The Bigger Apple: A Hot Primary Anticipated

L-R Democratic mayoral candidates Andrew Cuomo, Zohran Mamdani and Whitney Tilson during the mayoral debate. (Photo by Yuki Iwamura / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)

Over the last six months, I sat down with nearly every serious Democrat* running for New York City mayor. As part of the New York Editorial Board, we asked tough questions about housing, budgets, public safety, immigration, and how they’d manage the country’s largest city, and spent an hour last week talking about our takeaways. 

None of the candidates will excite conservatives—though Whitney Tilson comes close. One candidate didn’t show up: Former Governor Andrew Cuomo. He skipped the opportunity to explain how he’d govern differently this time. That choice speaks volumes. The rest offered insight into how they think and how they’d lead.

State Senator Zellnor Myrie outlined ambitious yet pragmatic plans to build a million units of housing and provide free afterschool. Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller, offered unmatched fluency in budgeting and capital planning. His platform is serious, disciplined, and structurally sound. Yet his low-key style doesn’t spark broad emotional enthusiasm, and his cross-endorsement with Mamdani makes one question his positioning as the pragmatic candidate.

And that matters. People tend to vote emotionally. Among the two frontrunners, Cuomo offers familiarity and a promise of stability. Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, the field’s most ideological candidate, offers moral clarity and a sense of purpose. His vision—universal public goods, free transit, housing as a right—is bold and inspiring to many. But his plans are thin, and his rhetoric tends to float above practical limits. 

State Senator Jessica Ramos spoke movingly about government failure but endorsed Cuomo soon after, raising questions about conviction. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams was steady but vague. Former Comptroller Scott Stringer was knowledgeable but felt backward-looking. Whitney Tilson diagnosed dysfunction but lacked credible plans.

Some campaigns treat City Hall as a platform for national messaging. But for all the tough, bold talk, cities also need to be managed: The next mayor will need to pass a budget, negotiate contracts, and restore trust. Emotions and the descending heat wave will likely influence this election, but I hope that as they consider their choices, the Democratic primary voters consider competence as well.

Looking to the general election, Eric Adams is trying to reboot. Republicans have offered Curtis Sliwa again. It’s not clear there will be a serious contender to the right, so it is likely that one of the above candidates will become mayor.

(*I was not present for the interview with Michael Blake )

From Left: Andrew Cuomo, Adrienne Adams, Brad Lander, Scott Stringer, Zellnor Myrie, Jessica Ramos, Zohran Mamdani, Michael Blake, Whitey Tilson. Photos via Getty Images. 

Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo held rallies this week that were overshadowed by Brad Lander’s arrest. Whitney Tilson got a nod in the New York Times, and Mamdani hired security. 

It will be very hot and humid on primary day: Temperatures are expected to hit 100F on Tuesday. In an election where intergenerational turnout is likely to determine the outcome, this is not good news for the candidates counting on the older primary voters showing up on Election Day. Early voting, which ends on Sunday, has doubled compared to the 2021 primary, driven primarily by younger voters, Gothamist reports. 

We will not know the winner on Election Day. We will know the first choice votes, but will not know who won ranked choice until the following week due to the election rules. 

Endorsements: 

The progressive center is finally consolidating behind Mamdani. Brad Lander and Zohran Mamdani cross-endorsed each other with the express goal of stopping Andrew Cuomo from winning. Michael Blake and Mamdani also cross-endorsed. Civil rights lawyer and progressive mayoral candidate in the 2021 Democratic primary Maya Wiley endorsed Mamdani, as did Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Of the three main unions, the Teachers’ Union is not endorsing in the primary. DC37 endorsed Mamdani, and SEIU1199 endorsed Cuomo.

After stepping back from local endorsements last year, the New York Times  jumped back in with a somewhat convoluted approach. First, Times Opinion published a panel guide in which a majority of the selected prominent New Yorkers endorsed Brad Lander as their top choice. Days later, after Lander cross-endorsed Zohran Mamdani, the Times Editorial Board explicitly warned voters against ranking Mamdani—but notably stopped short of endorsing Cuomo or anyone else. 

Ezra Klein endorsed Lander, highlighting Lander’s deep experience with housing policy and governance, while Josh Barro and Daniel Golliher endorsed Whitney Tilson, who’s unlikely to win, along with more viable options. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio thinks Cuomo should not be mayor. 

Additional Reading:

In The Magic Realism of Zohran Mamdani for The Atlantic, Michael Powell wonders whether the fact that the socialist New York mayoral candidate’s proposals don’t hold up to serious scrutiny will matter come Election Day. 

Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo aren’t as different as they seem, Josh Greenman writes in Vital City. 

Some of our fellows raise concerns about Mamdani’s ability to effectively handle public safety and civil unrest, his rejection of Israel’s Jewish identity, and his vague, self-defined notion of “international law”.

(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

It will be the second time NYC will use Ranked Choice Voting in mayoral primaries, and I’ve lost count of how many people have told me how confusing the process is.

