In Crowded N.Y.C. Mayor's Race, Zellnor Myrie Needs a Breakthrough
Zellnor Myrie, a state senator running for mayor, is Afro-Latino in a city where 51 percent of residents identify as Black or Latino. He is well regarded by his colleagues in the State Legislature, where he has championed left-leaning proposals like the John R. Lewis New York Voting Rights Act and legislation that allows the state and individuals to sue gun manufacturers.
He grew up in a rent-stabilized apartment in New York City, attended its public schools and is a rabid New York Knicks fan — a loyalty he seems keen to highlight. (He has been a guest on a Knicks podcast, been pictured in the back seat of a sedan watching a Knicks playoff game on his laptop and has appeared outside the Garden, asking that free tickets be given to working-class fans.)
All of it is meant to further the idea that New York deserves a mayor who understands ordinary New Yorkers' struggles — much as the city's current mayor, Eric Adams, suggested he did four years ago. Mr. Myrie, 38, firmly believes that he is the person to properly fulfill that legacy, and that the race's front-runner, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, is not.
'One has to wonder how you can be the person to fix our affordability crisis when you have no clue whatsoever what it's like to struggle to pay your rent,' Mr. Myrie said at a recent news conference outside the Sutton Place apartment building in Manhattan where Mr. Cuomo now lives. 'You need a mayor that understands that struggle, that is living it. I'm on the subway every day. I got student loans like everybody else.'
His mayoral platform includes proposals to build one million new homes over the next decade and provide free universal after-school care.
Yet Mr. Myrie's messaging has yet to translate into voter support. Recent polls show him firmly ensconced among a group of second-tier candidates far behind Mr. Cuomo and the closest runner-up, Zohran Mamdani, a left-leaning state assemblyman from Queens.
Many in the political establishment assumed that Mr. Myrie would run a high-energy, insurgent campaign like Mr. Mamdani has, challenging the moderate Democratic orthodoxy represented by Mr. Adams.
Mr. Mamdani has leaned hard into his democratic socialist roots, promising free buses and a freeze for rent-stabilized apartments, But Mr. Myrie has been more interested in demonstrating how the city could be better managed and has been less focused on being the progressive candidate — even though his bona fides include sponsoring the Clean Slate Act, which sealed criminal records for millions of people.
Asked at a recent forum whether he would support a rent freeze, Mr. Myrie gave a winding answer about the importance of appointing qualified people to the Rent Guidelines Board. He talked about how his mother lives in a rent-stabilized building where the elevator frequently breaks down and highlighted his fight for tenant protection legislation.
'So you're not committing to a rent freeze?' asked Ayana Harry, a reporter for NY1 and the event moderator.
'That's right, that's right,' Mr. Myrie said to jeers from some in the audience. He later said that he supports a rent freeze this year but would have to examine the data each year before making a decision.
He also remains relatively unknown. Standing recently in the pulpit of City Tabernacle Seventh Day Adventist Church in West Harlem, Mr. Myrie laid out a vision to fight President Trump, build more housing and tackle gun violence as the crowd gave its approval with nods and amens. As the noise died down, one parishioner in the pews leaned forward to ask another a question: 'What's his name again?'
Liz Krueger, a state senator from Manhattan who has endorsed Mr. Myrie as one of two candidates to include on a ranked-choice ballot, said she is not surprised he has struggled, given voters' familiarity with Mr. Cuomo and the allure of Mr. Mamdani's social media skills.
'Zohran has clearly figured out how you use your personal charisma and controversy to build attention to himself,' Ms. Krueger said. 'Andrew Cuomo just has so much name recognition, and he's in the newspapers twice, three times, every day.'
With less than eight weeks until the June 24 Democratic primary, Mr. Myrie remains hopeful. He recently received the endorsement of the left-leaning Working Families Party and was ranked third in a group endorsement by District Council 37, the city's largest municipal union.
He has raised more than $3.5 million, including public matching funds, and has $2.8 million on hand. His campaign believes that a deluge of paid advertisements in the next few weeks will help improve his name recognition.
