“He has literally never had a job,” Cuomo said of Mamdani, who has been a state assemblyman since 2020.
Trump was the elephant in the room Trump has had some choice words about this mayoral race, threatening to pull funding from New York City and send federal troops in.
Sliwa and Cuomo praised Trump for ending the war and said Mamdani won’t help Jewish people in New York.
Investor Bill Ackman, who has donated more than $1m to try to stop Mamdani’s candidacy, has said his policies would be “disastrous” for New York City.
In comparison to Mamdani, who seemed to be on a mission to cover every inch of the city, Cuomo had little interaction with voters.
A race for mayor that has national repercussions.
Epstein, Kayla.
from New York, reporting.
At Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, the three front-runners for mayor of New York City took the stage to argue for control of the nation’s largest city.
As President Donald Trump looms large, the race’s outcome will have political ramifications beyond the Empire State, and whoever wins will probably be under pressure from Washington in one way or another.
Additionally, the Democratic Party is probably trying to predict whether progressive Democrat Zohran Mamdani or establishment centrist Andrew Cuomo will win America’s largest Democratic stronghold.
After a crushing defeat to Trump in the 2024 election, the victor could let national party leaders know what kind of candidate and platform might help them get out of the wilderness.
The ability of candidate Curtis Sliwa to gain support for their party on a platform of public safety will also be closely watched by Republicans.
Here are the top five things to remember from our live debate coverage, which is coming to an end.
Cuomo, Sliwa, and Mamdani argue about Trump and the cost of living.
Sakshi Venkatraman.
from New York, reporting.
Three candidates for mayor of New York City engaged in a heated two-hour debate.
Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani is in the lead in the polls and was the center of much of the discussion, whether it was due to attacks from his opponents or questions from moderators. There were also challenging questions for Republican Curtis Sliwa and Independent Andrew Cuomo.
Here are a few of the key moments.
a tense environment.
The candidates’ heated arguments and personal jabs filled the evening.
Of Mamdani, a state assemblyman since 2020, Cuomo remarked, “He has literally never had a job.”. Additionally, he charged that he was not a true Democrat.
Mamdani brought up Cuomo’s claims of sexual harassment and criticized his record as governor. He also repeatedly corrected Sliwa’s pronunciation of his name.
The unspoken problem was Trump.
Trump has used harsh language in relation to this mayoral contest, threatening to send federal troops in and withhold funding from New York City. He constantly berates Mamdani.
Every contender pledged to protect New York from Trump’s policies.
Israel and Gaza.
Moderators focused on Mamdani because he goes further than most members of the Democratic establishment in his criticism of Israel and strong support for Palestinians.
“Obviously, I think that they [Hamas] ought to put down their weapons. “A ceasefire entails putting out the fire,” he stated tonight.
In addition to saying Mamdani won’t assist Jews in New York, Sliwa and Cuomo commended Trump for bringing the war to an end.
living expenses.
Regarding how to solve the city’s affordability crisis, the three candidates have quite different opinions.
Mamdani reaffirmed his pledge during the campaign to increase the 1 percent tax on the wealthiest in order to fund more free services for New Yorkers.
Sliwa concurred with Cuomo that tax increases will lead people to “flee” to Florida.
Has the panic in Wall Street died down?
Sherman, Natalie.
reporter for a business publication in Manhattan.
The city’s business elite was extremely alarmed by Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary last June.
Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan, snubbed him for spewing “ideological mush that means nothing in the real world.”.
Bill Ackman, an investor who has contributed over $1 million to oppose Mamdani’s candidacy, has declared that his policies would be “disastrous” for the city of New York.
Daniel Loeb, the head of the hedge fund, recently issued a social media warning: “This will not end well.”.
However, what the media frequently referred to as a Wall Street “freak-out” during the summer seems to have lessened as a Mamdani mayoralty becomes more likely. Mamdani is trying to reassure business leaders that he will remain receptive to their concerns and appoint seasoned, non-ideological managers to his administration.
“The past few months have been extremely hectic, dot. “I believe he’s done a great job of establishing some relationships,” Kathryn Wylde, CEO of Partnership for New York, a business group, recently told the BBC.
“No one was familiar with him when he was elected. They were all afraid because they were aware of the campaign’s negative rhetoric. “.
Are free bus programs “a disaster”?
