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After months of campaigning and handwringing, the 2025 election is finally here. Early voting, which started last Saturday, has seen record turnout numbers across the board, with Tuesday night’s final totals deciding whether Zohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo or Curtis Sliwa gets the title of Mayor of New York City. Many pundits say early voting is the key to deciding the winner. Early voting has been a revelation for Democratic candidates in recent years, but Republicans, after years of complaining, may have finally learned to use early voting to boost their prospects. City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-19TH) is also up for re-election to serve her Queens district for a second term. She appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to offer her unique brand of analysis as the race enters the home stretch.
Paladino told host Larry Mendte she feels good because old Republican dogs have finally learned new voting tricks: “I’m super-excited because it looks as though, in the early voting process right now, all these people over 50 that are coming out, these are the same people that said they would never vote early. So now we have- yay, finally!- everybody understanding that we need to level the playing field, because the Democrats had a leg up on us. They know now how important this race really, really is, and the grown-ups are taking over the room… I don’t think Zohran’s going to pull off what people seem to think he’s going to pull off.”
Paladino was also quick to point out who she feels is to blame for the mess that the 2025 mayoral election has wrought upon the city: “None of this would have been happening if our mayor, Eric Adams, would have performed in four years, and he would have been the incumbent, and he would have won the hearts and minds of a great many people, instead of being the flipper and the flopper that he was, and we wouldn’t be in the situation that we’re in. We just would not.”
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