Zohran Mamdani launches door-to-door campaigning as he blasts ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Eric Adams for having ties with Donald Trump

As Zohran Mamdani tries to make his opposition to President Donald Trump a central message in his campaign for mayor of New York, he will spend this week highlighting the ways he believes the president's agenda is hurting the city. What Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, is calling a Five Boroughs Against Trump tour started on Monday in Manhattan with endorsements from three Democrats: Ruth Messinger, a former Manhattan borough president; Keith Powers, a City Council member; and Harvey Epstein, a state Assembly member. Mamdani's event in Manhattan on Monday was held at the headquarters for Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, which has endorsed him, and included US House of Representative Jerrold Nadler, who endorsed him after he triumphed in the primary. Many prominent New York Democrats have embraced Mamdani since the contentious primary. Some have not, including Governor Kathy Hochul and Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader.

Mamdani said that Trump was responsible for kicking more than 1 million New Yorkers off Medicaid, cutting funding for food stamps and slashing funding for housing programs. "We know that there is no borough that will be free from Trump's cruelty," he said.

New York Mayoral Election


As he heads into the general election in November, Mamdani is trying to position himself as the strongest candidate to stand up to Trump, and will visit a different borough each day to convey that message.

Mamdani criticized former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June, arguing that Cuomo's recent phone call with Trump about the race was "disqualifying."

Zohran Mamdani vs Andrew Cuomo vs Eric Adams vs Curtis Sliwa

Mamdani has argued that his three main challengers -- Cuomo, Mayor Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee -- all have ties to the president. "The fact is that the president has three candidates in this race -- one that he's directly been in touch with, another that he bailed out of legal trouble and now functionally controls, and the final one literally being a member of the same Republican Party," Mamdani said in a recent radio interview.

The New York Times reported last week that Trump and Cuomo spoke directly about the mayor's race in a recent phone call, according to three people briefed on the conversation. Cuomo and Trump have denied doing so.

In a closed-door meeting on Wednesday with business leaders, Cuomo said he was not "personally" looking for a fight with the president and jokingly compared their yearslong relationship to a "dysfunctional marriage."

Cuomo said in an interview on Sunday that he agreed with Mamdani that Adams was a "wholly owned subsidiary" of Trump. But the former governor said that he and Sliwa did not get along with Trump.

Adams, who is also running as an independent, has tried to work with Trump on some issues while opposing him on others. The mayor received a wave of criticism in New York after the Trump administration dropped federal corruption charges against him.

Todd Shapiro, a spokesperson for Adams, said in a statement that a mayor was "supposed to work with presidents -- not wage war against them." "Turning the mayor's office into a partisan battlefield might score headlines, but it costs New Yorkers opportunities, resources and progress," he said.

Sliwa has encouraged Trump not to get involved in the mayoral election and has argued that doing so would help Mamdani to be viewed as the anti-Trump candidate in a city where the president is unpopular. Trump has called Mamdani a "Communist Lunatic."

FAQs

Q1. When is New York Mayoral election?
A1. New York Mayoral election is held in November this year.

Q2. Who are main challengers to Zohran Mamdani?
A2. Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams, Curtis Sliwa are main challengers to Zohran Mamdani.