His first television ad, released on Tuesday, highlighted his working-class roots, with one of his public-school teachers reciting his accomplishments and listing a few of his proposals, including increasing affordable housing and creating after-school programs for all.
As Mr. Adams did in 2021, Mr. Myrie argues that a mayor should have firsthand knowledge of the struggles New Yorkers face. The son of Costa Rican immigrants who were undocumented when he was born, he says he understands the fears immigrants are facing under the federal threat of mass deportations.
Like many New Yorkers, he says he worries that he and his wife, Diana Richardson, a former assemblywoman, will struggle to purchase a home. He talks about being in therapy.
He has also sought to underscore how he is anything but a staid, button-down politician. Mr. Myrie is an avowed sneaker head who wore a pair of black, purple and teal Air Jordan Six retro sneakers to a recent forum. He served as the D.J. at a recent fund-raiser. His friends call him 'Z.'
He was the only boy on his middle-school step team and performed his old moves at a mayoral forum in February while he was promoting his plan for universal after school.
Mr. Myrie has tried to convey some of that personality on social media, emulating a bit of Mr. Mamdani's successes there. In one video, he jokes about how he would be the first person with the astrological sign of Scorpio to become mayor. He joked recently that as mayor he planned to unify the way New Yorkers pronounce DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn.
'My experience with Zellnor is that the more you get to know him, the more you're impressed by him,' Representative Dan Goldman of New York, one of Mr. Myrie's earliest and most prominent endorsers, said. 'He is a very smart, creative, thoughtful, and pragmatic elected official who's gotten a lot done in Albany and has really lived the true New York City experience.'
There is another quality that some have ascribed to Mr. Myrie: his apparent nerdiness. Mr. Adams, appearing at the annual Inner Circle charity event in April, sardonically referred to Mr. Myrie as Steve Urkel, the geeky character from the 1990s television show 'Family Matters.'
Mr. Myrie sometimes embraces that image. After his news conference calling for free Knicks tickets, he held a trivia night fund-raiser which he advertised by calling himself a New York 'history nerd.'
Chi Ossé, who represents Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and is the youngest member of the City Council, has created a series of social media videos about why things don't work in the city. He recently announced a group endorsement of three candidates, including Mr. Mamdani, but not Mr. Myrie.
Mr. Mamdani's videos are 'digestible, witty and entertaining' and pull the audience in, allowing viewers to feel a deeper connection with the issues being addressed, Mr. Ossé said.
'Nerdiness doesn't translate as well on social media,' he added.
A major part of Mr. Myrie's campaign strategy was to be built around the idea that his legislative record demonstrated a level of competence that he said Mayor Adams lacked. But Mr. Cuomo's late entry in the race has complicated Mr. Myrie's bid to run on competence.
'There's no question that from an experience standpoint, Andrew Cuomo has the most in terms of managerial and executive experience,' Mr. Goldman conceded.
Mr. Myrie's advisers point out that a significant chunk of voters are still undecided, and that late-stage surges have been common in previous mayoral campaigns.
'I'm hustling very hard. I'm in churches, I'm at subway stations. I go to community events. I hop all around the city,' Mr. Myrie said in an interview. 'I'm doing all of the things that you need to do to build up that name recognition.'
And he is doing what he can to turn voters away from Mr. Cuomo. He launched a website tracking the days since Mr. Cuomo had last spoken against Trump policies, and another counting the number of times Mr. Cuomo had taken questions from reporters.
At a recent Black Agenda Forum in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, Mr. Myrie took the stage in a blue suit and neon green Nike sneakers.
'We got to stop letting people come in our space, asking for our vote when they have not been here for our struggle,' Mr. Myrie said, in a clear but unnamed reference to Mr. Cuomo. He delivered the two minute-long broadside with vigor, drawing only a smattering of applause in front of a crowd that was friendly to the former governor.
