{"id":19216,"date":"2025-10-27T23:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T23:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/19216\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T23:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T23:41:09","slug":"ex-nypd-commish-ray-kelly-endorses-cuomo-as-police-unions-dodge-nyc-mayoral-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/19216\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-NYPD Commish Ray Kelly endorses Cuomo — as police unions dodge NYC mayoral race"},"content":{"rendered":"

The city\u2019s longest-serving NYPD commissioner, Ray Kelly<\/a>, endorsed Andrew Cuomo for mayor Monday \u2014 but the Big Apple\u2019s major police unions are sitting out the race.<\/p>\n

Kelly said he respects Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, who he has known for 40 years through the Guardian Angels.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s common sense now: You have to vote for Andrew Cuomo to have any shot, any chance to defeat [Zohran] Mamdani,\u201d Kelly said on 77 WABC \u201cSid & Friends\u201d show.<\/p>\n

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been endorsed for mayor by former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. Matthew McDermott<\/p>\n

Mamdani, the lefty Democratic nominee and front-runner, will \u201cwreak havoc on us,\u201d Kelly told host Sid Rosenberg.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t look good, but we have to be on the smart side at this time,\u201d said Kelly, who served two stints as police commissioner under Mayors Mike Bloomberg and David Dinkins.<\/p>\n

He claimed Mamdani will redirect funding from the NYPD budget to create his proposed new Department of Community Safety, which will focus on aiding mentally ill residents and other social services and crime prevention programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s defunding the police,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s former top cop called Mamdani\u2019s initiative \u2014 to have social service workers approach individuals with mental illness without cops \u2014 \u201cpie in the sky.<\/p>\n

Kelly said his endorsement of Cuomo is about defeating Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani. AP<\/p>\n

\u201cThese events can turn on a dime and become very dangerous,\u201d Kelly said.<\/p>\n

Mamdani has tried to make nice with the department and its supporters while running for mayor, distancing himself from comments he made in 2020 <\/a>when he called the NYPD \u201cracist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety\u201d and backed \u201cdefund the police.\u201d<\/p>\n

With City Hall within his grasp, he now says he would\u00a0retain\u00a0Jessica Tisch<\/a> as police commissioner.<\/p>\n

But Kelly said it would be \u201cvery difficult\u201d for Tisch to work under Mamdani, given their disagreements on key criminal-justice issues.<\/p>\n

Kelly claimed on WABC that Mamdani would \u201cwreak havoc on us\u201d if elected mayor. James Messerschmidt<\/p>\n

Cuomo welcomed Kelly\u2019s endorsement.<\/p>\n

\u201cRay Kelly is one of the best police commissioners in the city\u2019s history, and we appreciate his support as Andrew Cuomo fights for the vote of all uniformed members,\u201d said Cuomo campaign spokesman Rich Azzopardi.<\/p>\n

Cuomo has vowed to hire 5,000 more cops and keep the jail complex on Rikers Island running instead of opening new ones in the boroughs.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, many of the city\u2019s law-enforcement unions \u2014 rolled into the Uniformed Forces Coalition 2025 covering most of the city police, corrections and sanitation unions that backed Mayor Eric Adams\u2019 re-election run <\/a>before he dropped out of the race \u2014 have not endorsed Mamdani, Cuomo or Sliwa.<\/p>\n

The city Police Benevolent Association, representing beat cops but not part of the coalition, also has not endorsed a candidate.<\/p>\n

Reps from the law-enforcement higher-ups\u2019 coalition\u2013 which includes the Detectives\u2019 Endowment Association, Sergeants Benevolent Association, Lieutenants Benevolent Association and Captains Endowment Association \u2014 met with Cuomo and Sliwa on Friday and decided not to endorse either candidate, a source familiar with the deliberations said.<\/p>\n

Nearly all the unions representing law enforcement and uniformed officers had backed Adams\u2019 successful run for mayor in 2021, and some supported Republican Nicole Malliotakis for mayor in 2017, though none voiced their official support for Bill de Blasio when he first won the mayoralty in 2013.<\/p>\n

Cuomo\u2019s actions as governor have come back to haunt him. He approved the state\u2019s controversial cashless bail law, and police unions have blasted Cuomo\u2019s state Parole Board appointees for releasing convicted cop-killers<\/a>, a law-enforcement union source said.<\/p>\n

Reps for the coalitions did not meet with Mamdani\u2019s campaign, but some of the union officials will continue to attack him as anti-cop, a labor insider said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city\u2019s longest-serving NYPD commissioner, Ray Kelly, endorsed Andrew Cuomo for mayor Monday \u2014 but the Big Apple\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[80,5302,57,9,56,63,65,563,64,87,12132,58,82],"class_list":["post-19216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-andrew-cuomo","tag-jessica-tisch","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-mayoral-election-2025","tag-nyc-news","tag-politics","tag-ray-kelly","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}