Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York City
by Pauline Park
Eric Adams is the most incompetent and corrupt mayor in the history of New York City; the only good news is that his reign of error will be coming to an end in January 2026. Adams has decided to skip the Democratic mayoral primary altogether — clearly because he realizes he would come in a distant third at best — and instead run as an independent in the general election which he will lose badly.
“Dozens of donors to Eric Adams’ first mayoral run have defected from him this year and instead poured tens of thousands of dollars into the campaign coffers of two of his top challengers, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, a Daily News analysis of contribution filings found. Out of the 423 donors who this month gave the legal max amount of $2,100 to Cuomo’s mayoral campaign in its first two weeks, about 10%, or 41 individuals, were financial supporters of Adams’ successful 2021 campaign. In total, the ex-governor raked in at least $126,000 from 135 individuals who have previously made political contributions to Adams — including executives in New York’s powerful real estate, lobbying and finance sectors, records show. That’s nearly 9% of the $1.5 million Cuomo raised total in the two week stretch after his March 1 campaign launch. Ken Frydman, a New York PR veteran who has represented investment firms, said Cuomo’s courting of Adams donors in real estate, lobbying and finance is especially key. Such donors are part of the “permanent government” class that holds extraordinary influence over city politics, Frydman argued,” Josephine Stratman reported for the New York Daily News (Josephine Stratman, “Dozens of Adams donors shifting loyalty to Cuomo, Adrienne Adams in 2025 NYC mayoral race,” New York Daily News, 20 March 2025).
Cuomo’s SuperPAC “Fix the City can be hard to distinguish from his official campaign. It is run by Steven M. Cohen, a member of Mr. Cuomo’s inner circle for decades, and its messaging closely mirrors that of the official campaign. A New York City Campaign Finance Board investigation determined that because the campaign’s messaging was so similar to the super PAC’s, they were most likely colluding,” Nicholas Fandos reported of donations to the Cuomo campaign (Nicholas Fandos, “The Business Interests Bankrolling Andrew Cuomo’s Run for Mayor,” 1 June 2025), noting, “Millions of dollars more have arrived from labor unions, tech companies, real estate developers and landlords who have a direct financial stake in the election’s outcome — grand gestures that, while legal, raise pressing ethical questions about the motivations behind their generosity. Mr. Mamdani, Mr. Myrie, Ms. Adams, Mr. Lander, Mr. Stringer, Mr. Blake and Jessica Ramos, a Democratic state senator, have said that if elected, they would lobby the board to halt increases, even though landlords are increasingly saying they are not making enough to keep units in rentable condition. (Mihir Zaveri, “How the N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Plan to Solve the Housing Crisis,” New York Times, 1 June 2025).
Andrew Cuomo is the frontrunner according to all the polls but the worst governor in the history of New York would be a disaster as mayor and no one interested in good government should rank him in the second mayoral election to use ranked choice voting.
Zohran Mamdani is the clear choice of progressive voters (Sahalie Donaldson, “Zohran Mamdani is trying to build a new NYC Democratic primary coalition,” City & State New York, 5 May 2025): he has been endorsed by the Working Families Party (WFP) and by the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC DSA), which I recently joined as a member. There are many reasons why I have decided to endorse Mamdani but one is that Zohran is the only mayoral candidate who has clearly endorsed the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement working to end Apartheid Israel’s illegal and genocidal occupation of Palestine as Apartheid Israel is actively ethnically cleansing the West Bank and pursuing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Mamdani’s support for Gaza and Palestine alone sets him apart from the rest of the Democratic primary pack and is just one of many indications that he is the choice of progressives. It is significant that U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has chosen to endorse Mamdani (Courtney Gross and Erica Brosnan, “Mamdani picks up endorsement from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” NY1, 5 June 2025). In announcing her endorsement, she urged Democratic primary voters to rank Adrienne Adams second, Brad Lander third, Scott Stringer fourth and Zellnor Myrie fifth; but there was no question that her enthusiasm was reserved for Mamdani.
But since the City of New York adopted rank choice voting four years ago, it is important to note that primary votes can and in fact should rank up to five candidates on their ballots.