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Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
As Trump's raids ramp up, a Texas region's residents stay inside — even when they need medical care
WESLACO, Texas — These days, Juanita says a prayer every time she steps off the driveway of her modest rural home. The 41-year-old mother, who crossed into the United States from Mexico more than two decades ago and married an American carpenter, fears federal agents may be on the hunt for her. As she was about to leave for the pharmacy late last month, her husband called with a frantic warning: Immigration enforcement officers were swarming the store's parking lot. Juanita, who is prediabetic, skipped filling medications that treat her nutrient deficiencies. She also couldn't risk being detained because she has to care for her 17-year-old daughter, who has Down syndrome. ICE arrests increase across Chicago under Trump, many with no convictions, data shows'If I am caught, who's going to help my daughter?' Juanita asks in Spanish, through an interpreter. Some people quoted in this story insisted that The Associated Press publish only their first names because of concerns over their immigration status. As the Trump administration intensifies deportation activity around the country, some immigrants — including many who have lived in Texas's southern tip for decades — are unwilling to leave their homes, even for necessary medical care. Tucked behind the freeway strip malls, roadside taquerias and vast citrus groves that span this 160-mile stretch of the Rio Grande Valley are people like Juanita, who need critical medical care in one of the nation's poorest and unhealthiest regions. For generations, Mexican families have harmoniously settled — some legally, some not — in this predominately Latino community where immigration status was once hardly top of mind. White House officials have directed federal agents to leave no location unchecked, including hospitals and churches, in their drive to remove 1 million immigrants by year's end. Those agents are even combing through the federal government's largest medical record databases to search for immigrants who may be in the United States illegally. Deportations and tougher restrictions will come with consequences, says Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors restrictive immigration policies. 'We shouldn't have let it get out of hand the way we did,' Krikorian says of the previous administration's immigration policies. 'Some businesses are going to have difficulties. Some communities are going to face difficulties.' Federal agents' raids began reaching deeper into everyday life across the Rio Grande Valley in June, just as the area's 1.4 million residents began their summer ritual of enduring the suffocating heat. This working-class stretch of Texas solidly backed Trump in the 2024 election, despite campaign promises to ruthlessly pursue mass deportations. People here, who once moved regularly from the U.S. to Mexico to visit relatives or get cheap dental care, say they didn't realize his deportation campaign would focus on their neighbors. But in recent weeks, restaurant workers have been escorted out mid-shift and farmers have suddenly lost field workers. Schoolchildren talk openly about friends who lost a parent in raids. More than a dozen were arrested last month at local flea markets, according to local news reports and Border Patrol officials. Immigrants are staying shut inside their mobiles homes and shacks that make up the 'colonias,' zoning-free neighborhoods that sometimes don't have access to running water or electricity, says Sandra de la Cruz-Yarrison, who runs the Holy Family Services, Inc. clinic in Weslaco, Texas. 'People are not going to risk it,' de la Cruz-Yarrison says. 'People are being stripped from their families.' Yet people here are among the most medically needy in the country. Nearly half the population is obese. Women are more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer and elderly people are more likely to develop dementia. Bladder cancers can be more aggressive. One out of every four people lives with diabetes. As much as a third of the population doesn't have health insurance to cover those ailments. And a quarter of people live in poverty, more than double the national average. Now, many in this region are on a path to develop worse health outcomes as they skip doctors appointments out of fear, says Dr. Stanley Fisch, a pediatrician who helped open Driscoll Children's Hospital in the region last year. 'We've always had, unfortunately, people who have gone with untreated diabetes for a long time and now it's compounded with these other issues at the moment,' Fisch says. 