NEW YORK CITY – New Yorker Chris Barwick made an unexpected statement in the race for mayor of America’s largest city.
As Election Day approaches on Nov. 4, the self-described moderate conservative is considering a three-way race between Democratic candidate Zoran Mamdani, former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.
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“I have to do what’s best for New York,” the 58-year-old told Al Jazeera outside his apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. “I can’t believe this is actually coming out of my mouth. Andrew Cuomo is the best person for New York.”
Of course, Mr. Berwick, a regular Republican voter, said he would vote for Mr. Sliwa, the New York strongman who rose to fame in the 1980s by leading the controversial crime-fighting volunteer group Guardian Angels.
But he feels that’s a waste in big cities with Democratic majorities.
“So this is the lesser of two evils,” the main contractor said. “I don’t like Cuomo, but I don’t care about socialism…I don’t think this country was built on socialism.”
Mr. Cuomo’s campaign is hoping that there are many voters in the city who, like Mr. Berwick, are willing to hold their noses and vote Democratic to thwart Mr. Mamdani, an avowed democratic socialist who rose to prominence on a broad and ambitious platform of affordability and progressive reform and won a surprising victory in the Democratic primary in June.
Rallying independents and Democrats wary of Mamdani while stripping away conservative support may be Cuomo’s clearest strategy for victory.
Even the most charitable polls show the 67-year-old political scion trailing 34-year-old front-runner Mamdani by at least eight points. Most opinion polls, considered the highest quality, show Mamdani with a lead of 13 to 24 percentage points. Sliwa’s approval rating is between 9% and 23%.
Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 amid allegations of sexual misconduct, has been leaning toward conservative causes, touring right-wing media megaphones and Republican strongholds in the city in the final weeks of the campaign.
“I want my listeners to vote for me,” Cuomo told conservative host Sid Rosenberg in a mid-October appearance.
“I don’t have horns,” he declared.
“Not suitable for experimental planning”
Many Cuomo supporters are optimistic that pollsters aren’t gauging the city’s true temperature and are hopeful that both Republicans and independents who were unable to vote in the closed Democratic primary will make a difference in the race.
Of New York City’s 4.7 million registered voters in 2024, about 20 percent were not affiliated with a political party. Only 11 percent were Republicans.
As Election Day nears, Cuomo’s supporters believe electoral vulnerabilities related to Mamdani’s lack of leadership experience and concerns about significant obstacles to affordable plans could change the calculus.
Mamdani is running a campaign promising rent freezes, universal childcare and free buses, paid for in part by increased taxes on businesses and the city’s wealthiest residents. Changing the city’s tax code would require broad, hard-won support from state lawmakers. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul supports Mamdani, but said tax changes are not a start.
“I hope Mr. Zoran’s supporters will take a more critical look at his proposals,” said Iatin Chew, 58, of White Stone Queens, who heads the Asian Wave Alliance, a political group that supports Mr. Cuomo.
Mr Chu said he was particularly concerned about security under Mr Mamdani, who has promised a number of police reforms. She supports Mr. Cuomo’s plan to add 5,000 officers to the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
“Experimental plans are not suitable for a city of this size,” Chu told Al Jazeera. “You can say all these great things, but actually managing a city with a $116 billion budget and 300,000 city employees is, unfortunately, not something you can just step into and drive.”
Mr. Cuomo did well in wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods in the primary, trying to make the case that Mr. Mamdani’s policies would force the city’s wealthiest residents to flee. He performed well among black voters and in the farthest reaches of the district, where many middle-class and upper-class people live.
Aiming to tap into Mamdani’s support base, Cuomo has been rolling out his own affordability plan since the primary, framing it as more realistic than his opponent’s. That included announcing in August a policy that would give free bus rides to the poorest New Yorkers. He said the plan was fairer than Mamdani’s signature pledge to make it free for everyone.
Michael LaRosa, 30, from Middle Village, Queens, said he expects support for Mr. Cuomo to grow across political spectrum, especially among city residents who hold jobs like Mr. Cuomo.
“My father is a carpenter, I’m an electrician, and we rely on people to support us,” said LaRosa, whose union supports the former governor. “And based on the information we have gathered, Mr. Cuomo supports us.”
Angie Tobey, 63, who lives in public housing in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx, said many voters see the same young people who galvanized the Mamdani family as responsible for leadership.
