It was Saturday night, and the crowd inside a Manhattan concert venue was getting primed. A D.J. was stationed in the front, a brass band held the rear, and celebrity guest stars waited offstage alongside the main attraction, Zohran Mamdani.
Hours earlier, an older, smaller but enthusiastic audience clapped their hands to gospel music and greeted Andrew M. Cuomo in Harlem at the headquarters of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
The two events, held as New Yorkers flocked to the polls on the first day of early voting in the New York City mayor’s race, had the same objective, with the two leading candidates surrounding themselves with prominent allies and reinforcing the core themes of their campaigns.
But they looked and felt very different, underscoring their contrasting messages and the generational divide of the candidates and their supporters.
The Kid Mero, the comedian and podcaster, played the emcee at Mr. Mamdani’s rally at Terminal 5, a venue on Manhattan’s Far West Side. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delivered the introduction, arguing that Mr. Mamdani was the kind of leader that Democrats should be embracing across the nation.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed Mr. Mamdani as her first choice in the race, said she was disappointed by Democrats who called on Mr. Cuomo to resign in 2021 after a sexual harassment scandal, yet now support him for mayor. She said that Mr. Cuomo was part of a troubling “gerontocracy” in politics and that the city could not become a city only for the rich.
“If we can change the page in the biggest and best city in the United States of America, then we can change the page in our country, too,” she said.
Mr. Mamdani, 33, then took the stage as the audience chanted his name.
“We are ready for a new generation of leadership that puts working people first,” he said.
Mr. Cuomo, 67, made his closing argument earlier in the day, focusing on his experience in government and vowing to take on President Trump.
“Government was about doing things for people — making change,” he said, adding: “We lost that connection. And that’s what we have to regain.”
Mr. Cuomo, seated between two Black elected officials, Representative Gregory W. Meeks of Queens and Jordan Wright, an assemblyman from Harlem, stressed that he would help the working class.
He pledged to raise the city’s minimum wage to $20 an hour and push it to award more contracts to businesses owned by minorities and women — initiatives that played to the crowd and countered his rivals’ accusations that he was beholden to the moneyed class.
Mr. Sharpton, who has not endorsed a candidate in the race, spoke of the importance of having a mayor with experience and a fighter’s mentality.
“You’ve got to have a fighter against Trump,” Mr. Sharpton said. “Don’t bring no punks to the real fight.”
This year’s Democratic primary is an unusually crowded affair, with 11 candidates on the ballot. The incumbent, Mayor Eric Adams, is not one of them; he is running as an independent in November after a turbulent tenure that included a federal indictment that was dropped by President Trump’s Justice Department.
Mr. Adams’s vulnerability has allowed a new wave of Democrats to make their case for the mayoralty and reinvigorate voter interest.
If the first day of early voting is an indication, New Yorkers are interested. More than 30,000 voters flocked to the polls in the rain on Saturday — nearly twice the number seen in the first day of early voting in the June 2021 mayoral primary.
Many expressed enthusiasm for Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Mamdani, and some said they were explicitly leaving one or the other off their ballots under the city’s relatively new ranked-choice voting system.
Voters expressed concerns over affordability and public safety. Jason Martin, 50, who lives in Hell’s Kitchen and works for an arts nonprofit, ranked Mr. Mamdani first. He said he was impressed by Mr. Mamdani’s plan to create a separate agency from the police to handle mental health issues.
“The cops are overstretched in such a big city with so many issues,” Mr. Martin said.
Mr. Martin, who voted for Mr. Adams in the 2021 primary, used all of his five spots on his ballot, listing Scott Stringer, the former city comptroller; Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker; Whitney Tilson, a former hedge fund executive; and Brad Lander, the city comptroller, in that order. He said he could not look past the sexual harassment allegations the led to Mr. Cuomo’s resignation as governor in 2021. (Mr. Cuomo denies the accusations.)
“I’m just tired of him,” he said.
Diego Figueroa, 21, a political science student at City College, ranked Mr. Mamdani first. He said he liked his proposal for a rent freeze and that he did not like Mr. Cuomo’s attempts in 2016 to cut funding to CUNY.
“I think that after Trump’s win in November, Mamdani really galvanized youth and people that I never thought would vote,” he said.
At McCourt High School on the Upper East Side, Emma Tames, 30, was one of the first to arrive, filling out her ballot amid the folded-up cafeteria tables. She ranked Mr. Lander first and Mr. Mamdani second.
“I think Lander and Mamdani are the best examples of honest candidates because they don’t take money from real estate developers,” she said. “I believe they are real New Yorkers who want what’s best for the entire city.”
Mr. Lander and Mr. Mamdani entered a cross-endorsement agreement on Friday, urging their supporters to rank them first and second. The pair appeared at a rally in Bryant Park on Saturday, along with leaders from the left-leaning Working Families Party.
Their cross-endorsement, the first such cooperation pact since the city introduced ranked-choice balloting in 2021, did not seem to impress Mr. Cuomo. He said he expected to win, and that, if he did not, he planned to contest the general election in November as a third-party candidate.
Asked what he thought the biggest surprise of this race was, he said nothing.
“I know this city like the back of my hand,” Mr. Cuomo said. “I know politics, I know government.”
His message resonated with Carlos E. Moreaux, 67, an appliance technician in the South Bronx who voted for Mr. Adams in 2021. On Saturday, he said he voted for Mr. Cuomo first, followed by Ms. Adams and Jessica Ramos, a state senator who endorsed Mr. Cuomo.
“Cuomo has experience as a governor,” he said, adding that Mr. Cuomo had done a good job.
On the Upper West Side, Michael Wengroff, 79, a retired mortgage broker, said he ranked Ms. Adams first and Mr. Cuomo second. He does not like the rent freezes supported by Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Lander.
He said that Mr. Cuomo had “a lot of baggage,” but he added that former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s endorsement of Mr. Cuomo had influenced him.
“I guess if he’s good enough for Mike Bloomberg, he’s good enough for me,” Mr. Wengroff said.
Ms. Adams spent part of the day in Harlem with Councilman Yusef Salaam. She was greeted warmly by supporters at a festival celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, with some voters more excited to see Mr. Salaam. Several Black women hugged her and said they had ranked her first.
Asked whether she shared Mr. Cuomo’s concerns over Mr. Mamdani’s experience, Ms. Adams said that her “experience supersedes anyone on that stage, be it the former governor or anyone else.”
“I’m already doing the job,” she said. “We don’t have to look for someone else that’s going to need on-the-job training.”
Kimberly Elicker, 37, a scientist who lives in Washington Heights, said she ranked Mr. Mamdani first and Mr. Cuomo, acknowledging that it might seem odd. But she said she liked Mr. Mamdani’s vision and Mr. Cuomo’s experience.
”I’d love to put that together — experience plus sort of his new vision,” she said.
Reporting was contributed by Hilary Howard, Molly Longman and Juan B. Garcia.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
Jeffery C. Mays is a Times reporter covering politics with a focus on New York City Hall.
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