A defiant Andrew Cuomo tried to spin his second humiliating loss to fledgling lawmaker Zohran Mamdani as a repudiation of the socialist’s ideal — insisting it was the “right fight to wage.”
The ex-governor, standing with his daughters and speaking to a packed room in Manhattan, praised the historic turnout of Tuesday that topped 2 million for the first time in more than 50 years.
“This campaign was the right fight for which I am proud of what we did and what we did together,” he said.
“It’s also important to note that almost half of New Yorkers did vote to support a government agenda that makes promises that we know cannot be met,” Cuomo said in a dig at the mayoral-elect Zohran Mamdani’s lofty promises for a grab bag of socialist freebies.
“We support an economy of jobs and opportunities of entrepreneurship. That’s what New York is, and that’s what New York means to me.”
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Cuomo, running on an independent line, carved out an impressive 41.6% of the vote, trailing Mamdani by 9 points.
Mamdani entered the general election after trouncing Cuomo in the Democratic primary with a hefty lead for months.
“We got up off the mat the night after the primary, and we made it a real race,” Cuomo added, praising the some 850,000 votes nabbed on a third-party line, which was buried on the ballot.
He added that the percentage was greater than his father, Mario Cuomo, ran on an independent line in 1977 when he only pulled in 40% of the vote, and lost to Ed Koch.
“We are a nation of laws, and we believe in law and order, and we need the police to keep society safe,” he said, continuing, “We will not make the NYPD the enemy. We cherish our diversity, and we have no tolerance for discrimination of any kind by race, religion, sexual orientation, or creed, and we will not tolerate any behavior that fans the flames of anti-Semitism.”
“This campaign was necessary to make that point. A caution flag that we are heading down a dangerous, dangerous road,” Cuomo said in another shot at Mamdani.
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