She expressed particular concern over Mamdani’s past statements, including his 2020 call to defund the police. Mamdani has since left his post and apologized widely to police officers.
“He is very young and inexperienced,” she told Al Jazeera. “He’s going to come into office and realize he made promises he can’t keep.”
“Fear-mongering, hate speech, Islamophobia”
Indeed, the most appropriate path to victory for Cuomo would be for Sliwa to withdraw from the race at the last minute.
Cuomo said a vote for Sliwa was “a vote for Mamdani.” Mr. Sliwa remained defiant, saying Mr. Cuomo should instead drop out of the race to “play with billionaires in the Hamptons.”
Some conservatives, including prominent businessman John Catsimatidis, who funds Sliwa’s radio show, have also called on Republicans to withdraw from the race.
Joe Borelli, the former top Republican on the New York City Council, told Fox News that he would vote for Cuomo “so as not to ignite my vote.”
In a rally late in the campaign, Mr. Cuomo has rekindled increasingly harsh tactics, including portraying Mr. Mamdani as a “terrorist sympathizer” because of his pro-Palestinian views and escalating a months-long campaign of baseless anti-Semitism. Before running for office, Mr. Cuomo joined the legal team representing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for war crimes in Gaza.
In his interview with Rosenberg, Cuomo appeared to agree with the radio host’s suggestion that Mamdani would be “cheering” if another attack like the one that occurred in the United States on September 11, 2001 occurred.
Mr. Cuomo responded to what many saw as blatant Islamophobia and racism, saying, “That’s a different issue.” Mamdani will be the first Muslim, first African-born and first person of South Asian descent to lead the city.
Governor Hochul, Cuomo’s former lieutenant governor, responded to the exchange by saying, “Fear mongering, hate speech and Islamophobia are at the heart of New York State and everything we stand for as a state.”
Mr. Cuomo has also stepped up attacks on Mr. Mamdani’s ties to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), seeking to capitalize on the deep distrust of the term “socialist” among American conservatives. Although the DSA does not define democratic socialism, it is typically interpreted as a broad collection of progressive policies aimed at building a more just society, achieved through democratic means.
In a recent Fox News interview, Cuomo warned of a “socialist city” under Mamdani, calling it “the death of New York as we know it, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican.”
“Experience and experiment”
On a windy October day, Sidconia Winston, a 48-year-old from eastern New York, was one of two volunteers at a recruiting event for Mr. Cuomo in front of the Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood.
The final weeks of the race were an anticlimactic campaign. Mamdani remains omnipresent in his personalized social media videos, leveraging DSA’s vast infrastructure to draw on his army of volunteers.
Mr. Cuomo’s ground game has been less pronounced, with his rise instead supported by ad buys in traditional media.
Pro-Cuomo and anti-Mamdani political action committees (PACs) raised more than $14.5 million between June 25 and October 20, according to a Bloomberg News analysis. The pro-Mamdani PAC raised more than $1.7 million during the period.
The fact that Mr. Cuomo’s top donors often overlap with supporters of President Donald Trump, including businessmen, real estate leaders, and influential pro-Israel billionaires Bill Ackman and Miriam Adelson, has drawn particular criticism from Mr. Mamdani’s base.
But Mr. Winston, the Cuomo volunteer, sees Mr. Mamdani as an asset in his perceived closeness to Mr. Trump, who has promised to target city funds and deploy the National Guard if he wins.
“Trump promised that if Mamdani was elected, he would bankrupt the city,” said Winston, a certified chef. “I don’t care who you are. There’s no need to pick a fight with (the federal government) right now.”
Another volunteer, Anne, in her late 60s, who declined to give her last name, was hoping to persuade wary voters that Mr. Cuomo is the experienced person needed to lead the city in the Trump era.
“It’s experience and experimentation,” she said. “That’s why we’re here.”
“I may still change.”
As Election Day approaches, Mr. Cuomo is receiving a boost from the support of current Mayor Eric Adams, who has abandoned the race.
But shifting electoral allegiances could cut both ways.
Junior Schall, 67, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was drawn to Cuomo’s familiar face during the primary election.
Schall, who works in a childcare facility, says she is a person who “understands the elderly” in the city.
But the excitement surrounding Mamdani is prompting reconsiderations.
“Young people want something different,” she says. “I voted for Cuomo, but that may still change.”
