Experience vs. inspiration: New York City mayoral race mirrors national Dem divide

ALBANY, New York — Andrew Cuomo has settled on a closing argument in his quest to win the Democratic nomination to be New York City's next mayor: His top challenger, Zohran Mamdani, is far too inexperienced for the job.
It's a perceived vulnerability Cuomo is seizing on in a race otherwise focused on affordability, Mamdani's rhetoric on Israel and the long record of an ex-governor who has been in politics since 1977, when he worked on his father Mario Cuomo's mayoral campaign.
Cuomo is zooming in on his own achievements — enshrining same-sex marriage into state law, revamping LaGuardia Airport and his popular televised Covid briefings. Mamdani, in turn, highlights Cuomo's corruption scandals, the sexual misconduct allegations against him — which he denies — and the missteps of his pandemic management.
But as polling in the race tightens and Mamdani continues to excite his base, Cuomo is honing in on his 33-year-old chief rival's lack of executive experience.
'It is certainly a microcosm of what we're likely to see over the next few years, and I think you'll see a significant number of midterm primaries have this similar dynamic,' said Jon Paul Lupo, a New York City consultant who is not involved in the mayor's race. 'We're seeing it play out at the DNC with David Hogg and what role he played. There is a group of young and up-and-coming operatives, candidates and — quite frankly — voters that are frustrated with the direction of the party and they're looking for not just change from the party, but a different kind of candidate.'
In Mamdani, they have just that. He's not just bringing something new, he's being resoundingly rejected by the establishment: Mike Bloomberg has spent $8.3 million to help Cuomo defeat him, the New York Times editorial board eviscerated him in a piece focused more on his shortcomings than anyone else's attributes, and most city unions lined up behind Cuomo.
The race is now as much about youth against political seasoning as it is about the socialist Mamdani versus the moderate Cuomo.
Voters throughout the country are frustrated with their current leadership, public displays of anger at events like town halls are increasingly common, and Sen. Chuck Schumer is seeing his worst-ever poll numbers in his home state. Incumbents are unpopular at the moment. And as New York City Mayor Eric Adams sits out the primary to instead run as an independent in the general election, Cuomo is in many ways viewed as the incumbent candidate.
'We have a person running for mayor against me who has been an assemblyman for two terms — five years,' Cuomo, who's 67, said at a rally last week. 'Five staff members who worked for him. New York City — you have 300,000 employees. He's never worked with the City Council, never worked with the Congress, never negotiated things with the labor union, never even dealt with President Trump. Don't tell me he's ready to be mayor of the greatest city on the globe. No way.'
Unlike Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's surprise upset in 2018, in several races for New York's top jobs over the past decade, hype about shifting to a fresh face on the left has fizzled. This year's mayoral race is now the clearest bellwether of whether there might actually be more seismic changes at hand. Do Democratic voters want battle-proven — and battle-scarred — veterans, or are they willing to roll the dice and go with leaders who might take the party in a bold new direction — or flop spectacularly?
Experience is Cuomo's 'number one argument,' said Cynthia Nixon, who lost to Cuomo in the 2018 gubernatorial primary and now backs Mamdani. 'It's one thing if you've been in office for a long time and you have a record that you can be proud of. Cuomo has the opposite.'
Mamdani's thin governmental record allows for the ultimate test of whether Democrats are willing to move toward energetic fresh faces with minimal experience.
He was elected as a true outsider in 2020. Prior to winning office, he had only made two visits to the Capitol, both for housing advocacy.
Due to Covid, candidates running that year got far less scrutiny than in any modern New York election — there were no public events, state politics was overshadowed by a presidential race, and the Albany press corps was focused on Cuomo's pandemic briefings. The Zoom-era timing also meant Mamdani didn't engage in the typical bonding and glad-handing with new legislative colleagues.
'There's no equivalent of getting in an elevator with somebody,' he said in a 2021 interview. 'Virtual also creates a lot more of a conduit for tension versus in-person, because you're able to understand the humanity of someone a little bit more than when they're just a little square on the screen.'
His promise to legislate with an 'understanding that the status quo has failed us' — and, perhaps, his lack of immersion into the system as a freshman — have kept him an outsider among Albany's Democrats.
Mamdani's status on the fringes was highlighted by a bill he introduced in 2023 that would ban New York charities from supporting Israeli settlers. The backlash was swift: Assembly leadership immediately dubbed it a 'non-starter,' a rarity in a legislative body whose leaders usually wait for internal party discussions before weighing in. Twenty-five of his fellow Democrats released a letter condemning the measure as designed to 'antagonize pro-Israel New Yorkers.'
The democratic socialist was aware at the time that his break with the tradition of New York politicians offering full-throated support for Israel would indeed antagonize his colleagues — and it's a subject that's continued to lead to tensions, with fellow members quick to point out actions like his failure to endorse a resolution condemning the Holocaust.
He characterized the charity bill as an attempt to plant seeds for a longer-term fight.
'The simple act of introducing this legislation [helps] change the calculus,' Mamdani said at the time.
But mayors don't get to spend as much time focused on the long haul — if garbage isn't being picked up on time, most New Yorkers won't be too satisfied if City Hall promises a solution in a decade.
And when it comes to the type of negotiating a mayor needs to engage in to win approval for their priorities in Albany or the City Council, his record is scant.
