Cuomo's lead shrinks with under one week until New York City mayoral primary: poll
The 2025 race for New York City mayor is tightening, with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's lead shrinking with less than a week to go until the crucial June 24 Democratic Party mayoral primary, a new poll indicates.
A Marist Institute for Public Opinion poll released Wednesday shows that Cuomo – the former three-term governor – is the top choice for 38% of likely Democratic primary voters in New York City.
Cuomo, who resigned in 2021 amid multiple scandals, is now eyeing a political comeback and working to redeem his image.
Zorhan Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist state assemblyman from Queens, stands in second place in the poll, with 27% support in the primary, which is conducted using a ranked-choice voting system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots.
Mamdani, who is originally from Uganda, cut Cuomo's lead by nearly half from a Marist poll conducted a month ago, thanks in part to consolidating progressive support in the 11-candidate mayoral primary field.
Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York City's most prominent leader on the left, endorsed Mamdani earlier this month. Earlier this week, longtime progressive champion and two-time Democratic presidential nominee runner-up Sen. Bernie Sanders backed Mamdani.
With multiple candidates on the left running in the primary, the endorsements by Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders aimed to consolidate the support of progressive voters behind Mamdani.
"Mamdani is clearly in Cuomo's rearview mirror," Marist polling director Lee M. Miringoff told Fox News.
The poll indicates that New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is a distant third in the primary battle.
The survey was conducted June 9-12, before the final debate between the candidates and ahead of Lander's arrest on Tuesday by Department of Homeland Security agents in Manhattan, after allegedly assaulting a federal officer as Lander tried to escort a defendant out of an immigration court.
The poll was also conducted before the launch of an ad blitz questioning Mamdani's experience leading a city of more than 8 million people.
"Zohran Mamdani's a 33-year-old dangerously inexperienced legislator who's passed just three bills with a staff you can fit inside a New York elevator," the narrator in a Cuomo campaign ad said. "We need someone ready to roll. Andrew Cuomo managed a state and managed crises, from COVID to Trump."
Cuomo adviser and spokesperson Rich Azzopardi, when asked by Fox News about the new Marist survey, said, "This is the second poll in two days that showed Andrew Cuomo beginning and ending rank choice voting with a double-digit lead in a crowded multi-candidate race. These are serious times and New Yorkers know that Andrew Cuomo is the only candidate with the experience and the real record of results to fix what's broken and put the city back on the right track."
The 67-year-old Cuomo has spent the past four years fighting to clear his name after 11 sexual harassment accusations, which he has repeatedly denied, forced his resignation. He was also under investigation at the time for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic amid allegations his administration vastly understated COVID-related deaths at state nursing homes.
Last month, the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into Cuomo after Republicans accused him of lying to Congress about the decisions he made as governor during the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 130,000 Democrats have already cast ballots in early voting in the Democratic primary, ahead of next Tuesday's election.
The winner of the Democratic Party primary is traditionally seen as the overwhelming frontrunner in the November general election in the heavily blue city.
However, this year, the general election campaign may be a bit more unpredictable.
Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat elected in 2021, is running for re-election as an independent. Adams earlier this year dropped his Democratic primary bid as his approval ratings sank to historic lows.
While he is not on the ballot, President Donald Trump has taken center stage on the campaign trail in the closing weeks of the New York City primary battle.
Cuomo and many of the other candidates in the race have heavily criticized Trump's recent move to place National Guard troops and U.S. Marines in Los Angeles in an effort to quell unrest sparked by an increase in ICE arrests of illegal immigrants orchestrated by the administration.
The candidates are vowing to protect the city from what they suggest is a possible future federal crackdown against immigration protests in New York City.
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The Hill
13 minutes ago
- The Hill
Hogg's political group endorses Mamdani in NYC mayoral race
David Hogg's political group Leaders We Deserve is endorsing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary. 'We are here talking to voters on the third day of early voting,' Mamdani said in a video posted on X after Mamdani and Hogg introduce themselves. 'And we're so excited to let them know that our campaign has just been endorsed by Leaders We Deserve.' 'We're really excited to support the campaign here to help make New York City affordable, help make sure that buses are faster and free at the same time and that no New Yorker has to pay for childcare,' Hogg says in the video. Mamdani is running in a crowded field for New York City mayor, with recent polling showing a tightening race, though former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is shown in surveys still leading the pack. Mamdani and City Comptroller Brad Lander have cross-endorsed each other as a bid to make sure Cuomo doesn't come out ahead in the Tuesday contest. New York City uses ranked choice voting, meaning that voters rank their candidates in order of preference; if no candidate outright receives more than half of the vote, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and any voters who place the eliminated candidate as their first pick then have the second-choice picks distributed. The process plays out until one candidate receives more than half of the vote. The Democratic candidates are each hoping to take on embattled Mayor Eric Adams, an independent, in the general election. Mamdani has previously touted Hogg on social media, sharing a photo of the two of them during his campaign earlier this week. Mamdani's endorsement came on the same day that Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) announced he would be endorsing Cuomo, a noteworthy get as Cuomo courts Black voters in the city. Hogg's endorsement of Mamdani is his first one since he made the decision to forgo running for reelection as a Democratic National Committee vice chair amid controversy over his plans to back primary challengers to incumbents while serving as a DNC officer.
