Democratic mayoral major candidates Gov. Andrew Cuomo (left), Meeting Member Zohran Mamdani, and metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander.
Pictures by Lloyd Mitchell
The main candidates in New York Metropolis’s June 24 Democratic mayoral major hit the marketing campaign path on Thursday to assault one another.
Mamdani hits Cuomo on PAC cash
Queens Meeting Member Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist who’s persistently polling in second place, held an occasion in Astoria to slam former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the frontrunner, over a brilliant PAC supporting his marketing campaign — referred to as “Fix the City.”
Mamdani charged that rich contributors—together with donors to President Trump and actual property bigwigs—are pouring thousands and thousands of {dollars} into Cuomo’s tremendous PAC as a result of they’re afraid of his pledges to boost taxes on the rich and freeze lease will increase for stabilized tenants.
“These are billionaires who are giving hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars to Andrew Cuomo, precisely because they know that we are going to tax them to make life a little bit more affordable here in the most expensive city in the United States,” Mamdani stated. “They are giving Andrew Cuomo unprecedented amounts of money because they know we are going to stand up to the Trump administration that they helped deliver.”
Mamdani’s remarks come after Politico reported that Repair the Metropolis has now raised $24 million, one-third of which got here from billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who endorsed Cuomo final week.
Cuomo, in the meantime, defended the donations from Bloomberg following his personal Thursday afternoon Juneteenth occasion at Co-Op Metropolis within the Bronx.
“He happens to be a billionaire, good for him,” Cuomo stated of Bloomberg. “He also happens to have been a highly successful mayor of New York City, and Mr. Bloomberg supports me because he knows what this job requires, and he worked with me as governor.”
Moreover, Cuomo insisted that the frenzy of donations to Repair the Metropolis reveals he has “a lot of support” as a result of many individuals are anxious concerning the metropolis’s state and worry his opponents are “not competent to do the job.”
Cuomo hits Mamdani on ‘globalize the intifada’ protection
The previous governor additionally sought to hit Mamdani — a fierce critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights — over his declining to sentence the phrase “globalize the intifada” when requested if it made him uncomfortable on The Bulwork podcast earlier this week. Mamdani didn’t use the phrase, which many Jewish individuals see as inciting violence towards them, however as an alternative defined that in Arabic, it’s a name for liberation.
“When you say globalize the intifada, that is basically repugnant to the Jewish community,” Cuomo advised reporters. “It is basically inciting violence against the Jewish community worldwide.”
A slew of elected officers, together with Mamdani’s cross-endorsed fellow candidate, metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander, and the American Holocaust Museum, have sharply criticized him for not condemning the phrase.
Nonetheless, Mamdani defended his actions when requested about them by reporters Thursday morning. He insisted that he’s dedicated to defending Jewish New Yorkers as mayor and that he won’t ever advocate for violence.
“My point is not that this is language that I use,” Mamdani stated, referring to the phrase. “These words have different meanings for many different people. My point is rather to say that each and every New Yorker deserves that safety, and that my focus is going to be on making this an affordable city. The language that I use is going to be language that is clear and language that speaks directly to the concerns of New Yorkers.”
Lander hits Cuomo, once more, on previous scandals
In the meantime, Lander—accompanied by his spouse, son, and daughter—spoke to reporters after voting early on Thursday afternoon on the John Jay Excessive College campus within the Park Slope part of Brooklyn.
Lander, who has polled at a distant third place for a number of weeks, has been using excessive over the previous few days after receiving the backing of a New York Occasions Opinion-convened panel final week and being brutally arrested by federal immigration authorities on Tuesday.
The comptroller took the chance to spotlight his efficiency throughout the last Democratic major debate final week, during which he took Cuomo to job for the sexual harassment and COVID-19 nursing residence scandals that led the previous governor to resign in 2021.
“What I wanted to do was make clear to all New Yorkers, the last thing we need is a disgraced politician who had to resign after sexually harassing 11 women, who lied to New Yorkers and sent thousands of nursing home victims to their deaths, and who refused to take any responsibility for it,” Lander stated.
In response, Cuomo’s spokesperson, Wealthy Azzopardi, pointed to 5 district attorneys declining to deliver expenses over a number of the former governor’s sexual harassment allegations. He added that the civil instances that arose from the accusations, a few of that are nonetheless ongoing, “either dropped the governor or are rapidly falling apart.”
“Brad Lander has been trying to use this as an issue the entire election to paper over his lack of accomplishment and the fact that he barely does the job he was elected to do now,” Azzopardi stated. “He can’t fool New Yorkers into giving him a promotion.”
Relating to the nursing residence scandal, Azzopardi insisted Cuomo adopted federal pointers. Moreover, he stated Trump politicized your complete challenge throughout the president’s first time period, going after Democratic governors when he was operating for re-election in 2020.
