There is now a push among some in conservative media to whittle down the field of candidates in the New York City mayoral race to make it a one-on-one campaign between Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo. While the desire to stop Mamdani is understandable, the willingness to bring Cuomo back from the political grave is not.
Pressure from conservatives and centrist Democrats to push out incumbent Mayor Eric Adams succeeded, but the effort to hound GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa out of the race has not. Sliwa is defiantly staying in the race, splintering off votes that could otherwise go to Cuomo, despite it being obvious that Sliwa can’t win and will never be the mayor of New York City.
MAMDANI POSES IN CAMPAIGN PHOTO WITH ’93 WTC BOMBING UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATOR
Mamdani will no doubt destroy New York City in many ways. He is an antisemite and a terrorist sympathizer. He is a communist whose destructive economic policies would make New York City even more unaffordable. He hates police officers and wants to reorient the criminal justice system around sympathy for criminals. His tenure as mayor is an obvious disaster waiting to happen.
But Cuomo is not some moral choice to be the bulwark against Mamdani. He resigned as governor of New York in disgrace after facing sexual harassment accusations. He used the COVID-19 pandemic as a platform to become a Democratic celebrity politician and potentially set up a presidential run. At the same time, he had ordered nursing homes to accept COVID-19-positive patients, leading to widespread deaths. His health department then tried to cover that up by deleting his executive order and classifying nursing home deaths as hospital deaths. Like Mamdani, Cuomo is an obvious disaster waiting to happen, and we know that because it already happened.
ERIC TRUMP GOES OFF ON CHRIS CUOMO OVER GOVERNMENT ‘WEAPONIZATION’
This is not a call to line up behind Sliwa, either, an unserious candidate who lost by 39 points in 2021. And the only reason we are even in this position is that Adams is wildly unpopular and dogged by accusations of corruption. All of the top candidates for mayor are terrible options. At some point, that falls squarely on New York City voters.
Mamdani should not be the mayor of New York City, but neither should Cuomo. The fact is that there are no good options for New York City other than a long self-reflection about the choices that voters themselves have made. If that ends up happening during the terrible tenure of Mamdani, then so be it.
