🔗 Share this article

Residents of the Big Apple will find out who will be their next mayor this Tuesday, in a race that will determine who runs and defends the country's largest city at a moment when Donald Trump has threatened to deploy armed forces to the urban center.

Against that backdrop, New York has witnessed a race for mayor that has pitted two distinctly opposing Democrats against each other. The election has become an acrimonious showdown, laced with accusations of racism and anti-Muslim sentiment, but it is the ideological divide between the two leading candidates that could have significant consequences for how the Democratic party performs in next year's midterm elections.

The Rising Progressive

On the left side is the democratic socialist, the 34-year-old democratic socialist whose meteoric rise and grassroots campaign has brought international attention. On the establishment side is Andrew Cuomo, the ex- Democratic New York governor now running as an independent – and benefiting from the support of ultra-rich donors and big business.

As the election approaches, it is the progressive, the former longshot who defeated his opponent in the Democratic primary who is firmly installed as the leading candidate. Mamdani, who has campaigned on a agenda of economic justice and promised to halt rent increases for about two million city residents, has led Cuomo by double-digits in every poll taken in October, and it is very much the progressive's election to lose.

The Controversial Campaign

However, the former governor, who stepped down as the state's leader in recent years amid accusations of sexual harassment, has stated clearly he will battle to the end, and not necessarily in an above-the-belt fashion. He has trashed his opponent's goals as unrealistic, and in the final stretch chuckled along as a broadcaster made anti-Muslim comments about the candidate, who is a Muslim. Recently, Cuomo was widely condemned as racist after posting an AI-generated ad that featured a slew of racial caricatures and showed Mamdani releasing a convicts.

This represents a particularly ugly end to an election that could be critical to the direction that the Democratic party, floundering in its reaction to Trump's authoritarian grabs, adopts in the coming years.

National Implications

If the progressive secures a clear victory, the establishment party leaders who have declined to support his bid will be forced to reckon with a message that has appealed to Americans' anger at economic disparity, inflation and the establishment. It would be hard for Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries not to embrace at least some of Mamdani's progressive proposals about economic justice, given the newcomer has created an enthusiasm within the Democratic ranks perhaps not seen since the Vermont senator campaigned for the White House eight years ago.

Conversely, should Cuomo, who had been predicted to win easily in the June primary, achieve a surprising riches-to-rags-to-riches win, it could reinforce the party's existing approach of considered, uninspiring opposition – a tactic that has angered grassroots members. A NYC rejection of the progressive's progressive, positive message could persuade Schumer and Jeffries that the wisest course is to stick to the center – even as surveys show the current iteration of the party is widely disliked nationwide.

Voter Enthusiasm

Residents of the city appear to favor the Mamdani vision. Polls show that Mamdani supporters are much more excited about their choice than Cuomo backers, something that has been evident throughout the campaign. The candidate's snappy videos on social media, his optimistic vision for the city and his readiness to actually venture out and meet people in the city has attracted an force of over fifty thousand supporters, many of them youth or first-time voters.

Negative Tactics

However, Cuomo, in his late sixties, continues to fight. And with the risks against him, the ex-leader has resorted to ugly messaging in recent weeks.

Following extensive throwing basically everything at Mamdani to see what might stick, Cuomo has concentrated on attacking the candidate directly. He has called Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to South Asian heritage, an "radical", and popped up on Fox Business for an discussion with a rightwing host, where the candidate claimed the city “will not survive” Mamdani as city leader. It hit bottom recently, when the former governor chuckled and said “that’s another problem” after a broadcaster said the candidate would “cheer” another 9/11-style attack.

Political Landscape

The line of attack mirrors much of what Trump, who has sent the military reserves to the capital and threatened to take similar action to NYC, has said about Mamdani, and maybe that shouldn’t come as a surprise. A set of wealthy residents, including some who contributed to Trump in the last presidential race, have pumped millions into trying to elect Cuomo into office, as other influential figures have pressured Curtis Sliwa to drop out from the contest.

Candidate Backgrounds

For the Cuomo camp, and his wealthy backers, are worried, it should not have reached to this point. When the assemblyman, one of one hundred fifty state legislators, started his campaign for mayor in October 2024, not many had known him, and in truth, barely anyone even paid attention.

The former governor, by contrast, eased his way into the contest in March 2025 and became the immediate frontrunner. He was the big beast who apparently held all the advantages. The quintessential establishment figure, he had wed a Kennedy and worked in a Democratic presidency. He assumed office as New York governor in 2011, seventeen years after his father, Mario Cuomo, stepped down from the same position.

The progressive, who was elected to the state legislature in 2020, does not have the comparable background. But his commitment to providing free buses and free childcare – along with the freeze-the-rent pledge – offer a more positive vision of the city's direction than his opponent's dire warnings about “mayhem” and rising criminal activity, and his promise to increase police presence.

Recent Challenges

Still, the candidate has encountered difficulties in recent days, after video surfaced suggesting him implying the NYPD and the Israel Defense Forces were connected.

“We have to make clear that when the boot of the police is on your neck, it’s been influenced by the IDF,” the candidate said in the recording, recorded at a DSA gathering in 2023. Mamdani, a longtime critic of the Israeli government who has said the nation is committing genocide in the Palestinian territory, indicated he was criticizing joint training exercises between the city police and IDF.

Powerful Moment

With the election nearing, the candidate seems to have gained empathy and backing, however, for his response to his opponent's escalating attacks.

The progressive responded to Cuomo’s terrorism comments in an heartfelt recording. In it, Mamdani remembered how, when he first campaigned for the legislature, a Muslim uncle suggested to him that he did not have to tell people about his religion. It was a lesson, he said, that many local Muslims had been told “again and again”: “That security could only be found in the shadows of our city. That it is in those hidden spaces alone where followers of Islam could embrace their full identities, and that if we were to emerge from those seclusion, then it is in those silence that we must set aside our faith.”

Addressing the actions of Cuomo and Sliwa, who has alleged Mamd