A record number of early voters are weighing in on the race for New York City mayor, but the candidates are working to persuade undecided voters with one week to go until the election.
Republican Curtis Sliwa and Independent Andrew Cuomo are in a tug of war over the support of moderate voters who may be more motivated now than they were back in June.
Early voters continue to set records in New York. And with one week left in the campaign, the candidates are pushing hard to get their supporters to the polls.
On Tuesday morning, Sliwa continued to insist that he is a serious candidate, knowing that Cuomo is determined to win over Sliwa’s moderate and conservative supporters.
“Cuomo should stop moaning and groaning and again, I hear him yesterday saying I should drop out, listen, doesn’t he understand that ship has left the port,” Sliwa said.
Nearly a quarter of a million New Yorkers have already voted, with the biggest turnout in Brooklyn and Manhattan-being driven by middle-aged and older voters.
Cuomo believes the momentum is with him, now, in ways it wasn’t during the Democratic primary.
“In the primary, the turnout was totally different than they thought, much younger, and the younger vote was a much higher percentage,” Cuomo said.
On Tuesday afternoon at the Boston Postino Senior Center in the Bronx, he was joined by his former rival Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. David Paterson who had endorsed Adams in the race until now.
They all made the point that Mamdani’s Democratic socialist policies are bad for New York.
“No one is going to get a free ride no matter what some are promising, but there’s great promise if we elect this gentleman on Tuesday,” Paterson said.
Late Monday night, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic frontrunner, appeared on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” where he was questioned about his approach to public safety.
“Public safety is the prerequisite for an affordability agenda…people have to be safe,” Mamdani said. “And we also know that safety is something that you not only deliver with the NYPD, it’s also something you deliver by ensuring that there are actually jobs that can pay people enough to stay in the city. All of these things are integrated.”
Mamdani also made an appearance on Spanish language radio Tuesday morning.
“We can be confident about the next seven days, but we cannot become complacent,” he said. “That is exactly how Andrew Cuomo felt seven days until the primary a few months ago. He had the same odds, he had the same polls. He told himself, it was inevitable and then on June 24th we beat him by 13 points.”
Later in the evening, Mamdani made an appearance at a playground in Hell’s Kitchen in front of supporters, telling them how he would make good on all his promises, like making buses free and childcare universal.
Lucy Yang has the latest on the campaign trail in Midtown.
“We put forward a proposal to raise the state’s top corporate tax rate to match that of New Jersey, raise the personal income taxes on the top 1% of New Yorkers by 2%,” he said.
Mamdani knows his campaign needs to turn out their core supporters, many of whom are young or first-time voters.
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