6 Takeaways From Second NYC Mayoral Debate

Three candidates entered the ring for the second time in the New York City mayoral race Wednesday night in one of the most closely watched political races in the nation.
New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat, is the frontrunner in the race. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the primary, trails. And Republican Curtis Sliwa, founder of the anti-crime nonprofit Guardian Angels, has aimed to become the primary alternative to Mamdani.
The debate was even more spirited than the first as all candidates landed blows on their opponents. Some themes replayed themselves Wednesday night. President Donald Trump again loomed large. Cuomo leaned on his governing experience. Urban crime and chaos were frequent topics.
Here are my 5 takeaways from Wednesday night’s showdown.
1. ‘Us Versus Insiders’
Mamdani’s inside track to the mayor’s mansion has been bolstered by the fact that he doesn’t just face a Republican, but a former Democrat looking to the be the anti-Mamdani choice.
There has been a recent push from Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager who has become involved in conservative politics, and other prominent figures to get Sliwa to drop out of the race to make it a one-on-one matchup.
Mamdani made this dynamic about how his opponents are simply trying to get each other to leave the race rather than focusing on their pitch to run the city. He said that his opponents spend “more time trying to convince the other to drop out than proposing their own polices.” He said that both of his opponents are living in the past.
Sliwa made his pitch that he was the “populist” candidate fighting for working class New Yorkers.
“It’s us versus them,” he said. “It’s us versus the insiders and the billionaires. It’s us versus Cuomo. It’s us versus Zohran. This is a campaign not about power. This is a campaign about you the people.”
Cuomo’s pitch was again that he was simply the most qualified candidate and that to run the “greatest city in the world” requires someone who knows how to manage and govern.
2. ICE Raid
On Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement made a major raid outside a courthouse in Manhattan that according to Fox News, “resulted in the arrests of nine migrants from West Africa who were in the United States illegally.”
The raid was met with protests.
“Four protesters were also taken into custody for allegedly blocking ICE officers and throwing objects at them,” Fox reported.
The NYPD said that it was not involved with the raid.
All candidates weighed in on this issue with different positions. Cuomo said that he would insist on cooperation with the federal government and push back against Trump.
“We don’t need ICE to do quality of life crimes,” Cuomo said. “We don’t need them to worry about illegal vendors. That’s a basic policing function for NYPD.”
Mamdani called ICE a “reckless entity” and said he would prevent the city from cooperating with it. He said he wanted to “end the chapter of collaboration” with the federal government on immigration enforcement.
The Democrat said that he backed new laws to decriminalize street vending in the city.
Sliwa said that he had frequently patrolled the area that had been raided by ICE. He said that illegal vending, including the selling of stolen goods, had been happening for a long time in the area. He said that while some people had been arrested they often end up back on the street because of “no cash bail” laws.
He said that he didn’t think the federal government should have been involved in the matter, but that the city should have cleaned up the problem a long time ago. He said allowing people to attack federal agents is asking for “anarchy.”
3. Cost of Living
Mamdani has made the cost of rent and living in the city a major campaign theme. He said that he would use government levers to ease the burden on renters, but would help landlords control costs.
“I believe that tenants across our city deserve relief, that city government work to alleviate the pressure on landlords of those units with having to put that burden on those same tenants,” Mamdani said. He additionally said that he would help landlords with “rising insurance costs, water bills, ConEdison [energy bills], and a broken property tax system.”
Sliwa offered that one way to bring down rent costs and bring up availability was to place a vacancy tax on large developers who sit on empty apartments because they want to sell the building.
Cuomo blasted Mamdani’s ideas about artificially lowering rent in the city while covering the cost on landlords. He noted that when former Mayor Bill de Blasio froze rents during his tenure, landlords simply kept apartments off the market to cut costs.
4. The Persistent Crime Problem
Again, crime and disorder were once again major issues of debate.
Sliwa put his position on crime in strong contrast to both his opponents who he said are soft on crime. Cuomo and Mamdani said that they supported the “Raise the Age” law, which raises the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18 years old. Cuomo called putting these young people in adult prisons “cruel.”
Sliwa said that this issue was personal for him.
“My oldest son Anthony last October was the victim of a vicious gang assault, it could have killed him. And what happened to these juveniles? Cut free,” he said.
Sliwa said that the problem is that these violent, underage criminals were sent to family court instead of criminal court, so they got nothing but a “pat on the wrist.”
5. Mamdani’s Radical Connections
Moderators in the debate pressed Mamdani about how many New Yorkers, especially Jews, were concerned about his connections to radical Islamists and positions on Israel’s conflict with Hamas.
The young assemblyman was recently photographed smiling and embracing radical Imam Siraj Wahhaj who the New York Post identified as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That surprisingly didn’t come up in the debate.
Mamdani said that he wanted to be the mayor for all New Yorkers, including those who didn’t vote for him and Jews who disagreed with him about Israel’s conflict with Hamas.
Cuomo went hard after Mamdani. He said that the Muslim assemblyman had refused to denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada,” and had been stoking hatred in the city.
6. Cuomo’s Scandals
In a portion of the debate in which candidates were allowed to cross-examine each other, Sliwa and Mamdani ripped Cuomo over his sexual harassment scandals and asked him what he would say to the women who accused him, one of whom was in the audience.
Mamdani said that “in 2021, 13 different women who worked in your administration accused you of sexual harassment. Since then, you have spent more than $20 million in taxpayer funds to defend yourself.”
Cuomo answered that “if you are in government then you have to be serious and mature.” He said that after years of litigation the cases against him were dropped.
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