NYC mayoral candidates make final push ahead of Election Day

Political analyst Jefferey Bloodworth discusses why he thinks Zohran Mamdani will be the next mayor of New York City and why it may not be a close race.

From Coney Island to the Bronx, the candidates in New York City’s mayoral race spent Monday crisscrossing the five boroughs in a final, frenzied day of campaigning on the eve of Election Day.

As candidates made final pitch to voters, President Donald Trump urged New Yorkers to cast their ballot for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo over Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in an effort to defeat Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani. The president posted that voters “really have no choice.”

The campaign hurtled toward its end after more than 735,000 votes were cast during the city’s nine days of early, in-person voting -- more than four times the number of ballots cast during the only other mayor’s race to allow early voting, in 2021.

The tally was well short of the nearly 1.1 million early, in-person votes cast during last year’s presidential election, but some voting locations saw large crowds Sunday, the last day of early voting. The line at one polling place in downtown Brooklyn snaked around the building and, at one point, took an hour to cast a ballot.

A frenzied last stretch

Cuomo’s schedule was packed Monday, with stops in each of the boroughs for a get-out-the-vote effort. He wasted little time in attacking Mamdani. At one early stop, the former governor likened a potential Mamdani administration to left-wing governments in Latin America.

“Socialism didn’t work in Venezuela. Socialism didn’t work in Cuba. Socialism is not going to work in New York City,” he said.

Cuomo, 67, is trying to make his return to political office after resigning as governor four years ago following a barrage of sexual harassment accusations that he denies. A Democrat running as an independent, he’s shifted to wooing Republican voters to bolster his centrist base, pitching himself as the only candidate who can stop Mamdani.

Mamdani kicked off the day by crossing the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise. By the time the sun went down, he was giving a pep talk to canvassers in Queens.

“With close to just 24 hours until the polls close, let us leave everything out there on the field, my friends,” Mamdani told cheering supporters. “Let us do it together. Let us work so hard this evening and tomorrow that we never have to ask ourselves the question: `What if?”'

Mamdani, a state assemblymember who would be the city’s first Muslim mayor, beat Cuomo in the primary with an energetic campaign focused on making the city a more affordable place to live.

Mamdani’s busy weekend of campaigning included nightclub appearances, watching the Buffalo Bills at a bar with Gov. Kathy Hochul and attending a Knicks game -- in the nosebleed seats, drawing a contrast with Cuomo’s courtside view a few weeks earlier.

Sliwa, the red beret-wearing creator of the Guardian Angels crime patrol group, visited a subway stop in Brooklyn, laying a wreath for a woman who died last year after being set on fire at the station, before setting off to rally his supporters in the outer boroughs.

“This will be a race where the billionaires, the influencers, the insiders will not pick the next mayor of the city of New York. The people are going to pick the next mayor,” Sliwa told supporters at an evening campaign stop in Brooklyn.

Trump weighs in

Trump, a former New York resident of note, has loomed over the race for months. The Republican president has threatened to arrest Mamdani, deport him and take over the city if he wins.

In a post on Truth Social on Monday, Trump said New Yorkers have “no choice” but to vote for Cuomo, throwing his support behind the former governor as he reiterated a threat to withhold federal funds from the city if Mamdani wins.

“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,” Trump wrote.

The president also echoed a line that Cuomo has stressed in the final weeks of his campaign, saying, “A vote for Curtis Sliwa (who looks much better without the beret!) is a vote for Mamdani.”

Cuomo was not asked directly about the president’s tacit endorsement during an interview Monday evening on WABC Radio but expressed agreement with Trump’s comments.

“The president is right. A vote for Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani. And that’s why this election is now up to the Republicans,” Cuomo said.

Sliwa continued to assert Monday that he was not dropping out of the race.

Mamdani later blasted the “MAGA movement’s embrace” of Cuomo. He told his supporters that Trump believes Cuomo will be the best mayor for his administration, not for New Yorkers.

The battle is on social media, too

Cuomo on Friday released another of the AI-generated ads that have been a fixture of his campaign, this time showing a fake Mamdani going trick-or-treating for Halloween. The video has a disclaimer that it is “AI generated.”

The former governor has been criticized for his use of artificial intelligence in ads, and in one instance pulled down a fabricated ad depicting Mamdani eating rice with his hands and describing his supporters as criminals. A campaign spokesperson said the video was posted in error.

Mamdani, meanwhile, released a social media video of him speaking Arabic -- which, he admits in the ad, “needs some work.” He has previously put out videos speaking Spanish and Bengali.

Anthony Izaguirre, The Associated Press