State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is the early leader, since the first election votes are set at the primary Democrats of New York City, before the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, but the winner of the elections remains uncertain with no one in progress to ensure a majority in the first round of the elections of classified election.
Until now, Mamdani leads the counting of first choice votes with approximately 44% support, followed by approximately 36% for Cuomo, the result of a rapid increase in Mamdani, who began the career little known but quickly gained prominence as the progressive alternative to Cuomo.
And although New York City will have to wait for at least a week, possibly more time, to discover who will win the Democratic nomination through the city’s classified choice tabs, Cuomo made clear its supporters who believed that the clock was running out in its return offer.
“Tonight was not our night. Tonight was the night of Assemblyman Mamdani and organized a great campaign and touched the young people and inspired them and transferred them and made them come out and voted and really directed a very shocking campaign. I called him and congratulated him,” Cuomo said, asking Mamdani a round of applause.
“Tonight is his night. He deserved it, he won.”
Under the vote of choice classified in the city, voters classify up to five preferences in their vote. The support for the minor candidates is reassigned to the next options of these voters, and the process continues until two candidates are left.
The city’s election board plans to publish the results of these initial assignments next Tuesday. But depending on how many mail and provisional tickets they must still be counted, a winner could have been determining more time.
The wait was expected considering the field of 11 candidates that divide democratic votes. And the classified election system can encourage candidates for low collaboration to stay because they know that the elections of their followers can still be taken into account if they fall short.
Mamdani’s rise
Mamdani, a 33 -year -old state assemblyman of Queens who would be the first Muslim mayor of the city if chosen, has gained steam in the final weeks of the race, since he has launched a progressive vision for the city. He has made an energetic campaign focused on addressing higher costs, promising to freeze rentals and offer free buses, universal child care and other progressive policies that would be paid in part by increasing taxes on the rich.
It has become the focal point for an anti-whose movement that joined behind the “no range of cuomo” flag, arguing that the former governor does not deserve a successful political return after giving up the position in 2021 for accusations of sexual harassment. Mamdani has secured transverse administration agreements with other candidates, including the city’s comptroller, Brad Lander, and former DNC vice president Michael Blake.
They directed their supporters who also classify the other candidate on their ballot, an attempt to join to use the classified election vote so that a candidate moves away from Cuomo after several rounds of accumulated support of voters who are not of the voters.
Lander, who was arrested earlier this month serving as defender of the defendants in the Federal Immigration Court, is the only other candidate who sniffs the two digits. His decision to cross Mamdani, and support him when other prominent Jews in New York criticized Mamdani’s lack of will to denounce the slogan “globalize the intifada”, could be integral if Lander’s supporters break largely for Mamdani and help him clillage the nomination.
“Together, we are sending Andrew Cuomo to the suburbs! With our help, Zohran Mamdani will be the Democratic candidate for the mayor of New York City and we are on a road to win a city that all New Yorkers can pay and where everyone belongs,” Lander said Tuesday night at the night event of the elections of his campaign.
Mamdani also received outstanding endorsements from representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York working families, and Vermont’s independent senator Bernie Sanders, who, as Mamdani, identifies himself as a democratic socialist. Other prominent New Yorkers, such as state attorney general Letitia James, have asked supporters to include Mamdani in their classified election tickets (and to leave Cuomo outside) even while they say they would prefer another candidate.
Attempt to return from Cuomo
Cuomo was seen for a long time as the favorite in the race, with his unique profile as a former state and heavyweight official of the National Democratic Party that lent him a broad name identification from the beginning of his campaign, that none of his rivals could match at the beginning. He relied a lot on that experience to argue that he is the only candidate who could adequately fight against President Donald Trump.
He marked strong political support from prominent Democrats such as former mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Bronx County president, Rubén Díaz Jr., state and multiple congress members. And he received a great impulse from a super PAC with pocket (which received $ 8.5 million from Bloomberg) that covered the waves with ads singing their strengths and criticizing Mandami.
But the return offer, which Cuomo himself launched some cold water on Tuesday night after seeing the initial results, occurs four years after he resigned under pressure after the investigations of the state attorney general discovered that his administration infused the deaths taken in elderly homes and that he sexually harassed several women. (Cuomo admitted at that time that he “made mistakes”, but also said he was a victim of “canceling culture”).
His current supporters include many who previously asked him to renounce his position as governor, since they argue that Cuomo’s experience is what the city needs at this time. And received a great impulse from a well -financed Super (which received $ 8.5 million from Bloomberg) that covered the waves with ads praising their strengths and criticizing Mandami.
The two main candidates and their allies have been unwinding in their criticisms. The Super Pac Pro-whose has directed a flood of advertisements by framing Mamdani as “a risk that we cannot pay”, criticizing it as too radical for the city.
“Experience is important, and I think that inexperience is dangerous in this case. Mr. Mamdani has had a staff of five people, now will a 300,000 employee staff direct?” Cuomo said during a debate presented by Spectrum News NY1 earlier this month.
He added: “He has never dealt with the City Council. He has never dealt with Congress. He has never dealt with the State Legislature. He has never negotiated with a union. He has never built anything. He has never dealt with a natural emergency. He has never dealt with a hurricane, with a flood, Etcetera. He has never done any of the essential elements. And now he has Donald Trump in the first time of all that.”
But while Cuomo has supported that experience as a fortress, his opponents have tried to turn the tables reminding the voters the reason he is in the race in the first place: his fall of grace four years ago after the accusations of sexual harassment.
“For Mr. Cuomo: I have never had to resign in disgrace, I have never cut Medicaid,” Mamdani replied to Cuomo in the Spectrum News/NY1 debate.
“I have never pursued the 13 women who accuse me of my sexual harassment in a credible way, I have never sued for their gynecological records, and I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo,” he added, ending up correcting Cuomo for saying his last name incorrectly.
The two have also entered Israel and their war with Hamas in Gaza. Cuomo attacked after Mamdani seemed to defend the slogan “globalize the intifada” during a podcast interview published a week before the elections, and Cuomo and his allies increased the criticisms of those such as the head of the Anti-Defamation League and the United States Holocaust Museum. Mamdani responded during an emotional conversation with journalists in which he said he believes that “there is no place for anti -Semitism in this city” and shared that he has received threats in his life based on his religion.
