Journalism of Courage
The first debate in the general election of the New York City mayor’s race was a bitter and combative affair, with the three candidates trading personal attacks, disagreeing fiercely over the Israel-Hamas war and questioning their rivals’ credentials.
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic front-runner, took an aggressive stance toward his main opponent, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, as well as toward President Donald Trump — seeking to project strength and to make the case that he would stand up to Trump while Cuomo was beholden to the president.
Cuomo, 67, who is in second place in the polls, had a more difficult job: to land a meaningful punch against Mamdani, 33, and cast himself as a common-sense, experienced alternative. Curtis Sliwa, 71, the Republican candidate, fought for speaking time, lashing out at both Mamdani and Cuomo.
The candidates will face off again on Oct. 22, ahead of the Nov. 4 election.
Even with a strong lead in the polls, Mamdani did not play it safe. He aggressively attacked Cuomo, arguing that the former governor did not understand the city’s affordability crisis and did not have integrity.
Mamdani drew attention to Cuomo’s attacks over his rent-stabilized apartment in Queens. Cuomo argued that only working-class residents should qualify for those apartments.
“You’ve heard it from Andrew Cuomo that the No. 1 crisis in this city, the housing crisis — the answer is to evict my wife and I,” Mamdani said. “He thinks you address this crisis by unleashing my landlord’s ability to raise my rent.”
Then he made an appeal to voters.
“If you think that the problem in this city is that my rent is too low, vote for him,” he said. “If you know the problem in this city is that your rent is too high, vote for me.”
When Cuomo criticized Mamdani’s limited experience, Mamdani raised doubts about Cuomo’s time in government. Cuomo resigned as governor in 2021 after a series of sexual harassment allegations that he has denied.
“What I don’t have in experience, I make up for in integrity,” Mamdani said. “And what you don’t have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience.”
Mamdani has often been a happy warrior on the campaign trail, charming even his skeptics. That side of him did not appear often on the debate stage. He tried to highlight his affordability proposals and said that universal child care would be his most important priority.
But Sliwa suggested Mamdani’s plans were unrealistic.
“Your fantasies are never going to come about in terms of funding everything you want that’s going to be free, free, free,” he said. “It’s a fantasy.”
Mamdani, a fierce critic of Israel who is running to be the city’s first Muslim mayor, repeatedly defended his views on the conflict in the Gaza Strip.
In the face of vocal criticism from Republicans and Democrats, Mamdani sought to clean up his comments from a Fox News interview on Wednesday in which he did not answer directly when asked whether Hamas should put down its weapons and step aside in Gaza.
“Of course I believe that they should lay down their arms,” he said.
But his comments provided an opening for Cuomo to hammer Mamdani for his broader views, including Mamdani’s belief that Israel should not be an explicitly Jewish state, and his declining to condemn the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
“Why wouldn’t he condemn Hamas? Why wouldn’t he condemn Hasan Piker?” Cuomo asked, referring to a popular YouTube streamer who once said America “deserved 9/11.”
Mamdani said that he found Piker’s comments “objectionable and reprehensible.” But he said he stood by his remark that he would not recognize Israel’s right to be a Jewish state.
“I’ve said time and again that I recognize Israel’s right to exist,” he said, adding: “I would not recognize any state’s right to exist with a system of hierarchy on the basis of race or religion.”
Sliwa said that Mamdani would not be able to handle a crisis like the racial unrest that happened in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991, which included violence against Jews.
“Jews don’t trust that you are going to be there for them when they are the victims of antisemitic attacks,” Sliwa said.
Cuomo needed a big night with a breakout moment to signal to voters and big-money donors that he was still capable of mounting a fight.
It was not clear he succeeded.
His attacks against Mamdani were frequent and fell along the same lines. He repeatedly hammered Mamdani's views on Israel. He was intent on portraying Mamdani as inexperienced. And he blasted Mamdani as being too far to the left to govern New York City, comparing Mamdani frequently — and unfavorably — to former Mayor Bill de Blasio. (De Blasio is Mamdani’s favorite living mayor — a fact that both his opponents brought up more than once.)
“If you look at the failed mayors, they’re ones that had no management experience,” Cuomo said. “Don’t do it again.”
Yet even as Cuomo frequently boasted of his own experience as governor, he was forced to dwell on unpopular aspects of his tenure, including the state’s handling of nursing home deaths during the coronavirus pandemic and the sexual harassment allegations — diverting precious debate time that he could have used to offer a fresh vision for New York City.
