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The unthinkable happened in New York politics on Tuesday night when Andrew Cuomo conceded the Democratic mayoral primary to upstart and avowed socialist Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani- who wasn’t even a blip on the radar but saw his poll numbers steadily grow until he surged past Cuomo in the campaign’s closing days- now has the Democratic bid to run for mayor sewn up and will square off in November against current mayor Eric Adams, running as an independent, and Republican Curtis Sliwa.
Throughout the campaign, many of Cuomo’s critics said it looked like the disgraced former governor was phoning it in as he campaigned. Mamdani, however, ran a campaign where his energy level always seemed to be cranked to 11. New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-19th) is one of the politicians who Mamdani would have to work with to run the Big Apple if he wins in November. She appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to agree with the theory that Cuomo, perhaps, didn’t want the brass ring as much as Mamdani did.
“I don’t think Cuomo wanted this as bad as you may think he might have,” Paladino told host Larry Mendte. “Cuomo’s a seasoned politician. He blew a forty-point lead. We know he has a stinking, lousy past- and I’m not talking about the sexual charges that were thirty or twenty years ago; I’m talking about covid. He couldn’t run from covid, so he wanted to play it on the down-low, and he took this kid for granted. Well, you know, Joe Crowley did that too and we’ve got AOC. So now we’ve got this guy Mamdani.”
Paladino faults younger voters who may have seen Mamdani’s slick campaign videos and turned out in droves without fully understand what they were voting for- which the councilwoman was more than willing to explain for them: “His parents are loaded, and I mean millionaires. They’re in the film business, Larry- who better to do your videos than your mother, okay?... In one of his videos, he actually says to the public, ‘Nothing better than nepotism and a lot of money’.”
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