Democratic mayoral primary candidates Gov. Andrew Cuomo (left), Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, and city Comptroller Brad Lander.
Photos by Lloyd Mitchell
The leading candidates in New York City’s June 24 Democratic mayoral primary hit the campaign trail on Thursday to attack each other.
Mamdani hits Cuomo on PAC money
Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist who is consistently polling in second place, held an event in Astoria to slam former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the frontrunner, over a super PAC supporting his campaign — known as “Fix the City.”
Mamdani charged that wealthy contributors—including donors to President Trump and real estate bigwigs—are pouring millions of dollars into Cuomo’s super PAC because they are afraid of his pledges to raise taxes on the wealthy and freeze rent increases for stabilized tenants.
“These are billionaires who are giving hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars to Andrew Cuomo, precisely because they know that we are going to tax them to make life a little bit more affordable here in the most expensive city in the United States,” Mamdani said. “They are giving Andrew Cuomo unprecedented amounts of money because they know we are going to stand up to the Trump administration that they helped deliver.”
Mamdani’s remarks come after Politico reported that Fix the City has now raised $24 million, one-third of which came from billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed Cuomo last week.
Cuomo, meanwhile, defended the donations from Bloomberg following his own Thursday afternoon Juneteenth event at Co-Op City in the Bronx.
“He happens to be a billionaire, good for him,” Cuomo said of Bloomberg. “He also happens to have been a highly successful mayor of New York City, and Mr. Bloomberg supports me because he knows what this job requires, and he worked with me as governor.”
Furthermore, Cuomo insisted that the rush of donations to Fix the City shows he has “a lot of support” because many people are worried about the city’s state and fear his competitors are “not competent to do the job.”
Cuomo hits Mamdani on ‘globalize the intifada’ defense
The former governor also sought to hit Mamdani — a fierce critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights — over his declining to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” when asked if it made him uncomfortable on The Bulwork podcast earlier this week. Mamdani did not use the phrase, which many Jewish people see as inciting violence against them, but instead explained that in Arabic, it is a call for liberation.
“When you say globalize the intifada, that is basically repugnant to the Jewish community,” Cuomo told reporters. “It is basically inciting violence against the Jewish community worldwide.”
A slew of elected officials, including Mamdani’s cross-endorsed fellow candidate, city Comptroller Brad Lander, and the American Holocaust Museum, have sharply criticized him for not condemning the phrase.
However, Mamdani defended his actions when asked about them by reporters Thursday morning. He insisted that he is committed to protecting Jewish New Yorkers as mayor and that he will never advocate for violence.
“My point is not that this is language that I use,” Mamdani said, referring to the phrase. “These words have different meanings for many different people. My point is rather to say that each and every New Yorker deserves that safety, and that my focus is going to be on making this an affordable city. The language that I use is going to be language that is clear and language that speaks directly to the concerns of New Yorkers.”
Lander hits Cuomo, again, on past scandals
Meanwhile, Lander—accompanied by his wife, son, and daughter—spoke to reporters after voting early on Thursday afternoon at the John Jay High School campus in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn.
Lander, who has polled at a distant third place for several weeks, has been riding high over the past few days after receiving the backing of a New York Times Opinion-convened panel last week and being brutally arrested by federal immigration authorities on Tuesday.
The comptroller took the opportunity to highlight his performance during the final Democratic primary debate last week, in which he took Cuomo to task for the sexual harassment and COVID-19 nursing home scandals that led the former governor to resign in 2021.
“What I wanted to do was make clear to all New Yorkers, the last thing we need is a disgraced politician who had to resign after sexually harassing 11 women, who lied to New Yorkers and sent thousands of nursing home victims to their deaths, and who refused to take any responsibility for it,” Lander said.
In response, Cuomo’s spokesperson, Rich Azzopardi, pointed to five district attorneys declining to bring charges over some of the former governor’s sexual harassment allegations. He added that the civil cases that arose from the accusations, some of which are still ongoing, “either dropped the governor or are rapidly falling apart.”
“Brad Lander has been trying to use this as an issue the entire election to paper over his lack of accomplishment and the fact that he barely does the job he was elected to do now,” Azzopardi said. “He can’t fool New Yorkers into giving him a promotion.”
When it comes to the nursing home scandal, Azzopardi insisted Cuomo followed federal guidelines. Additionally, he said Trump politicized the entire issue during the president’s first term, going after Democratic governors when he was running for re-election in 2020.
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