Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo will step to the debate stage on Wednesday evening, perhaps for the last time in his decades-long political career, and try to make the most of his final chance to publicly challenge Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner in the race for mayor of New York City.
The math is against him. With early voting only three days away, he trails Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, by at least a dozen points in the polls. And he seems to stand little chance of catching Mr. Mamdani unless Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, drops out of the race.
And yet, Mr. Cuomo, who is running on an independent line, offered no hint that he planned to do much different from his debate performance last week, saying he did not anticipate making “dramatic changes” to his strategy.
“It’s a balance,” he said at a news conference on Tuesday. “You don’t want to be too aggressive, because then, you know, everyone has a critique. You’re too aggressive, they saw you’re a bully. You’re not aggressive enough, they say you’re too soft.”
Since last week’s debate, Mr. Cuomo has mostly centered his campaign messaging on two themes: Mr. Sliwa should drop out, and Mr. Mamdani would hurt the city if elected.
The latest attack against Mr. Mamdani came on Tuesday, when Mr. Cuomo’s campaign released an A.I.-generated video featuring former Mayor Bill de Blasio as Dr. Evil and Mr. Mamdani as his “mini-me” — repeating one of Mr. Cuomo’s zingers from last week’s debate.
“If you thought my policies were evil, you’re going to freaking hate this,” says the de Blasio character, cuddling a hairless cat on his lap.
“Sure will, boss!” the Mamdani character responds, in a high-pitched voice.
The stakes are high for Mr. Cuomo, a former New York attorney general who resigned as governor during his third term amid a sexual harassment scandal he describes as “political. He denies the accusations.
He barreled into the Democratic primary as the seemingly indisputable front-runner only to squander his lead and lose the June contest to Mr. Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist assemblyman from Queens.
Mr. Cuomo will turn 68 in December, at a time when the Democratic Party is under pressure to depose its gerontocracy. It is not clear what he would do should he lose. This summer he echoed the donor class when he said, apparently in jest, that he would move to Florida. In September, he did not rule out running for office again during an interview with The New York Times.
“We’re not contemplating anything other than winning,” said Rich Azzopardi, Mr. Cuomo’s spokesman.
A loss would close an ignominious chapter in a once formidable political career, one that at its height elicited political chatter about a presidential run. Mr. Cuomo ultimately saw his reputation consumed by a political firestorm after he directed nursing homes to accept Covid patients and was repeatedly accused of sexual harassment.
This run for mayor was supposed to be Mr. Cuomo’s post-resignation resurrection tour.
Now, nothing less than “his political career” hangs in the balance, said George Arzt, a Democratic consultant who is unaffiliated with any of the mayoral campaigns.
Nearly every public poll puts Mr. Mamdani ahead of Mr. Cuomo by 10 to 20 points, followed by Mr. Sliwa. Even the former governor has acknowledged that the odds are against him, and he has spent much of the last week trying to change the race’s fundamental dynamics by pushing Mr. Sliwa out of it.
If Mr. Sliwa does not withdraw, it would be “very, very, very hard mathematically,” for him to win, Mr. Cuomo told conservative talk radio host Sid Rosenberg last week. A recent poll commissioned by AARP suggested that might be Mr. Cuomo’s only chance for electoral success.
“If he dropped out, maybe Cuomo would have a little bit of a chance, but not much,” President Trump said on Tuesday.
Mr. Sliwa has remained adamant that he is going nowhere. And even if he were to stop campaigning, his name would remain on the ballot.
“Let me say it for the 9,852nd time: I’m not dropping out,” Mr. Sliwa said this weekend on Fox News.
That leaves Wednesday evening’s debate, hosted by NY1, WNYC and The City, an online news publication, as perhaps Mr. Cuomo’s last chance to flip the script.
“Local debates aren’t watched by most of the electorate, so the only way to make headlines is if something out of the ordinary or exciting happens,” said Jeff Leb, a Democratic political consultant managing a pro-Cuomo super PAC.
At least week’s debate, Mr. Cuomo tried and tried again to shift viewers’ focus to what he saw as his own government accomplishments and Mr. Mamdani’s flaws: His youth, his inexperience, his failed career as a rapper, his anti-Israel rhetoric, his work on a film directed by his mother, Mira Nair (which features prominently on his résumé from his pre-Assembly days).
But Mr. Cuomo’s own baggage preceded him, and the moderators turned to it again and again, as did his onstage rivals.
David Greenfield, a former Democratic councilman who has not endorsed a candidate, suggested that this time, Mr. Cuomo could put forth a more proactive platform, rather than just revisit his past.
“Every New Yorker knows his résumé, they want to hear his plans for the future,” he said.
But Donovan Richards, the Queens borough president who endorsed Mr. Mamdani in August, said he was not expecting anything new or election-altering.
”What is he going to say that he hasn’t said already?” he asked. “He’s labeled him everything under the sun. I don’t think a debate is going to change the outcome of this election, barring a really explosive allegation or something.”
Mr. Arzt also wondered what precisely Mr. Cuomo could actually do on the debate stage that would truly affect the outcome. With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, the race to replace Eric Adams has begun to feel baked.
“It sort of feels a monumental hill to overcome, a mountain,” Mr. Arzt said.
So where does that leave Mr. Cuomo?
On Monday, in response to a request for comment, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo shared a New York Post editorial urging Mr. Sliwa to get out of the race.
“It stinks, but for the sake of the city you love so deeply, Curtis, please swallow this bitter pill,” the editorial board wrote.
Michael Goldcontributed reporting.
Dana Rubinstein covers New York City politics and government for The Times.
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