🔗 Share this article

New Yorkers will discover the identity of their next mayor this election day, in a contest that will decide who governs and defends the country's largest city at a moment when the former president has vowed to send armed forces to the urban center.

Against that backdrop, New York has witnessed a race for mayor that has matched two distinctly opposing Democrats against one another. The election has turned into an acrimonious face-off, marked by accusations of racial bias and anti-Muslim sentiment, but it is the political differences between the two leading candidates that could have major implications for how the Democratic party performs in next year's congressional races.

The Progressive Challenger

On the left side is Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old progressive candidate whose rapid ascent and grassroots campaign has brought global notice. Representing the old guard is Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor now running as an independent – and enjoying the support of ultra-rich donors and big business.

As the election approaches, it is the progressive, the former longshot who defeated Cuomo in the party primary who is firmly installed as the leading candidate. Mamdani, who has run on a agenda of economic justice and pledged to halt rent increases for about two million New Yorkers, has outpaced Cuomo by significant margins in every poll conducted in October, and it is very much the younger man's election to lose.

A Bitter Contest

Yet, Cuomo, who stepped down as governor in 2021 amid allegations of misconduct, has stated clearly he will battle to the end, and not necessarily in an fair fashion. He has criticized his opponent's objectives as unachievable, and in recent days chuckled along as a broadcaster made Islamophobic remarks about Mamdani, who is a Muslim. Recently, Cuomo was strongly criticized as racist after sharing an AI-generated ad that featured a slew of racial caricatures and showed Mamdani freeing a convicts.

It's been a rather grubby end to an race that could be key to the path that the Democratic party, struggling in its response to Trump's power moves, adopts in the near future.

National Implications

If the progressive wins convincingly, the establishment party leaders who have refused to endorse his campaign will be forced to reckon with a message that has resonated with voters' frustration at economic disparity, soaring price rises and the establishment. It would be hard for Chuck Schumer and the House leader not to adopt at least some of the candidate's ambitious ideas about affordability, given the fresh face has generated an excitement within the Democratic ranks perhaps not witnessed since Bernie Sanders campaigned for the White House in 2016.

However, if the former governor, who had been predicted to sail to victory in the Democratic primary, achieve a surprising riches-to-rags-to-riches victory, it could reinforce the party's current model of cautious, uninspiring opposition – a tactic that has infuriated the party base. A NYC rejection of the progressive's optimistic platform could convince Schumer and Jeffries that the best plan is to stick to the center – even as surveys show the present version of the Democratic party is widely disliked nationwide.

Campaign Energy

Residents of the city seem to prefer the progressive agenda. Surveys show that his backers are much more excited about their candidate than Cuomo backers, something that has been evident during the race. Mamdani's snappy videos on social media, his optimistic vision for New York and his readiness to actually venture out and meet people in the city has drawn an army of over fifty thousand volunteers, many of them youth or first-time voters.

Negative Tactics

Yet, Cuomo, 67, isn't giving up. And with the stakes stacked against him, the former governor has resorted to ugly messaging in recent weeks.

Following extensive throwing basically everything at Mamdani to see what might stick, Cuomo has concentrated on targeting Mamdani directly. He has called Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to South Asian heritage, an “extremist”, and popped up on conservative media for an interview with a rightwing host, where Cuomo claimed New York “will not survive” Mamdani as city leader. It reached a nadir recently, when the former governor laughed along and said “that’s another problem” after a radio host said Mamdani would “cheer” another 9/11-style incident.

Political Landscape

This strategy mirrors much of what Trump, who has deployed the military reserves to Washington DC and threatened to do the same to New York, has said about Mamdani, and maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise. A group of billionaire New Yorkers, including some who donated to Trump in the 2024 election, have invested heavily into trying to get Cuomo into office, as other powerful voices have pressured Curtis Sliwa to drop out from the race.

Candidate Backgrounds

For the his team, and his billionaire supporters, are concerned, it should never have come to this. When the assemblyman, one of 150 New York state assembly members, started his mayoral bid in October 2024, not many had heard of him, and in reality, few even noticed.

The former governor, by contrast, entered smoothly into the contest in March 2025 and became the immediate frontrunner. He was the big beast who apparently held all the advantages. The classic establishment figure, he had married a Kennedy and worked in Bill Clinton’s administration. He became New York governor in 2011, 17 years after his parent, Mario Cuomo, left office from the identical role.

Mamdani, who was voted in to the New York state assembly in 2020, does not have the comparable background. But his dedication to providing no-cost transit and free childcare – along with the freeze-the-rent pledge – offer a brighter outlook of the future than Cuomo’s pessimistic predictions about “mayhem” and rising criminal activity, and his promise to hire more police officers.

Campaign Controversies

Nevertheless, Mamdani has faced some challenges in recent days, after video emerged suggesting him suggesting the NYPD and the Israel Defense Forces were intertwined.

“We have to make clear that when the pressure of the NYPD is on your throat, it’s been influenced by the Israeli military,” Mamdani said in the clip, filmed at a DSA convention in 2023. The progressive, a longtime critic of the Israeli government who has said the nation is engaging in atrocities in Gaza, suggested he was criticizing cooperative programs between the NYPD and IDF.

Powerful Moment

As the race closes, the candidate appears to have won empathy and backing, however, for his response to Cuomo’s escalating attacks.

The progressive responded to the independent's terrorism comments in an heartfelt recording. In it, Mamdani remembered how, when he first ran for state assembly, a family member advised to him that he did not have to tell people about his religion. It was a realization, he said, that many Muslim New Yorkers had been told “again and again”: “That security could only be found in the margins of our city. That it is in those shadows alone where followers of Islam could embrace their true selves, and that if we were to emerge from those shadows, then it is in those shadows that we must set aside our beliefs.”

Speaking to the actions of his opponents, who has alleged Mamd