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The Democratic primary debate for New York City mayor took place Wednesday night. Andrew Cuomo vs Zohran Mamdani was clearly the main event, with the rest of the field taking shots at the front-running Cuomo in a bid to keep their names on voters’ minds as June 24th draws near. The day after, many political pundits broke down the performance, saying Cuomo and Mamdani have earned their front-runner status. Craig McCarthy is the City Hall Bureau Chief at the New York Post, and Laura Curran is a former Nassau County Executive. They both appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program and said the debate went pretty much as expected: it was everyone vs. Cuomo and Cuomo vs. Mamdani.
“We all walked into this knowing that it was going to be a pile-on on Andrew Cuomo,” McCarthy told host Larry Curran. “All of these candidates [other than Mamdani] were really looking to make a name for themselves, try to land a good one-liner, a good zinger, but also at the same time get some policy out there, get some information out there because most of these people aren’t even polling into double digits… I think [Mamdani] landed a bunch of attacks, little subtle jabs on Cuomo. Cuomo went back and forth with him; I think it showed that Cuomo and his camp do fear him as a true challenger to him, because they had a bunch of attacks ready for him.”
Curran came away from the debate with the same analysis but was impressed by one candidate who was definitely an unknown when the debate started: “I thought [Cuomo] comported himself well… and the other surprise was Whitney Tilson. A lot of people saw him for the first time, and I’m sure around New York City, Google searches were lighting up for this ‘Whitney Tilson guy,’ because he was interesting. He seemed very much like a non-politician; he talked like a normal guy, and it’ll be interesting to see if this debate increases his visibility.”
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