Mamdami's biggest achievements have come outside the regular legislative process. He played a major role in taxi drivers' successful 2021 push for debt relief. He helped win a pilot program for free bus rides — now a central plank in his mayoral campaign — but kiboshed its renewal when he cast a protest vote against last year's budget, rather than play ball with his colleagues and take the win.
He also points to his support for a 2023 law that lets the state build its own green energy plants.
'That's not my legislation. The passage of it is not considered a bill that I have passed,' Mamdani said recently. 'I spent so much of my time fighting for it because I knew that, were we to pass it, we could actually take a real step towards taking on the climate crisis. And I think too often, much of our work in politics is focused on ensuring that you receive credit for the work that you do.'
Despite his opinion, his lack of clearly delineated achievements has provided opponents with a ready-made cudgel. Cuomo has hammered Mamdani for passing only three laws in his time as an Assemblymember. That's the 235th highest total since he took office in a Legislature in which 213 members serve at a time.
That apparent lack of productivity stems at least in part from the fact that he's a rank-and-file member in a legislative body where more than 100 Democrats want their bills prioritized.
'It's a pretty common experience for many legislators in their first few years in the Assembly or Senate to pass very few bills,' former Assemblymember Dick Gottfried said.
Gottfried said assessing a lawmaker through the number of bills they approve isn't a great barometer of how they might perform as an executive: 'Every year in the Legislature, I personally got a lot of bills passed, but you would not have wanted me to be the mayor even of a small village.'
But the lack of an in-depth passage record, coupled with the few bills he's authored, means Mamdani doesn't bring many specifics about his policy background for voters to glean.
One of the three laws he's responsible for let the Museum of the Moving Image apply for a liquor license. Another allowed people to petition state agencies to hold public hearings. But he didn't come up with that idea — the legislation had been lingering since 1995 and had previously passed the Assembly 14 times under five different sponsors. His third bill, enacted in 2022, tweaked that 2021 law. Then, during the most recent legislative session, he passed a fourth bill — that would bump back the law's expiration date.
The passage of the 2022 version of the petitioning law was the only time he's ever engaged in a back-and-forth debate during his time in the Legislature.
He hoped the bill would leave 'New Yorkers feeling that they have a place in this government, that their voices are heard,' he said. 'This is, for me, the essence of socialism, which is the extension of democracy from the ballot box to the rest of our society of the ability of each and every person to have control over their own lives.'
The remarks did not win over his detractors.
'Labeling this bill the extension of socialism makes me reaffirm my negative vote,' said then-Assemblymember Mike Lawler, his chief sparring partner in the debate.
Mamdani has spoken on the floor on a handful of other bills over the years, and often his remarks focused on issues of identity — he voted against the Democrats' 2022 redistricting plan, for example, because it didn't create a new district for his fellow South Asians elsewhere in Queens.
He criticized the governor's priorities in the state budget and supported legalized marijuana: 'Smoking or ingesting marijuana may also lead to becoming an elected official,' he said about claims that it's a gateway drug.
By and large, Mamdani has remained outside regular power structures in Albany, meaning even those who deal with the Assembly the most can't predict what a Mamdani City Hall might look like. Lobbyists surveyed by POLITICO — including those supportive of causes he appears aligned with, like environmental and criminal justice issues — say they haven't engaged with him much, or even met him at all. His name only appears on Gov. Kathy Hochul's schedules once in the past four years, when attending a dinner joined by 21 members of the Queens delegation.
One of the most important questions for any inexperienced executive is how they will fill out their administration.
Former Gov. David Paterson, who went from the state Legislature to a high-level executive role — much like Mamdani hopes to — said those decisions can make or break an administration.
'The whole issue is about staff selection,' said Paterson, who's backing Cuomo. 'You may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier but the other bulbs can work along with you.'
Even Mamdani's supporters have emphasized he needs to fill his administration with experienced staff — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she has 'made her expectations of the assemblymember quite clear' in that area.
Nothing has tripped up past mayors in New York City more than tensions with the city's vast and complicated bureaucracy — from a sanitation strike during John Lindsay's tenure, to Bill de Blasio's early missteps with snowstorms. It will likely be difficult for somebody like Mamdani to walk into office with the trust of city employees, especially if they lack high-level staff already familiar with the intricacies of the municipal government.
'He'd have to spend a decade building relationships in the city,' said Brandon del Pozo, a Brown University professor and former NYPD deputy inspector. 'You have to have a legislative track record. You'd have to have meetings with the police and the labor unions. You have to do a lot of behind-the-scenes work.'
A failure to lay those foundational building blocks means city employees like police officers may be skeptical of Mamdani from the get-go.
'Even though I don't think de Blasio had a great tenure — he still was able to convince people that he knew how New York City ran,' del Pozo said, pointing to the former mayor's time in institutions like the City Council. 'This is one of the most important cities in the world and the biggest and most complex city in the United States. So if you don't have the executive experience, you've got to have something else that really, really makes up for that.'
Paterson noted how 'Cuomo described [electing Mamdani] as reckless and dangerous. It certainly would portend that would be the case.' But, he added, 'you just never know' when it comes to succeeding as an executive.
'The one thing he's been in charge of his campaign,' he said. 'That's working: He's in the game.'
And nobody — not even the candidates themselves — actually know whether they're experienced enough to be an executive for the first time.
'When I did become governor, it felt that way: 'What am I doing here!?'' Paterson said.
— Jeff Coltin contributed reporting

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