Tonight, October 16, is the first New York City Mayoral debate of the general election. Onstage will be three candidates: the Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, the Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running for mayor as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani back in June.
In the past decade, New York City mayoral general elections have typically been blowout affairs, with Democrats routinely winning against Republicans by margins of 40% or more. But this year, the general election has been anything but typical.
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For starters, the 33 year old Mamdani, a proud Democratic Socialist, made national headlines when his social-media savvy campaign defeated Cuomo’s in the Democratic primary earlier in the year. That stunning upset, made all the more surprising by the fact that most polls in the lead up still had Cuomo up double digits, threw the general election into chaos.
Mamdani and Sliwa won the official Democratic and Republican nominations, but they were joined by a host of other candidates, including Cuomo again (who decided to run in the general election as an independent) and Eric Adams, the incumbent mayor of NYC. Adams, still a registered Democrat, decided against running for renomination in the primary given his sub-30s approval rating and federal corruption scandal, which has since been dismissed by the DoJ (with accusations that Adams cut a deal with the Trump administration in exchange).
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This 4-way race dynamic persisted through the summer and early fall, with Mamdani consistently leading Cuomo, his closest opponent, by double digits. Throughout those months, Cuomo, Sliwa, and Adams often seemed more interested in bickering about which of them should drop out than taking on Mamdani. But the latest jolt to the race came on September 29, when Eric Adams, lagging in the fundraising and polling, ended his reelection bid (he has not made an endorsement of any remaining candidate at the moment). His exit, though, did not fundamentally change the race. Going into the debate tonight, Mamdani is polling in the mid-40s vs Cuomo in the low to mid-30s and Sliwa in the mid-teens, and has around an 87% chance of winning the mayoralty in November.
This debate could be critical to determining the course of this election, and these are the two key things I will be paying attention to while watching:
Cuomo on the attack: The former governor needs something big to change in this race in the last weeks, and with early voting set to start in around a week, he may be running out of time. This debate will likely be one of his best opportunities to not only make the case for himself, but aggressively go after Mamdani on issues like policing, Israel / Gaza, and the recent news that Mamdani’s campaign had taken in thousands of illegal foreign campaign contributions. He needs to dent Mamdani’s lead while defending his own record (including controversies regarding his sexual harassment scandals and nursing home deaths) from both Mamdani and Sliwa.
What will Sliwa do?: The Republican nominee, Sliwa started a group called the Guardian Angels as a sort of vigilante group protecting New Yorkers back in the 1970s. He’s now running for NYC mayor again, after losing in a landslide to Adams back in 2021. During the debate, it will be key to see if he is focused on attacking Mamdani, the frontrunner, or Cuomo, who he has a long and bitter rivalry with. If he teams up with Cuomo to go after Mamdani, it could be an indicator that he may be open to dropping out of the race in a last-ditch effort to stop Mamdani. This is likely the only development in the race now that could conceivably change the race overnight in Cuomo’s favor, but despite intense pressure Sliwa has repeatedly insisted that he’s remaining in the election until the end.
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With so much at stake for the three candidates, and multiple competing visions for the future of NYC, it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that tonight’s debate is the most important NYC mayoral debate in the last decade.
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