Politico
35 minutes ago
- Politico
America's biggest rail service faces peril from both parties after years of ‘Amtrak Joe' Biden
BENEATH THE EAST RIVER, New York — Twelve years after Hurricane Sandy's brackish floodwaters poured into some of the Northeast's busiest rail tunnels, the damage is still apparent from pooling water and crumbling casing. Political leaders who mattered most — from former President Joe Biden to the region's governors — all backed a $1.6 billion repair of the Amtrak tunnels connecting Manhattan and Long Island. But now Donald Trump is president and New York is taking a more adversarial approach to Amtrak. Even though repair work started last month on the Sandy-damaged tunnels beneath the East River, Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and members of her administration threw intense last-minute shade on the project. They suggested Amtrak cannot be trusted, doesn't care about its customers and compared its officials to a used car salesman. The sharp elbows suggest a new peril for the national railroad following the 'Amtrak Joe' Biden years, when the administration showered billions of dollars on the railroad and New York rail projects, including the separate $16 billion project to build new tunnels beneath the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York. Amtrak's leader recently stepped down in a peace offering to Trump and the railroad is facing major layoffs and renewed pressure to turn a profit. If Amtrak doesn't have the confidence of Northeastern Democrats like Hochul, whose state is home to the flagship New York Penn Station and its busiest passenger routes, it's not clear who Amtrak can count on. 'Am I confident?' Hochul said during a recent press conference. 'I don't know.' Hochul's recent criticism of the East River rehab, paired with open hostility toward Amtrak from officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, are yet another sore spot between the Democratic governor and the Trump administration over transit — one among many. Trump is trying to kill New York's signature congestion pricing program. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently seized control of the high-profile overhaul of Penn Station and handed it to Amtrak, under the supervision of former MTA head Andy Byford. But the tunnel clash adds animosity to what was once widely regarded as a slam dunk repair project by Amtrak to its own tunnels. Sandy flooded two of four East River train tunnels, leaving behind a salty residue that's eating away at the concrete casing. Since then, Amtrak has been working on a plan to fix the century-old tubes by closing them one after another for two-and-a-half years of repair work. The closures could prompt delays for Long Island commuters if something goes wrong in any of the other tunnels. Hochul worries those delays could shred public confidence in transit after the state is 'finally getting our footing.' 'The last thing I want to do is have a setback that can go on for years,' Hochul said. 'So I was very clear in my messaging to Amtrak: Don't screw this up.' As the tunnel repair project loomed, Hochul and the MTA asked Amtrak to rip up its closure plans and take a different approach known as 'repair in place,' which would shift the work to nights and weekends and keep the tunnels open during peak commuting times. In doing so, she and her allies have used rhetoric that would have been hard to imagine when Biden was president. 'Amtrak's track record for us is a little terrifying,' MTA CEO Janno Lieber said, citing unrelated problems with Amtrak's system that caused massive headaches for New Jersey commuters last summer. Lisa Daglian, the head of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, cited a history of Amtrak system problems to suggest that if something went wrong with the East River tunnels, the 2017 'summer of hell' transit crisis in New York City would look like a 'warm spring day.' In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy and members of the state's congressional delegation have expressed frustration with Amtrak, but for other reasons and in more muted terms. Murphy, a Democrat, stepped in to broker a peace between Amtrak and NJ Transit last summer after the two railroads got into a spat over who was to blame for massive delays for Garden State commuters. Now, every few months, Murphy gathers NJ Transit and Amtrak leaders in front of cameras to field reporters' questions about their joint work. Not so in New York. New York's criticism of Amtrak intensified shortly after Duffy announced in mid-April that it would be in charge of Penn Station, a move that sidelined the MTA and Lieber, who has his own particular vision for what should happen there. It's hard to know if the tunnel flare up aimed at Amtrak is part of a tit-for-tat, but it's a theory few people are discounting given that the MTA and Amtrak had been talking about the tunnel work for years. 'We were surprised by this sudden disavowment of a plan that we had worked together on for a long time,' said Laura Mason, Amtrak's executive vice president for capital project delivery. New York contends it has long harbored worries about Amtrak's plan to close one tunnel for 13 months of repairs, reopen it and then close the other for 13 more months. The East River tunnels are used by Amtrak, the MTA's Long Island Rail Road and NJ Transit, which sends trains to Queens so they can be ready to head back to New Jersey during rush hour. NJ Transit has not raised a ruckus over the tunnel project. But LIRR, which is part of the MTA, is the biggest user of the tunnels. And its leader, Rob Free, is worried because it sends more than 450 trains and 125,000 customers through them each day. In early May, Amtrak handed LIRR an easy anecdote to bash it with even before repairs began: Poor quality control meant one of the tunnels wasn't ready to go after an overnight outage, inconveniencing tens of thousands of Long Island commuters. If another tunnel had been closed for repair when that happened, there would have been even more delays and cancellations. 