There are a few points that need to be made here: first, if you rank a candidate more than once, you risk invalidating your ballot — so please do not put Zohran Mamdani’s name on your ballot more than once or it could be voided. Second, do not rank more than one person in each slot: do not, for example, rank five candidates first, because that could invalidate your ballot entirely.
Third, do not rank Andrew Cuomo if you care about this city: the power-hungry and corrupt former governor left office in disgrace after being accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault by at least 11 different women and after killing more than 15,000 New Yorkers in the COVID-19 pandemic by blithely disregarding public health strictures and moving people infected with the Corona virus into nursing homes. As the Working Families Party suggests, Don’t Rank Evil Andrew for Mayor — DREAM~!
Fourth, it is useful to rank multiple candidates on one’s Democratic Party primary ballot, and so I am going to recommend others whom I would urge voters to rank.
While Scott Stringer served as New York City comptroller as well as in the New York State Assembly, the credible allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against him disqualify him in my mind just as similar allegations against Andrew Cuomo disqualify him for me. And Stringer like Cuomo is a rabid Zionist supporter of Apartheid Israel, which is at least as disqualifying as allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault. In fact, in the June 12 NY1/WNYC debate, Stringer explicitly identified himself as a Zionist and a supporter of a ‘Jewish State of Israel’ and an opponent of BDS, which he falsely labeled ‘anti-Semitic.’
I would have recommended New York State Senator Jessica Ramos and intended to rank her second on my ballot; she represents me in the 13th State Senate district in western Queens; but on June 6, she dropped a stink bomb in the primary race by endorsing Andrew Cuomo while remaining on the ballot (Courtney Gross & Spectrum News staff, “Jessica Ramos endorses Andrew Cuomo, stays on ballot,” NY1, 6 June 2025).
in 2021, Jessica Ramos called for Andrew Cuomo’s resignation in the midst of the sexual harassment scandal that ultimately brought him down; and more recently, she has questioned his ‘mental acuity’; so one has to wonder what prompted her to do a volte face and embrace him for mayor.
Ramos’ reversal shocked her supporters and prompted the New York Working Families Party to rescind its recommendation to rank her fifth on the primary ballot, declaring:
Was Jessica Ramos promised a position as commissioner or even deputy mayor in a Cuomo mayoral administration in exchange for her endorsement…? How interesting that Cuomo made a point of saying that he did not endorse her.
This much seems certain to me: Jessica Ramos has shredded her credibility with progressives in New York; instead, she has thrown her lot in with the profoundly anti-progressive multi-millionaire Andrew Cuomo and the enormously corrupt oligarchy she claimed to be fighting; Ramos had better hope that Cuomo wins the primary and the general election because if anyone else wins and Zohran Mamdani above all, she’ll be in political nowhere land even if she manages to hold onto her state Senate seat in 2026.
It has been reported that Ramos managed to raise only $9,000 — a minuscule amount for a mayoral campaign in any city and especially in New York, the most expensive media market in the country — and perhaps more to the point, managed to rack up more than $250,000 in debt; so perhaps part of the deal with Cuomo was his agreement to allow her to go to his well-heeled millionaire and billionaire donors to help retire her enormous mayoral campaign debt.
I thought Jessica Ramos was a progressive; but there are those moments in which someone reveals herself for who and what she is and it seems to me that this is one of those moments. Interesting that though Ramos did not formally withdraw from the race, she also did not participate in the NY1/WNYC debate on Thursday, June 12; I do not know whether that was her choice or whether those organizing the debate simply thought it was pointless to have her on the stage (Emily Ago, “Claws out for Cuomo, Mamdaniat debate as rivals dig into their missteps, weaknesses,” Politico, 12 June 2025).. As for my part, instead of ranking Jessica Ramos second, I will not be ranking her at all; bye, Felicia~!
I have some doubts about Brad Lander; in the June 12 debate, he said he was a supporter of Israel but he did not identify himself as a Zionist; instead, he said he favored a two-state solution and wanted a ceasefire in Gaza; Lander is far from where he should be on Israel/Palestine but he has been a competent New York City comptroller and I intend to rank him second.
