Cuomo Allies Dump Millions Into NYC Mayoral Race

The Democratic primary to unseat disgraced New York City Mayor Eric Adams is in full swing. With only a few days left to cast ballots, the uber-wealthy and America’s pundit class are doing everything they can to promote former New York governor and current mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo and to tank the prospects of his main opponent: Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani. 

While New York limits mayoral candidates to less than $8 million in direct spending on their campaign, Cuomo turned to PACs and Super PACs to skirt the financial limits. The former governor’s candidacy has seen over $24 million in total spending, most of it from outside groups and his primary Super PAC, called Fix the City. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been the single largest backer of Cuomo’s candidacy, dumping over $8 million into Fix the City. 

The PAC has run TV ads nonstop painting Mamdani as a “radical” who is too “risky” and “dangerous” for New Yorkers. The ad which Fix the City spent over $5.4 million on, repeatedly featured clips of Mamdani in a kurta — a common South Asian garment — which his campaign said was an intentional choice by the PAC given that Mamdani typically dons a suit and tie while campaigning. A Fix the City mailer — which the PAC claimed was a rejected proposal that never made it to circulation — went viral on social media earlier this month, after the Mamdani campaign accused the PAC of Islamophobia for darkening and thickening his beard. 

Cuomo has also seen $2.3 million in support from a group called Housing for All, which has been exclusively funded so far by the New York Apartment Association, a lobbying group for landlords. 

Alongside the string of attack ads painting Mamdani as a radical, the final days of the campaign have also brought with them a series of hysterical headlines from publications that should absolutely know better. “New Yorkers might vote for a socialist mayor, but a Muslim?” mused Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post’s opinion section, determining that Mamdani, if he wins the election, “might have a bigger role to play as the city’s first Muslim mayor than as an advocate for the disenfranchised,” while congratulating New Yorkers for being marginally less Islamophobic than they were in the post 9/11 afterburn.  

The Atlatic’s Michael Powell designated Mamdani’s proposals to tax wealthy corporations in the city in order to fund cheaper groceries, universal childcare, and free municipal buses, a form of socialist “magical realism” that was “disconnected from actual government budgets and organizational charts.” The same article lauds Cuomo for having provided free in-state tuition for low-income New Yorkers, raising the minimum wage, renovating the subway, and expanding pre-kindergarten to much of the state. None of those items apparently qualify as socialist wishcasting. 

The New York Post, the tabloid poltergeist of the Murdoch news empire, advised readers to “Keep menace Zohran Mamdani completely off your NYC ballot in the Democratic mayoral primary” in likely the most aggressive anti-endorsements of the race. The New York Times editorial board similarly urged voters not to rank Mamdani, in a widely-panned opinion.

But while Cuomo allies and the assorted opinion sections may not like what Mamdani has to offer, large swaths of the people of New York certainly do. As of Wednesday, Mamdani has cut Cuomo’s lead in the primary by half when compared to Marist polling done in May. 

The poll did not account for the final barrage of ads, cross endorsements between Mamdani and fellow candidate Brad Lander to accommodate NYC’s ranked-choice voting system, or a debate in which Cuomo was — in all but paper mache and sticks – a piñata for his fellow candidates. 

“Mamdani is clearly in Cuomo’s rearview mirror,” Lee Miringoff, who conducted the poll, told The New York Times, adding that “objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.”