Some candidates focus on blocking Cuomo’s path a day before NYC’s mayoral primary

NEW YORK (AP) — Their chances of becoming the next mayor of New York City may have dimmed. Their mission now? Stopping former Gov. Andrew Cuomo from getting to City Hall.

In the final day of campaigning before the city’s Democratic primary, candidates who are seen as long shots to win the nomination were urging voters to leave Cuomo off their ballots in the city’s ranked choice election in a last-ditch effort to block the former governor’s comeback from a sexual harassment scandal.

“Let’s make sure Andrew Cuomo gets nowhere near City Hall,” candidate and city Comptroller Brad Lander said Monday on WNYC radio, which interviewed the major candidates ahead of the election.

State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, another candidate, similarly asked voters to not vote for Cuomo, telling the station, “We need fresh leadership, we need to turn the page and we need bold solutions at this moment.”

The pitches came as Cuomo, who has been considered the frontrunner for months, has also been trying to fend off a charge from Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman, would be the city’s first Muslim and first Indian-American mayor if elected. A democratic socialist who got elected to the Legislature in 2020, Mamdani started the campaign as a relative unknown but has won support with a energetic campaign centered on improving the cost of living.

The assault on Cuomo from fellow members of the Democratic field comes as he has continued to rack up establishment endorsements. Former President Bill Clinton endorsed Cuomo on Sunday, saying voters should not “underestimate the complexity” for the challenges faced by a mayor. The New York Times didn’t issue an endorsement this year, but wrote an editorial praising Lander and saying Cuomo would be a better choice than Mamdani, who it said was unworthy of being on people’s ballots.

Cuomo and Mamdani have ratcheted up attacks on each other in the campaign’s final days.

“He’s about public relations,” Cuomo said of Mamdani, dismissing his opponent as too focused on looking great on social media, and not skilled enough as an executive to run the city.

Mamdani, meanwhile, exuded confidence, telling WNYC he is “one day from toppling a political dynasty.”

“New Yorkers are done with the cynical politics of the past. They want a future they can afford,” said Mamdani, who was endorsed by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

In a way, Mamdani and Cuomo represent the Democratic Party’s ideological divides, with Cuomo as an older moderate and Mamdani a younger progressive.

Their reactions to the American bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites on Sunday offered more evidence of the party’s internal split.

Cuomo, in a statement, criticized “the way Trump went about this without consulting Congress, without consulting the normal congressional officials” but stressed that “Iran cannot have nuclear capability.”

Mamdani released a statement that slammed Trump but quickly shifted focus back to his key issues, saying “these actions are the result of a political establishment that would rather spend trillions of dollars on weapons than lift millions out of poverty, launch endless wars while silencing calls for peace, and fearmonger about outsiders while billionaires hollow out our democracy from within.”

Cuomo, who won three terms as governor, resigned in 2021 after a report from the state attorney general concluded that he sexually harassed 11 women. He has denied wrongdoing.

New York City is using ranked choice voting in its Democratic mayoral primary election Tuesday, a system that allows voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. If one candidate is the first choice of a majority of voters, that person wins the race outright. If nobody hits that threshold, the votes are then tabulated in multiple rounds. After each round, the candidate in last place is eliminated. Votes cast for that person are then redistributed to the candidates ranked next on the voter’s ballot.

That continues until one candidate gets a majority.

Cuomo’s opponents have urged voters not to rank him at all and therefore deprive him of support in later rounds of counting.

“You do not have to go back to the name of Andrew Cuomo,” said Michael Blake, a former state lawmaker running in the primary. He told voters on WNYC that it was time to move on from the former governor.

Eleven candidates are on the ballot in the Democratic mayoral primary. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams isn’t one of them. He’s a Democrat but is running as an independent. The Republican Party has already picked its nominee, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.