Zohran Mamdani suffers awful showing in NYC – Latest News
While Zohran Mamdani has vile views and worse politics, his marketing campaign has been a logistical triumph and his Democratic debate efficiency in May was startlingly spectacular. There was each purpose to count on his debate showdown final evening with Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa could be one other feather in his cap.
It wasn’t. Mamdani flopped. His solutions had been defensive. He appeared offended at being questioned in any respect. It appeared offensive to him that he must offer an clarification for having known as for defunding the police and refusing to just accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
He claimed he by no means stated issues he stated or that he shouldn’t be accountable for phrases he wrote solely 5 years in the past. He didn’t look like a younger and comfortable warrior, more like a petulant graduate pupil.
Independent candidate former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, greets Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani earlier than collaborating in a mayoral debate, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, in New York. AP
But if Mamdani did badly, Andrew Cuomo did worse. And an pleasurable Curtis Sliwa buried Cuomo even deeper.
On May 15, 2022, the Pittsburgh Pirates had been no-hit by the Cincinnati Reds and nonetheless received the sport as a result of of three straight walks and a fielder’s alternative. That’s form of what occurred in the controversy. Mamdani obtained no hits. But Cuomo gave up three walks, Sliwa made a fielder’s alternative, and Mamdani’s march to the mayoralty was not halted.
For a man who’s run in a number of elections over the previous 25 years, Cuomo was shockingly inarticulate and unable to maintain a single argument or a single reply. There had been moments when Cuomo sounded more like Luca Brasi stumbling via his because of Don Corleone for that marriage ceremony invitation than he did his own famously silver-tongued father.
He needed us to know the legal claims in opposition to him for sexual harassment — the very trigger of his resignation from his job as governor in 2022 — have gone away, however even to get that time you needed to get previous innumerable “ums” and “ahs” that didn’t precisely encourage confidence in the advantage of his narrative.
Independent candidate former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gestures whereas talking during a mayoral debate, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, in New York. AP
Here are some key moments from the primary NYC Mayoral Debate
The solely actual life in the controversy got here from Curtis Sliwa, the populist New York crime-fighting hero of the Eighties, who was so spirited and energetic it was like he was bringing CBGBs back. He was additionally simply essentially the most substantive of the three candidates. He aimed his fire at each his rivals — on the ludicrous financial fantasies of Mamdani’s costly and unworkable proposals and Cuomo’s coverage failings in signing soft-on-crime laws into law as governor.
New York City mayoral candidate, Republican Curtis Sliwa, speaks during a mayoral debate in New York on October 16, 2025. POOL/AFP by way of Getty Images
Sliwa was the one one of the three to speak coherently concerning the disaster in town’s faculties and how they’re being run not for the benefit of youngsters however bureaucrats. And he stored bringing up public security, which Mamdani stored intentionally in search of to confuse together with his “affordability” mantra — as if making buses free would make up for a metropolis in which cops can be retiring in droves slightly than serving beneath somebody who has been a skilled denigrator of and agitator in opposition to policing.
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That stated, Sliwa possibly ought to have had one fewer cups of espresso, so hepped-up was he and so intent on making sure he was not, like Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction,” ignored. He could have finished himself a little bit of good with voters, however he’s nonetheless going to come back in third, and it’s nonetheless the case that each vote he will get can be a vote Cuomo doesn’t get — thereby successfully serving as a firewall for Mamdani’s probabilities.
Bottom line: Mamdani didn’t do himself any favors final evening. But Cuomo did him a favor by being so awful, and Sliwa did him a favor by making Cuomo look even more lame.
