Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo clashed Wednesday in the final New York mayoral debate, which put on full display their personal animosity and their array of disagreements over both city and national issues.
Throughout the 90-minute debate, Cuomo — the former Democratic governor running as an independent — called Mamdani, 34, a state assemblyman, a “kid” who would get knocked “on his tuchus” by President Donald Trump, a “great actor” and a “divisive force in New York” who brings “toxic energy for New York.”
Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, who defeated Cuomo in the party’s primary in June, slammed Cuomo as a “desperate man” and “Trump’s puppet” whose political career was decidedly in the past.
The contentious event, held three days before early voting kicks off and less than two weeks before Election Day, comes as Mamdani has maintained a double-digit lead in public polling.
With time to further narrow the gap before the election running out, Cuomo took swing after swing at Mamdani, criticizing him for not having adequate experience to lead a city of nearly 9 million and to stand up to Trump, who has repeatedly vowed to withhold federal funding from New York if Mamdani wins.
Cuomo ripped Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, in his opening statement as someone with “no new ideas” and a “rehash” of Mayor Bill de Blasio, saying he has “never run anything, managed anything, never had a real job.”
Mamdani slammed Cuomo as someone who “will only speak of the past” “and a “desperate man lashing out because he knows that the one thing he’s always cared about, power, is now slipping away from him.”
Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, who also took part in the debate, teed off on both of his opponents.
“Zohran, your résumé could fit on a cocktail napkin,” he said. “And Andrew, your failures could fill a public school library in New York City.”
Wednesday’s debate also came amid growing calls among Mamdani’s opponents for Sliwa to drop out of the race to create a more competitive two-man contest with Cuomo. Sliwa, who earlier in the day said he’d be leaving his conservative talk radio perch, gave no indication that he’d exit the race.
Affordability, housing, homelessness and New York-centric issues like education and policing — Mamdani confirmed that he’d retain New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch — accounted for the bulk of the night’s debate. But the candidates were first asked to weigh in on questions with national implications, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and how to deal with Trump.
Candidates were asked how city officials should have approached an ICE raid this week that targeted undocumented immigrants who may have connections to illegal street vending.
Cuomo replied that he would have called Trump and told him, “Look, you’re way out of bounds.”
“I’ve had a lot of dealings with President Trump, and there’s only one way to deal with him. He puts his finger in your chest, and you have to put your finger right back in his chest,” Cuomo said. “We don’t need ICE to do quality-of-life crimes. We don’t need them to worry about illegal vendors. That’s a basic policing function for the NYPD.”
Mamdani slammed ICE as a “reckless entity that cares little for the law and even less for the people that they’re supposed to serve,” and he promised to “end the chapter of collaboration between City Hall and the federal government.”
Responding to a question about how he’d work with or against Trump, Mamdani said he’d fight him “every step of the way” over deporting Americans and going after his political enemies. But when it came to Trump’s promises to lower the cost of living, Mamdani said he’d be open to working together.
“If he wants to talk to me about the third piece of that agenda, I will always be ready and willing,” he said.
“We heard from Donald Trump’s puppet himself, Andrew Cuomo. You could turn on TV any day of the week, and you will hear Donald Trump share that his pick for mayor is Andrew Cuomo, and he wants Andrew Cuomo to be the mayor not because it will be good for New Yorkers, but because it will be good for him,” Mamdani added.
Trump has called Mamdani a communist and threatened to withhold federal funds and deploy the National Guard, as he has done in other major cities, if he wins the November election.
Cuomo seized on the comments from Trump.
“You are going to have to confront him, and you can beat him. I confronted him, and I have beaten him,” Cuomo said. Trump, he added, “has said he’ll take over New York if Mamdani wins — and he will, because he has no respect for him.”
“He thinks he’s a kid and he’s going to knock him on his tuchus,” Cuomo added.
Tensions surfaced yet again after the candidates were asked how their views on Gaza and Israel might affect their ability to be an effective mayor.
In a fiery exchange, the three candidates sparred over who would best combat antisemitism in the city, with Mamdani starting by promising to protect Jewish New Yorkers and backing a plan to introduce more lessons about the Jewish experience in New York in public schools.
But Cuomo told Mamdani: “Not everything is a TikTok video. You’re the savior of the Jewish people? You won’t denounce [the phrase] ‘globalize the intifada,’ which means ‘kill Jews.’” He added that Mamdani was among a group of leaders “who stoke the flames of hatred against Jewish people.”
Cuomo’s comments referred to Mamdani’s past decision not to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.” The New York Times later reported that Mamdani privately promised to “discourage” use of it.
Mamdani responded that the city needs “a leader who takes [antisemitism] seriously, who roots it out of these five boroughs, not one who weaponizes it as a means by which to score political points on a debate stage.”
Sliwa then jumped in, calling Mamdani and Cuomo “two kids in a schoolyard.” He said several of his family members view Mamdani “as the arsonist who fanned the flames of antisemitism.”
“They cannot suddenly accept the fact that you’re coming like a firefighter and you’re going to put out these flames,” he said.
Mamdani also drew attention to the sexual harassment allegations that prompted Cuomo to resign as governor in 2021 by announcing that one of the women who made such accusations, Charlotte Bennett, was in the audience.
“You sought to access her private gynecological records. She cannot speak up for herself because you lodged a defamation case against her,” Mamdani said. “I, however, can speak.”
“What do you say to the 13 women that you sexually harassed?” he asked Cuomo.
Cuomo, who has denied the allegations, responded that “everything you just stated, you just said, was a misstatement — which we’re accustomed to.”
Bennett this year settled her lawsuit against New York that alleged the state didn’t do enough to prevent Cuomo’s alleged sexual harassment. Cuomo threatened to sue her this year for defamation.
Mamdani also attacked Cuomo over a scandal involving undercounting nursing home deaths during the Covid pandemic that embattled his administration as governor.
“You will hear from Andrew Cuomo about his experience, as if the issue is that we don’t know about it. The issue is that we have all experienced your experience,” Mamdani said. “The issue is that we experienced you taking a $5 million book deal while you sent seniors to their deaths in nursing homes.”
“The issue is your experience,” he added.
Cuomo hit back by diving back into his own key accusation against Mamdani.
“The issue is you have no experience,” he said. “You’ve accomplished nothing.”