Cuomo Bets ‘Petrified’ New Yorkers Will Find Way to Beat Mamdani

Andrew Cuomo said that either he or Eric Adams will need to drop out of the race for New York mayor against Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani by the middle of next month, otherwise the democratic socialist will defeat a divided field. “Everyone is petrified about electing a socialist who is anti-police,” Cuomo, the former governor, said Tuesday on Bloomberg Radio. Mid-September, he said, is “the drop-dead date when you have to winnow down the field, or people will think there’s no way to beat the assemblyman.”

Former federal prosecutor Jim Walden, who’s also in the race, has proposed that all but the highest-polling independent suspend their campaign in October to unify the opposition against Mamdani, who trounced Cuomo in the June Democratic primary. Cuomo has agreed to the plan. Adams has not.

Cuomo, 67, resigned as governor four years ago amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment, which he denies. Adams last year became the first New York mayor in modern history to be indicted on federal corruption charges. The charges were later dropped by the Trump administration, leading to accusations that the mayor is now beholden to the Republican president.

Mamdani, 33, has in the past called for defunding the police. While he has since moderated that stance, his platform calls for drastically reducing the NYPD’s overtime budget and would eliminate the department’s Strategic Response Group, a small unit that responds to fast-moving incidents like last week’s mass shooting at 345 Park Ave.

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