Sembhi Aisha, BBC Verify.
In the event that he is elected mayor, one of Zohran Mamdani’s main promises is to provide free bus transportation for all New Yorkers.
Regarding his opponent’s plan, Andrew Cuomo stated during the debate, “It has been done in other cities before. They stopped, and it’s been a catastrophe.
Several US cities have introduced free bus service. Following a trial period in 2020, Albuquerque, New Mexico, announced a 20 percent external increase in ridership in 2024 and made the program permanent in 2023.
Kansas City’s city council has declared that fares will be reinstated in 2026 after the free bus model was tested there.
Mamdani participated in a pilot program that offered five bus routes in New York without charging fares.
Although the average bus speed dropped, the number of users on all routes increased, according to a report on the pilot conducted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
Additionally, according to Cuomo, free bus models turn buses into “mobile homeless gathering places.”. The MTA report contained no information about passengers who were homeless.
Cuomo’s shifting tactics.
Nada Tawfik.
Reporting from New York.
Following an unimpressive primary campaign, Andrew Cuomo declared in a video that he would run as an independent in the general election after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary.
Unlike Mamdani, who appeared to be trying to reach every part of the city, Cuomo did not engage with voters very much.
In order to gain the support of New Yorkers, he stated in the video that he would be visiting the streets daily to listen to their opinions.
However, the well-known former governor has had a difficult time changing his public persona. The more he’s tried, the more his different methods have brought attention to the stark generational gap between the two campaigns.
The right-leaning tabloid, the New York Post, decried the video as “cringe and inauthentic” after it featured him helping a man jump-start his car.
Before the real Cuomo on camera states, “There are a lot of jobs I can’t do,” he was criticized for using artificial intelligence (AI) instead of New York artists to create an advertisement showing him performing a variety of jobs throughout the city. However, I’m prepared to take over as mayor right away. “.
By emphasizing Mamdani’s inexperience in comparison to his years in government, public safety, and job creation, as well as affordability, he hopes to influence voters.
To what extent do Republican states have high crime rates?
by Cheetham, Joshua.
The candidates were questioned earlier in the debate about whether they would agree to any National Guard deployment to the streets of New York.
“I wouldn’t,” Zohran Mamdani said, adding, “if Donald Trump was worried about safety, he would send them to the eight states with the highest crime rates in the nation. But since Republicans control them all, he won’t. “.”.
We interpret “run by Republicans” as referring to a state where the governor and legislature are both Republicans.
Alaska, which is a Republican-run state, had the highest rates of violent crime in the nation in 2024, with 724 violent incidents per 100,000 people, according to the most recent data from the Justice Center, an outside think tank.
Louisiana, California, Colorado, Missouri, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and New Mexico followed.
Of these, three are run by Democrats, five by Republicans, and one, Kansas, is split between the two parties.
The majority are Republican candidates, but we don’t win by a wide margin.
911 calls involving mental health concerns should be answered by whom?
Questions concerning 911 calls for individuals who seem to be experiencing mental health issues are now being posed to the candidates. 911 calls direct responses to emergency first responders, including police.
According to Mamdani, he wants to send mental health professionals to the scene of non-violent mental health calls rather than having the police department handle them.
Moderators question him about this, asking who will decide what circumstances are violent. Along with the mental health specialists, he says he will have faith in 911 operators to make those decisions.
In contrast, Sliwa refers to Mamdani’s plan as a “fantasy.”.
According to him, mentally ill individuals must be “removed” and require appropriate homeless shelters as well as mental healthcare.
Police and social workers should be on the scene because calls involving mentally ill people can turn violent, according to Cuomo.
Countering Cuomo, Sliwa asserts that it is “not realistic” to deploy both police and mental health specialists.
Education policy is the subject of discussion.
The candidates are now concentrating on a very local issue: city education policies.
Sliwa says his two 4-year-old sons did not suffer academic setbacks because they were not accepted into New York’s gifted and talented program, which offers advanced elementary school pupils an accelerated curriculum. He goes on to say that more spots in the program are required for children in New York.
According to Cuomo, he would double the number of specialized high schools and broaden programs for gifted and talented students.
Mamdani claims that his previous remarks regarding the phase-out of the gifted and talented program only applied to the kindergarten level of the program and not to higher grades.