'This is a very dangerous situation for people. The population is suffering accordingly.' Elvia was the unlucky — and unsuspecting — patient who sat down for the finger prick the clinic offers everyone during its monthly educational meeting for community members. As blood oozed out of her finger, the monitor registered a 194 glucose level, indicating she is prediabetic. She balked at the idea of writing down her address for regular care at Holy Family Services' clinic. Nor did she want to enroll in Medicaid, the federal and state funded program that provides health care coverage to the poorest Americans. Although she is a legal resident, some people living in her house do not have legal status. Fewer people have come to Holy Family Services' clinic with coverage in recent months, says billing coordinator Elizabeth Reta. Over decades, the clinic's midwifery staff has helped birth thousands of babies in bathtubs or on cozy beds in birthing houses situated throughout the campus. But now, Reta says, some parents are too scared to sign those children up for health insurance because they do not want to share too much information with the government. 'Even people I personally know that used to have Medicaid for their children that were born here — that are legally here, but the parents are not — they stopped requesting Medicaid,' Reta says. Their worry is well-founded. An Associated Press investigation last week revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have gained access to personal health data — including addresses — of the nation's 79 million Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program enrollees. The disclosure will allow ICE officials to receive 'identity and location information of aliens,' documents obtained by the AP say. In Texas, the governor started requiring emergency room staff to ask patients about their legal status, a move that doctors have argued will dissuade immigrants from seeking needed care. State officials have said the data will show how much money is spent on care for immigrants who may not be here legally. Federal law requires emergency rooms to treat any patients who come to the doors. Visits to Holy Family Services' mobile clinic have stopped altogether since Trump took office. The van, which once offered checkups at the doorsteps in the colonias, now sits running on idle. Its constant hum is heard throughout the clinic's campus, to keep medical supplies fresh in the 100-degree temperatures. 'These were hard-hit communities that really needed the services,' de la Cruz-Yarrison says. 'People were just not coming after the administration changed.' Immigrants were less likely to seek medical care during Trump's first term, multiple studies concluded. A 2023 study of well-child visits in Boston, Minneapolis and Little Rock, Arkansas, noted a 5% drop for children who were born to immigrant mothers after Trump was elected in 2016. The study also noted declines in visits when news about Trump's plans to tighten immigration rules broke throughout his first term. 'It's a really high-anxiety environment where they're afraid to talk to the pediatrician, go to school or bring their kids to child care,' says Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba, a Boston University researcher who oversaw the study. A delayed trip to the doctor almost cost 82-year-old Maria Isabel de Perez her son this spring. He refused to seek help for his intense and constant stomach pains for weeks, instead popping Tylenol daily so he could still labor in the farm fields of Arkansas, she says. He put off going to the hospital as rumors swirled that immigration enforcement officials were outside of the hospital. 'He waited and waited because he felt the pain but was too scared to go to the hospital,' she explains in Spanish through an interpreter. 'He couldn't go until the appendix exploded.' Her son is still recovering after surgery and has not been able to return to work, she says. Perez is a permanent resident who has lived in the United States for 40 years. But all of her children were born in Mexico, and, because she is a green card holder, she cannot sponsor them for citizenship. Maria, meanwhile, only leaves her house to volunteer at Holy Family Services' food bank. She's skipped work on nearby farms. And after last month's arrests, she won't sell clothes for money at the flea market anymore. So she stuffs cardboard boxes with loaves of bread, potatoes, peppers and beans that will be handed out to the hungry. Before the raids began, about 130 people would drive up to collect a box of food from Maria. But on this sweltering June day, only 68 people show up for food. She brings home a box every week to her children, ages 16, 11 and 4, who are spending the summer shut inside. Her 16-year-old daughter has skipped the checkup she needs to refill her depression medication. The teenager, who checks in on friends whose parents have been arrested in immigration raids through a text group chat, insists she is 'doing OK.' Maria left Mexico years ago because dangerous gangs rule her hometown, she explains. She's married now to an American truck driver. 'We're not bad people,' Maria says from her dining room table, where her 4-year-old son happily eats a lime green popsicle. 'We just want to have a better future for our children.' Juanita, the prediabetic mother who hasn't filled her prescriptions out of fear, was not sure when she would brave the pharmacy again. But with a cross hanging around her neck, the devout Catholic says she will say three invocations before she does. Explains her 15-year-old son, Jose: 'We always pray before we leave.'
