In the final days of the New York City mayoral campaign, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has vocally argued that the race’s front-runner, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, poses a threat to the city’s Jewish community. But on Sunday, under a grove of oak trees at the northwest corner of Central Park, dozens of Jewish New Yorkers gathered with the goal of combating Mr. Cuomo’s closing pitch.
They wore blue and yellow T-shirts that said “New York Jews for Zohran.” Many of them were young. They hoped to show that Mr. Mamdani had “not fringe but mass Jewish support,” said Eliza Klein, 28, the New York City organizer for Jewish Voice for Peace Action, a Jewish anti-Zionist organization that has endorsed Mr. Mamdani.
Beth Miller, the group’s political director, said Mr. Cuomo was “flattening” the city’s Jewish population. “He is talking about the Jewish community as though we have one political opinion and one voice,” said Ms. Miller, 38. “And that’s simply not true.”
Another canvasser, Alicia Singham Goodwin, 33, the political director of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, said Mr. Cuomo’s approach was “cynical” and was “turning off a lot of Jews.”
On Sunday, the canvassers knocked on doors on the Upper West Side, a neighborhood with a large Jewish population — and where Mr. Cuomo beat Mr. Mamdani in many precincts in the Democratic primary.
Speaking at a synagogue in the neighborhood last week, Mr. Cuomo said he was alarmed by what he described as Mr. Mamdani’s “arrogance and his antisemitism.” During the race’s final debate on Wednesday, he said Mr. Mamdani was stoking “flames of hatred against Jewish people.”
And on Friday, Mr. Cuomo told The Forward, a Jewish publication, that the Jewish community’s concern about Mr. Mamdani was “frighteningly high” and that Jewish voters were more motivated than he had “ever seen.”
Mr. Mamdani has sought to fend off those attacks. He pledged to protect Jewish New Yorkers, saying he considers antisemitism to be a major problem in the city, and stepped up his overtures to Jewish leaders in recent weeks.
And he has said his position on Israel, which he has accused of carrying out a genocide in Gaza, is motivated by concern about the rights of Palestinians. “I look forward to being a mayor for every single person that calls this city home,” he said at last week’s debate.
Opinion polling has indicated that Jewish voters favor Mr. Cuomo, who is running as an independent, over Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee and a democratic socialist.
But the margin has varied drastically in different surveys. And Mr. Mamdani has scored endorsements from a number of current and former Jewish elected officials, including Representative Jerry Nadler, the longest-serving Jewish member of the House; Brad Lander, the city comptroller; and Ruth Messinger, a former Manhattan borough president and mayoral nominee.
Some Jewish voters backing Mr. Mamdani, especially younger ones, have been drawn to his criticism of Israel. Other Jews who support him, including some older ones, are doing so in spite of it.
State Senator Liz Krueger, who joined Mr. Mamdani on the campaign trail Monday and is Jewish, said in an interview that she did not think New Yorkers should fear him.
“Whatever anyone thinks about his positions on any international issues, they’re not the job description of the mayor,” Ms. Krueger said.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, the former head of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in Manhattan, spoke Sunday evening at a Mamdani rally in Queens that drew thousands of supporters. “I don’t agree with our leader Zohran Mamdani in everything that he says,” she told the crowd.
But Rabbi Kleinbaum, 66, who describes herself as a progressive Zionist and says she is deeply concerned about antisemitism, said she believed Mr. Mamdani was committed “to protect all houses of worship and to take seriously the fear that many Jewish communities live with.”
Many rabbis disagree. More than 1,000 from around the nation signed an open letter that said a victory by Mr. Mamdani would threaten “the safety and dignity of Jews in every city.”
And Dov Hikind, a former state lawmaker who represented a heavily Orthodox section of Brooklyn, said Sunday he was withdrawing an endorsement for Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, and endorsing Mr. Cuomo in a last-minute bid to stop Mr. Mamdani.
“Throughout the Jewish community I have never seen anything like this in terms of the fear of him becoming mayor,” Mr. Hikind said in an interview on Monday.
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