Tens of millions of dollars in campaign ads have cluttered the city’s stoops and televisions. Candidates sparred face-to-face in two televised debates. And the last of the big-name endorsements have trickled in.
Now, with just days left, the critical Democratic primary for mayor of New York City has shifted into an urgent final footrace to push every last supporter in the five boroughs to the polls.
The round-the-clock effort took on fresh urgency this weekend, as the weather forecast for Primary Day on Tuesday threatened to bring dangerously high temperatures that some campaigns fear could keep older voters at home.
The nearly dozen Democratic candidates planned to fan out across the city on Saturday, but most eyes were on the two front-runners, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, and the vastly different approaches they were taking to try to tip the outcome.
Mr. Cuomo, a 67-year-old moderate, is reprising an old, and conspicuously expensive, playbook he has used in statewide races. While his super PAC pounds Mr. Mamdani with millions of dollars in negative commercials and mail, he appears to be largely relying on labor unions and paid canvassers to carry his message to subway stops and doorways.
“I have 650,000 women and men in organized labor,” Mr. Cuomo boasted on Tuesday after rallying with hundreds of carpenters, electricians and metal workers in Manhattan’s Union Square. “Does he?”
The number represents the membership of the unions that have endorsed Mr. Cuomo, but on the streets and sidewalks, Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, may have more muscle.
Despite working with a fraction of the former governor’s budget, Mr. Mamdani has harnessed a wave of energy from mostly young, left-leaning voters with little precedent in modern New York politics. He claims to have 46,000 unpaid volunteers who have helped his campaign knock on 1.3 million doors so far.
He also collected more than 27,000 individual donations, two-thirds more than his closest rival, Brad Lander, the city comptroller, and several times Mr. Cuomo’s total of 6,300. (Mr. Cuomo also has the support of Fix the City, the super PAC that has raised more than $24 million from wealthy donors, including former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.)
On Thursday, Mr. Mamdani sought to contrast his approach with Mr. Cuomo’s, telling reporters in Queens that “politics is not something that can simply be bought by billionaires and corporations.”
Campaign veterans, and even some of Mr. Cuomo’s supporters, say Mr. Mamdani has built a more impressive get-out-the-vote machine. So far, over 250,000 people have voted early, a jump in participation overall compared with 2021. The surge has been greatest among younger voters, who tend to favor the assemblyman.
“There’s a massive advantage to having your field operation staffed and run by volunteers,” said Jon Paul Lupo, a Democratic strategist who is not affiliated with a mayoral campaign. “Those folks are there because they believe in the campaign, they’re high energy, they’re more persuasive when they talk to voters.”
Even so, Mr. Mamdani faces a steep challenge, particularly if public polls are accurate. A recent Marist Institute for Public Opinion poll showed him narrowing Mr. Cuomo’s lead but still trailing by about 10 points. Closing the gap would require Mr. Mamdani to change the composition of the typical primary electorate in a meaningful way.
Mr. Cuomo’s allies concede that the race is closer than they expected it would be, but they remain cautiously confident. Fix the City has bought $5.4 million in withering TV attacks against Mr. Mamdani in just a few days, outspending him nearly 10-to-1 on paid media.
Mr. Cuomo’s supporters — polls show him winning with Black voters, women and older New Yorkers — are historically among the most likely to vote in a primary.
“There’s no panic,” Representative Gregory W. Meeks, the Queens Democratic chairman, said. “We’ve identified voters, our voters, the Cuomo voters, and we’re going to pull out those voters.”
“It’s almost like how in the first round George Foreman beat Muhammad Ali,” Mr. Meeks said, referring to the famous 1974 boxing match Ali ultimately won by deploying a “rope-a-dope” strategy. “But that wasn’t the fight.”
Yet the Cuomo campaign seems to recognize that the heat wave predicted to be coming, with temperatures potentially peaking around 100 degrees on Tuesday, could make relying on Primary Day turnout a precarious strategy.
The campaign blasted out texts to supporters urging them to “beat the heat and the line” by voting early and offering rides to the polls. (Early voting ends on Sunday.) And Mr. Cuomo has complained that the Board of Elections’s plans to address the coming heat were insufficient, demanding air conditioning be installed at polling sites.
Mr. Lander’s organizers have been trained to recognize signs of heat stroke, according to a campaign spokeswoman, Dora Pekec, and there are plans to send cars to polling sites filled with cold water, Gatorade, hydration packs and coolers.