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
As Trump's raids ramp up, a Texas region's residents stay inside — even when they need medical care
These days, Juanita says a prayer every time she steps off the driveway of her modest rural home. The 41-year-old mother, who crossed into the United States from Mexico more than two decades ago and married an American carpenter, fears federal agents may be on the hunt for her. As she was about to leave for the pharmacy late last month, her husband called with a frantic warning: Immigration enforcement officers were swarming the store's parking lot. Juanita, who is prediabetic, skipped filling medications that treat her nutrient deficiencies. She also couldn't risk being detained because she has to care for her 17-year-old daughter, who has Down syndrome. 'If I am caught, who's going to help my daughter?" Juanita asks in Spanish, through an interpreter. Some people quoted in this story insisted that The Associated Press publish only their first names because of concerns over their immigration status. As the Trump administration intensifies deportation activity around the country, some immigrants — including many who have lived in Texas's southern tip for decades — are unwilling to leave their homes, even for necessary medical care. Tucked behind the freeway strip malls, roadside taquerias and vast citrus groves that span this 160-mile stretch of the Rio Grande Valley are people like Juanita, who need critical medical care in one of the nation's poorest and unhealthiest regions. For generations, Mexican families have harmoniously settled — some legally, some not — in this predominately Latino community where immigration status was once hardly top of mind. White House officials have directed federal agents to leave no location unchecked, including hospitals and churches, in their drive to remove 1 million immigrants by year's end. Those agents are even combing through the federal government's largest medical record databases to search for immigrants who may be in the United States illegally. Deportations and tougher restrictions will come with consequences, says Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors restrictive immigration policies. 'We shouldn't have let it get out of hand the way we did,' Krikorian says of the previous administration's immigration policies. 'Some businesses are going to have difficulties. Some communities are going to face difficulties." Federal agents' raids began reaching deeper into everyday life across the Rio Grande Valley in June, just as the area's 1.4 million residents began their summer ritual of enduring the suffocating heat. This working-class stretch of Texas solidly backed Trump in the 2024 election, despite campaign promises to ruthlessly pursue mass deportations. People here, who once moved regularly from the U.S. to Mexico to visit relatives or get cheap dental care, say they didn't realize his deportation campaign would focus on their neighbors. But in recent weeks, restaurant workers have been escorted out mid-shift and farmers have suddenly lost field workers. Schoolchildren talk openly about friends who lost a parent in raids. More than a dozen were arrested last month at local flea markets, according to local news reports and Border Patrol officials. Immigrants are staying shut inside their mobiles homes and shacks that make up the 'colonias," zoning-free neighborhoods that sometimes don't have access to running water or electricity, says Sandra de la Cruz-Yarrison, who runs the Holy Family Services, Inc. clinic in Weslaco, Texas. 'People are not going to risk it,' de la Cruz-Yarrison says. 'People are being stripped from their families.' Yet people here are among the most medically needy in the country. Nearly half the population is obese. Women are more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer and elderly people are more likely to develop dementia. Bladder cancers can be more aggressive. One out of every four people lives with diabetes. As much as a third of the population doesn't have health insurance to cover those ailments. And a quarter of people live in poverty, more than double the national average. Now, many in this region are on a path to develop worse health outcomes as they skip doctors appointments out of fear, says Dr. Stanley Fisch, a pediatrician who helped open Driscoll Children's Hospital in the region last year. 'We've always had, unfortunately, people who have gone with untreated diabetes for a long time and now it's compounded with these other issues at the moment,' Fisch says. 'This is a very dangerous situation for people. The population is suffering accordingly.' Trepidations about going to clinics are spreading Elvia was the unlucky — and unsuspecting — patient who sat down for the finger prick the clinic offers everyone during its monthly educational meeting for community members. As blood oozed out of her finger, the monitor registered a 194 glucose level, indicating she is prediabetic. She balked at the idea of writing down her address for regular care at Holy Family Services' clinic. Nor did she want to enroll in Medicaid, the federal and state funded program that provides health care coverage to the poorest Americans. Although she is a legal resident, some people living in her house do not have legal status. Fewer people have come to Holy Family Services' clinic with coverage in recent months, says billing coordinator Elizabeth Reta. Over decades, the clinic's midwifery staff has helped birth thousands of babies in bathtubs or on cozy beds in birthing houses situated throughout the campus. But now, Reta says, some parents are too scared to sign those children up for health insurance because they do not want to share too much information with the government. 