For years, the slogan for the New York Lottery was, “You gotta be in it to win it.” When it comes to the 2025 NYC Mayoral race, however, that could be re-written as, “You gotta be out of it so he doesn’t win it.”
Much has been made of Donald Trump trying to influence at least Eric Adams or Andrew Cuomo to drop out to improve the odds that the remaining candidate can beat Democratic front-runner Zohran Mamdani. Former New York City Councilman Joe Borelli, however, thinks there’s a better plan. Speaking on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program, Borelli discussed the hopes of convincing enough people in traditionally Democratic New York to bite the bullet and put Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa over the top.
“It is an uphill battle for him,” Borelli told host Larry Mendte. “Again, though, the thing that sets this year apart from others is that you don’t need a majority. You only need a plurality to win. Curtis, in theory, could win with 35, 36, 37 per cent of the vote, which is only a 7-10 per cent rise in the poll numbers. That’s within the realm of possibility. [But] if Adams gets out of the race, I think it becomes tougher for Curtis to win; it just makes that number that he needs go up.”
But if Mamdani wins, which seems more and more likely as Election Day gets closer, Borelli says Chicago today will become New York tomorrow in Trump’s rhetoric: “He’ll be the same boogeyman on all the campaign ads, so it’s really going to nationalize New York politics, and I think the Trump campaign and Speaker Johnson and Majority Leader Thune would be wise to have their campaign people link Mamdani to all these other races around the country going forward.”
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