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The long, drawn-out race to win the mayor’s office in New York City is now a sprint to the finish line, as New Yorkers will decide who replaces Eric Adams in a few days. The majority of the polls have Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani winning comfortably, but former Governor Andrew Cuomo still believes his campaign as an independent can cut Mamdani’s chances down by reminding voters that even Mamdani himself admits he is really a Socialist and not a Democrat. To do that, however, he will need the support of Republican voters, many of whom realize their candidate, Curtis Sliwa, is a distant third and realistically can’t beat Mamdani. Cuomo appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to explain why breaking bread with Republicans may be his last shot at beating the upstart State Assemblyman.
Cuomo told host Larry Mendte why he thinks Republicans will see him as the best option to stop Mandani’s momentum: “I think the Republicans, frankly, actually have really stood up here in a way that I find admirable. You have a lot of Republican electeds who say, ‘Yeah, I’m a Republican, and I know Cuomo’s a Democrat, but the existential threat is Mamdani because he’s a Communist, and we can’t have a Communist, as the Republicans call him, as mayor. So, lyI’m gonna vote as a New Yorker, and I’m gonna vote for Cuomo because Sliwa has no chance of winning.’ Even if you believed he was qualified, he has no chance of winning, so a vote for Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani, and… Good for them, because [despite] all this partisanship, they’re saying, ‘I’m a New Yorker first’.”
Cuomo also addressed comments he made earlier in the week comparing traditional Democrats with the socialism movement that backs Mamdani to elements of a civil war: “This is a different, extreme, socialist version; it will kill the Democratic party, I believe, if they win, because it’s just out of touch with America. Also, it will kill New York City. New York City cannot be a socialist state. People would flee from New York, I am telling you, by the carload, and it will be the death of New York City.”
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