I have even more qualms about Adrienne Adams who as New York City Council Speaker has been at best an establishment liberal and far too supportive of the New York Police Department (NYPD), but I intend to rank her third because she and Andrew Cuomo share much of the same base and ranking her will help cut into his vote share. While I cannot say I have been overwhelmed by Zellnor Myrie, I will rank him fourth because he has a relatively progressive record and filling one’s ‘dance card’ actually helps everyone on the ballot including one’s first choice. And I will rank Michael Blake fifth to fill out my dance card.
As an activist, I hope Mamdani wins both the Democratic mayoral nomination and the general election in November; but as political scientist, I have to look at the data and come to a somewhat different conclusion: at this point, it is clear that the Democratic primary is now a two-man race (the one woman will not make it past the third or fourth round) and the general election will also come down to the same two men. At this point, polling strongly suggests that Cuomo will defeat Mamdani both in the primary and in the general election if the latter actively campaigns on the Working Families Party line between June and November.
However, as a political scientist, I feel compelled to offer an objective analysis (as objective as anyone can be about anything, in any case, in a world in which there is no Archimedean point) of the race and it is clear to me that Andrew Cuomo is the candidate most likely to win both the Democratic mayoral nomination and the general election in November. Emerson College has a very well reputed polling unit and ‘gamed out’ (my words) the ranked choice voting in the Democratic Party primary based on survey data from May and concluded that it would take 10 rounds for Cuomo to defeat Mamdani after all the other candidates were eliminated but that Cuomo would win 54% of the vote in the tenth and final round to 46% for Mamdani (Erica Brosnan, “Cuomo’s lead over Mamdani narrows in NYC mayoral primary, new poll shows,” NY1, 29 May 2025).
Nonetheless, the momentum is clearly with Mamdani whether one supports him or not. Recent polls show Mamdani reducing Cuomo’s once impregnable 30-point lead to somewhere between 2-12 points (Jeff Coltin, “New polls show a Cuomo-Mamdani face-off in a tightening New York mayoral race,” Politico, 9 June 2025). A survey conducted by Public Policy Polling for Democrat Justin Brannan’s city comptroller campaign even “found Mamdani beating Cuomo 35 percent to 31 percent — a difference that is narrowly within the 4.1 percent margin of error” (Nick Reisman & Joe Aunt, “Mamdani surges in new poll, leading Cuomo for first time in New York mayor’s race,” Politico, 11 June 2025).
Given that Mamdani could continue to contest the mayoral election on the Working Families Party and that Cuomo has his own newly invented third party line (the Fight & Deliver Party) on the November ballot, the most likely outcome of the general election is that Cuomo would face Mamdani in the final round of ranked choice voting in November after the Republican Curtis Sliwa and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams were eliminated in previous rounds. So I am predicting that Cuomo will narrowly win the Democratic mayoral nomination and narrowly win the general election; should Mamdani win the Democratic mayoral nomination, I am predicting that Cuomo will narrowly defeat him in the final round of the general election to become the city’s next mayor; but I think there’s still a chance that Mamdani could defeat Cuomo in the primary and/or the general election if the surge in support for Mamdani continues.
While as a political scientist, I foresee the election of Mayor Andrew Cuomo as the most likely outcome of the primary and the general election, as a citizen and activist, I am appalled by the prospect and am endorsing Zohran Mamdani in part to try to forestall that appalling outcome. Cuomo was the worst governor in New York’s history and could rival even Eric Adams for corruption as well as slavish self-interested loyalty to Wall Street, the real estate industry, Apartheid Israel and the Zionist machine; it is an outcome we must try our best to prevent from coming about.
Pauline Park is a Queens-based activist; she did her B.A. in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, her M.Sc. in European studies at the London School of Economics & Political Science and her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; she was the first student at any University of Illinois campus to win a Fulbright fellowship for France; the personal endorsement of Zohran Mamdani and the above assessment do not necessarily represent the opinion of any organization with which she is associated or has been associated.