It’s not uncommon for writers who occasionally share their thoughts about things going on in cities and states in which they don’t reside to get responses that go something along the lines of “mind your own business” or “keep our city/state out of your mouth.”
It’s happened to yours truly on occasion. But nine times out of 10 it happens to be in reference to a part of the country that has had no compunction about weighing in on North Carolina politics in a rather derisive way. So returning the favor seems only fitting.
New York City is unquestionably deep blue. In a citywide election, you expect that they will elect a Democrat to lead it. That is unlikely to change anytime soon, if ever.
In the case of their mayoral election, however, they have three candidates who are vying for the seat. Two of them are Democrats, though one is running as the nominee of the political party he created earlier this year, which was a backup plan of sorts in the event he failed to obtain the Democratic nomination.
The leading candidate is Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist of America party member who officially won the Democratic mayoral nomination in July. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the Fight and Deliver Party nominee, is running a distant second place in polling behind Mamdani. Guardian Angels nonprofit founder Curtis Sliwa is the Republican nominee.
For all intents and purposes, it is a two-man race, with current NYC Mayor Eric Adams, who ran as an independent candidate, dropping out in late September, and Sliwa having virtually no chance of winning because of the (R) beside his name.
Of the top two, Cuomo has more name recognition. Voters undoubtedly know him better than Mamdani in large part due to his time as the state’s attorney general and then governor, and because Cuomo’s father, Mario, was the state’s governor for 11 years.
But in this instance, name recognition and being from a powerful New York political family appear to be more of a hindrance than a help to Cuomo. He resigned in disgrace in August 2021 amid a sexual harassment scandal, which exploded amid another scandal Cuomo was mired in: nursing home deaths from the early days of the COVID pandemic and allegations of a cover-up in the aftermath.
Mamdani, who was trailing in primary polling up until about a week before the June primary, surged to the forefront as primary voters took to the polls. And he’s never looked back.
But New York City also has the largest Jewish population of any city in the world, and it has seen a rise in antisemitic attacks since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel. One would think that Mamdani’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war alone (he’s called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal” and accused Israel of genocide) would give voters pause.
There has also been his refusal to condemn “globalize the intifada” chants at the anti-Israel rallies he has sometimes attended, him breaking bread with a popular leftist influencer/streamer who said “America deserved 9/11,” and, most recently, his warm embrace of Brooklyn imam Siraj Wahhaj, who is widely believed to be an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
And yet despite all of that, Mamdani is on the verge of becoming the Big Apple’s mayor, which many of us on the outside view as a big mistake. I’m not one to tell anyone how to vote, but I can safely say that even with all of Cuomo’s baggage, he would seem like the saner bet for NYCers, in my opinion.
North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.
