NEW YORK CITY – For Jessica DeJesus, it’s the last few minutes to decide who she’ll vote for as New York City’s next mayor.
The 40-year-old man, who lives in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx, admittedly wasn’t following the race closely, but he had planned to vote for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. She recalled him appearing on TV almost every night when he was governor of New York during the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recommended stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
“He was our companion during the pandemic,” she recalled.
But the day before the election, DeJesus saw a video on TikTok detailing President Donald Trump’s support for Cuomo.
Her feelings about the mayoral candidates may be vague, but DeJesus knows she’s not a fan of President Trump. The nod led her to focus on upstart democratic socialist candidate Socialist Zoran Mamdani.
“That’s not possible. I don’t oppose everything President Trump does, but the cuts to food stamps are impacting a lot of people,” he said, referring to the restrictions on SNAP benefits in the bill passed by President Trump and Republicans earlier this year.
“I understand we have to stop bad people from coming across the border, but we also have a lot of good immigrants here,” she said, referring to President Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
Stepping into the voting site, she told Al Jazeera that she was still undecided. “You have to wait until the paper is in front of you,” she said.
After a while she said: “I voted for Mamdani!” she said.
“You really don’t have a choice.”
Areas like Mott Haven, where turnout was high and mixed for Mamdani and Cuomo in the June primary, show how responsive Trump’s support is to the race. For some it’s a poison pill, for others it’s the final nail in the coffin.
Trump, meanwhile, had hoped that his support, and that of soon-to-be billionaire Elon Musk, would help rally conservative New Yorkers, who will vote in unusually large numbers in the 2024 presidential election.
“Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really don’t have a choice,” President Trump said in a social media post Monday.
“You have to vote for him and expect him to do a great job. He can do it, but Mamdani can’t!”
Mr. Cuomo has also explicitly reached out to Republicans in an effort to garner their votes. In 2024, about 11% of New York state’s 4.7 million voters will be registered Republican.
Recent polls show Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa winning about 14% of the vote, which is not a huge number of votes, but could be enough to close Mamdani’s lead over the former governor.
It remains unclear how successful Mr. Trump’s actions, which have threatened to target city funding if Mr. Mamdani is elected, will be successful. But for some of Sliwa’s most ardent supporters, Trump’s intervention did little to change their minds.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Jackson Heights, Queens, Artemio Figuero, a 59-year-old street sweeper in the city, said: “[Trump’s support]won’t change my vote. Sliwa is for the people and I believe in that.”
“He was a guardian of the neighborhood,” Figuero added, noting that Sliwa served as the administrator of the anti-crime vigilante group Guardian Angels.
Other Republicans, long accustomed to voting outside their party in liberal-dominated local elections, saw Mr. Trump’s endorsement as a positive, if not game-changing, development.
“I’m glad Trump supported him,” Laura Ferguson, 53, a registered Republican social worker who had already planned to vote for Cuomo, told Al Jazeera in Mott Haven.
“He knows (Cuomo) is a better fit for this city,” she said.
Mr. Cuomo denied Mr. Trump’s support numbers, noting that Mr. Trump had mistakenly called Mr. Mamdani a “communist” and called him a “bad Democrat.”
Still, for Mamdani supporters, Trump’s move was not unexpected. Mr. Cuomo has the support of some of the city’s wealthiest residents, including billionaires like Bill Ackman and Miriam Adelson, who supported Mr. Trump.
“Birds of a feather flock together,” said Andre Augustin, 33, who works for a nonprofit organization that helps college admissions and voted for Mamdani.
“I feel like the signs were already there. All the people who were funding Mr. Trump’s campaign were also funding Mr. Cuomo’s campaign, and I think (Cuomo) is not going to be honest about that,” he said.
For others, supporting Trump was the feather that broke the camel’s back.
Dominick Witter, a 39-year-old health care technology consultant, had admired Cuomo’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but he was slowly shifting toward Mamdani.
She didn’t decide on Mamdani until the final sprint of the race.
“It took me a while to get there, but I will vote for Mamdani,” he told Al Jazeera as he prepared to vote in Mott Haven.
“I’m not going to lie, President Trump’s support didn’t help, because that’s not what we want, right?” she said.
“Oh, that’s not the endorsement you want.”
