New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani is condemning recent comments from rival candidate Andrew Cuomo as “racist” and “disgusting.”
During an interview on Thursday with conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg, Cuomo, the former governor of New York, suggested Mamdani lacked the experience to govern New York City in a crisis like a 9/11-scale terror attack.
“Can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?” Cuomo asked.
“Uh, I could. He’d be cheering,” Rosenberg responded.
“That’s another problem,” Cuomo then said.
Mamdani, a state assemblyman, condemned Cuomo’s remarks as Islamophobic and racist.
“This is disgusting,” Mamdani said in an interview on Thursday with PIX 11. “This is Andrew Cuomo’s final moment in public life and he’s choosing to spend them making racist attacks on the person who would be the first Muslim to lead this city.”
A Cuomo spokesperson claimed the comments were about Mamdani’s association with leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who once said (then quickly apologized for saying) America “deserved 9/11.” (During a recent debate, Mamdani called Piker’s comments on 9/11 “objectionable and reprehensible.”)
Allies, including current New York Governor Kathy Hochul, rallied to Mamdani’s defense after Cuomo’s comments.
“Time to get out of the gutter,” she wrote on X. “Fear-mongering, hate speech, and Islamophobia are beneath New York — and everything we stand for as a state.”
While some came to Mamdani’s side, others in New York politics have closed ranks to oppose the democratic socialist’s campaign.
On Thursday, current New York Mayor Eric Adams, who briefly ran in the mayoral race himself before dropping out, endorsed Cuomo, long a bitter rival, despite recently branding the former governor a “snake and a liar.” The men were seen on Wednesday at the New York Knicks opening home game following the final mayoral debate.
Mamdani, an Indian American naturalized U.S. citizen born in Uganda, has faced attacks during his run for mayor that allies see as Islamophobic.
GOP congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York has falsely claimed Mamdani is a “full-blown jihadist who has called for the genocide of Jews,” while Cuomo’s campaign released on social media then quickly deleted an AI campaign video interviewing “criminals for Zohran Mamdani.”
The clip pointedly featured the candidate eating rice with his hands, common in many non-Western cultures, then being endorsed by a shoplifting Black man wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf.
The Cuomo campaign has said the post was an accidental release of an unapproved draft video.
Former New York mayor Bill de Blasio called the video “disqualifying” for Cuomo’s campaign.
“No candidate who approves a racist, disgusting ad like this can be allowed to govern,” he wrote on X.
Attacks on Mamdani, who won a shock victory in the Democratic primary long seen as the most competitive part of the New York mayor’s race, have frequently focused on his views of the Israel-Palestine conflict, with critics alleging he is antisemitic.
Mamdani has rejected these characterizations.
The candidate, who has attracted substantial support from a variety of progressive Jewish groups and leaders in the city, has been a vocal critic of the Israeli war effort in Gaza, echoing the wide array of human rights experts who have determined the conflict amounts to a genocide. He has called for both Israel and Hamas to abide by international law and avoid violence against civilians.
A pro-Cuomo group also created a mailer that claimed Mamdani “rejects Jewish rights” and featured an image of Mamdani where his beard looked darker and thicker than it is in real life, though the group said it never sent out the mock-up.
Others have attacked Mamdani over claims he hasn’t done enough to condemn a slogan sometimes used in the pro-Palestine movement to “globalize the intifada,” a term to describe a series of historical uprisings on behalf of the Palestinian people.
Mamdani has said he personally doesn’t use the phrase or endorse it, but that his role as mayor is “not to police language.” Mamdani has also called for an increase in anti-hate crime prevention, including efforts to stop the “crisis of antisemitism.”
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