As the days until Election Day are now down to a handful, the New York mayoral candidates are chomping at the bit as the race enters the home stretch. The second and final debate for Zohran Mmadani, Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa takes place tonight, and with early balloting starting on Saturday, the voters start to have their say in who gets to shape the city’s course for the next four years. Mamdani has the edge now in the polls; with a three-man race, though, it seems much more likely that the upstart assemblyman from Queens will walk away with the job, unless the former governor or the Guardian Angels founder have a miracle in their back pocket. J.C. Polanco is a political analyst and assistant professor at the University of Mount Saint Vincent; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to dissect what the candidates have to do tonight to appeal to any remaining undecided voters.
Polanco explained for host Larry Mendte why it may be too late for Sliwa and Cuomo to consolidate and avoid the now-seemingly inevitable Mamdani victory on November 4th: “Curtis is running his campaign, a hard campaign. He wants to prove that this is his last hurrah, and he wants to be able to go all-out and show the city what he’s about, and he’s declared war on the billionaires. I think at the end of the day it may be a strategic mistake… I don’t see it happening. I think, at this point Assemblyman Mamdani is on cruise control, barring any last-minute surprises.”
One of the few surprises that could work, however, would require a heart-felt plea from Cuomo to Curtis’s voters: “It’s mathematically impossible, unless [Cuomo] makes an overture to Curtis’s voters and says, ‘Listen I need your support. This is the only way we’re going to be able to defeat the Democratic Socialists of America taking over city government.’ And if that doesn’t work with Republicans… then we’re going down with the ship.”
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