tennis career to announce that he would give "hundreds of millions of dollars" to a viable challenger to Mamdani. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) wants the government to strip Mamdani of his citizenship, and to deport him. And Donald Trump, for his part, has been absolutely apoplectic, slurring Mamdani as a "total nutjob" and threatening to arrest him and to "take over" New York City if he is elected in November.
Although these folks seem to be ignorant of this fact, they are undoubtedly helping Mamdani, rather than hurting him. Although Democrats most certainly cannot agree on Israel and Palestine, they do agree that they loathe Trump. And so, Trump's attacks on Mamdani have caused many Democrats, most obviously Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), to close ranks around the would-be mayor. Truth be told, as much as some people like the criticism of billionaires or the talk about reducing housing prices, "I am the guy Donald Trump despises" is probably the best selling point that Mamdani has working for him.
The New York Times has also continued to make no secret of the fact that they don't want Mamdani as mayor. Most obviously, the paper ran something of a hit piece, based on information that was illegally stolen from Columbia University, and then was passed on to the paper by a white supremacist blogger. The big scoop is that when Mamdani applied to Columbia (he did not get in), he checked the boxes for "Asian" and for "African-American." As Mamdani does not identify as African-American, the Times treated this as a big "gotcha!"
It should be noted (as the Times concedes) that Mamdani most certainly IS African-American. He was born in Uganda, and his father is partly of African descent. The candidate says that he filled out his application in that way because it did not allow him to accurately represent his background and his experience. While we don't have an opinion on the "intifada" issue, as it's not really our place, we think we CAN weigh in here, as academics. And our view is that Mamdani is absolutely right. We struggle to think of ANY form we've filled in for a university that did not have at least one question where we felt our answer wasn't really accurate, but there was no better option. Oh, and as long as we're sharing our opinion (after all, one of us also worked at a newspaper), the Times story is pretty shoddy journalism, and the paper's staff should be embarrassed.
In short, the battle lines are being drawn. On one side are Mamdani and the left-wing populists and progressives. On the other side are the billionaire class, the right-wing populists, and The New York Times. And stuck somewhere in the middle are the more centrist Democrats. It certainly should be interesting.
Because Mamdani looks like he might just be vulnerable, and he might not be able to consolidate the Democratic vote, there has been a lot more jockeying than normally would be the case. Thus far, Republican candidate Sliwa and the "independent" incumbent mayor Adams have stayed the course. Yesterday, in a surprise to absolutely nobody, Cuomo got back in. Since New York City does not have a sore-loser law, Cuomo is allowed to run as an independent, which is what he will do. Although nobody is saying so publicly, we presume he will be the beneficiary of those "hundreds of millions of dollars" that Ackman promised.
Adams and Cuomo see each other as rivals for the "real Democratic" vote, and so each is pressuring the other to drop out. They both have giant egos, so it's doubtful either will fall on his sword for the benefit of the other. There has also been some vague scuttlebutt that the Trump administration will offer Sliwa an ambassadorship, sending him off on a nice vacation to, say, the Bahamas. The idea, obviously, is that his voters would migrate to one of the two high-profile non-Mamdani candidates. Even if the White House tries it, however, it's not clear that Sliwa would accept. And even if Sliwa did accept, it's not clear that his voters would switch their loyalties, as opposed to just leaving that line blank, or sitting this election out.
So, the likeliest outcome is that it's going to be a four-way race (not including minor candidates). Do the ranked-choice primary results give some insight as to what might happen in the non-ranked-choice general election? At this point, we might try to crunch the numbers. However, we don't have to, because reader J.E. in Manhattan, NY beat us to it. Take it away, J.E.:
Looking over the data, I think there are a lot of things the state Democrats should take note of.
First, in big picture terms, it looks like Zohran Mamdani has a very, very good chance of winning in November even if Eric Adams runs as an independent.
Second, the Democratic establishment tried mightily to derail Mamdani and is still trying to do so. But this is going against the will of the voters (or at a minimum, the local Democratic electorate) as demonstrated by the votes Mamdani got.
One of the things the data tells you is that Mamdani was a second choice of a pretty solid majority of the non-first-choice votes. That is, while you can't quite see whether he was second or third for the people who voted for Adrienne Adams, for example, when you look at the votes transferred to both Mamdani and Cuomo, it's clear that wherever Cuomo fell on people's lists, he was clearly not high on about two thirds of them.
This is pretty significant, because in the last mayoral election the vote was Adams, 753,801; Sliwa, 312,385.
Let's assume Curtis Sliwa gets all the votes he had the first time around. Mamdani had more than that just from the people who voted for him as first choice in the primary.
So if only the people who voted for him first choice vote Mamdani, and Sliwa gets the same vote count he got before, and the remaining 307,000 voters who voted for Adams in 2021 vote for him, Mamdani wins, if relatively narrowly: 446,163 (Mamdani) to 307,638 (Adams) to 312,385 (Sliwa).
Basically, Adams or Sliwa would have to peel off a sizable portion of the electorate that voted in the Democratic primary. After Mamdani and Cuomo, Brad Lander got the next biggest haul of votes in the primary, 115,105. A large chunk of Lander's vote would have had Mamdani as a second choice, judging by how the votes got transferred. I have difficulty envisioning these people voting for Adams, Sliwa, or even Cuomo.
But even if every Lander voter were to vote for Adams—not terribly realistic, I might add—that would still not put Adams over the top.
Could Adams peel off votes from Sliwa's constituency? Possibly, but he would still need a third of it and that seems a stretch, given where Adams' base is.
What if Cuomo decides to run? Well, Cuomo still didn't get the votes of most of the Democratic electorate. He got 374,818 voters to rank him first. He needs an additional 70,000 votes just to match Mamdani's primary total, and since Lander's voters are far more likely to vote for Mamdani (remember, Lander basically told them to support Mamdani), Mamdani seems to already have on the order of 500,000 votes in the bag.
Cuomo would need to peel off 70,000 votes from the people who voted in the primary plus some portion of people who voted for Adams last time. So if Cuomo wants to get by with a plurality, it seems that Adams and Sliwa would have to suffer pretty historic losses relative to their primary totals. That's possible, but it seems unlikely.
Could Sliwa do that? Only if a lot of Mamdani voters decide not to come to the polls at all and Mamdani loses a very large portion of the Democratic vote in the next few months.
And again I will turn to some big-picture stuff: The NYC Democratic electorate has made it pretty clear that the older establishment Democrats aren't selling something they want to buy. Right now the Democratic leadership is spending more time attacking Mamdani and pulling out some pretty bigoted stuff to do it than they are fighting the fascists who are threatening the very lives of many of our citizens. This isn't lost on anyone here. I would invite Democrats to look up what happened when the SPD spent its time going after the KPD in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s. This did not end well.
Thanks, J.E.!
We'll add that there's already a poll of the general election, and it supports J.E.'s conclusion. The poll, conducted by Slingshot Strategies, says that Mamdani has the backing of 35% of registered voters, followed by Cuomo at 25%, Sliwa at 14%, and Adams at 11%. Another 2% goes to lesser candidates, while 13% of respondents are uncertain.
It certainly could get interesting if Adams drops out, and the majority of his support migrates to Cuomo. But, failing that, it looks like it's Mamdani's race to lose. Of course, there's enough time, and he's got enough potential liabilities, that such an outcome is certainly in the realm of possibility. (Z)