Cuomo’s mayoral bid has life now that Adams has bowed out — but he has more work to do to topple Mamdani

Mayor Eric Adams’ decision to end his mayoral campaign is unsurprising. The scandal-tarred incumbent was running a poor fourth in most polls and had no chance of re-election.

His choice nonetheless can have important repercussions. His withdrawal was the first domino to fall in the series of events Andrew Cuomo needs to have any shot of beating Zohran Mamdani in November.

The polls clearly show how hard Cuomo’s task is. The Real Clear Politics polling average has Mamdani ahead by a whopping 18.7 percentage points. 

More importantly, it shows Mamdani receiving 44.4% of the total vote. That’s already likely to be enough to win in anything short of a two-man race.

His lead would still be in the double digits even if every single person currently backing Adams switches to Cuomo. 

Adams was receiving only 8.4% in the final polling average before his departure. Adding those votes to Cuomo’s still leaves Mamdani with a daunting 10.3% lead.

It’s highly unlikely Adams’ remaining supporters would switch to Cuomo in those numbers. The last three polls testing a three-man race (Mamdani versus Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa) shows Mamdani leading by between 14 and 16 points.

Clearly many Adams voters prefer the progressive Mamdani to the old, moderate Cuomo, himself tarred by the scandals that forced him to resign from the governorship.

Adams’ withdrawal does, however, set up Cuomo’s next and most important challenge: convincing Sliwa to drop out too.

Sliwa’s backing comes almost entirely from New York’s Republican minority. These mostly conservative voters do not want the leftist Mamdani, but they also do not want the liberal Cuomo. 

As long as Sliwa is in the race, he’ll get enough of those votes to ensure Mamdani’s triumph.

Sliwa wants to stay in the race, but it’s impossible to see how he can win. 

He got 28% in his 2021 mayoral campaign against Adams, and President Donald Trump won only about 30% in the five boroughs in 2024. 

Even Lee Zeldin won only 30.2% in New York City in his 2022 race against Gov. Kathy Hochul. That’s not going be enough to win.

The fact is that Republicans have never won a New York City mayoral race without winning liberal votes. 

Fiorello LaGuardia won both the GOP and the City Fusion party nominations in 1933, while John Lindsay, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg received either the Liberal or the Independence Party endorsements. 

Sliwa has no significant non-Republican backing and is unlikely to get any.

Nor can Sliwa peel votes away from Cuomo to become the consensus anti-Mamdani candidate: Cuomo is getting the votes of moderate and establishment Democrats and independents and has the money to run the campaign necessary to retain their support. 

Sliwa can’t attack Cuomo from the center and lacks the campaign infrastructure to make a dent in the expensive New York media market. 

If Sliwa can’t win, that leaves Cuomo as the only potentially viable anti-Mamdani candidate. But Adams’ weakness means Cuomo’s chance at victory requires convincing Sliwa’s voters to join him to stop Mamdani. 

That’s much easier said than done.

Cuomo can’t get those votes by attacking Sliwa, who is well positioned as the type of conservative Republicans prefer. Cuomo’s lifetime of liberalism precludes him from winning GOP votes so long as Sliwa is in the race.

It’s unclear Cuomo could win even if Sliwa drops out. 

The three most recent polls testing a Mamdani versus Cuomo head-to-head contest still show Mamdani comfortably ahead with between 47 and 49%.

Those polls also show how reluctant Republicans are to back Cuomo even against the socialist Mamdani. The undecided share of the vote in the Marist poll, for example, rises from a mere 5% in the four-way race to 12% in the head-to-head.

Mamdani would only need a tiny fraction of that 12% to back him — or decide to cast a protest vote for one of the minor candidates on the ballot — for him to beat Cuomo.

Cuomo will need to hammer Mamdani on the crime issue to have any chance. 

Polls show crime is either voters’ top or second concern, and Mamdani’s past statements in favor of “defunding the police” present a huge target: A recent Suffolk University poll shows 74% of New Yorkers oppose defunding the NYPD, with 56% strongly opposing the concept.

And Cuomo has lots of votes to gain among voters who prioritize crime. The recent CBS News poll shows he is only winning 39% of voters who say “crime and safety” is their No. 1 issue, barely ahead of the 28% choosing Sliwa. Win those voters — and the 16% of them who currently choose Mamdani — and Cuomo could pull off an upset.

He will also need to shift his strategy away from the media-reliant approach that characterized his primary effort and toward one that also has a robust ground game. 

Cuomo would be wise to target low-propensity older voters (polls show him doing best with New Yorkers over 45) with volunteer efforts to convince them to cast early ballots.

In short, Adams’ retreat opens up a very tiny pathway for Cuomo to come from behind. 

But it remains a daunting uphill climb, one he is not likely to successfully make.

Henry Olsen, a political analyst and commentator, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.