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There was Andrew Cuomo, at Madison Square Garden, yukking it up at a Knicks game.
What was the ousted governor so happy about? He’d just come from the final New York mayoral debate, where he landed some blows against front-runner Zohran Mamdani, but he’s still on track to lose the election.
Ah, but the appearance at an NBA game (the league suddenly tainted by a gambling scandal that includes the Mafia!) – was a photo op, with Mayor Eric Adams, who endorsed his onetime rival yesterday.
So what if he called Cuomo “a snake and a liar” last month?
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Yet Adams, who had been indicted on corruption charges–until the Trump Justice Department dropped the case–was down in the single digits. So his backing may not move many votes, though it could give Cuomo some street cred in the Black community and among Orthodox Jews.
New York City politics is a game of nine-dimensional chess, with shifting alliances, red-hot rivalries and clashing narratives. Speaking as a native, you’ve got to understand the melting pot, the boroughs, the ethnic neighborhoods, Wall Street, Albany–it’s an asphalt jungle.
New York mayors tend to become national figures–John Lindsay, Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg–by reigning in the media capital.
You think it’s a coincidence that Donald Trump, Andrew Cuomo, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are all from New York? C’mon! Whatsa madder wid you?
Mamdani, an assemblyman who started out at 1 percent, should have been clobbered by Cuomo, who ran a lazy, entitled effort and lost the Democratic nomination.
From left, Mayoral candidates Independent candidate former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani participate in a mayoral debate, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, in New York. (Angelina Katsanis, Pool/AP Photo)
From Harlem to Coney Island, Mamdani proved to be a charismatic campaigner. He will likely win even if the Republican, Curtis Sliwa, formerly of the Guardian Angels, drops out, which he has no incentive to do.
So the race has morphed into a Stop-Mamdani movement, mainly because he is a self-described democratic socialist who in the past has taken some far-left stances, such as defunding the police. Republicans would love to make him a national symbol of the party; Trump regularly denounces him as a “communist.” Yet even many Democrats worry about him driving business out of the Apple.
Cuomo, as the son of a governor, inevitably seems the establishment candidate. And Andrew, who I’ve known since he was 25, before he ran HUD, has the baggage of being forced to resign over allegations of sexual harassment by 13 women–with Mamdani announcing that one of them, Charlotte Bennett, was in the debate audience.
Cuomo, off balance, said no charges had ever been filed. Trump, by the way, pulled the same move in a debate with Hillary Clinton.
Andrew Cuomo was also blamed for nursing home deaths during the pandemic.
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The New York Times has seven “takeaways,” such as Cuomo having “more energy” and landing “more blows” against Mamdani: “He’s never run anything, managed anything; he’s never had a real job.”
In a classic New York putdown, the ex-governor said Trump would roll right over Mamdani: “He thinks he’s a kid and he’s going to knock him on his tuchus.” (You can look it up. Mayor Koch once called someone a “schmuck” and there was a whole editors’ debate over whether I could print that.)
Mamdani countered that Cuomo would merely be “Trump’s puppet.”
If you’re getting the impression that the president is pretty unpopular in his home city, now abandoned for Palm Beach, you’re right.
Both rivals hit Mamdani on Israel, with Sliwa saying his two young sons, who are Jewish, feel unsafe.
That is one of the key points in the Washington Post, which clocks in at five “takeaways.”
“He does not think the country should exist as a majority-Jewish state and should instead focus on equal rights for both Palestinians and Jews. In this debate, the attacks on Mamdani, who is Muslim, seemed to land harder, even as Mamdani insisted he would fight anti-Semitism.”
Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani (R) Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa (L) and Independent candidate and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo participate in the second New York City mayoral debate at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Queens, New York, on October 22, 2025. (Hiroko MASUIKE / POOL / AFP)
Which brings us to a far more personal assault from Times columnist Bret Stephens, under the headline “Why Mamdani Scares Jews Like Me.”
He invokes some lesser-known stances from the past.
One, when Mamdani founded the Bowdoin College chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, he stopped cooperating with the left-wing Jewish group J Street, which backs Palestinian statehood and opposes Israeli settlements
“Why? Because J Street supports Israel as ‘a democratic homeland for the Jewish people.’ This was too much for Mamdani…who to this day does not support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.”
Two, Mamdani wrote a rap song in 2017 declaring love for “the Holy Land Five…The Holy Land Foundation was an ostensible charity convicted in 2008 of funneling $12 million to Hamas,” with the defendants convicted of terrorism and other crimes.
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Three, a few months before the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas, Mamdani introduced a bill “that could have jeopardized the tax-exempt status of virtually every pro-Israel charity.” Stephens accuses the front-runner of “monomania.”
This is no small matter in a city with the world’s largest Jewish population outside Israel. But Mamdani has met with rabbis and some younger Jewish voters are backing him, either because they’re focused on his affordability campaign or oppose the damage and death toll that Israel has inflicted on Gaza.
And get this: Cuomo just pulled down an AI ad showing Mamdani supporters as looters, drunk drivers as human traffickers. “Just disgusting,” said Zohran.
So that about wraps this piece up, right?
Sit down! There’s always more drama in the city that never sleeps.
Curtis Sliwa suddenly quit his job at New York’s top talk radio station, WABC (a rock station back in my day).
Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa participates in the second New York City mayoral debate with Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani and Independent candidate and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Queens, New York, on October 22, 2025. (Photo by Hiroko MASUIKE / POOL / AFP) (Photo by HIROKO MASUIKE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) ((Photo by Hiroko MASUIKE / POOL / AFP) (Photo by HIROKO MASUIKE/POOL/AFP via Getty Images))
“You will never see me at the studios of WABC again!” he thundered.
Sliwa said people that he hired and trained were betraying him by urging him to quit in order to stop Mamdani.
Billionaire John Catsimatidis, the station owner, who ran for mayor himself a decade ago, has also suggested he bow out.
Sliwa told host Sid Rosenberg that WABC is biased toward Cuomo. “You’re gonna lose and you’re gonna lose badly, embarrassingly,” Rosenberg said as their shouting match grew louder.
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I have no idea why Curtis Sliwa would give up the gig. But as the politicians know, New York is an outta-my-way, horn-honking place where everyone takes turns being mad at each other.
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