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.<\/p>\n
With less than a week to go until Election Day, the candidates are making their final push on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n
Four years ago, Curtis Sliwa won Staten Island with 67% of the vote, but Andrew Cuomo hopes this year will be different.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But Cuomo, who chased moderate voters in The South Bronx on Tuesday, will be on the island later Wednesday as well.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
Early voters continue to turn out in record numbers — hundreds of thousands of them.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
The Mamdani campaign is determined to boost turnout numbers in the Bronx, where early voting has lagged far behind Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.<\/p>\n
Cuomo is hoping that moderate and conservative voters will abandon Sliwa, who continues to hold double-digit support.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n
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