Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Mamdani Beats Cuomo for NYC Mayor Nomination
The political world has seen the last of Andrew Cuomo, the former Governor of New York. Yesterday, he finished second for the Democratic nomination for the job of New York City Mayor. Because the race is being held using a version of the single-transferrable vote (locally known as ranked-choice voting), the count is not official. That said, Mr. Cuomo conceded the election this morning. The man who toppled him is Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblymen. He offered a vision of the city that did not rely on austerity and cuts. Whether he can win the general election remains to be seen.
The voting system in New York City allows voters to state their preferences for up to 5 candidates. When the votes are counted, they are first sorted by first preferences. If any candidate has 50%+1 of firstr preferences, that candidate wins. Otherwise, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated and those ballots are re-allocated by second preferences.Then, the next lowest is out, and those ballots are redistributed. When the 50%+1 threshold is breached, a winner is declared.
New York City has yet to finish counting the first preferences because mail-in voting can take 7 days from election day to arrive and still be valid. That said, the New York Times reported the following totals based on 93% of the votes that were in and able to be counted: Mr. Mamdani 43.5%, Mr. Cuomo 36.4%, Brad Lander 11.3%, Adrienne Adams 4.1% and 7 others were below 2%. Under any reasonably fair vote-counting system, that is a poor result for Mr. Cuomo.
Mr. Mamdani is considered left-wing in America, lining himself up proudly with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez among others. He is 33 with a rather thin, though not blotted, record. He is an immigrant (born in Uganda) and a Muslim. One need not be a rabid MAGA supporter to see how he is going to be attacked in social media and elsewhere.
While it will be picked apart by political scientists for years, the campaign of Andrew Cuomo was disappointing as it never really provided much beyond anti-Trumpism. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, and Mr. Cuomo has a record of fighting his corner hard. That experience, however, comes with baggage. Mr. Cuomo is 67, which is a decent age to be mayor, but it does not speak of youthful freshness. Kathy Hochul is now Governor of New York because Mr. Cuomo resigned in disgrace, accused of sexual impropriety. He said he never did any such thing. As Mandy Rice-Davis stated on the witness stand of the Profumo trial when told the defendant denied it all, “Well, he would [say that], wouldn't he?” Too many New Yorkers remember his indiscetions.
This defeat marks the changing of the guard in the New York Democratic Party. No more babyboomers on the top of the ticket. And Generation X might not have much chance either. It also marks a change in the ethnic mix of New York. Mr. Cuomo is, quite proudly, of Italian descent. That group arrived in its largest numbers before World War II. Mr. Mamdani is of East Indian ethnicity, born in Africa and living in Queens. The city reinvents itself has the population shifts as it has here. Political power tends to be a trailing indicator of what a place really looks like.
Now, if Mr. Mamdani wins the general election, this will all be set in stone. The generational change has begun, and it will grow in scope. If he were to lose, however, it would call into question those points and the ideological one as well. The party will look to the past for a future.
That calculation will be complicated by the three-way race coming in November. Curtis Sliwa, a gadfly who founded the Guardian Angels patrols in the 1970s, has the Republican nomination. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams is also on the ballot as an independent. Mr. Sliwa will finish third. But a sitting mayor who was a cop, has a deal with the White House on immigration, who has preached austerity might convince voters to overlook his bribe-taking.
Like Broadway, New York politics is good theatre.
© Copyright 2025 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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