To fuel a comeback, Cuomo needs to attract a new base of support. But he committed to the same agenda and principles that had governed his failed Democratic primary campaign.
Asked explicitly what lessons he’d learned from that race, Cuomo focused on style rather than substance, saying he wished he’d campaigned more actively and been more present on social media.
Sliwa seemed to delight in attacking Cuomo, even comparing him unfavorably with his late father, Mario Cuomo.
“I knew Mario Cuomo,” he said. “You’re no Mario Cuomo.”
Sliwa — who made a point of not wearing his trademark red beret — went after Cuomo over the sexual harassment allegations, his handling of the pandemic and the high cost of his state-paid legal fees and questioned whether he would stand up to Trump.
His attacks reflected a political reality: Sliwa and Cuomo are both courting similar bases of moderate and conservative voters. Sliwa has also been frustrated by Cuomo’s efforts to oust him from the race to consolidate non-Mamdani votes.
Refusing to stay on the sidelines, Sliwa frequently made strikingly dated references to New York history, evoking a bygone era that came before Mamdani reached adulthood. He referenced a Public Enemy song from 1990 to knock 311 (“911 Is a Joke”), mentioned the Crown Heights riots and repeatedly complimented former Gov. George Pataki, a Republican who left office in 2006.
Sliwa also took an unusually hostile tone toward expanding the subway. He said he opposed extending the Q train to Harlem — a project known as the second phase of the Second Avenue subway that Trump has threatened to kill.
“I am the mayor of mass transit,” Sliwa said, in reference to his leadership of the Guardian Angels, a subway patrol group. “We do not need a Q train.”
Given the high cost of living in New York City, the moderators asked the candidates to divulge their weekly grocery bills.
Their estimates were one of the few things they had in common.
Cuomo, pondering aloud for a bit, landed at “about $150.”
Sliwa, complaining about the cost of milk and bread, landed at “about $175.”
And Mamdani said his average grocery bill was around $125 to $150 now that “eggs are down to less than 4 bucks.”
But if their food costs were around the same, their housing costs diverged.
Asked about his rent or mortgage cost, Sliwa, who lives in Manhattan, said that he paid about $3,900. “It’s not subsidized,” he added.
Mamdani, whose rent-stabilized apartment in Astoria, Queens, has become a target of Cuomo, said his payment was $2,300.
And Cuomo, who attacked Mamdani for having an apartment “that a poor person is supposed to have,” said that he paid more than three times as much: about $7,800. He lives in the Sutton Place section of Manhattan.
Some lighter exchanges occurred. Toward the end of the evening, a moderator asked if the candidates if they had bought anything at a cannabis shop.
Mamdani gave a broad smile and said yes. “I’ve purchased marijuana at a legal cannabis shop,” he said.
Sliwa said that he had used medical marijuana after he was shot in a taxi in 1992. “When I was shot five times and I got Crohn’s disease, I did use medical marijuana, yes,” Sliwa said.
Cuomo’s answer was terse. “No,” he said.
The candidates also discussed their breakfast bodega order.
Sliwa said: “Oh, eggs and cheese on a roll, no salt, please.”
Cuomo, who received some ridicule over his bagel order (actually an English muffin) during the primary, concurred: “Same thing, no salt.”
Mamdani preferred some spice. “Egg and cheese on a roll with jalapeños,” he said.
The moderators did a masterful job, keeping the candidates on topic and delving into thorny local and national issues.
Mamdani and Cuomo were far apart onstage, positions chosen in a random draw. Sliwa stood between them interjecting, not allowing the two leading candidates to challenge each other face-to-face.
Toward the end, a question on parades seemed to throw every candidate for a loop.
“New York City loves its parades, and the mayor is often front and center,” a moderator, Melissa Russo, a reporter with WNBC-TV, said. “You have all said that you want to be mayor for all New Yorkers. So will you march in all the parades?”
All three men seemed surprised.
Sliwa said he was staunchly pro-parade. Cuomo said he would only skip parades that discriminated. Mamdani just seemed perplexed.
“There are many parades that I would not be attending because I’d be focusing on the work of leading the city,” he said.
Russo pressed on: Were there any parades that the city needed to add to the calendar?
“I haven’t thought much about parades, to be honest with you,” Mamdani said.
“I have not thought — I don’t even know what parade doesn’t exist, frankly,” Cuomo joked.
“Every parade has the right to exist in New York City,” Sliwa declared.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
