{"id":28688,"date":"2025-11-04T21:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T21:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/28688\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T21:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T21:13:09","slug":"birds-of-a-feather-trumps-endorsement-of-cuomo-divides-nyc-voters-elections-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/28688\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Birds of a feather\u2019: Trump\u2019s endorsement of Cuomo divides NYC voters | Elections News"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York City \u2013 For Jessica Dejesus, deciding who to vote for as the next mayor of New York City came down to the final minutes.<\/p>\n

The 40-year-old resident of the Mott Haven neighbourhood in the Bronx admittedly had not been following the race closely, but planned to vote for former Governor Andrew Cuomo. She recalled his near-nightly television appearances when he was governor of New York State amid the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was our guy during the pandemic,\u201d she reflected.<\/p>\n

But a day before the election, Dejesus saw a video on TikTok detailing US President Donald Trump\u2019s endorsement<\/a> of Cuomo.<\/p>\n

\"JessicaJessica Dejesus decided in the last minute to support candidate Zohran Mamdani [Joseph Stepansky\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n

While her feelings towards the candidates in the mayoral race may be ho-hum, Dejesus knows she is no fan of Trump. The nod made her give upstart candidate Social Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, a closer look.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t have that. I don\u2019t disagree with everything Trump does, but he cut back on food stamps, and that affects a lot of people,\u201d she said, referring to restrictions on US Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in a bill passed by Trump and Republicans earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand you have to stop bad people coming over the border, but there are a lot of good immigrants here as well,\u201d she said, referring to Trump\u2019s mass deportation drive.<\/p>\n

Walking into her voting site, she told Al Jazeera she still had not made up her mind. \u201cI\u2019ll have to wait until that paper\u2019s in front of me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Moments later, she emerged: \u201cI voted for Mamdani!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u2018You really have no choice\u2019<\/p>\n

A neighbourhood like Mott Haven, which was solidly mixed during the June primary in its turnout for Mamdani and Cuomo, shows just how reactive Trump\u2019s endorsement could be to the race: a poison pill for some and a final nail in the coffin for others.<\/p>\n

Trump, meanwhile, hoped his endorsement, soon followed by that of billionaire Elon Musk, would help rally conservative New Yorkers who came out in atypically large numbers in the city\u2019s 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice,\u201d Trump said in a social media post on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must vote for him and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuomo has also been explicitly reaching out<\/a> to Republicans, hoping to court their votes. About 11 percent of New York\u2019s 4.7 million voters were registered with the Republican Party in 2024.<\/p>\n

Recent polls have shown Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa carrying about 14 percent of the vote \u2013 not a huge amount, but potentially enough to close Mamdani\u2019s lead over the former governor.<\/p>\n

It remained unclear how successful the action from Trump \u2013 who has also threatened<\/a> to target city funding if Mamdani was elected \u2013 would be. But for some staunch supporters of Sliwa, Trump\u2019s intervention did little to change their minds.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Trump\u2019s endorsement] doesn\u2019t change my vote. Sliwa is for the people and I have faith in that,\u201d said Artemio Figuero, a 59-year-old city street cleaner, who spoke to Al Jazeera in Jackson Heights, Queens.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a protector of the neighbourhood,\u201d Figuero added, referring to Sliwa\u2019s stewardship of the vigilante anti-crime Guardian Angels group.<\/p>\n

\"ArtemioArtemio Figuero, 59, stands outside of a polling station in Jackson Heights, Queens [Joseph Stepansky\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n

Other Republicans who had long grown accustomed to voting outside of their party in the liberal-dominated local elections saw Trump\u2019s support as a positive development, if not a game-changer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like that Trump endorsed him,\u201d Lola Ferguson, a 53-year-old social worker and registered Republican who was already planning to vote for Cuomo, told Al Jazeera in Mott Haven.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe knows that [Cuomo\u2019s] the better match for the city,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Cuomo, for his part, has denied Trump\u2019s endorsement counts, noting that Trump had referred to him as a \u201cbad Democrat\u201d compared to Mamdani, whom he falsely called a \u201ccommunist\u201d.<\/p>\n

Still, for Mamdani supporters, Trump\u2019s move was not unexpected. Cuomo has been supported by an array of the city\u2019s wealthiest residents, including billionaires like Bill Ackman and Miriam Adelson, who have also backed Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cBirds of a feather flock together,\u201d said Andre Augustine, a 33-year-old who works at a college access nonprofit, who voted for Mamdani.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the signs were already there. All the folks that were financing Trump\u2019s campaign were also financing Cuomo\u2019s, and I feel like [Cuomo] just wouldn\u2019t be honest about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For others, Trump\u2019s endorsement was the feather that broke the camel\u2019s back.<\/p>\n

\"DominiqueDominique Witter is seen in Mott Haven in the Bronx [Joseph Stepansky\/Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n

Dominique Witter, 39, a healthcare tech consultant, respected Cuomo\u2019s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city, but had been gradually shifting towards Mamdani.<\/p>\n

She did not decide on Mamdani until the final sprint of the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took me a while to get there, but I\u2019m voting for Mamdani,\u201d she told Al Jazeera as she prepared to vote in Mott Haven.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not gonna lie; the Trump endorsement did not help. Because that\u2019s not what we want, right?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh no, that\u2019s not an endorsement you want.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City \u2013 For Jessica Dejesus, deciding who to vote for as the next mayor of New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[153,416,9,12,56,63,65,64,87,901,2272],"class_list":{"0":"post-28688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-elections","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-ny","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-nyc-headlines","15":"tag-nyc-news","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-us-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28688","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=28688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}