'Even people I personally know that used to have Medicaid for their children that were born here — that are legally here, but the parents are not — they stopped requesting Medicaid," Reta says. Their worry is well-founded. An Associated Press investigation last week revealed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have gained access to personal health data — including addresses — of the nation's 79 million Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program enrollees. The disclosure will allow ICE officials to receive 'identity and location information of aliens,' documents obtained by the AP say. In Texas, the governor started requiring emergency room staff to ask patients about their legal status, a move that doctors have argued will dissuade immigrants from seeking needed care. State officials have said the data will show how much money is spent on care for immigrants who may not be here legally. Federal law requires emergency rooms to treat any patients who come to the doors. Visits to Holy Family Services' mobile clinic have stopped altogether since Trump took office. The van, which once offered checkups at the doorsteps in the colonias, now sits running on idle. Its constant hum is heard throughout the clinic's campus, to keep medical supplies fresh in the 100-degree temperatures. 'These were hard-hit communities that really needed the services,' de la Cruz-Yarrison says. 'People were just not coming after the administration changed.' A mother almost loses a son. A daughter is too scared to visit the doctor Immigrants were less likely to seek medical care during Trump's first term, multiple studies concluded. A 2023 study of well-child visits in Boston, Minneapolis and Little Rock, Arkansas, noted a 5% drop for children who were born to immigrant mothers after Trump was elected in 2016. The study also noted declines in visits when news about Trump's plans to tighten immigration rules broke throughout his first term. 'It's a really high-anxiety environment where they're afraid to talk to the pediatrician, go to school or bring their kids to child care,' says Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba, a Boston University researcher who oversaw the study. A delayed trip to the doctor almost cost 82-year-old Maria Isabel de Perez her son this spring. He refused to seek help for his intense and constant stomach pains for weeks, instead popping Tylenol daily so he could still labor in the farm fields of Arkansas, she says. He put off going to the hospital as rumors swirled that immigration enforcement officials were outside of the hospital. 'He waited and waited because he felt the pain but was too scared to go to the hospital,' she explains in Spanish through an interpreter. 'He couldn't go until the appendix exploded.' Her son is still recovering after surgery and has not been able to return to work, she says. Perez is a permanent resident who has lived in the United States for 40 years. But all of her children were born in Mexico, and, because she is a green card holder, she cannot sponsor them for citizenship. Maria, meanwhile, only leaves her house to volunteer at Holy Family Services' food bank. She's skipped work on nearby farms. And after last month's arrests, she won't sell clothes for money at the flea market anymore. So she stuffs cardboard boxes with loaves of bread, potatoes, peppers and beans that will be handed out to the hungry. Before the raids began, about 130 people would drive up to collect a box of food from Maria. But on this sweltering June day, only 68 people show up for food. She brings home a box every week to her children, ages 16, 11 and 4, who are spending the summer shut inside. Her 16-year-old daughter has skipped the checkup she needs to refill her depression medication. The teenager, who checks in on friends whose parents have been arrested in immigration raids through a text group chat, insists she is 'doing OK.' Maria left Mexico years ago because dangerous gangs rule her hometown, she explains. She's married now to an American truck driver. 'We're not bad people,' Maria says from her dining room table, where her 4-year-old son happily eats a lime green popsicle. 'We just want to have a better future for our children.' Juanita, the prediabetic mother who hasn't filled her prescriptions out of fear, was not sure when she would brave the pharmacy again. But with a cross hanging around her neck, the devout Catholic says she will say three invocations before she does.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
New York establishment Democrats mull over Mamdani charm offensive
