As Cuomo Tries to Catch Mamdani, the Campaign May Get Ugly

The screaming and booing erupted while Andrew Cuomo was still half a block away, walking toward a mosque in Jamaica, Queens. “You are a criminal! You are not welcome here! How dare you support a war criminal!” One of the dozen or so hecklers, some of whom were wearing T-shirts supporting Zohran Mamdani, was inches from the former governor’s right ear, matching his every step and yelling at full volume, “Shame on you! Shame on you!”

Cuomo stayed cool, removed his black dress shoes at the door of the mosque, and descended a narrow stairway into the small basement prayer room. The group of protesters followed Cuomo and continued jeering loudly throughout his attempt to speak to the 50 or so men kneeling on the floor. “This is an important time in this country,” he began. “You look at what’s going on in this country, the anger, the division, the extremism on both sides. You have an extreme left; you have an extreme right. You look at the violence we see, the political violence we see—”

“Go to Israel and help the prime minister there! Go there, where you belong!”

“You abused women!”

“Now, this election is different than most elections. This is not just about different people. This is about different philosophy…. My father was a Democrat. I’ve always been a Democrat…. Socialism didn’t work in Cuba. Socialism is not going to work in New York City…. Mr. Mamdani proposed to legalize prostitution. Legalizing prostitution would run afoul of the teaching in the Quran—”

“Do not speak about the Quran! You support the genocide!”

After six minutes and four mentions of prostitution (Mamdani has denied ever supporting the legalization of prostitution, though a spokesperson has said he would take a “decriminalization approach” to the issue), Cuomo exited, reclaimed his shoes, and departed in a waiting SUV. Afterward, his aides were so gleeful about the confrontation that I wondered, slightly, if the whole thing had been a setup, a bit of sophisticated trolling designed to make Cuomo appear as the sane moderate besieged by the radical left and that crazed socialist Mamdani. But the mosque visit was also in keeping with Cuomo’s more overt strategy of trying to paint his rival as holding unexamined, unpopular policy positions.

Cuomo has received friendlier welcomes at a couple of other mosque visits, but there hasn’t been much indication that his tactics are working with the wider electorate, continuing what has been a dismal campaign year for him. This spring, polls showed Cuomo with a seemingly substantial lead in the Democratic primary, on track to complete a remarkable comeback after resigning in disgrace from the governor’s office some four years earlier. He was lulled into a lethargic effort and made few retail campaign appearances. Mamdani’s late surge clobbered Cuomo by almost 13 points.

He promised things would be different in the general election, where he is running as an independent. Cuomo did initially beef up his social media presence and in-person schedule. But the live events dwindled through September, and some of his attempts to create viral videos were awkward. “Andrew doesn’t listen to anyone,” a senior ally says. “He wouldn’t do anything that he didn’t already know how to do.” Instead, he’s worked the phones in an effort to raise money and reel in endorsements from labor unions and mainstream elected officials. “You’ve got a candidate who has lost his way,” a second longtime Cuomo insider says.

He did get some good news when, in late September, the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, dropped out of the field. A Cuomo aide claims the campaign’s internal polling shows that the bulk of Adams’s support will shift to Cuomo—though even that would only add a mere 5%, not enough to close the gap with Mamdani. So one focus now is peeling support away from Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, in hopes that Sliwa will step aside and give Cuomo a head-to-head matchup with Mamdani. The Cuomo aide admits that it amounts to hitting a triple bank shot: “The pieces have to fall the right way. But is there a path? Yes, there is.”

Before Adams left the race, most polls put Mamdani at around 45% in a four-person field—a surprisingly low number for a Democratic mayoral nominee in a deeply blue city, leading some New York operatives to jokingly refer to Mamdani as “Z 45.” That underwhelming figure suggests a substantial number of potential general election voters still aren’t sold on Mamdani, and it gives Cuomo an opening, especially since an early-September New York Times poll showed him just four points behind Mamdani, among likely voters, in a one-on-one matchup.

One crucial factor will be whether Mamdani is able to repeat his spring success in turning out a significant number of young voters. “Everyone’s been like, ‘It doesn’t look like you guys are having as much fun.’ Yeah, this isn’t as much fun,” a top Mamdani strategist says. “There’s something far more magical about taking on the establishment than trying to coalesce it into your coalition. But I feel more confident than I have ever felt.”

Cuomo’s camp says its candidate will be highly aggressive in the two upcoming debates, the first of which is scheduled for October 16. They believe Mamdani remains vulnerable to questions about his inexperience, particularly as it relates to crime. “Yeah, that isn’t going to work,” a Democratic strategist who knows Cuomo well says. “Voters have decided it’s time for new blood. The generational transition happening in our politics that is so manifest has not yet been recognized by those 60 and over who are occupying most of the positions of power in the Democratic Party.”

The hecklers hounded Cuomo as he left the mosque. He was driven six blocks to a quiet residential street corner for a brief press conference with a half dozen reporters. He blamed his rival’s campaign for staging the disruption, which Mamdani’s team later denied. I asked Cuomo about the anger over his support for Israel. “I am pro-Israel. At the same time, I believe what’s happening in Gaza is horrific. The carnage is horrific, it should stop,” Cuomo replied. “[Mamdani] sympathizes with terrorists. I don’t. And that’s the real distinction. This country does not sympathize with terrorists. Nine-eleven taught us a lesson. Three thousand dead, 150,000 suffering from 9/11 health-related illnesses. This country doesn’t tolerate terrorists. We spent a decade chasing the terrorists who did 9/11. So there is no tolerance with terrorists. He associates with people like Hasan Piker, who said America deserved 9/11…. I think it’s anti-American, his behavior.”

Piker, a left-wing streamer, made that comment in 2019; he later claimed he was trying to be satirical. It’s also true that Piker interviewed Mamdani in April 2025. But Cuomo’s choice to connect the two events and flirt with calling Mamdani, who just happens to be Muslim, a terrorist, gave an unsubtle glimpse of how fearmongering could dominate the final weeks of the campaign.

Cuomo, both inside the mosque and outside at his presser, waxed nostalgic about his family’s history in the neighborhood. This was where his paternal grandfather, Andrea, for whom Andrew Cuomo was named, had operated a small grocery story after emigrating from Italy in 1926. Almost a century later, Cuomo was back where his family’s distinctly American story had begun, as his long political career potentially neared its end. A staffer had driven Cuomo to the press conference. When it was over, she got out and he climbed behind the wheel to drive away, alone.