Three weeks before voting day, the first debate, held this Thursday, was one of the last opportunities that the two opponents of Democrat Zohran Mamdani had to change the dynamics of the race. The favorite still has a double-digit lead over independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, despite the widespread campaign against him: from New York billionaires to President Donald Trump himself. According to the latest survey, from Quinnipiac University and published last week, Mamdani has 46% support, compared to 33% for Cuomo and 15% for Sliwa, who does not align with the MAGA movement.
The debate, supposedly intended to explain the respective programs and not to discuss international politics, however became a melee between Mamdani and Cuomo, who tried to entangle his rival, known for his criticism of Israel, in the minefield of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cuomo repeatedly tried to bring up the issue, whether it was relevant or not, while Mamdani, who has promised to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he sets foot in the Big Apple, defended himself by trying not to alienate his most critical base with Israel without losing his support among other more moderate voters.
Mamdani, a state assemblyman despite being almost unknown, presents himself as a “socialist,” a label that in the United States has a threatening ring, although his proposals are based on making New York affordable for large segments of the population who cannot pay rent or childcare. But his criticism of Israel and his religious confession provide targets for his detractors.
With , who is the outgoing mayor, Cuomo,—both cases, more as a flag of convenience than out of ideology—, has gained traction: if in September he was 22 points behind, now only 13, hence his aggressiveness during the debate. Because the race comes down to the fledgling candidate, 33 years old, and the former governor, who were remembered in the debate by the Republican Sliwa. This, founder of a citizen defense patrol, was used in the debate with more energy than expected due to his obligatory role as a troupe: in New York there is one registered Republican voter for every six Democrats. Sliwa offered a classic republican point of view, now buried by Trumpism.
The local race goes much further, to the White House: Trump has threatened to arrest Mamdani, a “communist,” if he is elected; also with withholding federal funds from the city to drain its finances. At the president’s request, well-known businessmen such as Bill Ackman or Ronald Lauder have disbursed millions of dollars, the only one capable of stopping Mamdani, who in turn presents himself as the most qualified to stand up to Trump: as if, instead of municipal ones, much more were at stake.
But Mamdani’s campaign also goes further because: charismatic, very popular on the networks; with proposals that in Europe are nothing more than social democratic and in the United States, on the other hand, are a challenge for any establishment, including the Democrat. That is why he also makes his party uncomfortable, some of whose representatives have distanced themselves from him. His attacks on Israel – which he tries to modulate with an approach to leaders of the city’s Jewish community – have also put him in the line of fire of some of his coreligionists. This week he welcomed the ceasefire in Gaza, but also criticized Israel for the “indelible stain” he says will be left by the US-backed war in the Strip, a “genocide paid for by American taxpayers”.
This matter was the protagonist of the first setback of the debate: as the newspaper pointed out The New York Times“a debate in which no Jews participate…that devotes a lot of time to Jews.” Mamdani was categorical about the obligation to disarm “from Hamas and the Israeli Army”, in a much clearer response than the one formulated the day before in an interview on the Fox network, which was imprecise and highly criticized by both parties, and which also earned him Islamophobic attacks. Cuomo, without letting go of that bone, reminded him of his call to “globalize the intifada”, ignored by Mamdani.
“New York [es la ciudad]where a hard day’s work is not enough to earn a good night’s rest,” Mamdani cried on Monday at a massive rally, alluding to the stratospheric cost of living in the city. And he stuck to that argument in the debate, again and again: the word he said the most was “affordability.” “We believe that in the richest city in the richest nation in world history, workers deserve a life worthy,” he insisted.
Among its priorities are freezing the rents of apartments with fixed income, free city buses and daycare for children under five years old. He also proposed that a Department of Community Safety address the serious problem of homelessness—no less than 140,000 New York schoolchildren are registered in that category, although the real figures may be much higher—and also the numerous cases of mental disorder among the homeless. Another of his ideas is to reformulate a program for gifted students in the early childhood education section, since in his opinion it harms minors from disadvantaged homes.
The favorite candidate remedies the existential, almost sidereal, distance between him and those potential voters. disadvantaged —Mamdani a product of the elites, with a university professor father and a filmmaker mother, whom Cuomo calls a “champagne socialist”—through an imaginative campaign with abundant touches of humor. This Thursday he joked for the umpteenth time on social media about the supposed threat that his candidacy poses to the financial elites… and his age: “Don’t worry, this weekend I will stop being 33 years old.” And yes, he assumed in that video published hours before the debate, “I am a threat.” “We are an existential threat to billionaires who think their money can buy our democracy,” he had said on Monday.
In other matters he has had to backtrack, for example to ingratiate himself with the city’s powerful police department from his initial promise to defund it (defund the police, the war cry that emerged from the mobilizations over the death at the hands of the African American George Floyd in 2020 in Minneapolis). Another weak flank that Cuomo did not waste to intensify his attacks. “Cuomo lies over and over again. I’m not running to defund the police. I’m running to work with the police,” Mamdani replied.
In a possibilist plan, although he did not make it explicit during the debate, Mamdani has even reached out to the White House, ensuring that he is willing to talk to Donald Trump if it is necessary to fulfill his promises. He did so on Wednesday, in a live interview on Fox, the conservative network that serves as a sounding board for the Republican Administration. The candidate also reiterated his support for the Palestinians and reiterated his promise to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York, noting that he would “exhaust all legal options.”