The turnout battle comes after months of increasingly personal squabbles among the 11 Democrats on the ballot over issues like policing, housing policy and who is best equipped to confront President Trump. (Mayor Eric Adams, who remains a registered Democrat, is skipping the primary to run as an independent in November.)
Mr. Cuomo, who resigned as governor in scandal four years ago, has consistently led in the polls, buoyed by his name recognition and the memory of his time in office. He has pledged to hire 5,000 more police officers and accelerate the construction of private housing, and has pitched himself as a tested leader capable of safeguarding the city.
Mr. Mamdani, who would be New York’s youngest mayor in a century, wants to raise taxes on businesses and wealthy residents to pay for free buses and child care, and has promised to freeze rent for rent-regulated units. He argues that the city needs a new generation of leaders.
There are signs that interest in the race is high.
Early in-person turnout through Friday was almost double the same period in 2021, when the coronavirus pandemic was still raging and many voters cast ballots by mail.
Older voters still account for the largest share of those who have voted overall, but the youngest cohort has increased the most since then, a positive sign for Mr. Mamdani. In the entire 10-day early voting period in 2021, 19,367 voters under 30 cast an early ballot in person. This year, 45,052 voters in that group have cast ballots in early voting’ first seven days.
Mr. Cuomo does have volunteers handing out literature and making calls for his campaign, but a spokesman, Rich Azzopardi, declined to share figures on volunteers or paid staff.
“This is a campaign of work horses, not show ponies, and I’d like to remind people that the last time we ran against a silver spoon socialist in a Trump backlash year, we actively expanded the electorate,” he said, referring to Mr. Cuomo’s 2018 primary against the actress Cynthia Nixon.
Public records show that Mr. Cuomo’s campaign and Fix the City are both spending heavily on canvassing. The former governor has spent at least $139,000 just this month, while the super PAC had spent more than $560,000 on field operations as of Friday. Another $14,000 went for T-shirts for paid canvassers that say “Vote for Cuomo: The mayor for this moment.”
North Shore Strategies, the firm that is handling some of Mr. Cuomo’s get-out-the-vote effort, recently posted $25-an-hour listings on Craigslist and Indeed seeking help.
“As a political canvasser, you will play a critical role in the democratic process by engaging voters through face-to-face interactions,” one post reads, without explicitly mentioning a candidate.
The larger part of Mr. Cuomo’s operation appears to be fueled by the labor unions that have endorsed him. The Hotel and Gaming Trades Council has deputized hundreds of members to hand out campaign literature in communities of color, and its super PAC is spending another $300,000 on what its spokesman described as “hundreds” of paid canvassers and mobile billboards.
Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union said 2,600 of its members were involved in promoting Mr. Cuomo, and 2,000 union carpenters have also pitched in. Local 1199 of the service employees union has sent hundreds of its members to door-knock fellow union members across the city, according to its political action arm.
Representative Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat who represents parts of Manhattan and the Bronx, said he was lending Mr. Cuomo his turnout machine, and he cast doubt on the effectiveness of paid workers.
“I’d take one volunteer over 10 paid people,” he said. “Paid people sit around to chat and take a three-hour lunch. Volunteers are there fighting for that vote.”
Mr. Mamdani plans to spend about $185,000 on 54 paid canvassers, his campaign said, and he has the support of several smaller unions. The huge volunteer numbers are almost impossible to independently verify.
His corps has grown over the course of months, and members of the Democratic Socialists of America are heavily represented. Its work was on display Wednesday night in Manhattan’s East Village, where about 50 volunteers wearing bandannas and carrying tote bags gathered to knock on doors.
Bennett Lees, 26, and Lex Uttamsingh, 25, paired up and left for a high-rise building on Mercer Street. They started on the 18th floor and worked their way down, often striking out, but leaving fliers behind.
Finally, they found a voter on the 10th floor who seemed interested: a 77-year-old former teacher named Jane, who had reservations about Mr. Cuomo and liked the idea of free buses.
Mr. Lees made his pitch, pointing to Mr. Mamdani’s child care plan and encouraging her to fill out all five ballot slots under ranked-choice voting. “We say A-B-C — Anybody but Cuomo,” Ms. Uttamsingh said.
A short time later, security kicked them out of the building.
Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government.
Dana Rubinstein covers New York City politics and government for The Times.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
Alex Lemonides is a data journalist at The Times, working on a team that analyzes election results and conducts political polls.
The post N.Y.C. Mayoral Primary May Hinge on Early Voters as Heat Wave Looms appeared first on New York Times.
