If the pundits and politicians are right, New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s agonized and belated departure from the November 4 general election is unlikely to realign the now three-way contest that favors the avowed socialist and Islamic candidate Zohran Mamdani. Adams’s farewell message was “I urge New Yorkers to choose our leaders not by what they promise but by what they have delivered.”
When Adams finally acceded to political reality on Sunday, polls showed him at 7-10%, Mamdani at 40-45%, former Governor Andrew Cuomo at 25-30% and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa at 15-18%. It’s apparent to most that, no matter how Adams’s sliver of the electoral pie is redistributed, it won’t make a difference in the outcome. Cuomo’s calls for Sliwa to step down wouldn’t affect the outcome either, according to nearly every public poll.
Image created using AI.
Unfortunately for those New Yorkers who understand that the primary responsibilities of the mayor include managing mundane operational tasks such as providing public safety, healthcare, sanitation, and housing, the zeitgeist of the mayoral election appears to be anti-Israel and pro-social justice and free stuff. Mamdani’s young voters are comfortable with his risible pontifications, such as one in June stating that “violence is an artificial construction,” believing them relevant to governing America’s biggest city.
What could alter the course of Mamdani’s destructive missile is an event that jolts a significant portion of young voters back to the reality of living in a big city, rather than in an academic Marxist fantasyland. That jolt could come if, at the upcoming October 17 and 22 debates, either Cuomo or Sliwa can persuasively articulate the case for effective governance, and if that articulation is coupled with Mamdani making a poor showing. Lots of ifs.
A few other factors could also affect the outcome, favoring Sliwa over Cuomo.
What many observers don’t realize is that Mamdani and Sliwa are the only major party candidates on the ballot, occupying post positions one and two. As of September 11, listed third on the city Board of Elections’ preliminary ballot is the Conservative Party candidate, Irene Estrada, an unknown candidate who raised no money and who doesn’t register a blip in polling.
Mamdani repeats on the fourth line, running as the Working Families Party candidate. WFP is aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, the radical wing of the Democrat Party. Sliwa repeats in the fifth slot on his home-grown Protect Animals line.
Adams will appear as the number six choice as the Safe&Affordable/End Anti-Semitism Party. Under New York’s rules, his name will remain on the November 4 ballot.
Six choices down, and the former governor still hasn’t appeared.
Seventh is the Quality of Life candidate, who is unknown and unfunded.
Finally, in the number eight slot, the ballot equivalent of Siberia, the former governor finally appears, running as the Fight and Deliver candidate, an inapt name because he spent most of the primary in the Hamptons instead of campaigning.
Ballot position often gives an advantage to the first candidates listed. “Ballot-order effects” lead some states to list candidates randomly. Academic studies from MIT and Chicago, for example, have consistently shown that candidates on the top two lines fare better than those buried at the bottom of the heap, which is where Cuomo finds himself. Ballot order affects campaign spending, which is correlated with a higher vote share.
One study (Koppell and Steen) on the 1998 Democratic primary election in NYC, found that, in “almost 10% of the cases where candidates listed first got a bump in vote share, that bump was larger than the winner’s margin of victory.” Another study in California quantified that bump at 4-5%.
Given the intense publicity given to the race, it is reasonable to conclude that the “bump” could extend to the next man down on the ballot, Curtis Sliwa.
Another factor to consider is that New York City’s ballot will be lengthy and double-sided, with contests for Controller, City Council and a raft of ballot initiatives. Voters could take one look at the monster ballot and get ballot fatigue before they even find Cuomo.
Circling back to Mayor Adams’s admonishment to voters, Democrat/DSA candidate Mamdani is all promise and no results. In his two terms as a backbencher in his part-time job in the New York State Assembly, he initiated no legislation of substance and has a spotty attendance record, missing a third of this year’s sessions, according to the Albany Times Union. A Ugandan by birth, he only became a citizen in 2018, two years before he was elected to represent the Queens neighborhood of Astoria, part of the “Commie Corridor” along the East River. Before that, he briefly flirted with rapping as Mr. Cardamon and worked for his filmmaker mother.
Some of his legislative colleagues agree. “I wish he was a harder worker,” said State Senator Jessica Ramos, as quoted in the New York Times. Not a great comment from a Democratic colleague to the guy who wants to run the financial capital of the world with a $116 billion budget, 72 departments, and 364,000 workers.
In contrast, Cuomo has a long record from his 11 years as governor, mostly bad. He is personally responsible for most of the state and city’s ills, including personally initiating a statewide crime wave by all but eliminating bail, raising the age for adult punishment for young criminals, signing an executive order that arguably resulted in thousands of deaths in nursing homes during COVID, and being a repulsive and abusive human being during his years in office.
Needless to say, enthusiasm for him and his Fight and Delivery Party is sparse. Rare sightings of him on the campaign trail reveal a tired, spent old man. Voters will cast ballots for him only as a last resort.
Which is why Cuomo desperately wants Republican candidate Sliwa to bow out.
Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels and radio host on WABC 77 Radio, is well known for his crime-fighting efforts in New York and other US cities. He knows NYC and New Yorkers better than any of the other candidates.
NYC’s commercial real estate moguls refuse to support Sliwa because he is the only candidate who opposes the massive new zoning law passed in late 2024, which gives developers free rein to build high rises in traditionally single-family neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. The new City of Yes! zoning law also allows industrial battery storage facilities to be placed in very small parcels of land immediately abutting residential properties. This has ignited a backlash that the pollsters probably haven’t properly assessed.
Faced with the above mess, the city’s donor class is flailing. Many are political ignoramuses. After Mamdani’s primary victory, they lined behind Adams, having abandoned their initial choice of Cuomo following his disastrous performance. Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman is representative of that faction. Ackman gave $500,000 to Cuomo for the primary. After the Cuomo defeat, he opined on X. “Mayor Adams is ready to go to battle, guns blazing with enormous energy and clarity on why Mandani and his socialist/communist (“We must seize the means of production) and anti-NYPD policies would be catastrophic for NYC.” Now Ackman is demanding that Sliwa step aside to help Cuomo.
There are rumors about an October surprise that will make Mamdani unelectable. So far, his popularity has proved impenetrable to an onslaught of revelations about his radical ideology and personal inauthenticity. These include his hypocrisy of advocating the defunding of police when he is surrounded 24/7 by a security contingent of New York City Police Officers and the hypocrisy of beating the drum on affordability when his parents own multiple homes, including a gated estate in Uganda, where he had a lavish wedding, then returning to his rent-stabilized apartment in Astoria.
So we return to Mayor Adams’s political realism. Mamdani is all hat and no horse, meaning that he is a flashy pretense without demonstrable skills or experience. Cuomo has lots of experience, and it’s all bad. Sliwa has demonstrated his passion and knowledge of New York for over 40 years with positive results and has consistently stood up for New Yorkers.
Mayor Adams, in your final days in office, pass the baton to the right man. You know who he is.
Linda R. Killian is a retired financial analyst and executive. She is a local chairman of a New York Republican committee.