As Cuomo Tries to Catch Mamdani, the Campaign May Get Ugly

[Celerity]

“You’ve got a candidate who has lost his way,” one Cuomo insider tells Vanity Fair.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/as-cuomo-tries-to-catch-mamdani-the-campaign-may-get-ugly

https://archive.ph/NDvRi



The screaming and booing erupted while Andrew Cuomo was still half a block away, walking toward a mosque in Jamaica, Queens. “You are a criminal! You are not welcome here! How dare you support a war criminal!” One of the dozen or so hecklers, some of whom were wearing T-shirts supporting Zohran Mamdani, was inches from the former governor’s right ear, matching his every step and yelling at full volume, “Shame on you! Shame on you!”

Cuomo stayed cool, removed his black dress shoes at the door of the mosque, and descended a narrow stairway into the small basement prayer room. The group of protesters followed Cuomo and continued jeering loudly throughout his attempt to speak to the 50 or so men kneeling on the floor. “This is an important time in this country,” he began. “You look at what’s going on in this country, the anger, the division, the extremism on both sides. You have an extreme left; you have an extreme right. You look at the violence we see, the political violence we see—”

“Go to Israel and help the prime minister there! Go there, where you belong!”

“You abused women!”

“Now, this election is different than most elections. This is not just about different people. This is about different philosophy…. My father was a Democrat. I’ve always been a Democrat…. Socialism didn’t work in Cuba. Socialism is not going to work in New York City…. Mr. Mamdani proposed to legalize prostitution. Legalizing prostitution would run afoul of the teaching in the Quran—”

“Do not speak about the Quran! You support the genocide!”

After six minutes and four mentions of prostitution (Mamdani has denied ever supporting the legalization of prostitution, though a spokesperson has said he would take a “decriminalization approach” to the issue), Cuomo exited, reclaimed his shoes, and departed in a waiting SUV. Afterward, his aides were so gleeful about the confrontation that I wondered, slightly, if the whole thing had been a setup, a bit of sophisticated trolling designed to make Cuomo appear as the sane moderate besieged by the radical left and that crazed socialist Mamdani. But the mosque visit was also in keeping with Cuomo’s more overt strategy of trying to paint his rival as holding unexamined, unpopular policy positions.

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