Top Big Apple mayoral contenders Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani continued flinging jibes at each other Thursday during a bruising debate — with third-place candidate Brad Lander also taking a big bite with a pointed stunt.
Attacks on the frontrunner Cuomo — who took the stage with six other Dem primary candidates at John Jay College — landed more forcefully than in the first debate last week.
Mamdani, a socialist state Assemblyman from Queens, quickly landed several pointed body blows against Cuomo as the messy two-hour food fight kicked off.
But it was the city comptroller, Lander, who arguably rattled the ex-governor the most — as he refused to let up on the sexual harassment scandal that led Cuomo to resign in disgrace in 2021.
“Everybody here knows that you sexually harassed women, that you created a toxic work environment,” Lander said to thundering applause.
The comptroller noted many in the audience were young women attending CUNY, including a valedictorian soon going to work at the Department of Homeless Services.
“I don’t want to have to tell her, ‘Don’t go work at City Hall because the mayor is a sexual harasser,’” Lander said.
“Those are just bold-faced lies,” Cuomo shot back, arguing the accusations were disproven.
The unrepentant Cuomo also came under fire from Mamdani over the sex harass accusations and record as governor.
When Cuomo tried to hit Mamdani, the 33-year-old state Assembly member from Queens, over his lack of experience, the Democratic socialist shot back: “I have never had to resign in disgrace.”
The 67-year-old Cuomo had been trying to deflect a pointed question about his age by seemingly turning the tables on Mamdani.
“Experience matters, and I think inexperience is dangerous,” Cuomo said.
During a back-and-forth on Mamdani’s proposal to freeze rents across the city, Cuomo said the socialist pol “should read” the law in regards to whether it was in the mayor’s power to do so.
“The law didn’t control you,” Mamdani quipped.
The mudslinging at times got personal — like when the lefty lawmaker corrected Cuomo’s repeated mispronunciation of “Mamdani,” which the ex-gov rhymed with “mom.”
“The name is Mamdani, M, A, M, D, A, N, I. You should learn how to say it, because we’ve got to get it right,” he said.
Given the chance to counterattack, Cuomo quickly repeated his pronunciation mistake.
“Mr. Mamdani is right,” Cuomo said, but again butchered his rival’s name’s first syllable.
Lander also gave a human face to the issues. He hammered Cuomo’s record on nursing home deaths during the coronavirus pandemic in dramatic fashion — inviting Peter Arbeeny, whose father died from COVID-19 after a rehab stint at a local nursing home, as a guest.
It came after Cuomo earlier Thursday made a stunning admission, finally admitting that he saw a controversial report on nursing home COVID deaths while he was governor — and also may have doctored the document.
Cuomo tried to dodge by dinging Lander for originally being from St. Louis, before apologizing to Arbeeny — albeit without offering a mea culpa for anything else.
“Maybe where you come from in St. Louis facts don’t matter, but here they do,” Cuomo said.
“Mr. Arbeeny lost a father,”he added. “I am very, very sorry for that.”
In another fiery moment, Lander contended that Cuomo “screwed” hundreds of immigrants who were contracted during the COVID pandemic to clean the subways.
Cuomo denied knowing what Lander was talking about — and made an eye-raising slip up.
“I don’t know what Mr. Lander is talking about,” he said before referencing the MTA hiring “illegal immigrants.”
“What did you call them?” Lander asked, prompting Cuomo to pivot to the term “undocumented.”
The moderators at one point asked the candidates to ask each other questions, which Cuomo used as an opportunity to outsource an attack on Mamdani’s arguably pie-in-the-sky campaign promises via longshot mayoral hopeful and Wall Street investor Whitney Tilson.
“You’re a financial expert: Is it feasible and financially possible that he is telling the truth?”
Tilson argued Mamdani’s plan would result in crushingly high taxes that would cause an exodus of jobs from New York City.
The tag team pointed to a new alliance in the race with Tilson later saying he’d rank Cuomo second on his ballot.
Another union also emerged when former city comptroller Scott Stringer and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie both heaped loads of praise on City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and teed her up to make her pitch to voters when the candidates were given the chance to grill a rival.
After the debate, Myrie admitted a cross-endorsement was in the works.
But both Lander and Mamdani appeared on their own political islands as the factions started to form with just 12 days left for the top horses in the race to make a run at the long-standing frontrunner.
Mamdani did receive a veiled dig from Stringer when the former comptroller answered a question about Israel’s war against Hamas.
“BDS is antisemitic,” Stringer said — moments after Mamdani had again doubled down on his support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.
Mamdani said his support of BDS was rooted in his belief in “nonviolence.”
The wounded Cuomo took nearly the whole debate to swing back at Mamdani for repeatedly hitting the ex-governor on his massive war chest from his campaign and state PAC stuffed with donations from Trump donors and big business, such as Doordash.
“I’m not for rent and I’m not for sale,” Cuomo finally spat out.
“So, we wonder who’s funding DSA and who’s funding his BDS movement,” he added, barely landing the hit.
Cuomo again stumbled when pressed by the moderators on his political blunder of seemingly not once visiting a mosque anywhere in the state over the past 14 years while in office and on the campaign trial.
“Not off the top of my head. I can’t tell you where I went, but I’ll check the record,” Cuomo was able to eventually muster.
— Additional reporting by Hannah Fierick and Matt Troutman
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