New York Democrats cool to their party's Big Apple mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani are weighing their options as the 33-year-old progressive makes his own pitch to centrists that they should back him. The Democratic establishment has been looking for alternatives, but none really satisfy. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week announced an independent run after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani, but a number of Democrats who spoke to The Hill have doubts he can win. Some also haven't forgotten past Cuomo controversies. Incumbent Eric Adams is also running as an independent, but he has had a scandal-tarred career and his tilting toward MAGA and Trump World hasn't won him too many friends in the Democratic establishment. Political observers say there aren't enough moderates to go around for one — let alone two candidates — and if the establishment wants to prevail, either Adams or Cuomo should exit the race. 'You can't have multiple alternatives,' said Grant Reeher, the director of Syracuse University's Campbell Public Affairs Institute. 'I just don't see any way that Mamdani doesn't win unless one of these folks drops out.' 'If I was a Democratic strategist for the whole party in New York City, and I commanded authority, I would put Adams and Cuomo in a room, and I would say, 'You guys are going to flip a coin,'' he added. A HarrisX poll out earlier this month — before Cuomo announced his independent bid — showed Adams trailing with 13 percent of the vote and Mamdani leading with 26 percent, followed by Cuomo at 23 percent, and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa at 22 percent. In a three-way race without Adams, the same poll revealed Cuomo would lead the field by 2 percentage points in front of Mamdani. Mamdani appears to recognize the potential danger to his candidacy if voters opposed to him rally around one independent choice. The left-wing candidate this past week sought to make inroads with business leaders and establishment Democrats, including during a trip to Washington where he met Democrats at an event with liberal star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). On Friday, he met with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in New York. Following the meeting, a spokesperson for Jeffries called the face-to-face 'constructive, candid and community-centered.' The spokesperson said Jeffries and Mamdani also discussed a 'variety of other important issues including public safety, rising antisemitism, gentrification' and the importance of 'taking back the House in 2026.' Mamdani also recently earned the endorsement of Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.), another rising Democratic star. Some of Mamdani's efforts appeared to be helping him. 'He's already had those conversations, been in those meetings, and it doesn't seem that there is a wholesale public rebuke of him,' said Democratic strategist Basil Smikle, who served as executive director of the New York State Democratic Party. Smikle said that signals 'that a lot of those constituencies and voters are willing to hear more and are likely going to find a way to work with him.' Mamdani has impressed some Democrats who say the party needs fresh blood. 'He is campaigning like he isn't 94 years old,' said Democratic strategist Eddie Vale, who hails from New York. 'He is out hitting the streets and events and talking to tons of people. He is doing press interviews and podcasts and he is young and natively comfortable online for doing his own videos and social media.' By meeting with establishment operatives and backers, Mamdani has been chipping away at a part of the electorate that strategists say is critical to both Cuomo and Adams. The two independents are, 'for a number of moderate voters, the business community, the real estate community, a firewall against more progressive politics,' Smilke said. Some observers in the race differ over who is the stronger challenger to Mamdani. New-York based Republican strategist Susan Del Percio, who worked for Cuomo as a special adviser in 2014, holds the view it is Adams. 'Cuomo has lost once; he probably will lose again,' she said. 'The only one who really has a path when it comes down to Cuomo, Sliwa, and Adams is Adams,' Del Percio added. 'If he's willing to reinvent himself a bit in light of people being scared of Mamdani — it's almost Cuomo's argument, except I think that there's more that Adams can do now.' 'If you tell [Adams] now, 'You may actually be able to win,' he'll twist himself into a pretzel to do it,' Del Percio added. 'If you told him he had to be disciplined, and this is how you do it, and he has a real campaign, I think he could do it.' Other voices who think Cuomo could win more support point to Adams's unpopular tenure as mayor. While Adams was charged with corruption charges last year, a judge permanently dismissed them in April. The dismissal came weeks after the Trump administration asked prosecutors to drop the charges against Adams. Reeher said Adams has been tarnished with financial corruption and incompetency. 'Nobody's really making the argument that Andrew Cuomo is incompetent and doesn't know what he's doing,' he said. Cuomo faces his own hurdles. The former governor's time in Albany came to an end with 13 women accusing of him sexual assault and accusations that the state purposefully under-reported COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. And his political opponents, particularly Mamdani, have not let him or the New York City electorate forget it. Some criticized Cuomo for reentering the race last week with an ad filmed on the Upper East Side, a sign to political observers that he has learned nothing about appealing to the issue that New Yorkers care most about — and the issue Mamdani won on in the Democratic primary — affordability. But there is still great worry about Mamdani in the party, strategists acknowledge. 'He can't be the future of the party,' one strategist said. 'He's only going to be fodder for Republicans.' Reeher agreed, saying 'If I put myself in the place of a Republican strategist, I'm wanting [Mamdani] to win.' 'I can imagine the advertisement would be … a list of some of the most extreme things that he has stood for … and I would say, 'This is what Democrats do when they're left to their own devices,'' he said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
