New York establishment Democrats mull over Mamdani charm offensive

New York Democrats cool to their party’s Big Apple mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani are weighing their options as the 33-year-old progressive makes his own pitch to centrists that they should back him.

The Democratic establishment has been looking for alternatives, but none really satisfy.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week announced an independent run after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani, but a number of Democrats who spoke to The Hill have doubts he can win. Some also haven’t forgotten past Cuomo controversies.

Incumbent Eric Adams is also running as an independent, but he has had a scandal-tarred career and his tilting toward MAGA and Trump World hasn’t won him too many friends in the Democratic establishment.

Political observers say there aren’t enough moderates to go around for one — let alone two candidates — and if the establishment wants to prevail, either Adams or Cuomo should exit the race.

“You can't have multiple alternatives,” said Grant Reeher, the director of Syracuse University’s Campbell Public Affairs Institute. “I just don't see any way that Mamdani doesn't win unless one of these folks drops out.”

“If I was a Democratic strategist for the whole party in New York City, and I commanded authority, I would put Adams and Cuomo in a room, and I would say, ‘You guys are going to flip a coin,’” he added.

A HarrisX poll out earlier this month — before Cuomo announced his independent bid — showed Adams trailing with 13 percent of the vote and Mamdani leading with 26 percent, followed by Cuomo at 23 percent, and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa at 22 percent.  

In a three-way race without Adams, the same poll revealed Cuomo would lead the field by 2 percentage points in front of Mamdani. 

Mamdani appears to recognize the potential danger to his candidacy if voters opposed to him rally around one independent choice.

The left-wing candidate this past week sought to make inroads with business leaders and establishment Democrats, including during a trip to Washington where he met Democrats at an event with liberal star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

On Friday, he met with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in New York. Following the meeting, a spokesperson for Jeffries called the face-to-face “constructive, candid and community-centered.”

The spokesperson said Jeffries and Mamdani also discussed a “variety of other important issues including public safety, rising antisemitism, gentrification" and the importance of "taking back the House in 2026.”

Mamdani also recently earned the endorsement of Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.), another rising Democratic star.

Some of Mamdani’s efforts appeared to be helping him.

“He's already had those conversations, been in those meetings, and it doesn't seem that there is a wholesale public rebuke of him,” said Democratic strategist Basil Smikle, who served as executive director of the New York State Democratic Party. 

Smikle said that signals “that a lot of those constituencies and voters are willing to hear more and are likely going to find a way to work with him.”

Mamdani has impressed some Democrats who say the party needs fresh blood. 

“He is campaigning like he isn’t 94 years old,” said Democratic strategist Eddie Vale, who hails from New York. “He is out hitting the streets and events and talking to tons of people. He is doing press interviews and podcasts and he is young and natively comfortable online for doing his own videos and social media."

By meeting with establishment operatives and backers, Mamdani has been chipping away at a part of the electorate that strategists say is critical to both Cuomo and Adams.

The two independents are, “for a number of moderate voters, the business community, the real estate community, a firewall against more progressive politics,” Smilke said.

Some observers in the race differ over who is the stronger challenger to Mamdani.

New-York based Republican strategist Susan Del Percio, who worked for Cuomo as a special adviser in 2014, holds the view it is Adams.

“Cuomo has lost once; he probably will lose again,” she said.

“The only one who really has a path when it comes down to Cuomo, Sliwa, and Adams is Adams,” Del Percio added. “If he's willing to reinvent himself a bit in light of people being scared of Mamdani — it’s almost Cuomo’s argument, except I think that there's more that Adams can do now.”

“If you tell [Adams] now, ‘You may actually be able to win,’ he’ll twist himself into a pretzel to do it,” Del Percio added. “If you told him he had to be disciplined, and this is how you do it, and he has a real campaign, I think he could do it.”

Other voices who think Cuomo could win more support point to Adams’s unpopular tenure as mayor.

While Adams was charged with corruption charges last year, a judge permanently dismissed them in April. The dismissal came weeks after the Trump administration asked prosecutors to drop the charges against Adams. 

Reeher said Adams has been tarnished with financial corruption and incompetency.

“Nobody's really making the argument that Andrew Cuomo is incompetent and doesn't know what he's doing," he said. 

Cuomo faces his own hurdles. The former governor's time in Albany came to an end with 13 women accusing of him sexual assault and accusations that the state purposefully under-reported COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. And his political opponents, particularly Mamdani, have not let him or the New York City electorate forget it.

Some criticized Cuomo for reentering the race last week with an ad filmed on the Upper East Side, a sign to political observers that he has learned nothing about appealing to the issue that New Yorkers care most about — and the issue Mamdani won on in the Democratic primary — affordability. 

But there is still great worry about Mamdani in the party, strategists acknowledge. 

“He can’t be the future of the party,” one strategist said. “He’s only going to be fodder for Republicans."

Reeher agreed, saying “If I put myself in the place of a Republican strategist, I'm wanting [Mamdani] to win.” 

“I can imagine the advertisement would be … a list of some of the most extreme things that he has stood for … and I would say, ‘This is what Democrats do when they're left to their own devices,’” he said.