New York’s Stop-Mamdani movement may fall short for Andrew Cuomo despite Eric Adams endorsement

There was Andrew Cuomo at Madison Square Garden yukking it up at a Knicks match What was the ousted governor so happy about He d just come from the final New York mayoral debate where he landed chosen blows against front-runner Zohran Mamdani but he s still on track to lose the poll Ah but the appearance at an NBA meeting the league suddenly tainted by a gambling embarrassment that includes the Mafia was a photo op with Mayor Eric Adams who endorsed his onetime rival the previous 24 hours So what if he called Cuomo a snake and a liar last month ANDREW CUOMO CAMPAIGN WALKS BACK CONTROVERSIAL ATTACK AD TARGETING MAMDANI VOTERSYet Adams who had been indicted on corruption charges until the Trump Justice Department dropped the situation was down in the single digits So his backing may not move a multitude of votes though it could give Cuomo various street cred in the Black society and among Orthodox Jews New York City politics is a challenge of nine-dimensional chess with shifting alliances red-hot rivalries and clashing narratives Speaking as a native you ve got to understand the melting pot the boroughs the ethnic neighborhoods Wall Street Albany it s an asphalt jungle New York mayors tend to become national figures John Lindsay Ed Koch Rudy Giuliani Michael Bloomberg by reigning in the media capital You think it s a coincidence that Donald Trump Andrew Cuomo Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are all from New York C mon Whatsa madder wid you Mamdani an assemblyman who started out at percent should have been clobbered by Cuomo who ran a lazy entitled effort and lost the Democratic nomination From Harlem to Coney Island Mamdani proved to be a charismatic campaigner He will likely win even if the Republican Curtis Sliwa formerly of the Guardian Angels drops out which he has no incentive to do So the race has morphed into a Stop-Mamdani movement mainly because he is a self-described democratic socialist who in the past has taken particular far-left stances such as defunding the police Republicans would love to make him a national symbol of the party Trump regularly denounces him as a communist Yet even a great number of Democrats worry about him driving business out of the Apple Cuomo as the son of a governor inevitably seems the establishment candidate And Andrew who I ve known since he was before he ran HUD has the baggage of being forced to resign over accusations of sexual harassment by women with Mamdani announcing that one of them Charlotte Bennett was in the debate audience Cuomo off balance mentioned no charges had ever been filed Trump by the way pulled the same move in a debate with Hillary Clinton Andrew Cuomo was also blamed for nursing home deaths during the pandemic MAYOR ERIC ADAMS ENDORSES ANDREW CUOMO AS HIS SUCCESSOR AS ZOHRAN MAMDANI MAINTAINS LEAD IN NYC RACEThe New York Times has seven takeaways such as Cuomo having more potential and landing more blows against Mamdani He s never run anything managed anything he s never had a real job In a classic New York putdown the ex-governor declared Trump would roll right over Mamdani He thinks he s a kid and he s going to knock him on his tuchus You can look it up Mayor Koch once called someone a schmuck and there was a whole editors debate over whether I could print that Mamdani countered that Cuomo would merely be Trump s puppet If you re getting the impression that the president is pretty unpopular in his home city now abandoned for Palm Beach you re right Both rivals hit Mamdani on Israel with Sliwa saying his two young sons who are Jewish feel unsafe That is one of the key points in the Washington Post which clocks in at five takeaways He does not think the country should exist as a majority-Jewish state and should instead focus on equal rights for both Palestinians and Jews In this debate the attacks on Mamdani who is Muslim seemed to land harder even as Mamdani insisted he would fight anti-Semitism Which brings us to a far more personal assault from Times columnist Bret Stephens under the headline Why Mamdani Scares Jews Like Me He invokes particular lesser-known stances from the past One when Mamdani founded the Bowdoin College chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine he stopped cooperating with the left-wing Jewish group J Street which backs Palestinian statehood and opposes Israeli settlements Why Because J Street supports Israel as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people This was too much for Mamdani who to this day does not encouragement Israel s right to exist as a Jewish state Two Mamdani wrote a rap song in declaring love for the Holy Land Five The Holy Land Foundation was an ostensible charity convicted in of funneling million to Hamas with the defendants convicted of terrorism and other crimes SOCIAL MEDIA ERUPTS AFTER CUOMO MAMDANI RIP EACH OTHER DURING FINAL DEBATE 'UNMASKED'Three a inadequate months before the Oct massacre by Hamas Mamdani introduced a bill that could have jeopardized the tax-exempt status of virtually every pro-Israel charity Stephens accuses the front-runner of monomania This is no small matter in a city with the world s largest Jewish population outside Israel But Mamdani has met with rabbis and specific younger Jewish voters are backing him either because they re focused on his affordability campaign or oppose the damage and death toll that Israel has inflicted on Gaza And get this Cuomo just pulled down an AI ad showing Mamdani supporters as looters drunk drivers as human traffickers Just disgusting disclosed Zohran So that about wraps this piece up right Sit down There s inevitably more drama in the city that never sleeps Curtis Sliwa suddenly quit his job at New York s top talk radio station WABC a rock station back in my day You will never see me at the studios of WABC again he thundered Sliwa announced people that he hired and trained were betraying him by urging him to quit in order to stop Mamdani Billionaire John Catsimatidis the station owner who ran for mayor himself a decade ago has also suggested he bow out Sliwa recounted host Sid Rosenberg that WABC is biased toward Cuomo You re gonna lose and you re gonna lose badly embarrassingly Rosenberg announced as their shouting match grew louder I have no idea why Curtis Sliwa would give up the gig But as the politicians know New York is an outta-my-way horn-honking place where everyone takes turns being mad at each other Start spreadin the news