NEW YORK (WABC) — Monday is the final day before voters decide who will be the next mayor of New York City and the three candidates crisscrossed the five boroughs to make their final pitch to voters.
It’s a race between a one-time vigilante, a former governor and a democratic socialist upstart, and the race has already driven huge voter engagement.
Andrew Cuomo told volunteers Monday night in Sutton Place that he anticipates record turnout on Tuesday, after voters set a record for early voting in a mayoral race at more than 735,000 ballots.
“They are worried about Mamdani being mayor of New York City,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo shrugged off a day-before-the-election endorsement from President Donald Trump who said, “Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice. You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”
“He’s not endorsing me. He’s opposing Mamdani,” Cuomo said.
He may not see it as an endorsement, but says the president is right.
“I agree. A vote for Curtis Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani,” Cuomo said. “Curtis Sliwa is not a viable candidate. He cannot win. He is in the race as a spoiler only.”
Sliwa has enough support in the polls to effectively be a spoiler for Cuomo, but the Republican nominee has never had the support of the Republican president.
“The President is entitled to his point of view, but the people on the ground say they want change, and the change is not Zohran Mamdani it’s Sliwa,” Sliwa said.
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Sliwa, who was at a subway station on Coney Island on Monday morning, says he is the only candidate in the race who has campaigned about safer subways and a safer city.
It’s the same station where Debrina Kawam, a homeless woman, was burned alive on the F train a year ago.
“Today, this final day of campaigning is dedicated to a victim who represents all victims of violent crime in New York City who have been forgotten,” Sliwa said.
Mamdani also addressed Trump’s endorsement of Cuomo on Monday night.
“The MAGA movement’s embrace of Andrew Cuomo is reflective of Donald Trump’s understanding that this would be the best mayor for him, not the best mayor for New York City,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani said he fully expected the endorsement, but says he did not “anticipate Andrew Cuomo going from being Donald Trump’s puppet to being so nakedly his parrot.”
Earlier in the day, Mamdani marched with hundreds of supporters, from union leaders to political figures, across the Brooklyn Bridge,
“The question before us is very simple-morning versus night. Do we want it to be morning again in New York, where we feel the warmth of the sun on our skin and the possibility inherent and innate to every new day? Or do we want to shiver in the night past by a politics of fear and self-enrichment?” Mamdani said.
Mamdani has been leading in the polls ever since the primary, and Cuomo would need to pull off the same kind of upset Mamdani did then.
Cuomo was in the Bronx on Monday morning as part of his five-borough bus tour with stops in Washington Heights, Flushing, Chinatown, Flatbush and Staten Island.
In the evening, Cuomo called in and appealed directly to conservative listeners of WABC radio, which was Sliwa’s employer until his resignation last month, over pressure for him to drop out of the race to help prevent a Mamdani victory.
Now, in the final hours of the race, each candidate hopes the election will go his way.
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