'The governor of New York seems to be more concerned about Amtrak customers than they do,' Free, the head of LIRR, said during a press conference in remarks that echoed Hochul's own. Mason of Amtrak responded that the critique 'didn't hurt because it wasn't true,' but she was frustrated by Free 'misrepresenting the collective effort that went into these plans.' Mason said that while the MTA has had concerns, it has been part of the project for years — the MTA has helped get the money for the project, signed off on the design and participated in the procurement. But there's been a bipartisan group of New York members worried about Amtrak for a while, including everything from Amtrak's service cuts to the full closure of the tunnels. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's ideas about how to run a railroad also loom over the dispute. To avoid a shutdown of the L subway line in 2019, Cuomo's administration instead shifted most of the work to nights and weekends. He was hailed as a sort of hero at the time and wanted to use that same repair-in-place approach on other projects, including Gateway. Now Hochul wants to use the idea for the East River tunnels. Amtrak recently fought back against it by offering a rare media tour of one of the East River tunnels to show just how fragile the tunnels are and why it considers repair-in-place unworkable. The tour began on a recent Thursday with a descent into Tunnel 2 at 1 a.m. Down there, travelling on the back of a truck in an otherwise empty tunnel dozens of feet below Manhattan's 1st Avenue and the East River itself, Amtrak officials pointed to the extent of the damage done by time and Sandy. Rickety catwalks meant for escape in an emergency seemed questionable at best. Water dripped from the ceiling, pooling near tracks in a way that could force trains to slow or stop. Cast-iron casing crumbled in one Amtrak worker's hand. The tunnel repairs Amtrak is making should ensure people can escape in an emergency. It won't stop all the dripping, but it's expected to prevent puddles from shutting down service and will upgrade the tunnel's interior and electrical work. 'What we're designing is a tunnel that helps itself,' said Liam McQuat, Amtrak's vice president of engineering services. 'This has been 12 years in the making.' The biggest impression Amtrak made was just how hard it would be to cram in work on nights and weekends: It seemed hard enough to get a gaggle of reporters in and out of the tunnel — no trains could travel in the tunnel that had to be blocked off and powered down for safety. The message Amtrak sent was that trying to get hundreds of workers and all their equipment in and out of the tunnel each night and have the tunnel reopened in time for the morning commute would be challenging and inefficient. It could also triple or quadruple the time it would take to make the repairs. In a press conference the next day, Free dismissed Amtrak's tour as the work of a car salesman. 'The salesman pulls the car up, you sit in the car, pulls at your heartstrings, pulls at your emotions,' Free said. 'But at the end of the day, it's about the details, it's about what's the bottom line.'
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
Zohran Mamdani Responds to Car Bomb Death Threats: 'Not Surprising'
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who is running in the Democratic primary for mayor in New York City, issued a statement after his office said it received multiple threats about blowing up his car. Newsweek reached out to Mamdani's campaign and the New York City Police Department outside of business hours for comment. The Context Mamdani has emerged as a leading candidate among the city's most progressive voters in the mayoral primary election due to policy proposals, including rent freezes and city-owned grocery stores to combat rising grocery costs. He has been endorsed by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Most polls show that one of his rivals, Andrew Cuomo, a centrist candidate who resigned in 2021 as New York's governor amid allegations of sexual harassment that he has denied, has a lead over Mamdani. Whichever candidate wins will likely become the favorite in the November general election, given that New York City is a Democratic stronghold. Mamdani's campaign recently hired security to deal with the increasing threats made against him. He told reporters this week that he receives anti-Muslim messages and death threats. Zohran Mamdani attends the 2025 National Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City on June 8, 2025. Zohran Mamdani attends the 2025 National Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City on June 8, 2025. Credit: Katie Godowski/MediaPunch /IPX What To Know Mamdani's office received four voicemails from an unknown individual who said they would blow up his car, a spokesperson for his campaign told various news outlets. "After multiple death threats and racist messages, Assemblymember Mamdani's office is participating in an ongoing investigation by the NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force," the statement said. "While Zohran does not own a car, the violent and specific language of what appears to be a repeat caller is alarming and we are taking every precaution. While this is a sad reality, it is not surprising after millions of dollars have been spent on dehumanizing, Islamophobic rhetoric designed to stoke division and hate. Violence and racism should have no place in our politics. Zohran remains focused on delivering a safe and affordable New York." The NYPD said it was investigating the report and added that the calls, which included "threatening anti-Muslim statements," were made on various dates and reported on Wednesday. What People Are Saying Zohran Mamdani told reporters earlier this week: "I get messages that say things like the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. I get threats on my life and on the people that I love and I try not to talk about it." Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is also running in the primary, said in a statement thatit was "an atrocious threat of political violence" that "has no place in our politics or our society." What Happens Next The investigation into the threats is ongoing and is being conducted by the Hate Crime Task Force division of the NYPD. The primary election is next Tuesday, June 24, and early voting has opened. The general election for mayor is November 4, 2025.