Here’s how to make it work for you: You should always start by ranking your actual favorites—even if you think they won’t win—to ensure they don’t get eliminated before they can benefit from second-choice votes of eliminated candidates. If your top choice is eliminated, your vote goes to your second choice candidate. And so on.

If all your choices are eliminated, your ballot becomes ‘exhausted’, and your vote will not count in further rankings. So, if you strongly dislike both frontrunners and expect one will definitely win, consider ranking the one you can live with as your final choice. This way, your vote matters longer, giving you more say in the final outcome.

Joel Wertheimer wrote for Nate Silver’s Silver Bullet about the intricacies of the process, whether anyone can beat Cuomo, and whether that is Mamdani, should you want to know more. 

Despite the media buzz around Mamdani’s surge, our new poll shows Andrew Cuomo leading, and it aligns with the latest Marist poll, which similarly shows a ten point win for the former governor. 

In both polls Cuomo starts with 43% of first-choice votes and wins after Adrienne Adams and Brad Lander are eliminated. Our poll shows him winning 56% to Mamdani’s 44%; Marist puts this at 55% to 45%. 

Cuomo draws significant support from older, moderate, and Black voters, particularly those prioritizing crime and public safety, while Mamdani has substantial backing from younger voters and has notably surged among Latino voters, likely boosted by high-profile endorsements like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Despite Cuomo’s apparent advantage, 11% of voters are still undecided, and the outcome could shift significantly if Mamdani’s massive volunteer operation successfully reaches them as well as mobilizes his base, potentially offsetting Cuomo’s lead among voters concerned with stability and safety. For some vulnerable groups of voters it may just be too hot to go outside.

(And if you missed it, here is an interesting read about New York’s five political types from this survey that was commissioned by Jamie Rubin earlier this year).

Cars dominate NYC’s streets not because they’re efficient—exactly the opposite, Nicole Gelinas writes in Streetsblog. They’ve reshaped the city around their own limitations, crowding out buses, bikes, and pedestrians, and forcing everyone else aside. Complaints about “empty” bike and bus lanes miss the point: they’re empty because buses and bikes actuallymove people quickly and efficiently.

She argues that parking is the same: we barely notice parked cars lining our streets, even though they’re private property hogging public space—yet dining sheds attract fierce debate. The backlash to tiny attempts to reclaim street space isn’t about efficiency or fairness; it’s proof of how completely cars have captured our urban imagination.

NYC’s Congestion Pricing toll has cut Manhattan traffic delays by 25% and reduced gridlock in nearby counties, a new report from the Regional Plan Association shows. 

Waymo has officially applied for a permit from the New York City Department of Transportation to begin testing a pilot fleet of autonomous vehicles in Manhattan.

Gotham Book Prize: Nicole Gelinas’ book Movement: New York’s Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car won the Gotham Book award, and we at MI are very proud of this deserved recognition. The other winner was Paradise Bronx by Ian Frazier, which is currently on my reading list.

Park Slope Food Coop—often a microcosm of tensions within the city’s very liberal voter base—is once again in the news. A fight over an Israeli goods boycott at the coop has swelled into an existential conflict, sparking accusations of antisemitism and prompting a city investigation, Hell Gate reports (🔒). Pro-Palestinian organizers argue the coop must align its shelves and governance with members’ political values, while opponents, including longtime leadership, contend a boycott risks fracturing the famously democratic community. 

And since we are talking about Democratic primaries, New York City needs electoral reform—a point MI’s John Ketcham has argued for years. Right now, over a million New Yorkers—registered as independents or with minor parties—have little say in local elections, since most key races are decided in closed Democratic primaries. Moving city elections to even-numbered years alongside state and national contests could in addition boost voter turnout significantly; just 21% of eligible voters turned out in the 2021 mayoral election, compared with much higher participation in presidential election years.

Opponents argue that allowing non-party voters into primaries might dilute the influence of committed party members, weakening political cohesion. They also worry that aligning local elections with higher-profile state and national races could overshadow important city issues, making voters less informed about local policy.

Yet momentum for reform is building. The city’s Charter Revision Commission is considering placing proposals—such as open primaries and moving election years—on the ballot this November. According to its preliminary report, election reform has generated more public interest and written testimony than any other issue, a finding consistent with Manhattan Institute polling showing strong voter support for making the electoral system more inclusive.

Paley Park. Photo by Liena Zagare

Paley Park  (3 E 53rd St., Midtown)

Opened in 1967, this pioneering “vest-pocket park” remains an urban gem for Midtown meetings. Slightly elevated from street level, Paley Park offers a quiet, shady refuge next to a soothing 20-foot waterfall that drowns out city noise and neighboring conversations. Iconic modernist seating by Eero Saarinen and Harry Bertoia makes this compact space ideal for casual conversations or quick coffee meet-ups—a peaceful slice of design history in Manhattan’s busiest corridor. It does get very busy during lunchtime.