NYC mayor’s race tightens up after Adams’ exit

Early voting in New York City starts in two weeks, and the election is in three.

Things are starting to get interesting, though, as the race has tightened up considerably with Mayor Eric Adams dropping out of the race.

Don’t get too excited, though, as Mamdani still has a double-digit lead, but if things go right, that could evaporate rather quickly.

Hurting Himself

There is a rather significant Jewish contingent in New York City, and Zohran Mamdani did himself no favors with his October 7 statement about the war between Israel and Hamas.

While he did call out Hamas for its initial atrocities, most of his statement was turned against Israel, calling it their “genocide war,” which is utterly ridiculous.

Israel is being held to an unfair standard during a war, and make no mistake about it, this is a war.

When you look at the ratio of civilians to combatants killed in WWI, WWII, and our Middle East campaigns, Israel is far lower, and in a much more difficult circumstance in terms of finding the enemy. We literally dropped a bomb on a civilian city, two of them, in the name of ending a war, yet Israel is not permitted to defend itself against terrorists.

Getting Close

Before Adams dropped out, Mamdani was up by more than 20 points, so there was some curiosity as to how those voters would fall.

Based on the new numbers, the majority of those voters went to Adams, pulling former Governor Andrew Cuomo within 13 points of Mamdani, with GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa getting a small bump up to 15%.

Here is the thing… if Sliwa insists on staying in the race, and I don’t blame him if he does, Mamdani runs away with this election. If Sliwa drops, we have to assume that most of his supporters would go to Cuomo, and this would be a coin-flip race.

Now, I don’t blame Sliwa if he stays in because he is the GOP nominee. The party never took the race seriously, and he ran unopposed. The local GOP should have put someone in there, like Lee Zeldin, for instance, and Cuomo would be out of the picture. Having said that, if I were Cuomo, I would call up Sliwa and tell him to pick his position in the administration if he drops out and Cuomo wins. Make the deal with the devil you know rather than allowing the devil you don't know to take over the city.

One More Factor

There is still one outstanding factor that could really turn this race, especially if Sliwa decides to bow out.

The interest level on the left was high because of the Israel-Hamas war. As I hinted above, Mamdani has been feasting on dumping on Israel, so what happens now that the war is over?

Let me add more fuel to that by asking what happens if Israel is already pouring aid into Gaza and starting the rebuild? Will that sap the energy out of progressives and have them sitting on their couch?

I am not being unrealistic to think that Cuomo can make a 14-point surge in two weeks, but if the chips fall right, this could get very interesting. The one thing I don’t want to see, however, is people getting upset with Sliwa if he stays in and Mamdani wins. He won a major party nomination and has every right to be in this race. It’s not his fault the New York GOP did not take the race seriously.