NEW YORK (WABC) — Time is running out for the New York City mayoral candidates to convince voters why they should be their choice at the polls.
With less than a week to go until Election Day, the candidates are making their final push on the campaign trail.
Four years ago, Curtis Sliwa won Staten Island with 67% of the vote, but Andrew Cuomo hopes this year will be different.
The Republican Sliwa greeted Staten Island voters at the ferry terminal on Wednesday morning — a reliably Republican slice of the electorate where Sliwa might be expected to dominate.
But Cuomo, who chased moderate voters in The South Bronx on Tuesday, will be on the island later Wednesday as well.
“Cuomo is a fair weather friend, I think people on Staten Island know both him and Zohran are coming there to get the votes,” Sliwa said. “But they’ve never been there before and I guarantee, after the election, they will never be there again. I’m Staten Island strong, through and through.”
Early voters continue to turn out in record numbers — hundreds of thousands of them.
Democratic frontrunner Zohran Mamdani rallied with volunteers Tuesday in Hell’s Kitchen and on Wednesday campaigned in the Bronx, where he was endorsed by the United Bodegas of America.
“Everyone always says that I’m running on an affordability agenda, that’s not quite true, I’m running on a BEC agenda, it’s not a Bacon Egg and Cheese, it’s Bringing Economic Change — with some jalapenos on the side,” Mamdani said.
The Mamdani campaign is determined to boost turnout numbers in the Bronx, where early voting has lagged far behind Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.
Cuomo is hoping that moderate and conservative voters will abandon Sliwa, who continues to hold double-digit support.
For him, Staten Island may be fertile ground. In any other year, campaigning there would be hopeless. But speaking on Fox Business, Cuomo insisted this year is different.
“They used to call me liberal, now I’m a moderate, because the whole party shifted,” Cuomo said. “That’s what this election is about. It is that civil war. I believe that the far-left will destroy the Democratic Party. I believe it will destroy the democratic party nationwide, if that far left becomes dominant.”
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