Socialist mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani brought his campaign to frontrunner Andrew Cuomo’s front door Friday morning — daring the former governor to join him and face the press in a candid conversation.
“When are you going to find your spine? When are you going to actually answer the questions that you’ve been evading? And when are you going to stand up for New Yorkers?” said the Queens assemblyman outside of Cuomo’s luxury Midtown apartment building.
The lefty lawmaker — whose momentum-gaining campaign raised over $845,000 in the last two months and who could be eligible for $4.3 million in public matching funds — boasted about his impressive grassroots support from Cuomo’s doorstep.
“We have not only created the largest small following base of any campaign in this race, we have not only had millions of New Yorkers view our videos on social media. We’ve also assembled a single largest field team that we’ve ever seen in a mayoral race, and we knocked on more than 100,000 doors so far with more than 7,000 New Yorkers volunteering with our campaign, and we’re seeing averages of about 100 New Yorkers signing on every 24 hours,” he crowed.
Cuomo’s campaign raised $1.5 million from more than 2,800 donors in the 13 days since the three-term Democratic governor entered the primary race on March 1st. He also expects to receive matching funds.
The proudly socialist Mamdani slammed for reportedly receiving more than $120,000 in donations from registered Republicans.
“This is a governor who now decries the state of the MTA when he is the same governor who stole hundreds of millions of dollars from it and even to subsidize upstate ski resorts that were having a tough winter,” said Mamdani.
“A governor who pretends he could stand up to President Trump’s cutting of Medicaid when he did the same things as the governor of this state,” he said.
At least 40 GOP-affiliated donors have contributed, including President Trump’s former spokesperson Anthony Scaramucci and ex-Long Island sanitation boss, Joseph Rutigliano, who was indicted over alleged ties to the Genovese crime family, Politico reported.
“What New York City deserves is a leader that is willing to not only answer any questions, but to be clear and concise in our opposition to a Trump administration that is put in New Yorkers firmly within their crosshairs,” Mamdani said.
“All while Andrew Cuomo is too busy begging for donations in boardrooms from registered Republicans that have now funded more than $120,000 of his campaign,” he quipped.
A Cuomo spokesperson pointed out that Cuomo has done a variety of one-on-one TV interviews, has taken questions from reporters at various campaign events and sat down with the Post editorial board earlier this week.
The rep also pointed out that Cuomo has received endorsements from a diverse group that includes prominent New York Democrats and labor unions.
“New York City is in crisis — a crisis of affordability, of quality of life and of leadership, and Governor Cuomo alone has a track record of decades as a proven leader who can get the job done,” Cuomo spokesperson Jason Elan said in a statement.
“Unlike everyone else, Governor Cuomo is running a proactive, positive, issue based campaign and spending his days meeting with voters to hear directly from them on their concerns and share his plans to make our city safer and affordable,” he said. “We have been overwhelmed by the breath of support we have received from men and women of the labor movement, elected officials and party leaders across all five boroughs and the nearly three-thousand donors who contributed to our campaign in just two weeks. There are serious times that require a serious leader, not those trafficking in cherry picked gutter tactics for silly press hits.”
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